Introduction

EVERY SYSTEM OF law stands in the closest possible relation to the ideas, aims and purposes of the society to which the law is to apply. The government is the instrument which translates these more or less unshaped ideas and aims into the terse language of the law, and thus brings to fruition, or attempts to do so, the purpose or aim of the society. The law in a communist society will look differently from that in a capitalist society; the law in a Buddhist society will again look differently from both and from that in a Christian society; and so on. The dominant theme in the European Middle Ages was that supplied by Christian cosmology: it was the christocentric standpoint which impressed itself upon all classes of society, from the lowliest villein to the most powerful king or emperor. And it is this standpoint which explains the immersion of medieval governments and their laws in the Christian theme.