As to the knightly ideal, this was too exclusively a martial one to become the supreme rule of life and conduct for the multitude. Furthermore, it was an aristocratic ideal, an ideal for the noble born alone. This precluded the possibility of its becoming, as a distinct type, a permanent force in civilization. But the ethical type of the towns, embracing those native human virtues which spring up everywhere out of the usual and universal relationships of everyday life and occupations, was sure of a permanent place among the ethical types of the classes and professions of modern society. In the same sense that the medieval towns (as the birthplace of the third estate) were the cradle of modern democracy, were they the cradle of modern business morality. Just as through the medieval monastery passes the direct line of descent of the present-day social conscience of Christendom,[712] just so through the medieval town passes the direct line of descent of the present-day business conscience of the Western world. [Sidenote: Disuse of trial by wager of battle] The influence of the spirit generated in the medieval towns is seen in that important reform, the abolition of the judicial duel, which was one of the most noteworthy matters in the moral history of the Middle Ages.[713] It was the military spirit of the German barbarians which, as we have seen, was a chief agency in the introduction of the wager of battle or trial by combat in the jurisprudence of the European peoples.[714] Besides the influence of the towns, a number of other causes concurred in gradually effecting the abrogation of this method of settling disputes, among which the most efficient were the opposition of the Church, the revival of the Roman law in the eleventh century, and the advance in general intelligence. Into every one of these agencies there entered an ethical element, so that we may regard this great reform, in its causes as well as in its effects, as distinctively a moral reform. Thus the influence of the towns was essentially ethical, for the rise of these communities, as we have just seen, meant the superseding of the ethics of aristocracy and war by the ethics of democracy and industry. Consequently the influence exerted by the towns was largely that of a new ideal of character. The opposition of the Church was motived chiefly by moral feeling, the pontiffs and the bishops who opposed the practice doing so on the ground that the ordeal by battle was “brutal, unchristian, and unrighteous.” The advocates of the civil law opposed the practice not only because it interfered with the royal and imperial administration of justice, but because it was a practice based on ignorance and superstition and “incompatible with every notion of equity and justice,” since brutal force was allowed to usurp the place of testimony and reason. Thus the Roman law, as the embodiment of right reason, was here as everywhere else a moral force making for what is reasonable and just.