Lecture 4
The Church and Society

The role of the medieval Catholic Church in establishing institutions and structures of schooling and higher education, in gathering and interpreting the works of Classical antiquity and the Apostolic Age, in founding religious orders to teach, preach and care for the growing urban populations, and in assisting in the education and training of lawyers and civil administrators, led to its acquiring the features of a state or government, but that was in tension with the idea of being in the world but not of it. This is not just a historical issue but a perennial one that has to be thought through in each age.