Church. But in the course of the eleventh century, the emperors favoured the vavassores at the expense of the greater feudatories and, by the Constitutio de feudis ( 1037), made them into free proprietors of their land and reduced their duties to their overlords. Many vavassores moved into the city of Milan and made common cause with urban groups such as lawyers and merchants against the greater landowners. It was out of such associations, where groups with common aims joined together, that the communes emerged. The groups within the cities elected their own leaders--the consuls--often members of important families, to protect their interests against the claims of the magnates, or other powers such as the Church.

There was nothing intrinsically new in the association of citizens in common aims and activities but the political circumstances of the eleventh and twelfth centuries meant that their influence increased. In Milan, for instance, the archbishop had always played a leading part in the government of the city and his appointment was a matter of considerable interest both to the pope and to the German emperors who claimed suzerainty over Lombardy. Both wished their nominee to be accepted by the citizens and the clergy, and as the battle for supremacy in Milan continued, the groups who controlled the trade and landed wealth of the city, alternately wooed by the two powers, stood to gain most. In other towns in northern Italy, too, hostility to imperial claims (such as the right to impose taxes and tolls on trade and the fodrum, a levy to support imperial armies in Italy) lay at the root of the political demands of the communes. In 1081 the Emperor Henry IV confirmed the customs of Pisa and also agreed that he would not appoint a marquis in Tuscany without the consent of the twelve representatives of the city given in the town assembly. The customs of Genoa indicated the areas in which urban interests demanded change: legal independence and the right to hold courts in which land, inheritance, and commercial claims could be settled; the freedom from dues imposed by outside political powers and the right to control immigration into the city.

By 1150 the leaders of the commune were usually known as

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