ecclesiastical government.

Where we find at once the most important and, if not rightly
understood, the most perplexing traces of the survival of the old
Roman municipal system, is in this matter of territorial boundaries.
According to the Roman system, as we have seen, the city was the
important administrative unit, and each city was surrounded by a belt
of rural lands, more or less large according to the size and
importance of the city itself. This of course resulted in a division
of the whole country into a number of districts whose boundaries were
definitely marked, perhaps even jealously guarded. Now, when the
Lombards took possession of the country, while they rejected the
principle of the municipal unit, as foreign to the character and
instincts of their race, they could not fail to see the practical
utility of using, and the actual difficulty of overthrowing, a system
of land division which custom and authority had united in rendering
alike definite and convenient. What was the result? They made use of
the old boundary lines, leaving their limits, as far as we can judge,
untouched, and substituted as the fundamental principle of their
administration, in place of the Roman idea of the _municipium_, the
thoroughly Teutonic idea of the _civitas_ or country district.
Coincident with these time-honored boundaries which served to mark the
limits of the jurisdiction of the duke and the _judex_, are to be
found those of the ecclesiastical power, of the bishop's diocese.

This statement is confirmed by the many charters, immunities, etc.,
addressed to the episcopal authorities; and direct proof of it may be
had by reference to the controversy which arose in the first half of
the eighth century between the bishops of Arezzo and Siena, which
dispute was based on the fact that for reasons definitely stated these