"The family was the well-rooted and established unit of society"

“THE Catholic Church becoming the religion of Graeco-Roman society did among other things, two capital things for the settlement of Europe on its political side, and for arresting the descent into chaos. It humanized slavery and it strengthened permanent marriage. Very slowly through the centuries those two influences were to produce the stable civilization of the Middle Ages, wherein the slave was no longer a slave but a peasant; and everywhere the family was the well-rooted and established unit of society.”

~Hilaire Belloc: from The Crisis of Civilization.