to its inhabitants a greater sense of security, and consequently of
importance, even if we cannot claim that in the earliest stages of
municipal development it gave birth to any definite ideas of personal
freedom or of municipal independence. But it can easily be seen that
it formed another and an important factor in that idea whose progress
we wish to trace, of a slowly growing feeling of individuality in the
city as such, the municipal unit as conceived apart from the still
legally recognized unit, the entire _civitas_. We have seen the count
the representative of this idea as far as its actual connection with
the constitution of the state was concerned, but it was the _scabinus_
who was to represent it to the consciousness of the people, and to
assist them in rediscovering the lost conception of a municipal unity.

It would be incomplete to conclude this account of the various
officers of government, without some mention of the position held by
the bishops at this period. As it has been our duty throughout this
paper to study the municipalities of Italy as only preparing to assume
a position of individuality eventually leading to independence, so it
is with regard to the bishops. While their social influence, as
pointed out in the first part of this paper, was always notable, their
political power, which formed one of the important steps in the
progress of the communes towards a separate existence, has its birth
at a time which is beyond the limits of this investigation. Not until
the overthrow of the Carlovingian dynasty left Italy the prey of
contending factions, and the crown passing quickly from hand to hand
made each applicant anxious to gain the support of the more prominent
electors, did the bishops obtain that legally constituted political
power which, by breaking up and in many cases destroying the rule of
the counts and great nobles in the cities, was the means of bridging
over the wide gulf which lay between the idea of a district under the