Societas perfecta

RW Southern describes the medieval church’s conception of its place in the world: “the church was much more than the source of coercive power. It was not just a government, however grandiose its operations. It was the whole of human society subject to the will of God . . . It was membership of the church that gave men a thoroughly intelligible purpose and place in God’s universe. So the church was not only a state, it was the state – the human societas perfecta . Not only all political activity, but all learning and thought were functions of the church. Besides taking over the political order of the Roman Empire, the church appropriated the science of Greece and the literature of Rome, and it turned them into the instruments of human well-being in this world.”