Medieval sacred/secular

Milbank points out in detail how the sacred/secular dualism was undermined in medieval life: “monasteries were also farms . . . the church saw to the upkeep of bridges which were at once crossing places and shrines to the Virgin . . . the laity often exercised economic, charitable, and festive functions in confraternities that were themselves units of the church as much as parishes, and therefore occupied not unambiguously secular space.”

He adds that “the first freely shaped voluntary associations in the Christian West tended to be religious ones: the various religious and lay orders did not see constitution making (any more than canon law itself) as at variance with the idea that the constituted body was itself a divinely instituted gift and event of grace.”

On the other side, “the supreme laymen, namely kinds, were anointed, and assumed that they had thereby received a Christic office in another aspect to that received by the priesthood: Christ being understood following the New Testament as fulfilling the office of prophet, priest, and king.”