McKitterick, Rosamond. The Frankish Kingdoms Under the Carolingians, 751–987. London:
Longman, 1983, pp. 87–91.
Murray, Alexander Callander. “The Position of the Grafio in the Constitutional History of
Merovingian Gaul.” Speculum 61 (1986):787–804.
COMMUNE
. Communes were sworn associations of rural or urban dwellers designed to provide
collective protection from seigneurial authority. The earliest development of self-
governing cities occurred in the later 11th century between the Loire and the Rhineland,
as well as in northern Italy. A French urban commune typically consisted of a royal
charter proclaiming the peace of the city, a belfry, and a town seal that permitted it to
deal as a peer with seigneurial powers. Possessing these, a town could then organize and
govern itself, generally by means of a mayor and twelve notables (Lat. scabini, Fr.
échevins). The urban territory became officially a “peace zone.” Responsibility for
enforcing order and judging violators fell to the commune, as did collection of taxes and
the payment of dues to the king or local lord. These urban franchises were available to all
residents, including those who, fleeing servitude in the countryside, remained for a year
and a day.
Economic and political forces at the turn of the millennium set the communal
movement in motion. Enterprising lords hoping to develop underpopulated areas attracted
immigrants by offering various franchises, thereby providing an escape from the more
onerous aspects of the seigneurial ban. Those who settled around some privileged
fortifications (bourg, cité, castle) became wealthier and more numerous, overshadowing
the habitations of the lay or clerical lords who had first encouraged their association. By
the years ca. 1100, conflicts between the growing urban collectivity and the interests of
the traditional possessors of power reached a critical stage that dictated new agreements.
Where the agglomerations were relatively new, lords granted liberties without much
difficulty (Le Huy, 1066). Older urban communities with enlightened lords followed suit.
Communal movements often gained support from the monarchy, which, outside its own
cities, favored counterweights to its refractory nobility.
The self-assertion of the inhabitants became more violent, however, when lords
refused to relinquish traditional authority, and the communal movement took over some
of the revolutionary aspects of the Peace of God. Communes engaged all inhabitants in a
communal oath, thus substituting a horizontal and egalitarian form of association for the
more traditional hierarchical ones of the aristocracy. Within the commune, each member
was subservient to the other as a brother. On the ideological level, the notion of “peace”
played so fundamental a role that in some charters pax and communa are synonymous
terms.
The word “commune” sometimes had stronger connotations. At Laon in the 12th
century, the conservative cleric Guibert de Nogent found it a hateful novelty, while the
populace considered it the rallying cry to insurrection. The charter and seal of a city
constitute elements of a later, more normative phase of the movement, visible attributes
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