It is clear from the previous chapter that Christian monasticism was a more “dynamic” and autonomous institution than the Theravada Sangha, forcefully interacting with other social sectors and playing an important part in an arena of shifting social forces and coalitions. Up to the eleventh century, this part was mostly conservative. Abbots usually bowed to and even supported the external authority of kings and popes, while fending for their own material and ideal interests in a world they basically accepted as it was. The strong influence of monasticism in the Gregorian attempt to restructure Christian society was a sign of monasticism's vitality and prestige. Ultimately, however, this influence should be understood as the result of a close collaboration with the ecclesiastical hierarchy – an effective alloy of monastic prestige and ecclesiastical institutional power. On the whole, therefore, Christian monasticism cannot be said to have been much more anti- or counterstructural than its Theravada equivalent, despite its criticism of the world – and of the Church in the world especially – so important at its emergence, and maintained in a more subdued fashion throughout its subsequent stages. Seguy's conception of Christian monasticism as a form of “implicit protest” (see this volume, Chapter 2) may be applied without much reservation throughout the period under study, although this aspect may seem at times to be completely superseded by the elaborate network of mutual support and exchange between monasteries and society.