In the midst of a vast aggregation of human beings, possessing little social or political unity, and held together only by the larger forces of national life, there survives the visible outward structure of a social and political organism that was once intensely alive, active and self-conscious. The mediaeval city is a many-sided subject. It presents at least a score of aspects, which are not only of absorbing interest to the student, but also full of romantic attraction to the wayfaring man. The monastic refuge of the missionary saints, in which the infancy of modern civilization was nurtured, had largely dispensed with the arm of flesh. A cleared space marked out by four crosses became at once a sanctuary and a market. The functions which the gilds performed in the later period of civic development were performed by these communities for the city of the patrician period.