This is why University science which is based upon Roman law, centralisation and hero-worship, is absolutely incapable of understanding the substance of that movement which came from beneath.
In France, Augustin Thierry and Sismondi, who both wrote in the first half of this century and who had really understood that period, have had no followers up to the present time; and only now M. Lachaire timidly tries to follow the lines of research indicated by the great historian of the Merovingian and the communalist period (Augustin Thierry). This is why in Germany, the awakening of studies of this period and a vague comprehension of its spirit are only just now coming to the front. And this is why, in this country, one finds a true comprehension of the twelfth century in the poet William Morris rather than amongst the historians,—Green having been only the one who was capable (in the later part of his life) of understanding it at all.
The Commune of the middle ages takes its origin, on the one hand, from the village community, on the other from those thousands fraternities and guilds which were 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 a region 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 should arise, they never again would have recourse to personal revenge or to a judge other than the syndics nominated by themselves in the guild and the city.
It was long since the regular practice in every art or good-neighbourship guild, in every sworn fraternity. In every village commune, such had formerly been the custom, before bishop or kinglet had succeeded in introducing—and later in enforcing—his judge. Now the hamlets and the parishes which constituted the borough, as well as all the guilds and fraternities that had developed there, considered themselves a single amitas. They named their judges and swore permanent union between all these groups.
A charter was hastily drawn up and accepted. In case of need they sent for the copy of a charter to some small neighbouring commune, (we know hundreds of these charters today,) and the commune was constituted. The bishop or prince, who had up till then been judge of the commune and had often become more or less its master, had only
