at among the reasons which led in most instances to a
departure from this system of land boundaries, are to be found some of
the most important causes for the development of freedom and
independent jurisdiction among the cities. It is to the destruction of
this identity of interests and of government which existed between
country and city, that is owed the ultimate predominance of the
latter, and its regaining its ancient position of a self-centered
unity; although in its new form we find this depending on the
principle of individual liberty, instead of being based on the
principle of government by a central power. Whether this emancipation
from the bonds of a rural dependence was brought about by the practice
later entered upon, of breaking up the counties into a number of
smaller units with the so-called "rural counts," each ruling over a
_castellum_ or fortified village; or by the fact that many of the
bishops obtained political as well as religious control over a city
and a limited area of the surrounding country, generally extending
only three or five miles beyond the city walls; or whether this
freedom was the result of the spontaneous growth of civic and economic
life within the city itself; or finally, whether it came from a
combination of all these and many minor causes, is a question
which--for the early period of the development at least--the progress
of our investigation will answer for itself.

It will, however, be impossible for us to understand thoroughly the
relations of the city under Lombard and Frankish rule to the central
and to the local government, unless we know somewhat of the local and
state officers who exercised jurisdiction within the territorial
limits just described. By a consideration of their special powers and
of their special duties, we must learn all that we can know with any
degree of certainty with regard to the position of the city in these
times. With this in mind, let us first examine the office whose
functions it is at once the most difficult and the most important for
us to understand in all its bearings--that of the _Judex_. We must
consider it not only in the relation which it bears to the higher
grade of officers, the Lombard duke and the Frankish count, but also
in its relation with the lower officials who severally enjoyed more or
less of the powers attached to its possession, namely, the gastald,
the sculdahis, the scabino, and even the rural counts and the bishop.
And in