If central authority in Italy proved a broken reed in the longer term, the materials remained for a vigorous political life at a local level. The measure of decentralization which had existed in the Roman areas since the seventh century came to extend to the Germanic areas as well. In contrast to France, where justice became a private or feudal right, the complexity of Italian life helped to preserve the public nature of courts, written law, and an acceptance of formal legal procedures. The reliance on legal formalities and the written word was in part a reflection of a level of lay literacy which far exceeded other areas of the west: 77 per cent of witnesses who appeared in Lucca charters of the 890s were able to sign their names. Although most Italian towns around 900 had come under the authority of individual lords and bishops, complex nations of community and public ideology survived to form the necessary foundation for the later development of independent communes. The Italian model of devolved political life and public authority was to prove more dynamic than the Byzantine, where autocracy had been maintained at the cost of eliminating local communities and diverting political energies from the provinces to the capital. Oddly the Italian position had closer parallels with the Islamic world, where high levels of wealth and literacy produced a complex society but a superficially autocratic administration in practice limited its role to the collection of taxes and the maintenance of security, leaving local élites control over markets and everyday life in their cities.

Religion and Mentalities

Christianity was already widespread throughout the Mediterranean area in the Late Roman period, although it was stronger in the east than in the west and the countryside was still dominated by the pagani (literally 'country-dwellers'). Among the many reasons for its success were its possession of an effective organization centred on bishops ('overseers') based on the cities, and the breadth of its appeal. By taking over the vocabulary and many of the spiritual and ethical preoccupations of Greek philosophical thought, it attracted intellectuals im-

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