Of other duties which caused him to leave the seat of his authority, the only ones we need here consider are his military duties; and with regard to these it will be sufficient to point out that the judex was the leader in war of the vassals and lesser lords, and indeed of all the inhabitants of the judiciaria who were entitled or compelled, by the forms of their tenure, to bear arms.  Ample proof of this is to be found throughout the law codes, but we need not pause to cite such confirmation, if we remember the natural evolution of the office of dux from his position in the original Lombard military system.  As a good example of this military leadership we may refer to the provisions of the twenty-ninth law in the sixth book of the laws of Liutprand.[21]

What is of the greatest importance to us, however, in bringing out the relations of the cities to the rest of the community in Lombard and Frankish times, is the position of the judex as duke and as count within his own judiciaria, that is, within the civitas of which he was both lord and judge.  It was through him, or perhaps I should say chiefly through him, that the city was at this period connected with the state; and it was principally by the exercise of the functions of his office that the city formed a part of the state.  His official residence, in the majority of cases, and his courts, were situated within the city’s limits; thus making the official machinery of government a part of the city life, and causing the city to become an actual if not a legally recognized part of the constitution of the state.  As far as this investigation is concerned, this represents the prominent feature of the power and position of the head of the civitas.  We must be careful, however, to avoid any confusion of ideas as to the importance which it gave to the city as a municipal unit or as a corporation.  It was in no way what we could call a municipal government, even admitting a rather loose interpretation of the term, as the supporters of the theory of the survival of the Roman curial system would have us believe.[22] The judex may be called “the highest municipal officer among the Lombards,” and this designation still be correct, though perhaps misleading.  He was the highest officer of the locality, and his official duties were for the most part carried on within the city; but the leading fact we must keep prominently before us is, that he was the head of the whole civitas, and not in any sense of the city as such:  and further, that his powers over the rural portions of the civitas were in no sense added to any purely municipal powers he may have possessed; but, on the contrary, if we are to draw any distinctions, the municipality formed a part of the land division.  That the whole civitas was commonly named after the largest town contained within its borders, and that the seat of power was generally placed within the city walls,