THE REVIVAL OF CITY LIFE. The old cities of central and northern Italy, as
was stated above, continued through the early Middle Ages as places of
some little local importance. In the eleventh century they overthrew in
large part the rule of their Prince-Bishops, and became little City-
Republics, much after the old Greek model. Outside of Italy almost the
only cities not destroyed during the period of the barbarian invasions
were the episcopal cities, that is cities which were the residences of
bishops.

Outside of Italy the present cities of western Europe either rose on the
ruins of former Roman provincial cities, or originated about some
monastery or castle, on or adjacent to land at one time owned by monks or
feudal lord. An ever-increasing company of peasants, themselves little
more than serfs in the beginning, huddled together in such places for the
protection afforded, and a walled feudal town eventually resulted (R. 94
a). This later, in one way or another, secured its freedom from monastic
control or feudal lord, and evolved into the free city we know to-day.
Originally each little city was a self-sustaining community. The farming
and grazing lands lay outside, while the people were crowded compactly
together within the protecting town walls. The need for walls that could
be manned for defense, gates that could shut out the marauder, the narrow,
dirty streets, and the lack of any sanitary ideas, all alike tended to
keep the towns small. [28] The insecurity of life, the constant warfare,
the repeated failures or destruction of crops without and want within, and
the high death-rate from disease, all kept down the population. A town of
a thousand people in the early Middle Ages was a place of some importance,
while probably no city outside of Italy, excepting Paris and London, had
ten thousand inhabitants before the year 1200. In all England there were
but 2,150,000 people, according to the Domesday Survey (1086), while to-
day the city of London alone contains nearly three times that number.