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The very existence of <an
independent church> would enhance the possibilities for a growth of human
freedom by preventing medieval society from congealing into a rigid
despotism . . . Lord Acton pointed this out long ago, ‘To that conflict of
four hundred years . . . we owe the rise of civil liberty’.
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| Brian Tierney, Citadel of Cefalů, 1995 | "Medieval Canon Law and Western Constitutionalism," The Catholic Historical Review 52 (1966) 1-17 at 8. |