brief as is consistent with a clear understanding of these relations, and as complete as the great difficulties of the subject will permit, pointing out, whenever they are authentically traceable, the changes introduced in consequence of the Carlovingian conquest.

When we reach in Lombard history the period when the power of the native kings was first overthrown by foreign arms, we are no longer confronted by many of the problems which necessarily formed an important part of the earlier portions of our investigation. I mean the problems which arise in a state of society where the mass of individuals forming it is made up of two elements, a conquering, dominant one, and a conquered, subject one. During the two centuries elapsed since the Lombard barbarians conquered Italy, the two races, originally so different in their ideas and in their character, so opposed in their customs and in their nature, have been slowly but surely blending together, on the strength of common environment and by the necessities of mutual relations: so that by the last half of the eighth century, we can truly say that national differences, as such, have disappeared, and left behind them a single race, a combination but still a unity. We no longer have to deal with a double nationality, with the northern conquerors and their southern victims, with the oppressed and their oppressors. In considering the development of the institutional life of the people, we need no longer seek for differences, but may assume the easier task of tracing similarities. In a word, we no longer speak of Lombards and of Romans, but describe all that remains of both by the new word Italians.

It is not within the scope of this enquiry to trace the various steps or indicate the various influences, the civilizing effect of the Church, the restraining power of the law, by which this complete amalgamation of two distinct races became an accomplished fact; we need only to note that the unity of the race was achieved. Even Macchiavelli recognizes this fact and, speaking of the time of the Carlovingian conquest, in the brief review of the history of all Italy which forms the first part of the first book of the "Florentine History," he truly says that, after two hundred and twenty-two years of occupation by the Lombards, "they retained nothing of the foreigner save the name."[10]

But we must always bear in mind that it was not a process of absorption of one race by another, but a process of combination, of amalgamation; a levelling process, by which some members of the conquered people, by natural and economic causes, were raised to the level of their superiors; and on the other hand, some of the conquerors, by reason of similar causes, fell to the rank of the subject population. By manumission and by the various forms of vassalage more or less honorable, and by gaining some economic importance by trade and other means, many of the descendants of the Roman population gained admission to the ranks of the Arimanni, and obtained the full franchise by the possession of landed property. By forfeitures, consequent poverty and ultimate pauperization, many of the Lombard stock lost their rank and their lands and entered the same state of vassalage with the great body of the people. We see evidences of this change, this levelling up and levelling down, all through the military code of Liutprand, and in the later one of Aistulf can even more distinctly trace its progress; and without entering into further detail, we can definitely state that, by the time we are now considering, all traces of distinct race-origin had disappeared in the mass of the people, and the only safe distinction that we can draw is to say that among the families of the dukes and greater nobles, the Lombard stock was preserved comparatively pure, and that the serf population was, generally speaking, of Roman descent.[11]

                       KING
          +———————+———————+
          | | |
        COUNTS DUKES GASTALDS
                         |
          +———————+———————+
          | | |
        CUTANEI SCABINI SCULDAHIS
     (LATER BARONS)
      | | | | |
      | | | | +———————————————-+
      | | | +————————————-+ |
      | | +—————————-+ | |
      | +—————-+ | | |
      | | | | |
     ARIMANNI | | | |
                 MASNADA | | |
                            ALDII | |
                                    SERFS |
                                            SLAVES

The above table, while its divisions must not be taken too literally, will, I think, give some indication of the estimation in which the various classes of society were held. It is too early yet in the development of the feudal system to say that the derivation lines show the course of an absolute feudal tenure, and they are not meant for that purpose, but simply to indicate the succession of the inequalities of rank.

Turning now to the territorial divisions of the country at this period, we find them practically unchanged. The civitas still stands as the sectional unit; the territory with its city still represents the administrative division of the state. It is fundamental to a correct understanding of the early development of communal institutions that we should have a thorough knowledge of the meaning of this term civitas; of the extent of its application and of its limitations. I used the words "territory with its city" in defining the administrative division of the state, and perhaps this term describes the civitas better than any single word would do. In the Roman municipal system we have the city with its surrounding territory, over which extends the jurisdiction of the curia; in the Lombard system we have the territory, the land, in some part of which is located a city, a fortified place.

This is to my mind the important point which settles satisfactorily the vexed question of the dominance or the disappearance of Roman influences. The institutions of the Lombards were similar in character to those of the other Germanic races, and the continuance of any overruling municipal influence among them would have done violence alike to their traditions and to the nature of their race. The old municipal predominance as a system disappeared, the old municipal divisions and many of the minor forms and offices as a fact remained. It is these latter which give some color to the arguments of writers like Savigny,[12] who endeavor to maintain the continuance of the old Roman curia. They find evidence of the continuance of old boundaries, of many old names and many old executive functions, and fail to appreciate that the principle which lay back of and was making use of these old forms as convenient channels for the expression of its power and of its control, was an entirely new one, based on ideas fundamentally opposed to those of the civilization it had conquered. This slight warning is necessary so as to avoid any error in the conception of the significance to be attached to the geographical limits of the divisions of territory we are considering.

The word civitas has the same signification as comitatus, when that word was used