JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES
IN
HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCE
HERBERT B. ADAMS, Editor
History is past Politics and Politics present History.--_Freeman_
NINTH SERIES
V-VI
The Communes of Lombardy from the VI. to the X. Century
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE CAUSES WHICH LED TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF
MUNICIPAL UNITY AMONG THE LOMBARD COMMUNES
BY WILLIAM KLAPP WILLIAMS, PH.D.
NEWBERRY LIBRARY, CHICAGO
May, June, 1891
"Est error spretus, quo Langobarda juventus
Errabat, verum loquitur nunc pagina sensum."
RHOTARI: _Legum Prologus_.
THE COMMUNES OF LOMBARDY FROM THE VI. TO THE X. CENTURY.
PART I.
THE LOMBARD CONQUEST AND ITS RESULTS.
Before tracing the beginnings of renewed municipal 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 vassals--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 municipal 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
institutional 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 municipal
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 municipal 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 municipal 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 title
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 assumed privilege
or the curtailing of some coveted right.
Hence the principal 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 noble family or ecclesiastical
institution, 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 shell 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 municipal 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 municipalities had lost all their power, though in theory
their rights were unassailed. 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 classes:
(1) the privileged classes, (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 title of _clarissimi_, the soldiers, the
clergy, the public magistrates as distinguished from the municipal
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 class: both these classes 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 classes, the
Curials, fell all the grinding burdens of the state, the executing of
municipal 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 class" touches the point of our inquiry is in affording an
explanation of a circumstance 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
passivity 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 class which in times
of prosperity formed the sinews of the state. Of the other classes,
the privileged class, 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 abasement 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 entitled 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 passive
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
assisted, 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
municipal institutions 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 distinguishing
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-space" 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 associate 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 rushing 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 classes. 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
class 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 municipal 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 institutions 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 municipality 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 passivity 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 municipalities 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 ownership
of title, 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 class.
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 classes fleeing
from their more powerful neighbors. Also the human instinct of seeking
fellowship in misfortune probably assisted 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 municipality.[8] What particularly
concerns us is that he was the only municipal 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 institution, and consequently all that
remained of life in the municipal 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 vassal 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 municipal 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 class; 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 constitution 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 MUNICIPAL 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 institution, 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
institutions 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 assumed 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 institutions, 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 institutional
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.
When in the year 773-774, Charlemagne, in pursuance of his idea of
universal empire, and aiding the Pope as "Patricius" of Rome, entered
Lombardy with his army, took Pavia after a siege of six months, and
shut up Desiderius in a monastery, he found in Lombard society a well
defined, if not a perfectly developed system. In all their relations
with other nations, the evidence of history proves the Franks to have
been a conquering rather than a colonizing race; consequently we may
expect to find that in their conquest of Lombardy, they rather gave
her only new rulers without materially interfering with the condition
of the inhabitants or altering their mode of life. The institutions of
the Frankish nation were similar, in many important matters identical,
with those of their neighbors across the Alps; so the changes
introduced into the Lombard system by the Carlovingian rule are, with
a few exceptions, not such as affect the integral structure of
society, but for the most part only such as refer to the character and
position of the central or ruling power.
I say with a few exceptions, for among these very exceptions are to be
found certain alterations in the government of the cities, introduced
chiefly by the necessities of the system of central government
established by Charlemagne, but also partly by the claims of
individuality, which at this time first began in the cities timidly to
call for recognition. The very relation of the cities with the central
power seems to me to be a much more important factor in their growth
during this period than is generally supposed; for it not only secured
to their inhabitants better chances of justice and protection from the
powerful local rulers, but, bringing them, through certain officers,
into direct connection with the head of the state, added not a little
to their moral importance, a condition which in a growing community is
always closely followed by an increase of material importance.
According to their size they were the seats of courts of varying
degrees of importance, and from them as centres proceeded the acts of
royal officers, both ordinary and extraordinary. Ticinum was the
capital, where in Lombard times the king had his palace.[9]
For a satisfactory study of the development of the municipal
institutions we need a thorough understanding of the organization of
society at this time, and especially of the relations which the
municipal and rural communities bore to one another and to the
government. I will endeavor to give, therefore, a description of
Lombard society about the close of the eighth century, as brief as is
consistent with a clear understanding of these relations, and as
complete as the great difficulties of the subject will permit,
pointing out, whenever they are authentically traceable, the changes
introduced in consequence of the Carlovingian conquest.
When we reach in Lombard history the period when the power of the
native kings was first overthrown by foreign arms, we are no longer
confronted by many of the problems which necessarily formed an
important part of the earlier portions of our investigation. I mean
the problems which arise in a state of society where the mass of
individuals forming it is made up of two elements, a conquering,
dominant one, and a conquered, subject one. During the two centuries
elapsed since the Lombard barbarians conquered Italy, the two races,
originally so different in their ideas and in their character, so
opposed in their customs and in their nature, have been slowly but
surely blending together, on the strength of common environment and by
the necessities of mutual relations: so that by the last half of the
eighth century, we can truly say that national differences, as such,
have disappeared, and left behind them a single race, a combination
but still a unity. We no longer have to deal with a double
nationality, with the northern conquerors and their southern victims,
with the oppressed and their oppressors. In considering the
development of the institutional life of the people, we need no longer
seek for differences, but may assume the easier task of tracing
similarities. In a word, we no longer speak of Lombards and of Romans,
but describe all that remains of both by the new word _Italians_.