The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century | Page 8

the Lombards of the conquest, in their hatred of everything
which savored of the old Roman civilization, overthrew all the
established offices of city government to replace them with others of

barbarian name and origin, or to leave them unfilled altogether, among
the time-honored officers of the Roman rule was one whose powers
were everywhere recognized, even if at present it is a little difficult to
define with precision his duties. I refer to the defensor urbis. This
office came into prominence when Roman despotism found that it was
overreaching itself by grinding down the defenseless curiae below the
margin of productiveness. The duties of the defensor were, as his name
implies, to protect the powerless inhabitants of the cities against the
exactions of the imperial ministers. He enjoyed many important
privileges of jurisdiction, and these were materially increased by the
legislation of Justinian; and soon the defensor became an important
officer of the municipality.[8] What particularly concerns us is that he
was the only municipal officer who was elected not by the votes of the
curia alone, but by those of the whole people forming the
_municipium_, including the bishop and his clergy. Now in the period
just preceding the invasion of the barbarians, the clergy alone possessed
any energy and influence; so into their hands fell the control of this
new institution, and consequently all that remained of life in the
municipal system.
As in city matters these conditions remained unaltered after the coming
of the Lombards, what was more natural than that the bishops should
retain their moral position of defenders of the people, even if we admit
that the form of the office fell with the old administration? To these
considerations we may add two important facts: that the office of
bishop was for a long time the only one in the election to which the
people--and by this term I mean the people as a whole, not the populus
of the old laws and charters--had any voice whatever; and that the
bishop, from his spiritual position as pastor of the flock, and from his
civil position as having great legal influence in the town and being
probably the only man of superior intellect interested in the internal
affairs of the community, was the proper and most effectual mediator
between the people and their temporal rulers. Hence arose that
important influence of the bishops which was to have so perceptible an
effect on the subsequent development of the principles of liberty in the
communes.

To appreciate properly, and to give the true value to this power in its
later progress, we must remember one thing: that it did not have its
origin by any seeking of power by either the Roman or the Ambrosian
church as a body, in any concerted effort to extend the ecclesiastical
power at the expense of the civil. It came from the spontaneous effort
of the pastor, the natural and at that time the only protector of the
people, trying to save his flock from the extortion and the injustice of
their temporal rulers. In addition to this it must be remembered that at
that time the office of the bishop was the only one where even the
shadow of the democratic idea was preserved, the only one where the
lowest of the people, theoretically at least, had a voice in the election.
In later times, when the feudal system becomes established in its
completeness, the position of the bishop undergoes a great change, as
his relations to the state and to society become more complex in their
character; and his importance in the community, while it at first
increases, in time surely diminishes, under the influence of his double
relation of lord and vassal to some higher temporal power. When he in
his turn becomes the possessor of political power as a great baron or as
head of a _civitas_, his interests, and consequently his influence, are
concerned with intriguing and with efforts for his own political
advancement, in many cases leaving but few traces of the old relation
of "defender of the people." It is, however, of importance to note that
this decline in his prominence in civil life is commensurate with the
diminished need by the people of his protection, owing to the steady
increase in the security and independence of their position.
To sum up briefly the chief characteristics of the early and obscure
period which we have been considering, I think we can truly call it a
transition period, and its history a tottering bridge from the dead
Roman municipal system of the past, to the new state and city life of
the future; from a state of society where, as we have seen, the city had
changed from a political to an administrative division, to one where