Vestry and levied a local tax on produce known as a tithe. The decline of the feudal system and, following the Reformation in the 16th century, the power of the Church, led to a new form of township or parish meeting, which dealt with both civil and ecclesiastical affairs. This new meeting was supervised by the parish priest, probably the best educated of the inhabitants, and it evolved to become the vestry meeting. As the complexity of rural society increased, the vestry meetings pragmatically acquired greater responsibilities, and were given the power to grant or deny payments from parish funds. Although
What Is a Nation? and continues to be invoked. Political historian Karl Deutsch, in a quote sometimes mistakenly attributed to Renan, said that a nation is "a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbours". Benedict Anderson's 1983 work Imagined Communities, which states that a nation is an "imagined political community", argues that Renan contradicts himself when he says French people must have forgotten the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, yet does not explain what it is. In other words, Renan assumes that all his readers will remember the very massacre he says they have forgotten.