“... Venne il dì nostro O milanesi, e vincere bisogna.”—CARDUCCI.
After the blows and humiliation which the Milanese Church suffered in the eleventh century from the united attack of Rome and the people, it was no longer able to stem the popular movement towards freedom. Throughout the long civil war the incipient Republic had been developing and gradually limiting, more and more, the domination of the archbishop and the nobles. This process, which was being repeated everywhere in Lombardy, was greatly favoured by the weakness of the Empire during the long minority of Henry IV. The cities, freed from the intervention of a foreign suzerain, were able to shake off to some extent the rule of feudalism. The great war waged later by Gregory VII. and his kindred spirit, the Gran Contessa Matilda, against Henry IV. and the claims of imperialism, promoted, with the power of the Papacy, the freedom of the Communes, and showed in these two great elements of the national life unity of aim, Italy’s best defence against the stranger.
By the end of the eleventh century Milan was, in all its external relations, practically a free city, owning little more than nominal allegiance and a ceremonious reverence to the Emperor, and allying herself now with him, now with his resolute foe Matilda, or defying the one and the other, as it pleased her best. Within the community itself the principle of popular freedom and representation was recognised in the government, and by means of constant insurrections the lower orders had forced the nobles to recognise their rights. The Commune, whose birth historians have dated from the great revolution of 1066 when Lanzone kept Archbishop Ariberto and the nobles in exile for three years, was now in full being. The institution about this time of elective magistrates, whose title of _Consuls_ revived the old Latin tradition of the city, marks the emancipation of the young Republic from the archiepiscopal despotism. But the share of the ordinary citizens in the privileges of this Constitution was still much restricted. The Consuls appear to have been chosen exclusively at first from the higher class, whose hereditary habit of authority fitted them to govern, and under a constitutional form these officials tended to repeat the old aristocratic oligarchy. But the nobles had no longer any legal support in their attempts to tyrannise, and the whole system of government was in a state of flux, and subjected to ceaseless modifications and change by the continual revolts of the people, who, by the simple force of numbers, made their strength felt, and vindicated their growing pretensions to a larger part in the affairs of their city.