Komun Zaman Pertengahan

Komun di Eropah semasa Zaman Pertengahan ialah perikatan pertahanan bersaling (kedua-dua pertahanan fizikal serta kebebasan tradisional) antara penduduk sesebuah bandar atau bandar raya. Ia terdiri daripada banyak bentuk, dan amat berbeza daripada segi pembentukan dan pengurusannya. Komun dicatat buat pertama kali pada akhir abad ke-11 dan awal abad ke-12 di bahagian utara-tengah Itali dan ketika itu, merupakan negara kota sebenar, berdasarkan demokrasi separa.

Perkataan "commune" dalam bahasa Inggeris dan bahasa Perancis muncul do dalam rekod Latin dalam pelbagai bentuk. Dalam sesetengah kes, perkataan "commune" Latin klasik digunakan dalam pengertian "orang yang mempunyai kepentingan sepunya". Pada hakikatnya, kata dasar perkataan "komun" ialah cum ("dengan" atau "bersama-sama") + munire ("mendindingi"), dan secara harafiah bermaksud "mendindingi bersama-sama" (iaitu, kubu kongsi). Lebih seringnya, communia, perkataan Latin basahan, digunakan dan berasal daripada perkataan Romans, commune. Selepas kemerdekaan menerusi pemberontakan dan penggulingan ganas, "komun" seringnya digelar "conspiratio" (komplotan).

During the 10th century in several parts of Western Europe, peasants whether due to their knowledge of a special craft beyond the immediate requirements of their isolated village, or merely a self-reliant spirit, began to gravitate towards walled population centers. In central and northern Italy, and in Provence and Septimania, most of the old Roman cities had survived—even if grass grew in their streets—largely as administrative centers for a diocese or for the local representative of a distant kingly or imperial power. In the Low Countries, some new towns were founded upon long-distance trade^[1], where the staple was the woolen cloth-making industry. The sites for these ab ovo towns, more often than not, were the fortified burghs of counts, bishops or territorial abbots. Such towns were also founded in the Rhineland. Other towns were simply market villages, local centers of exchange.

Such townspeople needed physical protection from lawless nobles and bandits, part of the motivation for gathering behind communal walls, but the struggle to establish their liberties, the freedom to conduct and regulate their own affairs and security from arbitrary taxation and harassment from the bishop, abbot, or count in whose jurisdiction these obscure and ignoble social outsiders lay, was a long process of struggling to obtain charters that guaranteed such basics as the right to hold a market. Such charters were often purchased at exorbitant rates, or granted, not by the local power, which was naturally jealous of prerogatives, but by the king or the emperor, who came thereby to hope to enlist the towns as allies in the struggle to centralize power that was arising in tandem with the rise of the communes. "The burghers of the tenth and eleventh centuries were ruthlessly harassed, blackmailed, subjected to oppressive taxes and humiliated. This drove the bourgeois back upon their own resources, and it accounts for the intensely corporate and excessively organized character of medieval cities." (Cantor 1993 p 231)

The walled city represented protection from direct assault at the price of corporate interference on the pettiest levels, but once a townsman left the city walls, he (for women scarcely travelled) was at the mercy of often violent and lawless nobles in the countryside. Because much of medieval Europe lacked central authority to provide protection, each city had to provide its own protection for citizens both inside the city walls, and outside. Thus towns formed communes, a legal basis for turning the cities into self-governing corporations. Although in most cases the development of communes was connected with that of the cities, there were rural communes, notably in France and England, that were formed to protect the common interests of villagers.

Every town had its own commune and no two communes were alike, but at their heart, communes were sworn allegiances of mutual defense. When a commune was formed, all participating members gathered and swore an oath in a public ceremony, promising to defend each other in times of trouble, and to maintain the peace within the city proper.

What did it mean for a commune member to defend another? Obviously if a commune member was attacked outside the city, it was too late to call for help, as it would be unlikely anyone would be around in time. Instead, the commune would promise to exact revenge on the attacker, the threat of revenge being a form of defense. However, if the attacker was a noble, safely ensconced in a castle (as was often the case), the town commune could not muster the forces to attack him directly; instead they might attack the noble's family, burn his crops, kill his serfs, or destroy his orchards in retribution.

The commune movement started in the 10th century, with a few earlier ones like Forlì (possibly 889), and gained strength in the 11th century in northern Italy which had the most urbanized population of Europe at the time. It then spread in the early 12th century to France, Germany and Spain and elsewhere. The English state was already very centralized, so the communal movement mainly manifested itself in parishes, craftsmen's and merchants' guilds and monasteries. State officialdom expanded in England and France from the 12th century onwards, while the Holy Roman Empire was ruled by communal coalitions of cities, knights, farmer republics, prince-bishops and the large domains of the imperial lords.

Communes were very important for the medieval church according to John Bossy (Christianity in the West 1400-1700 (Oxford 1985)). The word that Bossy uses is fraternity. The medieval church had a main focus on establishing peace. The main sins that had to be overcome to stop the killing, according to many theologians, were pride, envy and wrath. Communes could help bring peace, because people would cooperate instead of acting egoistically. In many places, fraternities and guilds were formed before a parish was established. They were formed by common people who imitated the way of life of the monks, without becoming part of a monastical order. Another method to establish peace was the confession. Medieval confessions were different from the modern day practises in the Roman Catholic church. A confession was held by a person in public instead of alone with a priest. The main theme was expressing sins committed against neighbours. Forgiveness was asked not merely from God, but also from one's neighbours. The 15th century brought a positive view on individualism expressed in the humanist movement of the Renaissance. Rising commerce was the cause of this individualism. Communalism has remained very popular within and without Christianity until this day.

According to an English cleric of the late 10th century, society was composed of the three orders: those who fight, those who pray, and those who work (the nobles, the clergy, and the peasants). In theory this was a balance between spiritual and secular peers with the third order providing for the other two. The urban communes were a break in this order. The Church and King both had mixed reactions to communes. On the one hand, they agreed safety and protection from lawless nobles was in everyone's best interest. The communes intention was to keep the peace through the threat of revenge, and the Church was sympathetic to the end result of peace. However, the Church had their own ways to enforce peace, such as the Peace and Truce of God movement, for example. On the other hand, communes disrupted the order of medieval society; the methods the commune used, eye for an eye, violence begets violence, were generally not acceptable to Church or King. Furthermore, there was a sense that communes threatened the medieval social order. Only the noble lords were allowed by custom to fight, and ostensibly the merchant townspeople were workers, not warriors. As such, the nobility and the clergy sometimes accepted communes, but other times did not. One of the most famous cases of a commune being suppressed and the resulting defiant urban revolt occurred in the French town of Laon in 1112.

Perkembangan komun luar bandar Zaman Pertengahan berasal lebih daripada keperluan untuk bekerjasama mengurus tanah sepunya, berbanding dengan keperluan untuk mempertahankan diri. Pada waktu apabila pemerintahan pusat menjadi sangat lemah, komun-komun biasaya dibentuk untuk memastikan keselamatan jalan raya (Landfriede) di wilayah masing-masing demi membolehkan perdagangan.

Komun Zaman Pertengahan yang paling berjaya mungkin merupakan komun yang terletak di lembah Alp di sebelah utara Genting St. Gotthard. Komun itu kemudian mencetuskan pembentukan Gabungan Switzerland Lama. Orang Switzerland banyak mengamalkan Bundesbrief, iaitu perikatan bertulis. Bagi setiap kanton baharu yang menyertai gabungan tersebut, sebuah kontrak yang baharu ditulis.

Selain daripada Eidgenossenschaft (perkataan Jerman untuk "gabungan") Switzerland, terdapat juga komun-komun Alp luar bandar yang serupa di Tyrol tetapi kebanyakan komun itu kemudian dihapuskan oleh Kerabat Diraja Habsburg. Komun-komun yang serupa juga berkembang di Grisons di Alp Perancis (Briançon), di Pyrenees, di Perancis utara (Forêt de Roumare), di Jerman utara (Frisia dan Dithmarschen), serta juga di Sweden dan Norway. Penjajahan ke atas Walser juga berkait. Komun-komun selatan Zaman Pertengahan mungkin dipengaruhi oleh pendahulu Itali tetapi yang utara (termasuk juga komun-komun Switzerland di sebelah utara genting St. Gotthard) mungkin berkembang dengan serentak, tetapi secara berasingan daripada komun-komun Itali. Bagaimanapun, hanya amat sedikit daripada komun-komun luar bandar Zaman Pertengahan mencapai Reichsunmittelbarkeit, suatu status yang menyebabkan mereka dikuasai secara langsung oleh raja atau maharaja. Kebanyakan komun masih merupakan taklukan pembesar feudal.^[2][3]

Di Empayar Rom Holy, maharajanya selalu terpaksa menghadapi perebutan kuasa antara pesaing-pesaing yang berkuasa, baik putera-putera mahupun kota-kota dan komun-komun yang lain. Justera, para maharaja sentiasa melibatkan diri dalam perlawanan politik (bukan selalunya pertempuran) untuk mengukuhkan kedudukan masing-masing serta kedudukan pemerintahan beraja empayar. Dalam dekri Golden Bull pada 1356, Maharaja Charles IV mengharamkan sebarang conjuratione, confederatione, dan conspiratione, khususnya perikatan kota (Städtebünde), tetapi juga liga berkaum luar bandar yang muncul. Kebanyakan Städtebünde dibubarkan, kekadang secara paksaan, dan bagi sebilangan yang dipulihkan, pengaruh politiknya merosot dengan ketara.

• Komunalisme sebelum 1800
• Liga Lombardy
• Negara kota Itali

Histories of specific communes are found under the names of their cities or locales.

• Cantor, Norman E. 1993. The Civilization of the Middle Ages ((New York: HarperCollins)
• Jones, Philip. 1997. The Italian City-State: From Commune to Signoria. (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
• Lansing, Carol, 1992. The Florentine Magnates: Lineage and Faction in a Medieval Commune. (Princeton: Princeton University Press)
• Sella, Pietro, "The Statutes of the Commune of Bugelle (Biella)" 1904. 14th century statutes of a Piedmontese commune (Latin and English translations), express the nature of the commune in vivid detail, productions of medieval society and the medieval personality.
• Tobacco, Giovanni, 1989. The Struggle for Power in Medieval Italy: Structures of Political Rule, 400-1400,translator, Rosalind Brown Jensen (New York: Cambridge University Press)
• Waley, Donald, 1969 etc. The Italian City-Republics (3rd ed. New York: Longman, 1988.)
• Guelph University, "The Urban Past: IV. The Medieval City" A bibliography.

• Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911: "Medieval commune"
• (Itali) Itinerari medievali: risorse per lo studio del Medioevo