I will mention in illustration of this fact the rather neat example of a document of the year 762, published by Brunetti[13] in his Codice Diplomatico Toscano, in which three of these terms are used interchangeably in the space of a few lines.  It is a contract by which a certain Arnifrid, an inhabitant of Clusium—­the modern Chiusi—­who “in clusino territorio ... natus fuit,” pledges himself to live on a certain property, and says “nullam conbersationem facias nec in clusio nec in alia civitate habitandum, nisi.... &c.,” and promises to pay fifty solidi if “pro eo quod ipsa pecunia demittere presumbsero aut de judiciaria vestra suaninse exire voluero.”  The contract is “Actum in civitate suana.”  We here see the words territorium and civitas both applied to the territory of Chiusi, and the words judiciaria and civitas both applied to the territory of Siena, and we only need to remember that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other, to recognize the identity of the terms.  If we look at document number eight in the same collection,[14] we will further see the territory of Chiusi referred to as “fines clusinas.”

Hand-in-hand with the growth of episcopal organization we see another term coming into use in connection with the same land division, and this also is an administrative one, but of the church simply, and only made use of by conversion or carelessly when applied to a civil area.  I mean the districtus, which term is properly applicable only to the jurisdiction of a bishop, and designates the limits of his episcopal power, that is, his diocese.  The reasons for this term being used in later times occasionally for the civil division, the civitas, are twofold.  They result, firstly, from the confusion which arose between matters of civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, when political power was given to a large number of the bishops, and when they united to their religious duties as pastor, the judicial and sometimes even some of the military duties of comes and judex.  And secondly, in the important fact that in almost all cases the boundaries of a bishop’s diocese coincided more or less exactly with the limits of the authority of the state officers; so that the division which should be called a civitas or territorium from the point of view of civil government, should be called a districtus from that of ecclesiastical government.

Where we find at once the most important and, if not rightly understood, the most perplexing traces of the survival of the old Roman municipal system, is in this matter of territorial boundaries.  According to the Roman system, as we have seen, the city was the important administrative unit, and each city was surrounded by a belt of rural lands, more or less large according to the size and importance of the city itself.  This of course resulted in a division of the whole country into a number of districts whose