"A life in the church, for the church, through the church; a life which she blessed in mass at morning and sent to peaceful rest by the vesper hymn; a life which she supported by the constantly recurring stimulus of the sacraments, relieving it by confession, purifying it by penance, admonishing it by the presentation of visible objects for contemplation and worship--this was the life which they of the Middle Ages conceived of as the rightful life of man; it was the actual life of many, the ideal of all."[86] On the other side, the church boldly asserted the right and duty of the divine to control the world,--the religious symbol of the modern proposition that conscience should dominate political and business affairs. "No institution is apart from the authority of the church," wrote Ægidius Colonna. "No one can legitimately possess field or vine except under its authority or by it. Heretics are not owners, but unjustly occupy." Canossa symbolized the supremacy of the spiritual over the temporal power, and there is a sublime audacity, moral as well as political, in the famous Bull of Boniface VIII., "We declare that every human creature is subject to the Roman pontiff." The church as a corporate society expressed also the _community_ of its members. It was indeed no mere collection of individual believers. As a divine institution, the "body of Christ on earth," it gave to its members rather than received from them. It invested them with new worth, instead of getting its own worth from them. Nevertheless, it was not an absolute authority; it represented the union of all in a common fellowship, a common destiny, and a common cause against the powers of evil. The massive cathedrals which remain as the monuments of the ages of faith, are fitting symbols of these aspects of mediæval life. They dominate their cities architecturally, as the church dominated the life of the ages which built them. They inspired within the worshipper, on the one hand, a sense of finiteness in the presence of the sublime; on the other, an elevation of soul as he became conscious of union with a power and presence not his own. They awed the worshiping assembly and united it in a common service. § 2. MAIN LINES OF MODERN DEVELOPMENT