The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century | Page 2

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