Beautypically

Local and contingent reasons determined this various siding of the cities with popes and emperors: how could it be the prevalence in them of one or the other party, or the attitude of another and unfriendly city. But these reasons were already showing signs of consolidation, in response to old and latent antagonisms, to new mercantile rivalries. Not a few diplomas, in recognition of rights and privileges, the emperors gave to the cities in these years. But acts of favor also came to the cities from the popes. Thus, to cite an example, Pisa, whose bishop had the dignity of papal legate from the pontiff and then metropolitan rights over the Sardinian and Corsican bishops, in full compliance with the political interests of the city. What did not prevent Pisa from accepting or accepting favors even from Henry IV. In the external and internal struggle the personality of the city as such emerged, the associative spirit developed, the occasions to act as an established body became very frequent, the new hierarchies were consolidated or the old ones changed a little nature, they loosened the dependence on the old lords , they took on the character of an emanation of citizenship. There were the first wars between city and city. And the first alliances between cities: even against the emperor. And inside the cities, armed struggles of parties and even groupings of families and social groups, “pacts”, “concordies”, “companies”, Coniurationes , which can be considered the principle of a substantially new political order, even though it is grafted onto another precedent and lacking in contemporaries the awareness of a detachment from the past. In notarial practice, the use, already established towards the middle of the century, was accentuated. XI to no longer date the papers from the years of the emperor’s reign. The number of cities that minted coins or named their own coins increased. Some of them just now started building new walls; or a new and larger and more adorned cathedral, a center of not only religious but also civil life.

At this point, the end of the century. XI and beginning of XII, we can consider already constituted, within the framework of the ancient cities and on the basis of orders perhaps never fallen, the municipalities.

According to PLUS-SIZE-TIPS, they are the conclusive moment of a long political-social and economic evolution, very intense in the last two centuries, which has given life to new social elements of the city and drawn towards the city the forces of the middle country and feudal world; he placed bishops in the government of the cities or in a high political position, as well as economic and feudal, in the cities themselves; with this it has promoted the formation of new leadership groups and more free movement of citizens; it has created new habits of private and public law, new bonds of solidarity within certain groups and new and more varied forms of association; he identified the city in the surrounding feudal world and, at the same time, connected it more closely and organically with it, making its further development possible. Much uncertainty still reigns over the ways in which the municipality was established, on the relations it had with the old system and on what is made, specifically new, on the nature of the jurisdiction that its leaders exercised from the beginning, on its breadth and on the classes or groups that originally came to constitute it: feudal class, closely linked to bishop; new bourgeoisie of mercatores; craftsmanship. Even with this uncertainty, the municipality presents itself to us from the beginning as an essentially voluntary, temporary association, whether or not its duration was determined in the act of its establishment; very restricted association, whose central nucleus is made up of the many families of vicedomini, vice-councils, lawyers, of those who have had anci and benefits from bishops and counts and churches and monasteries and have appropriated, through inheritance, the offices and benefits themselves and manage and exploit them in common. They govern the Opera del Duomo, administer the bishopric in a vacant seat, train the new bishop on the throne and are close to him in a number of judicial, political and administrative acts concerning the bishopric and the city. The relationship between church and municipality is very close:ecclesia et comune civitatis , many donations made to the church and the municipality together. Consequently, the relationship between bishops and consuls is also very close: the latter, initially  consules episcopi, almost advisers to the bishop and emanating from the bishop more than from the citizens, then more and more represent the real executive power of the municipality, operating more or less alongside the bishop. Whatever the meaning and origin of the word, the consulate also appears to be constituted between the century. XI and XII, and certainly in close connection with the establishment of the sworn association which is called municipality. At the same time, the small initial organism of the municipality expanded, welcomed new social elements, freely adhering to the association or forced, accentuating its public character and multiplying its initiatives of general interest or intended to affect the entire structure of the city and its immediate territory. A municipal finance was established which had its core in the pre-existing city financial organization, based on the obligation to contribute to the expenses and works of interest to the city; a justice of the common, increasingly extended to the penal field; a territory of the municipality, which soon goes beyond the original small district, remained connected with the city.