Commerce has always been the greatest of civilizing factors. According to Buckle: “Among the accessories of modern civilization there is none of greater moment than Trade.” So too Hallam says: “Under a second class of events that contributed to destroy the spirit of the Feudal system, we may reckon the abolition of villenage, the increase of commerce, and consequent opulence of merchants and artisans, and especially the institution of free cities and boroughs. This is one of the most important and interesting steps in the progress of society during the Middle Ages, and deserves particular consideration.” But this is all the more important as showing that trade was in reality a more powerful factor for civilization than Christianity, which after several centuries of hold on the people of Europe, had done little more than inflame them with a zeal and a zest for fighting. It is significant also that while Rome rose to her greatest eminence under the Ancestral worship of her founders, when she became Christian, Christianity did not prevent her from declining and falling into pieces. But it is equally significant that while the opulence conferred by commerce on Rome, eventually brought reaction and ruin upon her people, the effect it had upon the barbarians who overthrew the Eternal City, was sufficiently stimulating to encourage them to invade a degenerate empire. For the desire of wealth and plunder was but the first awakening of the spirit of commerce. To be sure the crusades gave a great stimulus to trade. But there was more of the militant spirit than Christianity about them. Besides, although commercial prosperity often accompanies war, reaction is certain to supervene. Obviously the essential importance of trade was a truth that the Merchant-Prophet soon recognized. Intuitively, and with the keenness of perception that marked him, he naturally utilized every lesson that it taught him and every advantage that it gave him. Nor has he been the only theologian who saw its utility in a religious light. The Jesuits long afterwards recognized the agency of commerce in promoting and diffusing religious belief, and became great merchants as well as great missionaries. So too it was through commerce, as Draper points out, “that the Papacy first learned to turn to art. The ensuing development of Europe” (in the Renaissance) “was really based on the commerce of _upper_ Italy, and not on the Church. The statesmen of Florence were the inventors of the balance of power.”