During the 10th century in several parts of
Western Europe,
peasants began to gravitate towards walled population centers, as advances in agriculture (the
three-field system) resulted in greater productivity and intense competition. In
central and
northern Italy, and in
Provence and
Septimania, most of the old Roman cities had survived—even if grass grew in their streets—largely as administrative centers for a
diocese or for the local representative of a distant kingly or imperial power. In the
Low Countries, some new towns were founded upon long-distance trade, where the staple was the woolen cloth-making industry. The sites for these
ab ovo towns, more often than not, were the fortified
burghs of counts, bishops or territorial abbots. Such towns were also founded in the
Rhineland. Other towns were simply market villages, local centers of exchange. Such townspeople needed physical protection from lawless
nobles and bandits, part of the motivation for gathering behind communal walls, but also strove to establish their
liberties, the freedom to conduct and regulate their own affairs and security from arbitrary taxation and harassment from the bishop, abbot, or count in whose jurisdiction these obscure and ignoble social outsiders lay. This was a long process of struggling to obtain
charters that guaranteed such basics as the right to hold a market. Such charters were often purchased at exorbitant rates, or granted, not by the local power, but by a king or by the
emperor, who came to hope to enlist the towns as allies in order to centralize power. The
walled city provided protection from direct assault at the price of corporate interference on the pettiest levels, but once a townsman left the city walls, he (for women scarcely travelled) was at the mercy of often violent and lawless nobles in the countryside. Because much of medieval Europe lacked central authority to provide protection, each city had to provide its own protection for citizens - both inside the city walls, and outside. Thus towns formed communes which were a legal basis for turning the cities into self-governing corporations. In most cases the development of communes was connected with that of the cities. However, there were rural communes, notably in France and England, that formed to protect the common interests of villagers. At their heart, communes were sworn allegiances of mutual defense. When a commune formed, all participating members gathered and swore an oath in a public ceremony, promising to defend each other in times of trouble, and to maintain the peace within the city proper. The commune movement started in the 10th century, with a few earlier ones like
Forlì (possibly 889), and gained strength in the 11th century in northern
Italy, which had the most urbanized population of Europe at the time. It then spread in the early 12th century to
France,
Germany,
Spain and elsewhere. The English state was already very centralized, so the communal movement mainly manifested itself in parishes, craftsmen's and merchants'
guilds and monasteries. State officialdom expanded in England and France from the 12th century onwards, while the
Holy Roman Empire was ruled by communal coalitions of cities, knights, farmer republics, prince-bishops and the large domains of the imperial lords. In eastern Europe, the splintering of
Kievan Rus' allowed the formation of
veche communes like the
Novgorod Republic (1136-1478) and the
Pskov Republic (1348-1510). One in four urban communities in France were under the administration of mayors and (Northern France) or consuls and (Southern France) by 1300, and this number increased rapidly in the next 2 centuries due to the financial demands of city wall-building. Many were granted the rights to assembly, and executive power was often concentrated in one elected official, the mayor or first consul, with an advisory body of . Election was often restricted to the wealthy local merchant elite. In medieval Spain, urban communities were self-governing through their or open council of property-owners. The larger towns delegated authority to (town councillors) and (law officers), who managed the town and the surrounding lands as one
communidad. After the Middle Ages, selection of officials was changed from election to sortition, in order to resolve factional conflict. In Cantabria, seafaring towns led by
Burgos formed the (Marsh brotherhood), an organisation similar to the
Hanseatic league. In the 1470s the or Holy Brotherhood was formed, in which all municipalities sent representatives to a which would coordinate law enforcement to protect trade. == Social order ==