Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/709

 A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEIV OF SOVEREIGNTY 693

because of the abundance of its relics and because it was the seat of the apostle Peter. The beliefs of the people gradually made the bishop of Rome the head of the church. In his hands was centered the control of the church's property, with the resulting privative and remuneratory sanctions, backed by mate- rial penalties and rewards. Appointment, promotion, and removal of the priests throughout Christendom came from Rome. Excom- munication became exclusively the pope's weapon, with its unpar- alleled sweep of spiritual and material penalties. Finally, trials and punishments for heresy, conducted by the pope's subordi- nates, added to his power the physical penalties of death and bodily suffering.

We have here again the universal law of monopoly and cen- tralization, enforced by necessity and the struggle for existence. The religious teachings of Christ, love of God and man, meek- ness, self-sacrifice, devotion to law, order, and property rights, showed themselves in the martyrs of the early church, but the results were not commensurate with the sacrifices. There was the wastefulness, the loss of energy, which follows lack of organization. With the barbarian invasions, with a rude people needing discipline, the church required unity and energy, and the insignia of the same, pomp and wealth. Only with the disci- pline of organization and the wealthy material basis therefor could even those meek, persuasive qualities of Christ's religion, apparently so opposite, hope to survive and pervade society.

But monopoly, when once attained, is prone to exalt its material basis above its persuasive principles, and the interests of its hierarchy above the interests of the community. Organi- zation should be perfected for struggle, not for gathering the fruits of victory. A continuation of the methods of competi- tion now becomes aggrandizement instead of public service. The community had been educated by the church and by the forces that followed on its path, up to the point where it became equipped with the persuasive susceptibilities which con- stituted the church's mission. The community was now devel- oping a crude state consciousness, whose essential qualities are that respect for law, order, authority, property, and moral