THE STATE law for the origin of every political institution, are incapable of under~ standing the spirit of the co=unalist movement of the twelfth century. This virile affirmation of the rights of the Individual, who managed to constitute Society through the federation of individuals, villages and towns, was an absolute negation of the centralising spirit -0f ancient Rome, which spirit penetrates all historical conceptions of me present day university teaching. The uprising of the twelfth century cannot even be attributed to any personality of mark, or to any central institution. It is a natural phase of human development; and, as such, it belongs to human ,evolution like the tribe and the village-co=unity periods, but to no nation in particular, to no special region of Europe, and is the ~ork of no special hero. This is why University science, which is based upon Roman law, .centralisation and hero-worship, is incapable of understanding the substance of this movement which grew from below. In France, Augustin Thierry and Sismondi, who both wrote in the first half of the 19th century and who had really understood the co=unalist period, have had no followers up to the present time; and only now M. Lachaire timidly attempts to follow the lines of research indicated by the great historian of the Merovingian and the co=unalist period, Augustin Thierry. This is why in Germany, the awakening of studies of this period and a vague comprehension of its spirit are only now appearing, and why, in this country, one finds a true comprehension of the twelfth century in the poet William Morris rather than among the historians-Green alone having been .capable (in the later part of his life) of understanding it at all.* The Co=une of the middle ages takes its origin, on the one hand, from the village co=unity, on the other from those thousands of fraternities and guilds constituted outside territorial unions. It was .a federation of these two kinds of unions, developed under the protection of the fortified enclosure and the turrets of the city. In many regions it was a natural growth. Elsewhere-and this is the rule in Western Europe-it was the result of a revolution. When the inhabitants of a borough felt themselves sufficiently protected by their walls, they made a "con-juration". They mutually took the oath to put aside all pending questions concerning feuds arisen from insults, assaults or wounds, and they swore that henceforth in the quarrels that might arise they would never again have recourse to personal revenge or to a judge other than the syndics nominated by themselves in the guild and the city. This had Jong been the regular practice in every art or good- •Works by Thierry, Sismondi and Green are published in the Everyman Library. A representative view of Morris's social theories can be gained ·from the selection of his works published by the Nonesuch Press.-Eo. 19 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
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