The strength of the Church was sapped alike by theological and moral revolt, while the growth of new classes, the new greed of peace and of the wealth that comes of peace, the advance of industry, the division of property, the progress of centralized government, dealt fatal blows at the feudal organization of the state.
[Sidenote: Weakness of the Baronage] Nor was the danger merely an external one.

Noble and priest alike were beginning to disbelieve in themselves.

The new knowledge which was now dawning on the world, the direct contact with the Greek and Roman literatures which was just beginning to exert its influence on Western Europe, told above all on these wealthier and more refined classes.

The young scholar or noble who crossed the Alps brought from the schools of Florence the dim impression of a republican liberty or an imperial order which disenchanted him of the world in which he found himself.

He looked on the feudalism about him as a brutal anarchy, he looked on the Church itself as the supplanter of a nobler and more philosophic morality.
Besides this moral change, the barons had suffered politically from the decrease of their numbers in the House of Lords.