INTROD.
These, although varying a good deal in their details, generally conceded to the citizens the right of electing their own magistrates for the regulation of municipal affairs. Judges were appointed by this body for the administration of civil and criminal law, subject to an appeal to the royal tribunal. No person could be affected in life or property, except by a decision of this municipal court; and no cause, while pending before it, could be evoked thence into the superior tribunal. In order to secure the barriers of justice more effectually against the violence of power, so often superior to law in an imperfect state of society, it was provided in many of the charters, that no nobles should be permitted to acquire real property within the limits of the community; that no fortress or palace should be erected by them there; that such as might reside within its territory, should be subject to its jurisdiction; and that any violence, offered by them to its inhabitants, might be forcibly resisted with impunity. Ample and inalienable funds were provided for the maintenance of the municipal functionaries, and for other public expenses. A large
riod, is very equivocal; for their indefatigable antiquarian confesses that all, or nearly all their archives, previous to the time of Frederic I., (the latter part of the twelfth century,) had perished amid their frequent civil convulsions. (See the subject in detail, in Muratori, Dissertazioni sopra le Antichità Italiane, (Napoli, 1752,) dissert. 45.) Acts of enfranchisement became frequent in Spain during the eleventh century; several of which are preserved, and exhibit, Avith sufficient precision, the nature of the privileges accorded to the inhabitants.—Robertson, who wrote when the constitutional antiquities of Castile had been but sliglitly investigated, would seem to have little authority, therefore, for deriving the establishment of communities from Italy, and still less for tracing their progress through France and Germany to Spain. See his History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V., (London, 1796,) vol. i. pp. 29, 30
