consuls--a clear reference to antique tradition. Their number varied. In Verona in 1140 seven consuls signed a document; in Orvieto there were two consuls in 1157, though in 1170, and 1172 the number had risen to four. Beneath the consuls were councils of the leading men of the towns; in Orvieto in 1200 the council had a hundred members. The consuls in Pisa, like many of their fellows elsewhere, claimed authority from 'the people gathered in assembly', but this should not be taken as an indication of any democratic franchise. The citizens who took the oath to defend the commune were members of important families within the city; artisan groups and the poorer inhabitants of the towns were excluded from direct participation in their government. It was the joint involvement of these potentially competing family groups in the government of the towns that meant that, in many places, struggles were not so much concerned with resistance to outside political control as with internal jockeying for position. In Venice, although the old ruling families, such as the Orsoleo, Candiani, and Morosini, continued to dominate the city, other groups pressed for their share of power. By the end of the twelfth century the arengo, the old popular gathering, had disappeared, and a new assembly of 480 members, the maggior consilio had evolved. Its members were to be elected by two representatives of each of the sestieri, the districts of Venice. In 1185 the system was further modified; the maggior consilio was itself to nominate a Council of Forty to carry out legislative activity. None of these arrangements were democratic, nor were they intended to be. By 1200, in most northern and central Italian cities, as in Venice, there was a charmed circle of families and interest groups which kept power within its own hands.
The rise of communal government in northern Italy was both an effect and a cause of a lack of centralized political authority. Whilst remaining hostile to such 'unnatural' forms of government, both pope and emperor had to learn to come to terms with them. The Lombard League, formed by the cities of the region in 1167 to counter the claims of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa that he had attacked Milan to restore 'justice and right government' was the first of many such associations
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