But in the meantime much might be done towards further mitigating the evils of slavery, especially by impressing on master and slave their relative duties and controlling their behaviour towards one another by the exercise of an independent moral authority.
Although Rome wanted creative force to add a great series of tragic dramas to the literature of the world, yet the spirit of elevation and moral authority breathed into tragedy by Ennius passed into the ethical and didactic writings and the oratory of a later time.
Association, however, remains as before voluntary, and some churches are outside the Union; nor has a resolution of the assembly more than moral authority for any of the constituent churches.
For, while the power of Charlemagne's successors was decaying, the papacy itself became involved in the confusion of the party strife of Italy and of the city of Rome, and was plunged in consequence into such an abyss of degradation (the so-called Pornocracy), that it was in danger of forfeiting every shred of its moral authority over Christendom.
Armed by the reformation with a moral authority which made it possible to concentrate the forces of the West under the supreme direction of the Church and its leaders, Urban II.
