SOSC 1740 Chapter chapter 11: reading guide - chapter 11
18 Jun 2017
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The monastery, the guild, the church, served as formative elements of the medieval town. More effective than were cos, delphi, and olympia in hellas, they shaped every quarter of the city and molded a common life that promised to overcome the abortive institutions originally entrenched in the ancient citadel. Voluntary co-operation and contractual obligations and reciprocal duties partly replaced blind obedience and one-sided coercion. (315) At the moment these new structures were visible, working side by side, one may say that the archetypal medieval town had taken form. Church, but that the mercantile materialism that developed in the medieval towns/cities brought this new society into conflict with those same values. In certain respects, the medieval town had succeeded as no previous urban culture had done. For the first time, the majority of the inhabitants of a city were free men: except for special groups, like jews, city dweller and citizen were now synonymous terms.
