The importance of this first attempt at liberty, of this reproduction of the spirit of examination, was soon felt. Although occupied in reforming itself, the church did not the less take alarm: it immediately declared war against these new reformers, whose appearance threatened it much more than their doctrines. Behold the great fact which illustrates the end of the eleventh and the commencement of the twelfth century, whilst the church presented itself in the theocratic and monastic state! For the first time, a serious contest arose between the clergy and the free-thinkers. The quarrels of Abelard and St. Bernard, the councils of Soissons and Sens, in which Abelard was condemned, are but the evidences of that fact which has held so important a place in the history of modern civilisation. It was the principal circumstance in the state of the church in the twelfth century, the point of time at which we shall now leave it. A movement of a different nature took place at the very same period, the movement towards the enfranchisement of the boroughs. It was attended by a singular proof of the inconsistency of barbarian and rude minds. If those burgesses who maintained their own freedom with such zeal, had been told that there were men who asserted the rights of human reason, of free examination, and were denounced by the church as heretics, they would have stoned or burnt them on the instant. {121} Abelard and his friends were exposed to this danger more than once. On the other hand, those very writers who were the champions of the rights of human reason, spoke of the efforts for enfranchisement of the boroughs as productive of abominable disorder, and of the overthrow of society. Thus war seemed declared between the philosophical and the municipal movement, between intellectual and political enfranchisement. To reconcile these two great actions, and to bring them to a comprehension of the community of their interests, ages have been required. In the twelfth century they were utterly severed, as we shall see in our succeeding inquiry into the enfranchisement of the boroughs. {122} Lecture VII. Boroughs And Their Influence. The feudal system and the church, the two first great fundamental elements of modern civilisation, have now been brought down to the twelfth century, and our present object will be to trace the third of those elements, the boroughs, to the same era, confining ourselves within the limits we have observed with regard to the other two.