Asad explains, "During the period [early Middle Ages] the very term religious was therefore reserved for those living in monastic communities; with the later emergence of nonmonastic orders, the term came to be used for all who had taken lifelong vows by which they were set apart from the ordinary members of the Church" (39n22). Writing further, he mentions, "For medieval Christians, religion was not a universal phenomenon: religion was a site on which universal truth was produced, and it was clear to them that truth was not produced universally" (45n29). St. Thomas Aquinas used religio in his Summa Theologiae in I-II.49-55 and II-II.81.7-8 to refer to the reverence for God habitually developed within the church's communal liturgical practices. See St.