Conventional historiography duly emphasizes the Church's work in shaping medieval Society; but we must not stop there. It is equally important—some might say, even more important—to mark how Society shaped the Church. Roughly speaking, theirs was a peasant world, with peasant mentality. The village was one of its greatest formative forces, operative even in its passivity. Social conditions were the outcome not only of what the peasant actively desired, but also of that which his conservatism could not suffer to be removed or altered. It is only a half-truth to point out that medieval theologians were able to impose a long-disputed dogma upon the official Church. The complement of this is, that the populace could do much the same, almost without enlisting the theologians' services. Image worship, a question so contentious that it led to actual civil war, was finally decided not as the great early Fathers had thought, but as the populace required. In the long catalogue of recognized saints, those who have been canonized by popular acclamation will be found far more numerous than those who have received their credentials directly from Rome, after such examination as the present generation has seen in the cases of Fisher and More. The strength of the winning cause in the Transubstantiation dispute was in its direct and commanding appeal to the people, while scientific theologians could justify it only by the invention of logical devices hitherto unknown to any philosophy.