In short, the more we begin to know the mediaeval city the more we see that it was not simply a political organization for the protection of certain political liberties.  It was an attempt at organizing, on a much grander scale than in a village community, a close union for mutual aid and support, for consumption and production, and for social life altogether, without imposing upon men the fetters of the State, but giving full liberty of expression to the creative genius of each separate group of individuals in art, crafts, science, commerce, and political organization.  How far this attempt has been successful will be best seen when we have analyzed in the next chapter the organization of labour in the medieval city and the relations of the cities with the surrounding peasant population.

Notes: 

1.  W. Arnold, in his Wanderungen und Ansiedelungen der deutschen Stamme, p. 431, even maintains that one-half of the now arable area in middle Germany must have been reclaimed from the sixth to the ninth century.  Nitzsch (Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, Leipzig, 1883, vol. i.) shares the same opinion.

2.  Leo and Botta, Histoire d’Italie, French edition, 1844, t. i., p. 37.

3.  The composition for the stealing of a simple knife was 15 solidii and of the iron parts of a mill, 45 solidii (See on this subject Lamprecht’s Wirthschaft und Recht der Franken in Raumer’s Historisches Taschenbuch, 1883, p. 52.) According to the Riparian law, the sword, the spear, and the iron armour of a warrior attained the value of at least twenty-five cows, or two years of a freeman’s labour.  A cuirass alone was valued in the Salic law (Desmichels, quoted by Michelet) at as much as thirty-six bushels of wheat.

4.  The chief wealth of the chieftains, for a long time, was in their personal domains peopled partly with prisoner slaves, but chiefly in the above way.  On the origin of property see Inama Sternegg’s Die Ausbildung der grossen Grundherrschaften in Deutschland, in Schmoller’s Forschungen, Bd.  I., 1878; F. Dahn’s Urgeschichte der germanischen und romanischen Volker, Berlin, 1881; Maurer’s Dorfverfassung; Guizot’s Essais sur l’histoire de France; Maine’s Village Community; Botta’s Histoire d’Italie; Seebohm, Vinogradov, J. R. Green, etc.

5.  See Sir Henry Maine’s International Law, London, 1888.

6.  Ancient Laws of Ireland, Introduction; E. Nys, Etudes de droit international, t. i., 1896, pp. 86 seq.  Among the Ossetes the arbiters from three oldest villages enjoy a special reputation (M.  Kovalevsky’s Modern Custom and Old Law, Moscow, 1886, ii. 217, Russian).

7.  It is permissible to think that this conception (related to the conception of tanistry) played an important part in the life of the period; but research has not yet been directed that way.

1.  It was distinctly stated in the charter of St. Quentin of the year 1002 that the ransom for houses which had to be demolished for crimes went for the city walls.  The same destination was given to the Ungeld in German cities.  At Pskov the cathedral was the bank for the fines, and from this fund money was taken for the wails.