different societies.
The conflict between the two societies--Church and State--was one which
could hardly arise in the Middle Ages, because there was only a single
society, an undivided Christian commonwealth, which was at one and the
same time both Church and State. Because there was only one society,
baptism counted as admission both to churchmanship and to citizenship,
which were one thing, and one only, in the Christian commonwealth; and
for the same reason excommunication, which shut the offender from all
religious life, excluded him equally and by the same act from every
civil right. The excommunicated person could not enter either the Church
or the law court; could not receive either the eucharist or a legacy;
could not own either a cure of souls or an acre of soil. Civil right and
religious status implied one another; and not only was _extra ecclesiam
nulla salus_ a true saying, but _extra ecclesiam nullum ius_ would also
be very near the truth. Here again is a reason for saying that the State
as such can hardly be traced in the Middle Ages. The State is an
organization of secular life. Even if it goes beyond its elementary
purpose of security for person and property, and devotes itself to
spiritual purposes, it is concerned with the development of the spirit
in its mortal existence, and confined to the expansion of the mind in
the bounds of a mortal society. The Middle Ages thought more of
salvation than of security, and more of the eternal society of all the
faithful, united together in Christ their Head, than of any passing
society of this world only. They could recognize kings, who bore the
sword for the sake of security, and did justice in virtue of their
anointing. But kings were not, to their thinking, the heads of secular
societies. They were agents of the one divine commonwealth--defenders
of the Faith, who wielded the secular sword for the furtherance of the
purposes of God. Thus there was one society, if there were two orders of
ministering agents; and thus, though _regnum_ and _sacerdotium_ might be
distinguished, the State and the Church could not be divided. Stephen of
Tournai, a canonist of the twelfth century, recognizes the two powers;
but he only knows one society, under one king. That society is the
Church: that king is Christ.

Under conditions such as these--with the plurality of States
unrecognized by theory, even if it existed in practice, and with
distinction between State and Church unk