It will, however, be impossible for us to understand thoroughly the
relations of the city under Lombard and Frankish rule to the central
and to the local government, unless we know somewhat of the local and
state officers who exercised jurisdiction within the territorial
limits just described. By a consideration of their special powers and
of their special duties, we must learn all that we can know with any
degree of certainty with regard to the position of the city in these
times. With this in mind, let us first examine the office whose
functions it is at once the most difficult and the most important for
us to understand in all its bearings--that of the _Judex_. We must
consider it not only in the relation which it bears to the higher
grade of officers, the Lombard duke and the Frankish count, but also
in its relation with the lower officials who severally enjoyed more or
less of the powers attached to its possession, namely, the gastald,
the sculdahis, the scabino, and even the rural counts and the bishop.
And in tracing its development we must note the influence it bore on
the growth of the municipal idea, and also its connection with the
political jurisdiction, commonly combined with it in the person of a
single official.
In considering the institutions of a comparatively crude state of
society, such as existed in Europe in the early middle ages, it is
misleading if not impossible to differentiate to any great extent the
various functions and kinds of power which were commonly centered in
the same individual.
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