“Practically, the Church was an immense vested interest, implicated to the hilt in the economic fabric, especially on the side of agriculture and land tenure. Itself the greatest of landowners, it could no more quarrel with the feudal structure than the Ecclesiastical Commission, the largest of mineral owners today, can lead a crusade against royalties.”

—  R. H. Tawney

Part I, Ch. 3
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926)

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R. H. Tawney 34
English philosopher 1880–1962

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