[8] What particularly
concerns us is that he was the only municipal officer who was elected
not by the votes of the _curia_ alone, but by those of the whole
people forming the _municipium_, including the bishop and his clergy.
Now in the period just preceding the invasion of the barbarians, the
clergy alone possessed any energy and influence; so into their hands
fell the control of this new institution, and consequently all that
remained of life in the municipal system.
As in city matters these conditions remained unaltered after the
coming of the Lombards, what was more natural than that the bishops
should retain their moral position of defenders of the people, even if
we admit that the form of the office fell with the old administration?
To these considerations we may add two important facts: that the
office of bishop was for a long time the only one in the election to
which the people--and by this term I mean the people as a whole, not
the _populus_ of the old laws and charters--had any voice whatever;
and that the bishop, from his spiritual position as pastor of the
flock, and from his civil position as having great legal influence in
the town and being probably the only man of superior intellect
interested in the internal affairs of the community, was the proper
and most effectual mediator between the people and their temporal
rulers.
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