Before the Age of Absolutism, institutions, such as the Church, legislatures, or social elites, restrained monarchical power. Absolutism was characterized by the ending of feudal partitioning, consolidation of power with the monarch, rise of the state, rise of professional standing armies, creation of professional bureaucracies, codification of state laws, and the rise of ideologies that justify the absolutist monarchy. Hence, absolutism was made possible by new innovations and characterized as a phenomenon of Early Modern Europe, rather than that of the Middle Ages, where the clergy and nobility counterbalanced as a result of mutual rivalry.