part of this, and they were important because they offered both religious and secular education, the latter especially useful in feeding the professions and "the growing [secular] governmental bureaucracies" (Gies and Gies 159). However, secularization more generally had unforeseen consequences, such as mass urbanization and attendant chaos. Southern cites 13th-century documents that hint at Church concern for the Mystical Body's spiritual integrity as well as physical safety, or "peace in a turbulent society" (274) in several cities plagued by murder and mayhem possibly caused by religious fanaticism. Two things were going on here. First, the Church was claiming jurisdiction over both spiritual and secular behavior in a context bordering on social anarchy. Second, and perhaps even more important, the evidence of religious disarray points in the direction of sea-change retrenchment, Inquisition, and Reformation.
2. It is almost a commonplace to locate the origin of what became significant medieval trends in the "confusion which followed Charlemagne's d
...