The most pernicious and debasing conditions of Byzantine society prevailed to even a greater degree in the brutalized communities of Central and Western Europe. In no country of that continent did there exist a firmly established or legally constituted government. The authority of the sovereign was nominal and complimentary,--obeyed when it was more convenient to do so than to dispute it, and practically recognized under protest. The order of succession was perpetually violated. Ambitious vassals overturned thrones won by the valor of great chieftains, or ruled with despotic power in the names of their feeble progeny. Anarchy prevailed throughout those provinces whose population was not intimidated by the immediate presence of the court. Property and life were at the mercy of banditti in the pay and under the protection of powerful nobles, who complacently shared the spoils and the infamy of these highway plunderers. The savage and absurd customs imported by barbarians from the forests of Germany and Britain usurped the office of laws approved by the wisdom and practice of Roman jurisprudence. The decay of that science under the later emperors, and especially under the system established by Constantine, must be attributed to the increasing interest in religious doctrines and theological controversy, which ignored the talents and ambition once exercised in the profession of the civil law. The priest had become the successful rival of the advocate, and ecclesiastical preferment was prized more highly by the educated than the triumphs of judicial learning and forensic eloquence. The arm of the strongest determined the justice of a cause without the formalities of evidence and argument. A graduated tariff of compensation for bodily injury existed, and any offence could be expiated by the payment of a stipulated sum. The imposition and collection of taxes were not regulated by any established principles, and the obvious rules of political economy were violated in the application and enforcement of the fiscal regulations. Amidst the universal disorder, the Church lost no opportunity to increase her acquisitions and consolidate her power. She encouraged the continuance of the incredible ignorance and inhumanity of the age. She resolutely set her face against every attempt of the laity to shake off the fetters imposed upon it by violence and superstition. She punished with atrocious severity the slightest manifestation to question the genuineness of her pretensions or the validity of her canons.