THE ITALIAN CITIES
Nowhere, in the century between 1050 and 1150, did cities flourish so abundantly as in Italy. Hundreds of Italian urban centers were formed in that period as independent, self-governing communities.
They were often called communes (communia), often corporations (universitates), and often other names, such as "communities" (communitates). This movement was further accelerated in the following century, especially after the Peace of Constance ( 1183), which has been called "the Magna Carta of communal liberties."Prior to the eleventh century, however, one cannot speak of the Italian cities -- with the possible exception of Rome -- in terms of their own organic development. As cities of the Roman empire they had been branches of imperial power, whose fate was wholly determined by that of the empire. Milan provides a good example. 40 In the third and fourth centuries A.D. it was the main administrative center of the Western Empire. Thus it was in Milan that Constantine in 313 proclaimed Christianity to be the imperial religion. Yet Milan hardly had a history of its own-except possibly an ecclesiastical history during the century after St. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan from 374 to 397, had made that bishopric a stronghold of the fight against Arianism.
In the latter half of the fifth century, Milan and the rest of northern Italy were overrun first by the Huns under Attila, then by the Heruli under Odoacer, and finally by the Goths under Theodoric. In 539 the city was virtually destroyed by Uraia the Goth. Thirty years later it was conquered by the Germanic Lombards (Langobardi, "long beards"). Like the earlier invaders, the Lombards made Pavia their capital, and Milan
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declined. The incorporation of Lombardy into the Frankish Empire by Charlemagne in 774 may have improved the fortunes of Milan somewhat.
But not until a century later, after the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire, did the first signs of Milan's civic independence appear. The counts of Milan, originally Carolingian royal officials, lost their authority, and the archbishops began to exert control over both secular and ecclesiastical matters. In the early tenth century, the pressure of M agyar invasions was substantial, and refugees poured into Milan; but at the end of that century the tide turned. Increased agricultural prosperity in the country_side brought an expansion of Milan's commerce and industry, and the archbishops succeeded in extending the city's political and diocesan boundaries as far as the Swiss Alps. Between 1037 and 1039 Archbishop Aribert led the self_styled "Plebeians" of Milan_____________________ members of the semi_religious guilds______ to oppose successfully theprivileges granted to the lesser nobility by Emperor Conrad II. All this is important as chronicle, and also as the history of the Lombards and of the Frankish Empire, but it hardly forms the basis of a serious history of the city of Milan.
Moreover, in speaking of "the city of Milan," one must recall that, like virtually all European towns of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, Milan was essentially a large village. The fortified area, where the archbishop's household was located, together with the shops and residences of the merchants and artisans in the "suburb," probably did not contain more than one or two thousand souls; more important, these did not constitute an independent political or economic unit but were an integral part of' the larger territory in which the town was situated. Politically, the entire territory, including the town, was ruled by the archbishop and the nobility; there was no separate town government. Economically, the families of the merchants and artisans generally went out daily to work in the fields outside the town.
The modern history of Milan -- that is, the organic development of the modern city -- began in 1057 when a popular movement, led by militant advocates of papal reform, attacked the aristocratic higher clergy led by an imperialist bishop and ultimately drove them out.
Thereafter the constitution of Milan underwent a radical change. A sworn commune was established. By 1094 at the latest, communal magistrates, called consuls, were elected for a fixed term by a regular assembly of all the citizens.Together with the other cities of Lombardy, Milan was geographically in the center of the conflict between the imperial and papal authorities. The formation of self-governing sworn communes by the Lombard cities was often directed against their bishops, who were appointees of the emperor. Eventually fourteen of these cities formed the Lombard League, which successfully fought against the emperor, Frederick I. In
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1180 these fourteen cities - Verona, Venice, Vicenza, Bergamo, Treviso, Ferrara, Brescia, Cremona, Milan, Lodi, Piacenza, Parma, Modena, and Bologna - wrote to the pope: "We were first to bear the emperor's attack so that he might not destroy Italy and suppress the liberty of the Church. We refused, for the honor and liberty of Italy and for the dignity of the Church, to receive or listen to the emperor." 41 This is one of the first uses of the name "Italy" to refer to a political entity, namely, the archipelago of free cities that stretched from Lake Como halfway down the peninsula to the Papal States.
The emperor also favored the formation of sworn urban communes when they were directed against the pope or his supporters. Thus in the early 1080s, at the height of his struggle with Pope Gregory VII, Emperor Henry IV gave charters of liberty and self-government to the Tuscan cities of Lucca and Pisa in order to help them win their freedom from Gregory's friend and supporter, the Countess Matilda.
The system of communal self-government by consuls (as they were usually called), elected for fixed terms by popular assemblies, was introduced in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries in a great many of the towns of northern Italy. There are records of such consuls in Pisa in 1084, Asti in 1093, Arezzo in 1098, Genoa in 1099, Pavia in 1105, Bologna in 1123, Siena in 1125, Brescia in 1127, Florence in 1138.
42 The mass meetings of citizens to elect consuls were variously called commune, colloquium, parlamento, and (most often) arengo. The arengo legislated, declared peace or war, and ratified treaties in addition to electing consuls.The number of consuls varied from city to city, and it could vary within a single city from year to year. In Milan there were eighteen consuls in 1117, twenty-three in 1130, four in 1138, eight in 1140, and six in 1141. In most cities there were usually between four and twelve consuls. They administered the commune, led it in war, adjudicated disputes among its members. In time, special "consuls of justice" were appointed to be judges in many cities.
The most striking constitutional innovation made by the Italian towns in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries was the introduction of limited terms of political office. The consuls were usually elected for a year. This principle, which spread to most of the other European countries, represented a fundamental change in the concept of government in the West, for hitherto in Europe all political leaders, whether ecclesiastical or secular (royal, ducal, baronial) had ruled for life. The temporary character of urban political office became even more prominent in the last decades of the twelfth century when the system of plural consuls in Italy gradually gave way to that of a single ruler, usually called apodesta (potestas, "power"). The podesta was the military leader, the chief
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administrative officer, and the chief judge of the commune, but his term of office was often limited to six months and he could not be reelected.
The podesta is found in Pisa in about 1169, in Perugia in 1177, in Milan in 1186, in Piacenza in 1188, in Florence in 1193, in Siena in 1199. In the early thirteenth century the podesta system became almost universal in northern Italy. "Soon it became normal to select the podesta from another town (not usually a neighboring one) to ensure his neutrality in local disputes.
He came with his own household [and] took an oath on arrival to serve the commune loyally... The podesta was a noble, and he needed a legal training. His office became a recognized profession, in which able men specialized, traveling on from one post to the next." 43 He was, in effect, a professional "city manager," and at the end of his term of office his performance would be carefully reviewed by a special commission appointed for the purpose.By limiting the ruler's term of office to a fixed period of months or years, the Italian communes emphasized the "temporal" character of secular rule. The governors of the new European cities, in contrast to those of the ancient Greek or Roman cities, were not responsible for religious matters -Âmatters of cult or faith; those were left to the church, which the Papal Revolution had separated from what later was to be called "the state." In fact, the new municipal governments of Europe were the first purely secular political bodies, the first modern secular states. Their function was to keep the peace and to do justice in the legal sense. The word podesta is significant in this connection, for it clearly marks off political from spiritual functions -- "power" from "authority." 44
Because the podesta's term of office was so short, it was necessary to allocate long-term political functions to other political bodies. Most commonly, the arengos (parliaments) were succeeded by "great councils," which, however, were also usually too big to govern effectively. (In Milan the great council had 800 members.) At the same time there developed smaller "secret" councils, or "councils of trust" (consiglio della credenza), often limited to 24 (or even 16) members, but occasionally numbering as many as 100. In addition, ad hoc commissions were often created to exercise special powers in military, financial, or constitutional matters.
The podesta was required to consult the councils of the citizens on all important matters. In theory, at least, the councils alone had the power to make new laws.The Italian cities took the lead not only in creating new forms of government but also in systematizing and reforming the laws. The earliest systematization of urban law in Italy took the form of collections of rules sworn to by the consuls upon assuming their duties and collections of rules sworn to by the people in response. The oaths were called breviα("writs"). The consular brevia specified the detailed rules which the
389- consuls were obligated to follow in the exercise of their functions. The popular brevia specified the basic rules which the citizens were obligated to follow in dealing with the municipal government. Public officials other than consuls were also required, upon taking office, to swear oaths specifying the rules they were to follow. As the Italian legal historian Francesco Calasso has written: "Clearly this network of oaths constituted an ensemble of legal norms that regulated the constitutional and administrative life of the commune." 45
Calasso states further that the subsequent centralization of power in the podesta "brought about a consolidation of the various oaths in a single corpus of rules, separated by rubrics, which the podesta swore to observe and to enforce." 46 This marked the second stage in the systematization of urban law in Italy. It was often fused with the writing down of the customs of the commune. The third stage was the codification of the resolutions of the legislative organ of the commune, the popular assembly or the grand council. These decisions were usually called statutes (statuta); sometimes, by analogy to the laws of the Roman Republic, they were called leges. In some cities there was a fusion of customary law and statutory law; in others there was not. In Pisa, for example, there were two codes, one consisting of rules of customary law, called constitutum USUS, and one consisting of the resolutions of the assembly, called constitutum legis; there were also two tribunals, each judging on the basis of one of the two codes. 47
The politicians and jurists of the Italian cities, like the ecclesiastical politicians and jurists, were concerned to systematize and synthesize legal materials coming from different sources, to eliminate contradictions and fill in gaps. For this purpose special officers and special commissions were appointed. In some cities, such as Parma and Pistoia, the practice developed of shutting up the codifiers in a building until they had completed their work, in order to prevent outside influence. In other cities the opposite practice developed; the persons charged with codification were actually encouraged to avail themselves of the opinions and suggestions of the people.