place as part of a rural
holding, instead of leaving it the centre of a circle of rural
dependencies. Having demonstrated the absence of all constitutional
recognition of the municipal unit as such, I have attempted to show
how a condition of such legal insignificance became generally a
condition of actual importance; how from a position of such negative
interest, the advance of the city was commenced along a road which was
ultimately to restore it its old pre-eminence, even adding to this in
time the almost forgotten attribute of sovereignty. The motives for
this advance we have seen to be no higher ones than convenience and
expediency, which made the _urbs_ of every _civitas_ the natural
centre of its local administration, thereby in fact, if in no way by
law, restoring to it some of the elements of individuality, if not of
pre-eminence, which it had lost. The means employed we have seen to be
the functions of the various officers of state: the _dux_, the count
and the gastald, who connected the city with the state, and the
_scabinus_ and the bishop, who represented this connection to the
consciousness of the people. We have noted the marked effects produced
on the development of a more popular feeling, by the changes
introduced by the great emperor of the Franks; which, by diminishing
the power of the local lords, accomplished a double benefit; on the
one hand by saving the people from the arbitrary rule of a feudal
superior; on the other, by causing the city to become more of a
dependence and more of a support to the state as a whole. And finally
we have left the city prepared, on the return of another dynasty of
native kings, to accept, at least in a large number of cases, the
domination of another kind of lord, a spiritual one; who was to serve
as a medium for breaking up the power of the old lords of the
_civitas_, and from whom it would be an easier task for the commune of
the future to wrest the power and the sovereignty which was to make it
a free and independent autonomy.

* * * * *

AUTHORITIES REFERRED TO IN THE TEXT AND FOOT-NOTES.

_Anastasius Bibliothecarius_: Vitae Romanorum Pontificum. v.
_Muratori_: Script. Rer. Ital., Tom. III., Pars I.

_Baluzii, Stephanus_: Capitular. Regum Francorum additae sunt
_Marculfi_ Monachi et aliorum formulae veteres. Parisiis, 1780. 2
vols. fol.

_Bethmann-Hollweg_: Schrift ueber den Ursprung der lombardischen
Staedtefreiheit.

_Bo