patriotism is Modena, whose position on the turbulent border between the Byzantines and the Lombards had reduced it to dereliction and which survived through the attachment of the local clergy to the martyr St Gimignano. As in most northern cities the bishop came to exercise everyday administration, and so in the 880s we find its bishop, Leudoin, rebuilding the walls and even inscribing a poem in a chapel which called on the citizens to display vigilance in the best classical traditions of Rome and Troy. Although in the tenth century bishops became unpopular as outsiders and representatives of royal power, in earlier centuries they were the mouthpiece for local interests and feelings and their cathedral chapters were influential as opinion-makers and custodians of their cities' traditions.

This economic and cultural vitality, so missing in the 'cities' of the Byzantine interior, only found its full expression in Italy with the political awakening of the cities in the eleventh century. Most of the other areas of the Christian west lacked the same level of economic activity, occupational diversity, and local pride. Only the cities of Dalmatia, which had economic ties with the Adriatic coast of Italy and benefited from a nominal allegiance to Byzantium, displayed an active commercial and ecclesiastical life and a strong civic consciousness in the face of constant pressure from their Slav neighbours. In the Christian areas of northern Spain economic life was relatively backward and the towns' main importance was as military strongholds. Even in these underdeveloped areas, however, there was a. striking reliance on the written word in legal transactions which contrasts sharply with the northern European position, and an enduring use of Visigothic law codes. In southern France the previously prosperous coastal towns such as Marseilles maintained some commercial role and Roman traditions in such fields as Roman legal practice, but what little evidence survives suggests that their development in the eighth and ninth centuries was retarded by endemic internal disorder and the effects of recurrent Arab raids.

In no area of the Mediterranean, therefore, were urban traditions completely extinguished. In spite of the invasions the modicum of stability necessary for urban life was soon re-

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