with the meaning of a territorial division; and included all the territory, with its lands, its villages, its fortified places and its city, which came under the jurisdiction of a dux or judex, or in Frankish times of a count, when we are strictly justified in giving it the more familiar name of county. From this we trace the Italian word contado, by the steps comitatu, comitato, contato, contado. The land division here indicated is indifferently called in the Lombard records territorium, fines, civitas, or judiciaria. The identity of all these terms admits of easy proof from all the documents, public and private; and numberless instances could be cited showing an interchange of terms in describing the same locality.

I will mention in illustration of this fact the rather neat example of a document of the year 762, published by Brunetti[13] in his Codice Diplomatico Toscano, in which three of these terms are used interchangeably in the space of a few lines. It is a contract by which a certain Arnifrid, an inhabitant of Clusium—the modern Chiusi—who "in clusino territorio … natus fuit," pledges himself to live on a certain property, and says "nullam conbersationem facias nec in clusio nec in alia civitate habitandum, nisi…. &c.," and promises to pay fifty solidi if "pro eo quod ipsa pecunia demittere presumbsero aut de judiciaria vestra suaninse exire voluero." The contract is "Actum in civitate suana." We here see the words territorium and civitas both applied to the territory of Chiusi, and the words judiciaria and civitas both applied to the territory of Siena, and we only need to remember that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other, to recognize the identity of the terms. If we look at document number eight in the same collection,[14] we will further see the territory of Chiusi referred to as "fines clusinas."

Hand-in-hand with the growth of episcopal organization we see another term coming into use in connection with the same land division, and this also is an administrative one, but of the church simply, and only made use of by conversion or carelessly when applied to a civil area. I mean the districtus, which term is properly applicable only to the jurisdiction of a bishop, and designates the limits of his episcopal power, that is, his diocese. The reasons for this term being used in later times occasionally for the civil division, the civitas, are twofold. They result, firstly, from the confusion which arose between matters of civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, when political power was given to a large number of the bishops, and when they united to their religious duties as pastor, the judicial and sometimes even some of the military duties of comes and judex. And secondly, in the important fact that in almost all cases the boundaries of a bishop's diocese coincided more or less exactly with the limits of the authority of the state officers; so that the division which should be called a civitas or territorium from the point of view of civil government, should be called a districtus from that of ecclesiastical government.

Where we find at once the most important and, if not rightly understood, the most perplexing traces of the survival of the old Roman municipal system, is in this matter of territorial boundaries. According to the Roman system, as we have seen, the city was the important administrative unit, and each city was surrounded by a belt of rural lands, more or less large according to the size and importance of the city itself. This of course resulted in a division of the whole country into a number of districts whose boundaries were definitely marked, perhaps even jealously guarded. Now, when the Lombards took possession of the country, while they rejected the principle of the municipal unit, as foreign to the character and instincts of their race, they could not fail to see the practical utility of using, and the actual difficulty of overthrowing, a system of land division which custom and authority had united in rendering alike definite and convenient. What was the result? They made use of the old boundary lines, leaving their limits, as far as we can judge, untouched, and substituted as the fundamental principle of their administration, in place of the Roman idea of the municipium, the thoroughly Teutonic idea of the civitas or country district. Coincident with these time-honored boundaries which served to mark the limits of the jurisdiction of the duke and the judex, are to be found those of the ecclesiastical power, of the bishop's diocese.

This statement is confirmed by the many charters, immunities, etc., addressed to the episcopal authorities; and direct proof of it may be had by reference to the controversy which arose in the first half of the eighth century between the bishops of Arezzo and Siena, which dispute was based on the fact that for reasons definitely stated these two dioceses formed an exception to the general rule. The strength of the proof lies in this exception, which had a well-known cause for its origin. Some of the documents[15] in the case, of the year 715, show that the bishop of Siena claimed for his jurisdiction certain churches which belonged to the diocese of Arezzo, basing his claim solely on the ground that these churches were situated in the territorium of Siena. The bishop of Arezzo, on the other hand, claims them as part of his diocese, on the ground that they had formed part of it ever since the beginning of Lombard rule in Italy; and—which is the part of importance to us—gives as the only reason for their having been attached to the diocese of a neighboring territorium, the fact that at that early date there was no bishop in the territorium of Siena. That a claim of such a character should have been based on the argument of the natural coincidence of the boundaries of territorium and diocese, is sufficient proof of the identity of these limits at that age. In a bull of the year 752,[16] Pope Stephen II. decides to adhere to the already existing diocesan divisions, and adjudges to the bishop of Arezzo the churches "quae esse manifestum est sub consecratione et regimine praefatae S. Aretinae Ecclesiae, territorium vero est prefatae nominatae Civitatis Senensis."

We see then the perpetuation of the old Roman land divisions in the new commonwealth through the medium of the civitas and the diocese. How long these divisions remained intact and what were the causes and the extent of their final overthrow, forms part of the history of the later development of the Italian communes. Here I will simply indicate the fact, that among the reasons which led in most instances to a departure from this system of land boundaries, are to be found some of the most important causes for the development of freedom and independent jurisdiction among the cities. It is to the destruction of this identity of interests and of government which existed between country and city, that is owed the ultimate predominance of the latter, and its regaining its ancient position of a self-centered unity; although in its new form we find this depending on the principle of individual liberty, instead of being based on the principle of government by a central power. Whether this emancipation from the bonds of a rural dependence was brought about by the practice later entered upon, of breaking up the counties into a number of smaller units with the so-called "rural counts," each ruling over a castellum or fortified village; or by the fact that many of the bishops obtained political as well as religious control over a city and a limited area of the surrounding country, generally extending only three or five miles beyond the city walls; or whether this freedom was the result of the spontaneous growth of civic and economic life within the city itself; or finally, whether it came from a