The Communes of Lombardy from the VI. to the X. Century / An Investigation of the Causes Which Led to the Development of Municipal Unity Among the Lombard Communes.

by William Klapp Williams

The important point which it is necessary to emphasize in this connection is the fact that the gastald held his tenure, not from the dux as his subordinate, but from the king in person, and for this reason can more fitly be compared with the later count than with the dux of the Lombards. Consequently it is in the matter of tenure that I think is to be found the difference in power between the two officers. In addition to his official authority, the dux was possessed of a power and an influence entirely his own, derived quite as much from the number of his vassals and his position in the civitas as from the grant he received from the king. At home he was a powerful lord, and though he, of course, owed fealty and service to the king, he was by no means a king's servant, like his successor the Carlovingian count. The gastald, on the other hand, was eminently a servant of the central power; and whether or not he was engaged exclusively in looking after the fiscal interests of the masters who employed him, he had no power and no influence except such as he derived from the source of his authority. He was a king's minister and nothing more, and we can easily appreciate that the amount of power he was enabled to exercise could never exceed the amount of influence in local affairs possessed at any particular time by the central government, whose representative he was.

But the very nature of the source from which the power of his office is derived is what connects it vitally with the subject of our enquiry. We have seen the dux as head—in the earliest times almost independent head—of the whole civitas, including rural and city jurisdiction. We have seen him as an official, depending from the king, it is true, and holding the king's placita and executing the law, but also holding placita of his own; appearing as a powerful local lord, and exercising almost arbitrary power in the regulation and the distribution of the public property of the commonwealth over which he ruled; in fact, a descendant of the old duces of the Lombard barbarian host, who, perhaps, even antedating the royal office, held their power and their position as princes and chosen leaders of the people, rather than as appointees or dependents of any higher authority. In the gastald, on the other hand, we have an official of an entirely different type—one not belonging to a powerful class of lords or leaders which traces its origin to the spontaneous choice of the people or army, but one who gets his appointment at the will and in the interests of the central government, and is commissioned to exercise certain functions of the administration as an assistant to, perhaps even as a check on, the power of the local head.

Such an official was naturally located at the place where the district courts held their sessions, and where the fiscal duties which he especially had in charge were most easily executed. As we have seen in the case of the dux, convenience points to the urbs of each civitas as a natural centre, and consequently here again we find the office of gastald as another agent in bringing the municipal division into prominence; but doing this, we must always remember, simply from the fact of convenience or fitness, and not in any sense as a matter of constitutional necessity. Like that of the dux, the jurisdiction of the gastald was exercised over the remotest farm of the civitas as much as over the palace in the city: de jure, the city gained nothing by the circumstance of its being the centre of the administration of any office; but, de facto, the holding of such a position can easily be seen to have been an important element in its growth and development.

This fact is even of greater importance in the case of the gastald than in that of the dux, because, on account of the elimination of the character of local ruler, which was indissolubly attached to the office of the latter, the gastald brought local affairs into direct relation with other parts of the social system of the kingdom, especially connecting them with the king or centre of the whole. Such a connection, as may be inferred from what has just been said, while legally true, of course, of the whole civitas, had practically the effect of bringing the cities chiefly into relation with the rest of the Lombard constitution; and, consequently, some writers point to the office of gastald as the connecting link between municipal life and the new state life of the Teutonic system. This statement seems to me to be true except in so far as it makes the gastald the only connecting link. For we have already seen the dux holding the same relation, only in a less direct manner, owing to the intrusion of other interests belonging to his position; and we shall shortly have to consider the scabinus, another local officer, who, under Carlovingian rule, accomplished even more in this direction than the gastald. I do not wish to fail in appreciation of the important influence of this office in the development of the slowly growing idea of individuality in the cities of Lombardy, only to point out that it was not the only "connecting link" between the municipal units and the state as a whole.

In passing to a brief characterization of a few of the subordinate officers, I must not omit to mention the fact that the gastald had also certain military functions attached to his office. When called upon by the king he took command in the army, together with the minor officers who were under him in his jurisdiction, such as the sculdahis, saltarius,[44] etc. We have confirmation of this in the constitution "promotionis exercitus" of Lewis II.,[45] which says "ut nullum ab expeditione aut Comes aut Gastald, vel Ministri eorum excusatum habeant"; and in the life of Gregory II., Anastasius Bibliotecharius[46] tells that at the overthrow of the castrum of Cumae with the help of that pope, "Langobardos pene trecentos cum eorum Gastaldione interfecerunt." In military affairs the command held by the gastald seems to have been lower than that of the dux, the leader of all the troops furnished by the civitas. A right of appeal to the dux existed for the exercitalis who was oppressed by the gastald, as shown by the twenty-fourth law of Rhotaris,[47] which says: "Si Gastaldius exercitalem suum contra rationem molestaverit, Dux eum soletur." In a case of oppression by the dux, the gastald, on the other hand, could bring the matter before the king.

Before considering the changes introduced by the Carlovingian rule, let us cast a hasty glance at a few of the minor officers who acted as subordinates of the judex in administering the affairs of the civitas. As their relations to the urban portion of the Lombard kingdom, which is the special object of our study, were either slight in themselves or else so closely connected with those of their superiors as not to merit any particular description, I will merely mention the names of a few of them and indicate their duties. The officer who came next in rank to the judex, and who, in a subordinate capacity, assisted him especially in administering the judicial affairs of the civitas, was in Lombard times called the sculdahis, and in Carlovingian times the centenarius. Under him were the saltarius and the decanus. The sculdahis acted as a local officer under the judex, having limited judicial, police and military powers. His jurisdiction was confined to the small fortified towns and villages of the civitas, where he administered justice and collected fines, forfeitures, etc., in much the same manner as did the judex in the largest town of the civitas; his judgments, however, were not final, but always subject to appeal to a higher authority: "Si vero talis causa fuerit, quod ipse Sculdahis minime deliberare possit, dirigat ambas partes ad judicem suum."[48] There were several sculdahis in one judiciaria, and cases were often tried before more than one,[49] though each of the smaller local units seems to have had such an officer. Paulus Diaconus[50] speaks of "elector loci illius, quem sculdahis lingua propria dicunt, vir nobilis," etc.

These rural divisions seem sometimes to have been called sculdascia, for we have a diploma of Berengar I., of the year 918, given to the monastery of Sta. Maria dell' Organo,[51] where is mentioned "pratum juris imperii nostri pertinens de Comitatu Veronensi, de Sculdascia videlicet, que Fluvium dicitur"; and in a document published by Ughelli,[52] in speaking of the bishops of Belluno, "Sculdascia Belluni" is used. In Frankish times the centenarius held the same position as the sculdahis of the Lombards: his jurisdiction was similarly limited to minor offences; all cases involving capital punishment, loss of liberty, or delivering of res mancipii, being handed over to the count's court according to the legislation of Charlemagne.[53] The decani and saltarii were subordinates of the centenarii and sculdahis. They both presided over smaller local divisions than the sculdascia, and acted as deputies. In the laws of Liutprand,[54] speaking of a runaway slave, we are told that "si in alia judiciaria inventus fuerit, tunc decanus aut saltarius, qui in loco ordinatus fuerit, comprehendere eum debeat et ad sculdahis suum perducat, et ipse sculdahis judici suo consignet." The saltarius seems to have been originally a sort of guardian of forests, "custos saltuum"[55] or "silvanus";[56] and the name of the decanus, like the Frankish centenarius, is a survival of the old decimal division of the army and people. These minor officers, as well as other subalterns of the judex, are often met with under the common name of actionarii, which includes also the different sorts of exactores, adores, advocati, and all the lesser officials of the fiscus.

In the course of this investigation I have already referred to, and in a certain measure characterized, the changes introduced into the Lombard system of government consequent on the kingdom being absorbed into the great empire of Charlemagne. I have said that, owing to the similarity of institutions between the Franks and the Lombards, the changes made consisted rather in differences in the manner of enforcing the control of the central power than in any alteration in the institutional life of the people, but that there were certain exceptions to this general rule, which, in their mode of operation, though not in the intention of their author, materially affected, indeed greatly accelerated, the growth of individual life among the cities. We must now consider the nature of these exceptions.

Under the Lombard system we have seen the administrative unit of the state to be the civitas, with its administrative head, the dux, at different times enjoying a greater or less degree of independence from control of the central power. We have seen the dux lord as well as judge in his own jurisdiction, and standing as the successor of the military leader chosen by the people, instead of holding the position of king's servant; this place being more properly filled by the gastald, who cared for the fiscal interests of the central power, whose appointee he was. Such a form of government, it can be readily seen, left no room for any strong development of the principle of centralization, and no scope for the exercise of any decided power or even of general supervision by the central authority. The heads of the civitates were the king's judices, it is true, and assembled to assist him in judgments at his general placita in the March of each year; but they bear the character also of local lords of no mean importance, and in some cases possessed of no inconsiderable amount of power. Such a degree of individual influence—perhaps I should exaggerate if I called it individual independence—was, however, little suited to the idea of a universal centralized empire, which was the forming principle of the government of Charlemagne. While recognizing the necessity of retaining the fundamental institution of a division of the state into civitates, and of governing it by means of the heads of these divisions, he wished to eliminate from these officers all the characteristics of local magnates, and to reduce them to the more easily controlled position of servants, and dependents of the king. This object he accomplished most satisfactorily by changing the dukes or local lords into counts or king's men, by appointing a Count of the Palace for Italy, and by extending to that kingdom the perfectly organized system of central control by means of the Missi Dominici, with the workings of which in the other parts of his great empire the student of history is too well acquainted to need any description here.

The immediate changes in the life of the people consequent on the introduction of this system were not considerable, if we except a great improvement in public order and a marked advance in the equitable administration of justice; but it needs no great foresight to see that the ultimate effects on the position held by the municipal units in the community could not fail to be important and far-reaching. The new officer, the count, stripped of all the importance that his predecessor, the duke, had enjoyed as lord of the country over which he ruled, was placed in each city to govern, in the king's name, it and its territorium. As long as the empire of Charlemagne retained its integrity, and as long as the reins of central government were held by a strong hand and the control it exercised was felt to be positive and real, the change in the character of the local governor was of little moment; but as soon as the power of the central government weakened—during the inglorious reigns of the immediate successors of the great emperor—its hold on the administration of the local units slackened immediately; and in proportion as the vitality of the new central control diminishes, we see appearing the effects which must always result when the strong hand of an active central power is removed from a system of administration which had been based on the exercise of such a power. These effects are the increased importance—I may now say the increased independence—of the local units; of these local units themselves as distinguished from the heads who rule over them.