e 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_.

It is not within the scope of this enquiry to trace the various steps
or indicate the various influences, the civilizing effect of the
Church, the restraining power of the law, by whic