The Italian city-states are the most visible example of politics at the level where it had
the greatest impact on most people’s day-to-day lives: the local. Their history reminds
us that in all of Europe, underneath the highest layer of intermarrying hereditary dynasties,
cities, villages, parishes, timars , and many other smaller governmental units all
had authority over people and their families. Just as national or territorial rulers did,
these lower levels of government demanded taxes, developed bureaucracies, and issued
ordinances. They created and maintained courts that set punishments for those who
did not pay their taxes, obey offi cials, or follow ordinances. Though most men could
not hope to become an offi cial for a national or territorial ruler, they might gain a position
as village constable, gate-keeper, church sexton, or market overseer.
Some of these more local institutions of government were run by the church. Christians
throughout Europe paid taxes to their local parish and were under the authority
of church courts for matters involving marriage, morality, and a variety of other issues.
Other of these institutions were secular. By 1450 villages in many parts of Europe had
become what were called communes, with institutions of self-governance such as councils
or courts that regulated planting and harvesting, and might represent the village as a
whole to outside political authorities. In some places such groups could issue ordinances
and make legal decisions, either in conjunction with the local lord or on their own.
The towns and cities that won their independence from local lords and gained charters
had even stronger institutions of governance. In Germany and Italy, as we have
seen, they might be under the jurisdiction of only the emperor or of no higher political
authority at all, but even in areas in which national monarchies developed, cities collected
taxes, passed and enforced ordinances, built and maintained walls and fortifi cations,
and established courts, hospitals, orphanages, and often municipal brothels.
Larger cities were often dominated by a merchant oligarchy, and in smaller towns
and villages the men from wealthier families were often the most powerful, but in many
places all adult men swore an oath annually to defend and protect their town, so that
they were at the very least symbolically part of a political community. They were citizens,
a word that is linked etymologically and conceptually in many European languages
to living in a city or community – in Latin the word civitas means both citizenship
and community; in French a city is a bourg and its residents are bourgeois ; in German
Burg is a walled city or fortress and its residents are Bürger . Citizenship in a city or town
did not bring direct voting rights in this period, but it did bring preferential legal treatment,
often lower taxes than those paid by non-citizens, the right to live in the city and
buy property there without seeking anyone’s permission, the right to be free from the
demands of anyone living outside the city, and the right to claim certain services if one
fell ill or became incapacitated, such as staying in a city hospital or receiving public support.
In short, it brought many of the same benefi ts we associate with citizenship today,
particularly the right to live and work undisturbed in a particular location. Citizenship
was thus a coveted commodity, and, like property or a monarchy, became heritable.
The importance and heritability of citizenship meant that – again as with property or
a monarchy – distinctions were made on the basis of gender. Until about 1500 women
were regularly listed as “citizeness” ( Bürgerin , bourgeoise ) in court records, though they
do not seem to have been part of the annual oath-swearing. This label gradually became
rarer, as cities sought various means to restrict the number of citizens, and as Roman
law – which viewed women as mentally weak – spread in Europe. Women in towns and
cities very occasionally held minor offi ces such as those of churchwarden, market inspector,
or gate-keeper, especially if they were the widow of a man who had held this offi
ce, and in more places held offi cial positions as city midwives. In these positions, they
swore oaths of offi ce just as men did. They never held high positions in urban or village
government, however. Women inherited and governed nations and regions, of course,
but those female rulers did not grant or allow other women a more signifi cant political
role than male rulers did. They named no women as ministers or judges, nor did they
sell them the government offi ces that were so often for sale to men.
World History
