both physicians and lawyers a certain religious character was formally recognised, of which some 66 shadow of a memory still exists in their official garments and formulae.
As an example of the closeness with which this idea of the gradation of ranks for service-protection clung to the religious, as well as to the secular, polity of the Middle Ages, we may cite the Mystery Plays, in which not only heaven and earth are furnished each with its due hierarchy, but hell also has a like constitution. The simple medieval man conceived of the universe, it must be remembered, as divided into three parts, heaven above, earth in the midst, and hell below, though this was modified with the more learned by a curious mixture of quasi-Ptolemaic lore.
But the relations between the feudal lords, their vassals and their serfs, as such, only show us one side of the society of the Middle Ages. The tendency to association within that society is one of its most marked features. In fact, nothing could be done in those days without such association. Life seemed impossible to the medieval mind without common action. 67 All men, as we have seen, both great and small, belonged to the great corporation of the Church; damnation in this world and the next was the only alternative. The ecclesiastics proper, and those specially devoted to the religious life, including those whose business was fighting for the Church, formed themselves into strictly regulated orders. The nobles were bound by the ties of the fraternity of knighthood in one or other of its forms.
Production and Exchange were in the hands of great associations formed by traders and craftsmen for protection of commerce and organisation of industry. The mediæval towns had two origins: first, there was the town, which was a survival of the city of Roman times and is mostly found in the south of Europe, Italy, Spain, France, etc. although there are examples in Britain and Western Germany. And next there were the new towns