The Reconstruction of the Civilization of the West, from Charlemagne (Transitio Imperil) to the Era of the Crusades (and Concordat, 1122).

Extract

The influence of Christianity on the Roman Empire, and so ultimately on modern Civilization, was immediately felt, as we first observed, in its action on the social system; and eventually in the formation of better public opinion in morals and Religion. The ideas of individual right and personal freedom (absolutely essential to the new faith which had appeared as the teacher of conscience), found their echo, and also in some sense a defined limit, in the advancing Roman Law; but the more active relations of the gradually-formed Christian Society to the State in which it took its mission would, as we saw, be much determined by the course of events, and by the action and development of the State itself.