The Communes of Lombardy from the VI. to the X. Century Part 1

The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century.

by William Klapp Williams.

PART I.

THE LOMBARD CONQUEST AND ITS RESULTS.

Before tracing the beginnings of renewed munic.i.p.al life in Northern Italy, we must consider the conditions of land and people, which first rendered possible and then fostered the spirit of local independence of which such beginnings were the natural expression. To do this we must commence our researches with the first domination of the Lombards in the country.

In detail the story of the conquest of Northern Italy by the Lombards under Alboin, in 568, hardly differs materially from that of the inroads of other barbarian tribes of the north on the fertile plains of Italy. The causes were the same. Where the distinction is to be found from other such invasions, is in the results of the Lombard occupation, and in the different methods which the Lombards adopted so as to render their power and their possessions permanent. Let us look at the character of this invading host, which sweeps like a tide, at once destroying and revivifying, over the exhausted though still fertile plains of the Po and the Adige. Are we to call it a moving people or an advancing army? Are we to call its leaders (_duces_, from _ducere_ to lead), heads of clans and families, or captains and generals? Finally, is the land to be invaded, or is the land to be settled? To all these questions the only answer is to be found in the conception of the absolute union of both the kinds of functions described. A people is moving from a home whose borders have proved too narrow for its increasing numbers; an army is conquering a new home, where plenty will take the place of want, and luxury of privation. It is not an army marching at the command of a strongly centralized power to conquer a rich neighbor, and force a defeated enemy to pay it service or tribute. It is a body which, when it has conquered as an army, will occupy as a people; when it is established as a people, will still remain an army. The sword was not turned into the ploughshare; but the power to wield the sword had given the right to till the land, and soon the power to hold the land was to give the right to wear the sword. It was the conquest of a highly civilized agricultural people--whose very civilization had reduced them to a stage of moral weakness which rendered them totally unfit to defend themselves--by a semi-barbarous people, agricultural also, but rude, uncivilized, independent, owning no rulers but their family or military chiefs.

The conquerors took possession of the country simply as they would take possession of a larger farm than they had before owned. Their riches were only such as served for the support of men--herds, land, wine and corn. They needed cultivators for their large farm, so instead of destroying every one with fire and sword, they spared those of the weak inhabitants of the land who had survived the first onslaught, in order that they might make use of farmers to cultivate their new possessions. In most cases they did not make slaves of them, but tributaries; and after the land had been portioned evenly among the soldiers of the invading host, the original holders of the land tilled it themselves, under a system somewhat kindred to the metayer system as to-day existent in Tuscany and elsewhere, paying, according to the usual custom adopted by the northern conquerors of Italy, one-third of the produce[1] to their new masters. The whole organization of society was on a purely military basis; the soldiers of the conquering army, although they became landed proprietors, none the less retained their character and name of soldiers. Hence when these crude forms of social life began to crystallize into the carefully marked ranks of the feudal system, the "_milites_"[2] formed the order of gentlemen, the smaller feudatories, who gave land in fief to their va.s.sals--generally the old inhabitants--while holding their own nominally from the "_duces_," or dukes, the representatives of their former leaders in war, who held their tenure direct from the king or chief.

As the object of this paper is particularly to trace the origin and early sources of munic.i.p.al life in Northern Italy, let us turn and see what were the effects on the already existing towns, of the inroads of these hordes of northern barbarians. At the outset I must state emphatically that all our sources of information as to the inst.i.tutional history of this obscure period are exceedingly vague, meagre and unsatisfactory. The progress of events we can follow with more or less accuracy from the mazy writings of the early chroniclers; we can get a fair idea of the judicial and the legislative acts of the ruling powers by studying and comparing the different codes of laws that have come down to us; but in a study of the internal munic.i.p.al life of these early ages, the student meets again and again with increasing discouragement, and soon finds himself almost hopelessly lost in a tangle of doubts and inferences.

In the almost total want of direct evidence, from casual mention gleaned from the writings of the chroniclers, and from occasional references in the law codes to munic.i.p.al offices and regulations, enough indirect evidence must be sought, to enable us, by the aid of our powers of reasoning, if not of our imagination, to build up some history, defective though it be, of munic.i.p.al life, down to the time when the internal growth and importance of the cities rendered them sufficiently prominent political factors to have their deeds and their progress chronicled. Besides, if we consider the modes by which the communes slowly rose to independence, it will easily be seen that to have every step of this slow and almost secret advance chronicled and given to the world, would have been entirely contrary to the policy of the cities. These hoped to gain by the neglect of their rulers, and while clinging pertinaciously to every privilege ever legally granted, to claim new ones constantly, putting forth as their sole legal t.i.tle that slippery claim of precedent and time-honored custom. In that age, books of reference to prove such claims would have been found alike inconvenient and unnecessary. All the city folks wished was to be forgotten and ignored by their superiors, as any notice vouchsafed them was sure to come only in the restraint of some a.s.sumed privilege or the curtailing of some coveted right.

Hence the princ.i.p.al cause of the poverty of record through all this period of slow if steady growth; and the disappointed investigator must in some measure console himself with such a reason. It may be asked, what of the various local histories of different towns, whose authors seldom fail to give highflown accounts of their native cities, even in the remotest and darkest ages of their history? To this question there is a double answer: in the first place the uttermost caution must be enjoined in using such material; not only in separating fact from baseless tradition of a much later period, but in making large allowance for the heavy strain which a strong feeling of local patriotism, or civism, puts upon the conscience of the author.

In the second place it must be remembered that most of such histories, or at least of the monkish or other records from which they derive their source and most of their material, were written to the glory or under the auspices of some dominant n.o.ble family or ecclesiastical inst.i.tution, to whose laudation in ages past and present the humble author devotes all the resources of his mind, and I am afraid far too often of his imagination.

Let us now cast a glance at the exhausted civilization of the towns of Northern Italy, where the formal sh.e.l.l of Roman organization still remained, after the vigor and life which had produced it had long been destroyed. To describe the condition of the Roman _municipia_ at the time of the Teutonic invasions is but to tell a part of the story of the fall of the Roman Empire. The munic.i.p.al system, which from the names and duties of its officers would seem to represent a surprising amount of local independence in matters of administration, even a collection of small almost free republics, had lost all its strength and all its vital power by the grinding exactions of a centralized despotism, which was compelled to support its declining power by strengthening the very forces which were working its destruction, at the expense of destroying those from which it should have gained its strength. The stability of every state rests ultimately on the wealth and character of its citizens, and any government which exhausts the one and degrades the other in an effort to maintain its own unlimited power has its days numbered. Under the despotic rule of the later emperors the munic.i.p.alities had lost all their power, though in theory their rights were una.s.sailed. The _curia_ could elect its magistrates as of old, and these magistrates could legislate for the _municipium_, but by a single word the imperial delegate could annul the choice of the one and the acts of the other.

The economic condition of the people amounted to little short of bankruptcy; the possession of wealth, in landed property especially, having become but a burden to be avoided, and a source of exaction rather than of satisfaction to the owner. The inequalities of burdens and of rank were great. The citizens were divided into three cla.s.ses: (1) the privileged cla.s.ses, (2) the Curials, (3) the common people.

The first, freely speaking, were those who had in a manner succeeded in detaching themselves from the interests of the _municipium_ to which they belonged; such were the members of the Senate, including all with the indefinite t.i.tle of _clarissimi_, the soldiers, the clergy, the public magistrates as distinguished from the munic.i.p.al officers. The second consisted of all citizens of a town, whether natives--_municipes_--or settlers--_incolae_--who possessed landed property of more than twenty-five _jugera_, and did not belong to any privileged cla.s.s: both these cla.s.ses were hereditary. The third, of all free citizens whose poverty debarred them from belonging to either of the preceding divisions. On the second of these cla.s.ses, the Curials, fell all the grinding burdens of the state, the executing of munic.i.p.al duties, and the exactions of the central government.

It is not necessary for me to trace here the development of that financial policy which resulted in the ruin, I may say the annihilation of this order. Suffice it to say that it formed the capital fund of the government which exhausted it, and when the source of supply was destroyed, production ceased, and with it, of course, all means of governmental support. Where the extinction of this "middle cla.s.s" touches the point of our inquiry is in affording an explanation of a circ.u.mstance in the history of the Lombard subjugation of the Italian towns, which without consideration of this fact would appear almost incomprehensible. I refer to the utter pa.s.sivity of the inhabitants, not only in the matter of resistance to attack, which the greater strength and courage of the invaders perhaps rendered useless, but in what is more surprising, the fact that after the easy conquest was completed, we hear nothing of the manner in which the people adapted themselves to the totally new condition of life and of government to which they were subjected. Even if we can understand hearing nothing of what the people did, at least we should expect to hear what was done with it, what it became. The story of its resistance might be short and soon forgotten, but the story of its sufferings, of its complaints, of struggle against the entire change in the order and character of its life, should be a long one.

But of this no record, hardly mention even appears. When the central government falls and the last of its legions are destroyed or have departed, there seems to be no thought of any other element in society. If the evidence of the law codes did not tell us that a Roman population existed, history would record little to indicate its presence. Not only is even the slightest trace of nationality effaced, but the merging of the old conditions of life into the new seems of too little consequence to merit even an allusion. This state of affairs, as said above, is caused by the annihilation, by the despotic power of the central government, of that middle cla.s.s which in times of prosperity formed the sinews of the state. Of the other cla.s.ses, the privileged cla.s.s, with the exception of the clergy, fell of course with the government which supported it, and the common people possessed no individuality, no power, and hardly any rights. Such, then, was the condition of the towns at the time of the Lombard invasion, a condition of such abas.e.m.e.nt and such degradation as literally to have no history; a condition which indeed can truthfully be said to merit none.

History tells the story of every great nation on the face of the earth in three short words, growth, supremacy, decline. Vary the theme as you may in the countless histories of countless peoples; subdivide the course of its progress as you will, allowing for different local causes and different local phenomena, the true philosophy of history teaches that no real departure from this natural development is possible. But what if by the violent intervention of some new and entirely foreign force, another development and another life is given to the inanimate ashes of the old? What if some nation, fresh from the woods and fields of the childhood of its growth, come with overwhelming yet preserving strength and infuse new blood into the withered veins of its predecessor? This is the problem we now have before us. How many writers of Italian history have ent.i.tled this chapter in its development "A new Italian Nation formed"! It is not the old glories of Rome, which had been Italy, returning; it is a new Italian nation formed. Each word tells a story of its own. It is not the old galvanized to a second life; it is the new superimposed, violently if you will, upon it. We do not hear of Athens or of Rome, of an Alexander or of a Caesar, of a city or of a man. It is an "Italian nation." It is the individualism of the independent spirit of the North, which "forms" a nation from the exhausted remains of the development of centralization of the South. The new idea of distinct nationality among races of kindred stock was already at work, even though it did not reach a formal expression till the Treaty of Verdun, more than two hundred and fifty years later.

I do not mean to imply that we must in any measure ignore the pa.s.sive force and influence of the old forms on the new. The old veins receive the new blood; the new torrent, overrunning everything at first with the strength of its new life, will find again, even if it deepen, the channel of the old river: a vanquished civilization will always subdue and at the same time raise its barbarous conquerors, if they come of a stock capable of appreciating civilizing influences. In the present case this means that the men of the North brought the new ideas that were to form modern history, and let their growth be directed and a.s.sisted, while they were yet too young to stand alone, by some of the framework which had been built up by the long experience of their Southern neighbors.

To focus this thought on the immediate subject of our present study, this I think is the only and true solution of the tedious question, so much discussed by the two opposing schools of thought: whether the government of the Italian communes was purely Roman in its forms and in its conception, or purely Teutonic. The supporters of neither theory can be said to be in the right. You cannot say that the average city government was entirely Roman or entirely Teutonic, either in the laws which guided it, or in the channels by which these laws were executed and expressed. I think much time and much learning have been spent on a discussion both fruitless and unnecessary. We cannot err if we subject the question to a consideration at once critical and impartial.

The widely differing opinions eagerly supported by different writers on this point, form a very good example of the deceiving influence of national feeling on the judgment in matters of historical criticism.

For, on the one hand, we find many German writers ignoring entirely the old framework of Roman organization, and recognizing only the new Teutonic life which gave back to it the strength it had lost; on the other, a host of lesser Italian writers who magnify certain old names and forms, and mistake them for the substance, making all the new life of Italy but the return of a past, which belonged to a greatness that was dead. Many there are of this school in Italy, where you will often find to-day a commune of three hundred inhabitants, with its one or two constables wearing the imperial badge, "_Senatus Populusque Albanensis_" or "_Verulensis_," as the case may be. Truly a suggestive anachronism! It is true that in remote ages especially, when the records of history are few and uncertain--and the period we are considering in this paper can almost be called the prehistoric age of munic.i.p.al inst.i.tutions in Northern Italy--much can be learned and much truth inferred from the evidence of a name. But this is a species of evidence we can never be too cautious in using, as the temptation is always to infer too much rather than too little.

In the following pages I will try to sift the evidence obtainable, with the impartiality of one trammeled by the support of no particular theory; always bearing in mind, however, one fact, all-important in a study where so much depends on nomenclature, namely, to give that shade of meaning and that amount of weight to any term which it possessed in the age in which it was used, carefully distinguis.h.i.+ng this from its use in any earlier or later age. The importance of this caution will be soon seen when we come to discuss the origin of corporate life in the communes, where many have been misled by attaching to the words _respublica_ and _civitas_, for example, so continually recurring in the old laws and charters, a meaning which was entirely foreign to the terms at the period of their use. With this warning, we will turn to a consideration of the first effects of the inroad of the northern barbarians on the cities, whose exhausted and defenseless state has already been pointed out.

One of the chief characteristics of the Teutonic tribes which overran Italy during the fifth and sixth centuries, was an innate hatred of cities, of enclosing walls and crowded habitations. Children of the field and the forest, they had their village communities and their hundreds, their common land and their allotted land, but these were small restrictions on their free life, and left an extended "air-s.p.a.ce" for each individual and his immediate household. Homestead was not too near homestead, each man being separated from his neighbor by the extent of half the land belonging to each. The centralization of population in city life was a thing undreamed of, and an idea abhorred, alike for its novelty and for the violence it did to the as yet untrained instincts of the people. The strong, independent individualism of the Teutonic freeman rebelled against anything which would in any way limit his freedom of action: "ne pati quidem inter se junctas sedes," says Tacitus.[3] An agriculturist in his rude way, he lived on the land which supported him and his family, and feeling no further need, his untrained intelligence could form no conception of the necessities and the advantages of the social union and interdependence of a more civilized state of society; nor could he comprehend the mutual relations of the individual to the immediate community in which he lived.

He could understand his own relation to and dependence on the state as a whole; alone he could not repel the attacks of neighboring tribes, alone he could not go forth to conquer new lands or increase the number of his herds. But why he should a.s.sociate with others and so limit the freedom which was his birthright, for other purposes than those of attack and defense, of electing a leader for war, or getting his allotment of land in peace, was altogether beyond the horizon of his comprehension. He was sufficient unto himself for all the purposes of his daily life; to the product of his own plough and hunting-spear he looked for the maintenance of himself and his family, and the loose organization which we may call the state existed simply so as to enable him to live in comparative peace, or gain advantage in war--perhaps the first example of the new power in state-craft which was to revolutionize the political principles of the world; the individual lived no longer simply to support the state, but the state existed solely to protect and aid the individual.

If all this be true of the Teutonic nations in general, in the earlier stages of their development, particularly true is it of the Lombards,[4] a wild tribe of the Suevic stock, whose few appearances in history, previous to their invasion of Italy, are connected only with the fiercest strife and the rudest forms of barbarism. History seems to have proved that tradition has maligned the Vandal; the Goth can boast a ruler raised at the centre of Eastern civilization and refinement; but the Lombard of the invasion can never appear as other than the rude barbarian rus.h.i.+ng from his wild northern home, and forcing on a defenseless people the laws and the customs suited to his own rugged nature and the unformed state of society in which he lived.

Such being the case, there is little cause for wonder that the invading Lombard directed his fury with particular violence against the corporate towns, whose strength was not sufficient to resist the attacks of his invading host. Like all other Teutonic tribes the Lombards were entirely unskilled in the art of attacking fortified towns; hence the only mode of siege with which they were acquainted was that of starving out the inhabitants, by cutting off all source of supply by ravaging and destroying the surrounding country. This fact, unimportant as it may seem at the first glance, materially affected the whole course of the later history of some of the Italian cities.

By this means we are enabled, even at this early epoch, to divide them into two cla.s.ses. First, those cities which, after a more or less short resistance, yielded to the rude tactics of the barbarians and were made subject by them, for example Milan and Pavia.[5] Second, those cities like Venice and Ravenna,[6] which, by means of a connection with the sea which the invaders could not cut off, were enabled to gain supplies by water, and so resist all efforts of the besieging host to capture them. They never fell completely under the Lombard yoke, and either retained a sort of partial autonomy or yielded allegiance to some other power. It is the cities of the former cla.s.s that are the subject of this investigation.

The condition of these inland towns at the time of the invasion was, as we have seen, weak in the extreme. The defenses, where they existed, were of a character to afford little protection, and the bulk of the inhabitants were so enervated from a life of poverty and oppression that they were almost incapable of offering any resistance in their own defense. They were reduced to such a condition as to be only too grateful if their rough conquerors, after an easy victory, disdainfully spared their lives, and left them to occupy their dismantled dwellings.

This seems to have been the almost universal method of procedure. The Lombards did not in any sense, at first, think of occupying the conquered cities; for the reasons already given they despised, because they could not yet comprehend, the life of the civilian. They contented themselves with pulling down the walls, razing the fortifications, and destroying every mark which would make of the city anything but an aggregate of miserable dwellings. The inhabitants were for the most part spared, and left to enjoy, if the term can be used for such an existence, what the conquerors did not think worth the having. These felt the fruits of their victory to lie in the rich arable lands of the surrounding plains, and here they settled down, each in his own holding, portioned out by lot to every soldier; the town being considered but as a part of the _civitas_ or district, if I may use the term, of the _dux_ or overlord, from whom the several _milites_, or landholders of the surrounding territory, had their tenure, and who himself held directly from the king.

It is the very insignificance of the munic.i.p.al unit at this time that makes it so difficult to determine anything accurate of its position.

It existed, but little more can be said of it; indeed, even this statement might be questioned, if we make that term signify a corporate existence, as will be seen further on when we come to discuss the question of the unbroken corporate existence of the towns.

In a feudal age, or in an age of incipient feudalism, obligation, either claimed from an inferior or yielded to a superior, is a good index of rank and importance. Until we find the cities fulfilling certain obligations required by a higher power, we can learn little to tell of their condition or of their internal history. On the other hand, when we find the time come for fulfilling certain obligations, we can safely argue that the cities have acquired certain functions which put them in a position to meet the obligations which their growing importance has caused to be exacted of them. To trace these steps accurately and satisfactorily is impossible, but by the aid of collateral evidence a rough idea of the epochs at least of their progress can be gained.

For this first period, then, we see the towns reduced to the lowest depths of wretchedness and disintegration; critically speaking hardly existing, but simply holding together. In studying inst.i.tutions and tracing the course of their development, we must always remember that the uninterrupted continuance of their history may depend as much on the moral force of their existence as on the more limited and defined fact of their accurate and legal recognition by others. In every society a state of fact must in time become a state of law, as wise legislation is more the recognition by law of existing conditions than the formulating of new codes. So the towns, even at the period immediately succeeding their conquest by the Lombards, though their corporate existence cannot be claimed, nevertheless cannot be said in any measure to have ceased to exist; for as collections of individuals and of dwellings they were there, with an individuality uneffaced though as yet unrecognized.

It was a period of utter stagnation, of suspension of life, but the source remained intact, from which, by the evolution of events and the progress of time, seeds were to spring that only needed external pressure to force them into a growth, slow indeed but certain, and in the end fruitful. A transition period we might call it. The theory of Roman universal domination, by relegating to the central power all the _political_ functions of the munic.i.p.ality and leaving it only its _civic_ ones, and these in later imperial times grudgingly and with an impaired independence, had left it simply an administrative instead of a political division of the state. In the flush of triumph the rough hand of the barbarian overthrew the framework of administration, and at first failed to recognize the necessity of replacing it by any other. The pa.s.sivity of the conquered inhabitants--the cause of which has already been explained--was such that a long period elapsed before they realized that to regain in some measure the position of local independence that they had lost, and to free themselves from the shackles of dependence on the rural communities in which they were placed--a dependence forced upon them by the natural development of the new state system of their Teutonic conquerors--some common effort at organization was needful, for purposes at least of self-defense.

That this effort came from the town itself, from the people and not from the external power of the ruler or overlord, is the fact which first makes the history of these munic.i.p.alities interesting.

There are two facts, however, which, even at this early date, begin to influence the internal history of the communes. These are the influence which the Church,[7] through its bishops, began to attain in the civil affairs of the country; and the idea beginning to gain currency that the locality where a number of individuals, however wretched in state, were collected together, would afford a safer refuge than the open country to the oppressed, the homeless and the outcast. I will briefly consider the latter first, as of less importance, though not unconnected with the former.

In the period of great confusion in all relations of property which ensued from the Lombard military system of small independent landholders and a few great overlords, with a nominal royal owners.h.i.+p of t.i.tle, and before the feudal system was established, with its iron rules in regular working order, constant inequalities of wealth and consequent changes in the relative positions of individuals were sure to ensue. In practice if not in theory, might makes right in such a state of society. The weaker goes to the wall, and the stronger gains in strength by his downfall. Besides, it was long before the roving and predatory instinct of the barbarian was moderated; and his weaker neighbor was the natural prey of the more powerful landholder, an example not unfrequently set by the king himself. Now, if the weaker party remained to brave the attack and was conquered, he was reduced to a state of villeinage or of dependence more or less complete. If on the other hand he wished to escape this change of condition, where was he to find refuge? The only safe asylum in those days of rapine and violence was that offered by the Church and its precincts. The church of the greatest importance in the district, in this early age when no walled monasteries existed, would without doubt be that situated within the limits of the nearest town. To this haven then comes the outcast, hastily collecting his family and all of his wealth of a portable character; the country loses a small landed proprietor, but the town gains a citizen, a freeman, a member of the upper cla.s.s.

Of course many of the fugitives who sought asylum in the towns were as low as the great numbers of the semi-servile population, but much that was new and of a better character and intelligence, and even a large amount of property, which later gave birth to commercial and other interests, were introduced by members of the higher cla.s.ses fleeing from their more powerful neighbors. Also the human instinct of seeking fellows.h.i.+p in misfortune probably a.s.sisted in increasing the numbers which in times of trouble flocked towards the towns as a haven of refuge and a place to seek support. To see how they were in a measure enabled to attain these results, we must now consider the first of the two facts mentioned above, that is, the power in civil affairs gained by the bishops.

When the Lombards of the conquest, in their hatred of everything which savored of the old Roman civilization, overthrew all the established offices of city government to replace them with others of barbarian name and origin, or to leave them unfilled altogether, among the time-honored officers of the Roman rule was one whose powers were everywhere recognized, even if at present it is a little difficult to define with precision his duties. I refer to the _defensor urbis_.

This office came into prominence when Roman despotism found that it was overreaching itself by grinding down the defenseless _curiae_ below the margin of productiveness. The duties of the _defensor_ were, as his name implies, to protect the powerless inhabitants of the cities against the exactions of the imperial ministers. He enjoyed many important privileges of jurisdiction, and these were materially increased by the legislation of Justinian; and soon the _defensor_ became an important officer of the munic.i.p.ality.[8] What particularly concerns us is that he was the only munic.i.p.al officer who was elected not by the votes of the _curia_ alone, but by those of the whole people forming the _municipium_, including the bishop and his clergy.

Now in the period just preceding the invasion of the barbarians, the clergy alone possessed any energy and influence; so into their hands fell the control of this new inst.i.tution, and consequently all that remained of life in the munic.i.p.al system.

As in city matters these conditions remained unaltered after the coming of the Lombards, what was more natural than that the bishops should retain their moral position of defenders of the people, even if we admit that the form of the office fell with the old administration?

To these considerations we may add two important facts: that the office of bishop was for a long time the only one in the election to which the people--and by this term I mean the people as a whole, not the _populus_ of the old laws and charters--had any voice whatever; and that the bishop, from his spiritual position as pastor of the flock, and from his civil position as having great legal influence in the town and being probably the only man of superior intellect interested in the internal affairs of the community, was the proper and most effectual mediator between the people and their temporal rulers. Hence arose that important influence of the bishops which was to have so perceptible an effect on the subsequent development of the principles of liberty in the communes.

To appreciate properly, and to give the true value to this power in its later progress, we must remember one thing: that it did not have its origin by any seeking of power by either the Roman or the Ambrosian church as a body, in any concerted effort to extend the ecclesiastical power at the expense of the civil. It came from the spontaneous effort of the pastor, the natural and at that time the only protector of the people, trying to save his flock from the extortion and the injustice of their temporal rulers. In addition to this it must be remembered that at that time the office of the bishop was the only one where even the shadow of the democratic idea was preserved, the only one where the lowest of the people, theoretically at least, had a voice in the election. In later times, when the feudal system becomes established in its completeness, the position of the bishop undergoes a great change, as his relations to the state and to society become more complex in their character; and his importance in the community, while it at first increases, in time surely diminishes, under the influence of his double relation of lord and va.s.sal to some higher temporal power. When he in his turn becomes the possessor of political power as a great baron or as head of a _civitas_, his interests, and consequently his influence, are concerned with intriguing and with efforts for his own political advancement, in many cases leaving but few traces of the old relation of "defender of the people." It is, however, of importance to note that this decline in his prominence in civil life is commensurate with the diminished need by the people of his protection, owing to the steady increase in the security and independence of their position.

To sum up briefly the chief characteristics of the early and obscure period which we have been considering, I think we can truly call it a transition period, and its history a tottering bridge from the dead Roman munic.i.p.al system of the past, to the new state and city life of the future; from a state of society where, as we have seen, the city had changed from a political to an administrative division, to one where the city was to prepare itself again to claim, and eventually, by the growth of internal resources, to gain the lost function of sovereignty. The condition of the people during this time we have seen to be wretched in the extreme; the dismantled city but a bunch of comfortless dwellings; its inhabitants but a semi-servile population, with a small admixture of refugees of a better cla.s.s; the city occupying but a subordinate place as part of the rural holding within whose limits it stood; whatever of wealth it contained an easy if not a legitimate prey to the turbulent spirits, whose mutual contests kept the surrounding country in a continual state of disturbance. The only men of any influence in the community we have seen to be the bishops, who, while steadily gaining in rank and power, stood forth as defenders of the people. During all this time, however, the new sap brought by the northern conquerors has been slowly but steadily entering into and forming the const.i.tution of the people. The chaste and uncorrupted Northmen have by means of legitimate intermarriage with the best of the enervated inhabitants of the land, raised up an almost new race, who combine in their nature the humanizing effects of the old civilization with the love of independence and the temperate virtues of the northern conquerors, a race willing to benefit by the experience of the past, and resolved to carve out for itself a new and independent future.

PART II.

ELEMENTARY SOURCES OF MUNIc.i.p.aL UNITY IN LOMBARD AND FRANKISH TIMES.

In the second part of this paper we have to consider a period of development rather than one of transition, of growth rather than of change. We have before us the task of tracing the advance from a period of barbarism to one when the feudal system had obtained an almost complete domination over the social system of Europe.

Considering the principles which lay at the base of the society of new Europe, this system is a natural, indeed an unavoidable evolution from the stage of barbarism and social disorganization. The confusion in all social and economic relations consequent on the combination of the old and the new elements in European life, had led to a state of disintegration that could not continue. A new regulative force was required which would at the same time have power sufficient to control the various warring elements with which it had to deal and reduce them to some sort of harmony, and yet which would not in its nature be in opposition to the decentralizing spirit and the idea of individual independence, which formed the most marked characteristic of the dominant element of the new society. Feudalism sprang from the midst of barbarism not by a sudden birth, but by a growth at once natural and necessary: natural, because it was but a regulation by law of conditions produced by the character of the people and their mode of life; necessary, because the progress of civilization was carrying society ahead of the stage of anarchy and barbarism in which the overthrow of the old regime had left it.

The economic changes which were produced by the transition to the new principles represented by the feudal system, are as great and in their way as important as the political ones. When we say that feudalism represents the transfer of the dominant power from a central head to scattered members, from the capital to the castles, we speak of it in its most prominent, its political character. But we must not forget that this transfer also meant a great economic change in the organization of society: that it meant a transfer of the seat of economic importance from the city to the country; the spirit of the times requiring, especially in the earlier stages of the development of the inst.i.tution, that the seat of wealth should follow the seat of power. I note this now because we shall soon have occasion to consider how important a factor, in the earliest period of the development of the cities, their entire lack of prominence in both political and economic affairs was to prove itself. Under the old Roman system, as we have seen, the city was the important unit: Rome was a subduer and an upbuilder of cities. Under the new Teutonic element the land is what is brought into prominence, and the possessor of it into power.

The dominant member of society is the landowner and not the citizen.

In ancient society the "citizen" need own no land; in the modern society of the feudal age, the "gentleman" could not be such without owning land.

This opposition between the citizen, the burgher, and the landowner, the baron, leads us to a conclusion of the utmost importance to the whole study of city life during the middle ages. We note the universal prevalence of the _forms_ characteristic of the feudal system, and from this we conclude that its _principles_ were as universally adopted. Now this is to a certain extent an error. There were certain inst.i.tutions which from the very nature of their origin and of the principles on which they were based, must have been, at once in their idea and in their structure, opposed to the fundamental principle of feudalism. The Roman Church, for example, conformed itself to the forms and customs of this system, but never lost its structural unity and centralization, ideas founded on principles which stood in direct opposition to those of feudalism. So it was, though perhaps in a less degree, with the cities. Though adapting themselves in many ways to feudal forms, here the idea of democracy was as strong in its opposition to the dominant principle of feudalism, as ever was that of centralization in the Church. The people, in their own conception at least, stood out as an organic unity, and they considered their rights and duties as matters which concerned them collectively, not separately, as the commonwealth, not as individuals. Of course it was long before any such opposition a.s.sumed a definite form and shape, before even the people became conscious of its existence; but what I wish to point out is, that it was there in fact from the beginning, and must have formed a structural part of the development of city life in the middle ages.

In outlining the course of the history of inst.i.tutions, it is seldom that we are so fortunate as to find definite landmarks by which we can accurately mark the chronological course of their development. The giving of definite dates for the progress of ideas is in most cases both misleading and illusory, as, except in instances of violent revolution, changes are apt to be gradual, rather than immediate and arbitrary. But we can indicate the periods of progress by comparing them with the contemporary political changes, and roughly designate their eras by the dates of prominent political events. In doing this, however, we must always remember that the dates given, while definite from a political standpoint, are in most cases, from an inst.i.tutional standpoint, only indicative of a more or less extended period of change. This fact being recognized, let us proceed to examine the changes introduced into Italy by the Carlovingian rulers, and the condition of the society upon which these changes were engrafted.