and control over the rude feudal militia, might alone warrant the
conclusion that the most essential requirement of Venice, even when it
had so far modified the form of administration, was felt to be the
possession, under responsible direction, of a means of securing internal
order and withstanding external aggression, if it were not the case that
from the Gothic era onward we hear of _scholae militiae cum patronis_,
manifestly the schools of instruction for the body over which the
_magister militum_ presided. These seminaries existed in the days of the
exarch Narses, generations before a doge was given to Venice. Yet,
through all the time which has now elapsed since the first erection of a
separate political jurisdiction, not only the Church, on which such
stress was at the very outset laid, but a civil government, and
regulations for trade and shipping, must have been active forces, always
tending to grow in strength and coherence.

The Venetians, in constructing by degrees, and even somewhat at random,
a constitutional fabric, very naturally followed the precedents and
models which they found in the regions which bordered on them, and from
which their forefathers had emigrated. The Lombard system, which was of
far longer duration than its predecessors on the same soil, borrowed as
much as possible from that which the invaders saw in use and favor among
the conquered; and the earliest institutions of the only community not
subjugated by their arms were counterparts either of the Lombard, the
Roman, or the Greek customary law. The doge, in some respects, enjoyed
an authority similar to that which the Romans had vested in their
ancient kings; but, while he was clothed with full ecclesiastical
jurisdiction, he did not personally discharge the sacerdotal functions
or assume a sacerdotal title. The Latins had had their _magistri
populi_; and in the Middle Ages they recognized at Naples and at Amalfi
a _master of the soldiers_; at Lucca, Verona, and elsewhere, a _captain
of the people_. But all these magistrates were in possession of the
supreme power, were kings in everything save the name; and the
interesting suggestion presents itself that in the case of Venice the
_master of the soldiers_ had been part of the tribunitial organization,
if not of the consular one, and that one of the tribunes officiated by
rotation, bearing to the republic the same sort of relationship as the
_bretwalda_ bore to the other Anglo-Saxon _re