boundaries were definitely marked, perhaps even jealously guarded.  Now, when the Lombards took possession of the country, while they rejected the principle of the municipal unit, as foreign to the character and instincts of their race, they could not fail to see the practical utility of using, and the actual difficulty of overthrowing, a system of land division which custom and authority had united in rendering alike definite and convenient.  What was the result?  They made use of the old boundary lines, leaving their limits, as far as we can judge, untouched, and substituted as the fundamental principle of their administration, in place of the Roman idea of the municipium, the thoroughly Teutonic idea of the civitas or country district.  Coincident with these time-honored boundaries which served to mark the limits of the jurisdiction of the duke and the judex, are to be found those of the ecclesiastical power, of the bishop’s diocese.

This statement is confirmed by the many charters, immunities, etc., addressed to the episcopal authorities; and direct proof of it may be had by reference to the controversy which arose in the first half of the eighth century between the bishops of Arezzo and Siena, which dispute was based on the fact that for reasons definitely stated these two dioceses formed an exception to the general rule.  The strength of the proof lies in this exception, which had a well-known cause for its origin.  Some of the documents[15] in the case, of the year 715, show that the bishop of Siena claimed for his jurisdiction certain churches which belonged to the diocese of Arezzo, basing his claim solely on the ground that these churches were situated in the territorium of Siena.  The bishop of Arezzo, on the other hand, claims them as part of his diocese, on the ground that they had formed part of it ever since the beginning of Lombard rule in Italy; and—­which is the part of importance to us—­gives as the only reason for their having been attached to the diocese of a neighboring territorium, the fact that at that early date there was no bishop in the territorium of Siena.  That a claim of such a character should have been based on the argument of the natural coincidence of the boundaries of territorium and diocese, is sufficient proof of the identity of these limits at that age.  In a bull of the year 752,[16] Pope Stephen II. decides to adhere to the already existing diocesan divisions, and adjudges to the bishop of Arezzo the churches “quae esse manifestum est sub consecratione et regimine praefatae S. Aretinae Ecclesiae, territorium vero est prefatae nominatae Civitatis Senensis.”