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administration and politics in the west 235
however, continue to perform a function of great importance. They kept
the gesta municipalia, which provided a written record of all property transactions
in the civitas. This notarial role of the city council is attested by surviving
formulae from Aquitaine (Bordeaux, Bourges, Cahors and Poitiers),
Burgundy and northern Gaul (Sens, Orleans, Tours, Le Mans, Paris), 218 and
also from Italy and Dalmatia, but scarcely from Spain. These documents
show that city councils, sometimes with curatores and defensores, survived in
some places well into the eighth century. In Italy gesta municipalia disappear
around 800. At Naples the council survived to the tenth century. 219
Significantly, in some cities, such as Naples and Amalfi, the professional
notaries, who took on this work, assumed the title of curiales. 220
Under the Merovingians, curiales no longer seem to have been responsible
for the land-tax, which appears to have been collected by agents of
the comes. 221 In fact, the tax was no longer self-evidently essential for the
maintenance of government. Gregory of Tours refers to the royal tax
revenue as a luxury. He exaggerates. The kings had to reward their followers
and to show generosity towards the church. They seem regularly to have
done this not by paying salaries but through grants of estates or of ‘immunity’.
This meant that the ‘immune’ landowner kept the tax which, in the
west as in the east, he had received from the tenant together with the rent,
instead of passing it on to royal representatives. 222 The development
severed an important link between the city and its territory.
The Germanic kings could afford to be extravagantly generous with their
revenue only because they employed comparatively few civil servants, and
above all did not have to pay a large professional army. They fought their
wars with levies of peasants. The countryside was becoming militarized.
This was partly a result of the settlement on the land of Franks in the north
of Gaul and of Visigoths in Spain. But, in addition, the great landowners
of Gaul and Spain were themselves acquiring armed followings. The
process can be observed in the case of one Ecdicius, 233 who around 471
raised first a small troop and later on an army to resist the Visigoths. 224 The
Visigoths themselves made use of this capability and compelled Roman
aristocrats and their men to fight for them. 225 This was a development of
fundamental importance. 226 In the independent city state, the peasants
218 Zeumer (1886). 219 Wickham (1981) 75. 220 Schmidt (1957) 122–4.
221 Greg. Tur. Hist. iv.2, v.34, ix.30.
222 Goffart (1982), Kaiser (1979) – the traditional view – rather than Durliat (1990b).
223 PLRE ii s.v. Ecdicius 3. 224 Sid. Ap. Ep. iii.3.7–8.
225 Sid. Ap. Ep. v.12;Greg.Tur.Hist. ii.3.
226 Bachrach (1971); Rouche (1979) 350–2. In general on militarization in the west, see Krause (1987)
131ff., who supplies a comprehensive survey of the evidence but tends to underestimate the scale of
the development. On fortified hill-fort refuges, frequent in frontier zones, and fortified villas, for which
there is some but not abundant evidence, see Johnson (1983) 226–44. In Italy, militarization occurred,
both under the Lombards and Byzantines, without ruralization (Wickham (1981) 72, 76–7).
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