The whole
organization of society was on a purely military basis; the soldiers
of the conquering army, although they became landed proprietors, none
the less retained their character and name of soldiers. Hence when
these crude forms of social life began to crystallize into the
carefully marked ranks of the feudal system, the "_milites_"[2] formed
the order of gentlemen, the smaller feudatories, who gave land in fief
to their vassals--generally the old inhabitants--while holding their
own nominally from the "_duces_," or dukes, the representatives of
their former leaders in war, who held their tenure direct from the
king or chief.
As the object of this paper is particularly to trace the origin and
early sources of municipal life in Northern Italy, let us turn and see
what were the effects on the already existing towns, of the inroads of
these hordes of northern barbarians. At the outset I must state
emphatically that all our sources of information as to the
institutional history of this obscure period are exceedingly vague,
meagre and unsatisfactory. The progress of events we can follow with
more or less accuracy from the mazy writings of the early chroniclers;
we can get a fair idea of the judicial and the legislative acts of the
ruling powers by studying and comparing the different codes of laws
that have come down to us; but in a study of the internal municipal
life of these early ages, the student meets again and again with
increasing discouragement, and soon finds himself almost hopelessly
lost in a tangle of doubts and inferences.
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