ABSTRACT
Western Europeans elevated the Church to lead Latin society during the Gregorian Age, a period of intermittent internal warfare extending from about 1050 until 1130. The Church embodied the cultural identity of the 'Christian republic'. Although war persisted, Christendom's only easily justified wars were the Crusades, waves of expansion at the expense of neighbouring cultures and religions. The needs of this imperialism encouraged plans designed to realize a peaceful Christian society at home, the military being restrained there by the law of just war and the peace or truce of God. Because princes and magistrates wanted those active in the world to be accountable in their courts, freedom required clerks to withdraw from secular office and professions involving them in lay affairs. Although the separation of the spheres of lay and clerk was long obscured by a lack of trained laymen and by persisting old state-dominated churches, a start had been made and ecclesiastical legislation pointed in two directions.
