On the whole, it may be psychologically accurate to say that the invaders, by setting up a new caste of freemen where before all classes were alike subordinate to the imperial tyranny, created a variation in the direction of a new self-government, the spectacle of privilege stimulating the unprivileged to desire it. But any conquest whatever might do this; and it is a plain paralogism to conclude that where the subjugated people does not react the fault is its own, while where it does the credit is to go to the conquerors. It does not seem to have occurred to anyone to reason that the Norman Conquest of England was as such the bringer of the liberty later achieved there. Yet, as regards the Teutonic invasions of Italy, the principle passes current on all sides; and Guizot endorses it in one lecture (Hist. de la civ. en France, i, 7ième leçon, end), though in the next he gives an objective account which practically discredits it.
As regards the ideals of justice and freedom in general, the Teutonic laws, being framed not for a normal barbarian state but for a society of conquerors and conquered, were in some respects rather more iniquitous than the Roman. In particular the Ostrogothic laws of Theodoric and his son punish the crimes of the rich by fines, and put to death the poor for the same offences; while the degradation of the slave is in all the early Teutonic codes constantly insisted on. (Cp. Milman, Hist. Lat. Chr. 4th ed. ii, 36, and refs. Roman law also, however, differed in practice for rich and poor. Cp. Cassiodorus, l. ii, pp. 24, 25; iii, 20, 36; iv, 39; v, 14, and Finlay, ed. cited. i, 236.) Whether or not Gregory the Great, as has been asserted (Milman, as cited, p. 52), was the first to free slaves on the principle of human equality, he did not get the idea from the Teutons.
It took centuries, in any case, to develop the new upward tendency to a decisive degree. The Frankish conquest, like others, disarmed and unwalled the population as far as possible; and it seems to have been only in the tenth century, when the Hungarians repeatedly raided northern Italy (900-24), and the Saracens the southern coasts and the isles, that a general permission was given to the towns to defend themselves.[506] This time the balance of power lay with the defence; and to the mere disorderliness of the barbarian rule on one hand may in part be attributed the relative success of the cities of the later Empire as compared with those of the earlier. Latin Rome had not only disarmed its cities but accustomed them for centuries to ease and idleness; and before a numerous foe, bent on conquest, they made no resistance. Goths, Longobards, and Franks in turn sought to keep all but their own strong places disarmed; but their system could not wholly prevent the growth of a militant spirit in the industrial towns. On the other hand, the Hungarians and Saracens were bent not on conquest but on mere plunder, and were thus manageable foes. Had the Normans, say, come at this time into Italy, they could have overrun the quasi-Teutonic communities as easily as the Teutons had done the Romans or each other. But the conditions being as they were, the swing was towards the independence of the cities; at first under the headship of the bishops, who in the period of collapse of the Carlovingian empire obtained part of the authority previously wielded by counts.[507] At this stage the bishop was by his position partly identified with the people, whom he would on occasion champion against the counts. Thus a new conception of social organisation was shaped by the pressures of the times; and when Otto came in 951 the foundations of the republics were laid. The next stage was the effacement of the authority of the counts within the cities; the next an extension of the bishops' authority over the whole diocese, which was as a rule the old Roman civitas or county. Thus the new municipalities came into being partly under the ægis of the Church.
Hallam (Middle Ages, ch. iii, pt. i) describes Sismondi as stating that Otto "erected" the Lombard cities into municipal communities, and dissents from that view. But Sismondi (Républiques, i, 95) expressly says that there are no charters, and that the municipal independence of the cities is to be inferred from their subsequent claims of prescription. As there is nothing to show for any regular government from the outside in the preceding period of turmoil, the inference that some self-government existed before and under Otto is really forced upon us. Ranke (Latin and Teutonic Nations, Eng. tr. p. 11) pronounces that the first consuls of the Italian cities, chosen by themselves, appear at the date of the first Crusade, 1100. "Beyond all question, we meet with them first in Genoa on the occasion of an expedition to the Holy Land." (They appear again in 1117 at a meeting of reconciliation for all Lombardy at Milan. Prof. W.F. Butler, The Communes of Lombardy, 1906, pp. 76-77.) But this clearly does not exclude prior forms of self-government for domestic needs. Consuls of some kind are noted "in Fano and other places in 883; in Rome in 901; Orvieto, 975; Ravenna, 990; Ferrara, 1015; Pisa and Genoa, 1100; Florence, 1101." Boulting-Sismondi, p. 63. (This last date appears to be an error. The document hitherto dated 1102 belongs to 1182. Villari, Two First Centuries of Florentine History, Eng. tr. pp. 55, 84. But there is documentary evidence for Florentine consuls in 1136. Id. p. 115.) Hallam himself points out that in the years 1002-6 the annalists, in recording the wars of the cities, speak "of the people and not of their leaders, which is the true republican tone of history"; and notes that a contemporary chronicle shows the people of Pavia and Milan acting as independent states in 1047.
This state of things would naturally arise when the emperor and the nobles lived in a state of mutual jealousy. Cp. Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, pp. 127-29, 139-40, 150, 176. Mr. Bryce does not attempt to clear up the dispute, but he recognises that the liberties of the cities would naturally "shoot up in the absence of the emperors and the feuds of the princes." And this is the view finally of Heinrich Leo: "Seit Otto bemerken wir eine auffallende Aenderung in der Politik der ganzen nördlichen Italiens" (Geschichte von Italien, 1829, i, 325; Bk. iv, Kap. i, § 1). Leo points out that the granting of exemptions to the north Italian cities came from the Ottos. "It was not, however," he goes on, "as it has been supposed we must assume, the blending of Roman citizenship (which in the Lombard cities had never existed[508] in the form of commune or municipality [Gemeinde]) with the Lombard and German, but the blending of the survivors and the labourers, mostly of Roman descent, with the almost entirely German-derived free Gemeinde, through which the exemptions were obtained, and which gave a new aspect to the Italian cities" (pp. 326-27).
Similarly Karl Hegel, after noting the analogies between Roman collegia and German gilds, decides that "the German gilds were of native (einheimischen) origin, the same needs setting up the same order of institutions." He adds that the Christian Church first evoked in the gilds a real brotherly feeling. (Städte und Gilden der germanischen Völker in Mittelalter, 1891, Einleit. p. 10.) He admits, however, that the gilds, when first traced under Charlemagne, are forbidden under the name Gildonia, as oath-societies; and that they seem to have been unknown among the Franks (pp. 4, 6).
§ 3
Almost concurrently with the new growth of political life in the cities, rural life readjusted itself under a system concerning the merits of which there has been as much dispute as concerning its origins—the system of feudalism. Broadly speaking, that began in the relation between the leaders of the Germanic invasion and their chief followers, who, receiving lands as their share, or at another time as a reward, were expected as a matter of course to back the king in time of war, and in their turn ruled their lands and retainers on that principle. When the principle of heredity was established as regarded the crown, it was necessarily affirmed as regards land tenures; and soon it was applied as a matter of course to nearly all the higher royal offices and "benefices" in the Frankish empire,[509] which after Charlemagne became the model for the Germanic and the French and English kingdoms. Thus "the aristocratic system was in possession of society"; and the conflict which inevitably arose between the feudal baronage and the monarchic power served in time to aggrandise the cities, whose support was so important to both sides.
[See Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, 4th ed. i, 273-74, note, for a sketch of the discussion as to the rise of feudalism. It has been obscured, especially among the later writers, by lack of regard for exact and consistent statement. Thus Bishop Stubbs endorses Waitz's dictum that "the gift of an estate by the king involved no defined obligation of service"; going on to say (p. 275) that a king's beneficium was received "with a special undertaking to be faithful"; and again adding the footnote: "Not a promise of definite service, but a pledge to continue faithful in the conduct in consideration of which the reward is given." Again, the bishop admits that by this condition the giver had a hold on the land, "through which he was able to enforce fidelity" (p. 275, note); yet goes on to say (p. 277) that homage and fealty "depended on conscience only for their fulfilment." Bishop Stubbs further remarks (i, 278) that there was a "great difference in social results between French (= Frankish) and German feudalism," by reason of the prostrate state of the old Gallic population; going on however to add: "But the result was the same, feudal government, a graduated system of jurisdiction based on land tenure, in which every lord judged, taxed, and commanded the class next below him; in which abject slavery formed the lowest, and irresponsible tyranny the highest grade; in which private war, private coinage, private prisons, took the place of the imperial institutions of government." Of course the bishop has previously (p. 274, note) endorsed Waitz's view, that "all the people were bound to be faithful to the king"; but the passage above cited seems to be his final generalisation.]
Whatever its social value, the feudal system is essentially a blend of Roman and barbarian points of polity; and in France, the place of its development, Gallic usage played a modifying part. It is dubiously described as growing up "from two great sources—the beneficium and the practice of commendation"—the first consisting (a) in gifts of land by the kings out of their own estates, and (b) in surrenders of land to churches or powerful men, on condition that the surrenderer holds it as tenant for rent or service; while commendation consisted in becoming a vassal without any surrender of title. "The union of the beneficiary tie with that of commendation completed the idea of feudal obligation." The beneficium again, "is partly of Roman, partly of German origin," and "the reduction of a large Roman population," nominally freemen under the Roman system, "to dependence," placed it on a common footing with the German semi-free cultivator, "and conduced to the wide extension of the institution. Commendation, on the other hand, may have had a Gallic or Celtic origin...." In one or other of these developments, the German comitatus or chief's war-band, originally so different, "ultimately merged its existence." On the whole, then, the Teutons followed Gallo-Roman leads.