of rights achieved in an era when legal thought played a minor role. The belfry, however,
represents the original strength of the movement: the right to sound the bell of alarm and
convocation institutionalized the cry of “communa,” giving members the right to
summon the collectivity to deliberate or fight for their peace. Such communes could lead
to bloody insurrections, although such violence was not especially common or successful.
But their frightening example must have played a role in any negotiation process; and
violent hostility between lords and communes recurred throughout the Middle Ages.
Communes continued to form through the 12th and early 13th centuries, and in the
reign of Louis IX there were over thirty-five of them in the regions directly north of
Paris. They gradually became more established, with a hierarchy of guilds structuring
relationships between segments of the population, often concentrating authority in the
hands of a clique of ruling families. Communes began to decline after the 13th century,
with European economic growth generally. Hardening class distinctions weakened their
collective spirit, and communal governments fell into serious debt. By ca. 1300, some
cities, such as Sens, Compiègne, Meulan, and Senlis, accusing their leaders of corruption
and embezzlement, requested the king and Parlement to dissolve their communes. The
disorder and heavy fiscal demands accompanying the Hundred Years’ War destroyed
some communes but revived the spirit of self-defense and insurrection in others.
Although never regaining their institutional weight during the rise of the modern state,
communes have retained an almost mythic place in the social imagination of the French.
Richard Landes
[See also: BASTIDE; BOURGEOISIE; CITÉ; TOWNS]
Ennen, Edith. The Medieval Town. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1978.
Kennely, Dolorosa. “Medieval Towns and the Peace of God.” Medievalia et Humanistica
15(1953):35–53.
Petit-Dutaillis, Charles. The French Commune in the Middle Ages, trans. Joan Vickes, Amsterdam:
North-Holland, 1978.
Pirenne, Henri. Medieval Cities. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1925.
Vermeesch, Albert. Essai sur les origines et la signification de la commune dans le nord de la
France (XIe et XIIe siècles). Heule: International Commission for the History of Representative
and Parliamentary Institutions, 1966.
COMMYNES, PHILIPPE DE
(ca. 1447–1511). A member of the Flemish nobility, Commynes was first an important
official of Charles the Bold of Burgundy and then afterward served as chamberlain,
counselor, and confidant of Louis XI of France. His experiences in both capacities are the
subject of his Mémoires, written between 1489 and 1498. Commynes’s memoirs are one
of the first examples of the memoir-as-history, a genre that was to be highly popular in
the Renaissance.
Commynes was the son of Colard van den Clyte, a functionary of the dukes of
Burgundy. Commynes took his name from Comines near Lille, the holding of his uncle,
who raised him from the age of seven. From 1464, he was an intimate adviser of the
future Duke Charles the Bold. In July 1472, Commynes defected from the Burgundian
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