century, mercantile and other urban groups began to claim a much greater voice in the political life of the cities. The greatest changes came in Italy, where a lack of strong centralized rule allowed towns as well as rural areas to evolve their own, individual forms of government. In many towns and cities, the eleventh century saw a series of major upheavals; uprisings against the existing forces of authority--such as bishops and counts--and the evolution of a new type of association, the commune.
Just as urban life produced its own forms of economic organization, it also brought to the fore political structures based on groups and associations. The commune, originally a sworn association of citizens bound together to keep the peace, developed particularly in Italy. It has often been seen as a new departure, but recent research suggests that it was simply another means medieval men found of articulating the collectivity which lay behind much of what they did. But it is still important to consider why this form of government evolved in many Italian towns and cities during and after the eleventh century. There were many focal points of urban solidarity: a sense of civic identity which in many cases had survived from the Roman period and the continuing existence of notaries and lawyers as repositories of that tradition; the fact that Italian dioceses were often small so that many cities had cathedrals, bishops to provide a lead in society, and patron saints to keep watch over their particular faithful; and the fact that many landowners also lived in towns, so that civic solidarity stretched out beyond the walls into the countryside beyond.
In Milan, for example, there were three main groups: the capitanei, important landowners with property not only in the countryside but in the city; the vavassores, lesser landowners who often owed services to the capitanei; and the cives, the merchants and professional men of the town. The power of the capitanei improved significantly after 843, when the emperor granted them lands which had once been held by the
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