Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/432

 416 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

In the diocese of Africa the church struggled against the Dona- tists, and converted Tripolitana, Mauretania, and Sardinia. At the North it incorporated within itself the Anglo-Saxons and the Scots. It organized its less stationary or mobile militia. The principal phenomenon is that the frontiers of the church extended beyond those of any of the states of the period, and even beyond the limits of the old Roman Empire. Gregory the Great estab- lished the real primacy of the Roman church in the West a primacy hitherto rather nominal than effective. At the same time, the temporal domain was extending; for just as the soul, in spite even of the doctrine of the church, is inseparable from the body and the power of matter, so there is no spiritual sovereignty with- out temporal sovereignty. That is possible only with doctrines which are not fitted to become social beliefs. The temporal sovereignty of the popes sprang naturally, like all sovereignty in its beginnings, from property. The popes had become the great- est landed proprietors in Italy at a period when land comprised the principal sort of wealth. Their domains, arranged in divisions designated by the name of patrimonies, comprised each the total real property, massae, held in each province. The papacy thus had patrimonies not only in Italy, but in Gaul, in Africa, and elsewhere. The different portions of each of these patrimonies were occupied and cultivated by colonists attached to the soil; they were worked either directly or through tenants, but always under the direction and oversight of an ecclesiastical rector. At the time the pope was, it is true, still only a great proprietor, but nevertheless here lay the origin of his temporal power an origin analogous to that of the temporal power of the feudal lords, which inversely became invested with a spiritual power such as that of the administration of justice.

From all that precedes, one may see perfectly that the forma- tion of new states at this period, with their respective frontiers, was determined above all by the development of internal social conditions in correlation with external forces of the same charac- ter. Under feudalism and during the Middle Ages, the play of these forces was more complex than it perhaps had ever been. A given man might be vassal in one territory and paramount lord of