noting how much this type of government achieved. The sheer extent of government activity in a commune is impressive. Though untypical, Siena provides a good illustration since during a quite exceptionally stable regime, the Government of the Nine ( 1287-1355), it took the aspirations and achievements of government to an extreme degree. Siena first of all developed its system of taxation to sophisticated levels. The cost of warfare--it had been in the thick of the Guelph-Ghibelline struggles of Tuscany--ensured this. Taxation implied control of the contado, which remained the chief supplier of taxation. Lists of subject territories were kept from 1263, and they were obliged to supply candles on certain feast-days as symbols of their subjection. The contado was also regulated in great detail. New towns were set up, well into distant southern territories of the commune, and citizens were encouraged to settle there by tax exemptions. A network of fortifications was built, and irrigation and dam schemes followed. Similar activities took place in the city itself. Town planning was taken to its highest form. The height, distance, and type of building materials allowed were all specified and heavy fines or demolition were the penalties for contravention. The commune's own building programme was monumentally ambitious. A water supply for the town was created; today's visitor notes the famous fountains, but does not see the 25 kilometres of underground aqueducts the commune had tunnelled in order to bring the water from springs outside the town. Money was poured into the construction and embellishment of the town hall, churches, and Siena's great hospital, Santa Maria della Scala. These ambitions reached almost megalomaniac proportions with the designs for a cathedral which would dwarf those of all its rivals. When in the fourteenth century money ran out, Siena was left with only the transept, but a transept the size of most other cathedrals' naves.

The communal passion for legislation may have reached extremes in Siena but it was general enough. In most communes all imaginable aspects of life were regulated; hours of curfew, clothing and expenditure on entertainments ('sumptuary laws'), succession and bequests, wardship, trade, manners, rubbish

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