whole; the _Gran Consiglio_, which is only open to duly qualified
members of the Popolo; and the _Credenza_, or privy council of specially
delegated burghers, who debate on matters demanding secrecy and
diplomacy. Such, generally speaking, and without regard to local
differences, was the internal constitution of an Italian city during the
supremacy of the Bishops.

[1] It is not necessary to raise antiquarian questions here relating
to the origin of the Italian Commune. Whether regarded as a survival
of the ancient Roman _municipium_ or as an offshoot from the Lombard
_guild_, it was a new birth of modern times, a new organism evolved
to express the functions of Italian as different from ancient Roman
or mediæval Lombard life. The affection of the people for their past
induced them to use the nomenclature of Latin civility for the
officers and councils of the Commune. Thus a specious air of
classical antiquity, rather literary and sentimental than real, was
given to the Commune at the outset. Moreover, it must be remembered
that Rome herself had suffered no substantial interruption of
republican existence during the Dark Ages. Therefore the free
burghs, though their vitality was the outcome of wholly new
conditions, though they were built up of guilds and associations
representing interests of modern origin, flattered themselves with
an uninterrupted municipal succession from the Roman era, and
pointed for proof to the Eternal City.

[2] The Italian word _contado_ is a survival from this state of
things. It represents a moment in the national development when the
sphere of the Count outside the city was defined against the sphere
of the municipality. The _Contadini_ are the people of the Contado,
the Count's men.