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Communes in Europe in the '''Middle Ages''' were sworn allegiances of mutual defense (both physical defense and of traditional freedoms) among community members of a town or city. They took many forms, no two were alike in organization or make-up. Communes are first recorded in the late 11th and early 12th centuries, thereafter becoming a widespread phenomenon. ETYMOLOGY The English and French word "commune" appears in Latin records in various forms. The classical Latin ''communio'' means an association. In some cases the classical Latin ''commune'' was used to mean people with a common interest. More frequently the Low Latin ''communia'' was used from which the Romance ''commune'' was derived. When independence of rule was won through violent uprising and overthrow, they were often called ''conspiratio''. ORIGINS During the 10th century in several parts of Western Europe, peasants with a special craft beyond the immediate requirements of their isolated village, or with a self-reliant spirit, began to gravitate towards the walled towns. In central and northern Italy, and in Provence and Septimania, the Roman cities had almost all survived—even if grass grew in their streets—largely as administrative centers for a diocese or for the local representative of a distant kingly or imperial power. In the Low Countries, some new towns were founded upon long-distance trade Such examples provided Henri Pirenne with a thesis he perhaps too widely applied., where the staple was the woolen cloth-making industry. The sites for these ''ab ovo'' towns, more often than not, were the fortified '' Burgh s'' of counts, bishops or territorial abbots. Such towns were also founded in the Rhineland . Other towns were simply market villages, local centers of exchange. Such townspeople needed physical protection from lawless Nobles and bandits, part of the motivation for gathering behind communal walls, but the struggle to establish their ''liberties'', the freedom to conduct and regulate their own affairs and security from arbitrary taxation and harassment from the bishop, abbot or count in whose jurisdiction these obscure and ignoble social outsiders lay, was a long process of struggling to obtain charters that guaranteed such basics as the right to hold a market. Such charters were often purchased at exhorbitant rates, or granted, not by the local power, which was naturally jealous of prerogatives, but by the king or the emperor, who came thereby to hope to enlist the towns as allies in the struggle to centralize power that was arising in tandem with the rise of the communes. "The burghers of the tenth and eleventh centuries were ruthlessly harassed, blackmailed, subjected to oppressive taxes and humiliated. This drove the bourgeois back upon their own resources, and it accounts for the intensely corporate and excessively organized character of medieval cities" (Cantor 1993 p 231) The Walled City represented protection from direct assault at the price of corporate interference on the pettiest levels, but once a townsman left the city walls, he (for women scarcely travelled) was at the mercy of often violent and lawless nobles in the countryside. Because much of medieval Europe lacked central authority to provide protection, each city had to provide its own protection for citizens both inside the city walls, and outside. Thus towns formed communes, a legal basis for turning the cities into self-governing corporations. Although in most cases the development of communes was connected with that of the cities, there were rural communes, notably in France and England, that were formed to protect the common interests of villagers. Every town had its own commune and no two communes were alike, but at their heart, communes were sworn allegiances of mutual defense. When a commune was formed, all participating members gathered and swore an oath in a public ceremony, promising to defend each other in times of trouble, and to maintain the peace within the city proper. What did it mean for a commune member to defend another? Obviously if a commune member was attacked outside the city, it was too late to call for help, as it would be unlikely anyone would be around in time. Instead, the commune would promise to exact Revenge on the attacker, the threat of revenge being a form of defense. However, if the attacker was a noble, safely ensconced in a Castle (as was often the case), the town commune could not muster the forces to attack him directly; instead they might attack the nobles family, burn his crops, kill his Serfs , or destroy his orchards in retribution. The commune movement started in the 10th Century , with a few earlier ones like Forlì (possibly 889 ), and gained strength in the 11th Century in northern Italy which had the most urbanized population of Europe at the time, and in what is now Belgium which was also relatively urban. It then spread in the early 12th Century to France , Germany and Spain and elsewhere. England never saw much of the commune movement because it was by comparison a pretty well-run kingdom and did not need local protection forces. SOCIAL ORDER According to an English cleric of the late 10th century, society was composed of the three orders: those who fight, pray and work (the nobles, the clergy and peasants). In theory this was a balance between spiritual and secular peers with the third order providing for the other two. The urban communes were a break in this order. The Church and King both had mixed reactions to communes. On the one hand, they agreed safety and protection from lawless nobles was in everyone's best interest. The communes intention was to keep the peace through the threat of revenge, and the Church was sympathetic to the end result of peace. However, the Church had their own ways to enforce peace, such as the Peace And Truce Of God movement, for example. On the other hand, communes disrupted the order of medieval society; the methods the commune used, eye for an eye, violence begets violence, were generally not acceptable to Church or King. Furthermore, there was a sense that communes threatened the medieval social order. Only the noble lords were allowed by custom to fight, and ostensibly the merchant townspeople were workers, not warriors. As such, the nobility and the clergy sometimes accepted communes, but other times did not. One of the most famous cases of a commune being suppressed and the resulting defiant urban revolt occurred in the French town of Laon in 1112 . RURAL COMMUNES The development of medieval rural communes arose more from a need to collaborate to manage the commons than out of defensive needs. In times of a weak central government, communes typically formed to ensure the safety on the roads (''Landfriede'') through their territory, to enable commerce. Perhaps the most successful such medieval community was the one in the alpine valleys north of the '', there were similar rural alpine communes in Tyrol , but these got quenched by the House of Habsburg . Other such rural communes developed in the Grisons , in the French Alps ( Briançon ), in the Pyrenees , in northern France (Forêt de Roumare), in northern Germany ( Frisia and Dithmarschen ), and also in Sweden and Norway. The colonization of the Walser also is related. The southern medieval communes most probably were influenced by the Italian precedent, but the northern ones (and even the Swiss communes north of the St. Gotthard pass) may well have developed concurrently and independently from the Italian ones. Only very few of these medieval rural communes ever attained '' Reichsunmittelbarkeit '', where they would have been subject only to the king or emperor; most still remained subjects of some more or less distant liege lord.Im Hof, U.: ''Geschichte der Schweiz'', Kohlhammer, 1974/2001. In German; ISBN 3-170-14051-1.Schwabe & Co.: ''Geschichte der Schweiz und der Schweizer'', Schwabe & Co 1986/2004. In German; ISBN 3-796-52067-7. DECLINE In the , emperor Charles IV outlawed any ''conjurationes, confederationes,'' and ''conspirationes,'' meaning in particular the city alliances ('' Städtebünde ''), but also the rural communal leagues that had sprung up. Most Städtebünde were subsequently dissolved, sometimes forcibly, and where refounded, their political influence was much reduced. SEE ALSO FOOTNOTES REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
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