Through the Church alone was an organisation kept up in direct communication with the central civilising agencies of Italy and the south.

And while the Church and the monasteries thus preserved the connection with the continent, they also formed schools of culture and of industrial arts for the country itself.
At the abbeys bells were cast, glass manufactured, buildings designed, gold and silver ornaments wrought, jewels enamelled, and unskilled labour organised by the most trained intelligence of the land.

They thus remained as they had begun, homes and retreats for those exceptional minds which were capable of carrying on the arts and the knowledge of a dying civilisation across the gulf of predatory barbarism which separates the artificial culture of Rome from the industrial culture of modern Europe.
The towns were few and relatively unimportant, built entirely of wood (except the churches), and very liable to be burnt down on the least excuse.

In considering them we must dismiss from our minds the ideas derived from our own great and complex organisation, and bring ourselves mentally into the attitude of a simple agricultural people, requiring little beyond what was produced on each man's own farm or petty holding.
Such people are mainly fed from their own corn and meat, mainly clad from their own homespun wool and linen.

A little specialisation of function, however, already existed.