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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
page 77 of 97 (79%)
the hands of native kings.[96] It means the full development of the
bishop into the temporal ruler, and as such belongs properly to the
history of the tenth century, and consequently is beyond the limits of
the present paper.

We have now considered individually and separately, in the course of
their development, the different elements which, when combined and
modified by the various changes described, contributed to form the
solid foundation upon which the fabric of the future independent life
of the cities was to be built. We have been dealing exclusively with
institutions, and the manner in which their growth has been
accomplished. For it is in the institutional life of a people, and in
the change and development it undergoes, that are to be found those
elements which form the basis for all future changes, whether simply
in the form of its government or in the structure of its social
system. If once a clear picture is gained of the structural parts
which form the institutional framework of any particular development,
and a truthful presentation of these forming principles is proved and
established, a detailed account of the material expression of them is
a matter of secondary importance.

I have not, in this paper, attempted to describe the actual condition
of any particular municipality, or even presented a picture which
could represent the material existence of the cities as a whole. Such
a picture would only be a necessary part of a study of institutions
when the city itself was the unit to be investigated, and not of one
whose chief object is to prove that the city as such had no
constitutional existence, but simply formed a part of another
institutional unit. When we reach a period in which the city stands
out as an object of study in itself, and when we do not have to trace
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