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.

[3] Even Petrarch, in his letter to four Cardinals (Lett. Fam. xi.
16, ed. Fracassetti) on the reformation of the Roman Commonwealth,
recommends the exclusion of the neighboring burghs and all
strangers, inclusive of the Colonna and Orsini families, from the
franchise. None but pure Romans, how to be discovered from the
_colluviet omnium gentium_ deposited upon the Seven Hills by
centuries of immigration he does not clearly say, should be chosen
to revive the fallen majesty of the Republic. See in particular the
peroration of his argument (op. cit. vol. iii. p. 95). In other
words, he aims at a narrow Popolo, a _pura cittadinanza_, in the
sense of Cacciaguida Par. xvi.

[4] In some places we find as many as twelve Consuls. It appears
that both the constituent families of the Popolo and the numbers of
the Consuls were determined by the Sections of the city, so many
being told off for each quarter.

In the North of Italy not a few of the greater vassals, among whom may
be mentioned the houses of Canossa, Montferrat, Savoy, and Este,
creations of the Salic Emperors, looked with favor upon the development
of the towns, while some nobles went so far as to constitute themselves
feudatories of Bishops.[1] The angry warfare carried on against Canossa
by the Lombard barons has probably to be interpreted by the jealousy
this popular policy excited. At the same time, while Lombardy and
Tuscany were establishing their municipal liberties, a sympathetic
movement began in Southern Ita