centre of its local administration, thereby in fact, if in no way by
law, restoring to it some of the elements of individuality, if not of
pre-eminence, which it had lost. The means employed we have seen to be
the functions of the various officers of state: the _dux_, the count
and the gastald, who connected the city with the state, and the
_scabinus_ and the bishop, who represented this connection to the
consciousness of the people. We have noted the marked effects produced
on the development of a more popular feeling, by the changes
introduced by the great emperor of the Franks; which, by diminishing
the power of the local lords, accomplished a double benefit; on the
one hand by saving the people from the arbitrary rule of a feudal
superior; on the other, by causing the city to become more of a
dependence and more of a support to the state as a whole. And finally
we have left the city prepared, on the return of another dynasty of
native kings, to accept, at least in a large number of cases, the
domination of another kind of lord, a spiritual one; who was to serve
as a medium for breaking up the power of the old lords of the
_civitas_, and from whom it would be an easier task for the commune of
the future to wrest the power and the sovereignty which was to make it
a free and independent autonomy.

* * * * *

AUTHORITIES REFERRED TO IN THE TEXT AND FOOT-NOTES.

_Anastasius Bibliothecarius_: Vitae Romanorum Pontificum. v.
_Muratori_: Script. Rer. Ital., Tom. III., Pars I.

_Baluzii, Stephanus_: Capitular. Regum Francorum additae sunt
_Marculfi_ Monachi et aliorum formulae veteres. Parisiis, 1780. 2