The sixteenth century was not an easy period for the people of Western Europe. War, rebellion, and religious persecution at times seemed to be destroying the structure of society. But, unlike the fourteenth century, every outbreak of violence was followed by a period of reconstruction. By the end of the century men were working together more effectively than they had for generations; there was greater political security and wider economic opportunity. On these solid foundations a new and larger structure of European civilization could be built.
But the new structure had to be built, for the most part, out of old materials. The modern state, which furnished the central framework for the new civilization, was actually a patchwork of medieval institutions and medieval concepts of law and legitimacy, buttressed by religion. The new economic system, beginning to develop in the direction of capitalism, owed much to Italian bankers and merchants, and even more to the unknown men who had first substituted wind and water power for human muscle, and so had begun to make Europe a land of machinery instead of serfs. The new learning, in its most spectacular achievements, solved problems of medieval science, rather than problems of classical textual criticism.
Thus the modern world preserved, though often in disguise, the essential elements of medieval civilization. It drew strength from these elements, but with medieval achievements it also inherited medieval problems. When should the demands of the state be limited by the rules of law and the interests of religion? When should the free working of the economic system be checked by the needs of society and the principles of Christian brotherhood? How is the conflict between the results of learned investigation and the basic beliefs of religion to be solved? These problems of medieval society have been even greater problems in the modern world. They will continue to be problems as long as our society remembers, in any degree, its medieval origins.
