“The Commune,” Guilbert de Nogent wrote, “is an oath of mutual aid (mutui adjutorii conjuratio)...  A new and detestable word.  Through it the serfs (capite sensi) are freed from all serfdom; through it, they can only be condemned to a legally determined fine for breaches of the law; through it, they cease to be liable to payments which the serfs always used to pay."(41)

The same wave of emancipation ran, in the twelfth century, through all parts of the continent, involving both rich cities and the poorest towns.  And if we may say that, as a rule, the Italian cities were the first to free themselves, we can assign no centre from which the movement would have spread.  Very often a small burg in central Europe took the lead for its region, and big agglomerations accepted the little town’s charter as a model for their own.  Thus, the charter of a small town, Lorris, was adopted by eighty-three towns in south-west France, and that of Beaumont became the model for over five hundred towns and cities in Belgium and France.  Special deputies were dispatched by the cities to their neighbours to obtain a copy from their charter, and the constitution was framed upon that model.  However, they did not simply copy each other:  they framed their own charters in accordance with the concessions they had obtained from their lords; and the result was that, as remarked by an historian, the charters of the medieval communes offer the same variety as the Gothic architecture of their churches and cathedrals.  The same leading ideas in all of them—­the cathedral symbolizing the union of parish and guild in the, city—­and the same infinitely rich variety of detail.

Self-jurisdiction was the essential point, and self-jurisdiction meant self-administration.  But the commune was not simply an “autonomous” part of the State—­such ambiguous words had not yet been invented by that time—­it was a State in itself.  It had the right of war and peace, of federation and alliance with its neighbours.  It was sovereign in its own affairs, and mixed with no others.  The supreme political power could be vested entirely in a democratic forum, as was the case in Pskov, whose vyeche sent and received ambassadors, concluded treaties, accepted and sent away princes, or went on without them for dozens of years; or it was vested in, or usurped by, an aristocracy of merchants or even nobles, as was the case in hundreds of Italian and middle European cities.  The principle, nevertheless, remained the same:  the city was a State and—­what was perhaps still more remarkable—­when the power in the city was usurped by an aristocracy of merchants or even nobles, the inner life of the city and the democratism of its daily life did not disappear:  they depended but little upon what may be called the political form of the State.