Under the influence of the Frankish regime in Dalmatia and Pannonia, which worked through counts, acting under the supreme authority of the dukes, the original title of judex, which is found in all neighbouring cities, was changed to comes, and, as the Slavs near-by had kings after the German fashion, this «judge-count» became a knez. He and the Councillors were the masters of Ragusa.
The same state of things can easily be traced in all the other cities of the Dalmatian coast. In Zara, the capital, which passed repeatedly from Hungarian to Venetian rule and back again, and undoubtedly also in Sebenico and in Trail, which are mentioned by the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenete as free communities, not occupied by the barbarians of the interior; in the Albanian cities of Durazzo, Dulcigno, Antivari; in Ragusa’s hated rival Cattaro (Kotor), with its splendid harbour, on the crescentshaped bocche; in the islands which fringe the shore, Cherso, Osero, Arbe — everywhere — the judge and his councillors rule the community. The system extends as far as the urban communities of the Pindus, such as Scutari. All of these were, in theory, imperial civitates, all have their traditions: this is the common element which constitutes these rudimentary « Romanias ». Natural ties grew up between these nuclei of liberty, of traditional historical organic democracy. Assemblies, or sbors, were held, originally perhaps for law-suits, but also for other purposes, and, just as the Roumanians elected their judges in the churches (in the Greek community of Venice the magistrates to this day are elected in S. Giorgio dei Greci), so the site of the assembly (which the Albanian tribes called a kovent — from conventus) was near a church: that of S. Sergio, or another. Close similarities, due to their common origin, existed between the laws of the different cities.
