Northern Italy in the Central Middle Ages

This chapter focuses on the political change that took place in the post-Carolingian age, when the collapse of empire encouraged the jurisdictional separation of cities and countryside, until then subject to the same authorities and to the same destiny. Thus, while in the city the community of cives gathered first around their bishop and then around the new communal institutions, the countryside saw the beginning of a proliferation of lords of castles and manorial lords. The result was the development of very different political cultures that were destined to come into conflict with each other as, starting from the 12th century, the citizens of the commune began their political expansion into the surrounding countryside.