During the Middle Ages, religion in the form of Catholicism dominated the lives of all citizens, rich and poor, because the Catholic Church was a larger and more powerful organization that most of the governmental structures that existed at the time; the Church had abundant land and financial resources, giving it a great amount of political power. At the time, most Europeans lived in relatively small communities with top-down hierarchies headed by a landowner or king. This system, known as feudalism, relied on local governance rather than the control of a single national government, creating a power vacuum that allowed the Catholic Church to gain a large amount of influence and control that went beyond religion. Secular art of any kind was
