Civic Life

Civic Life in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds

Cities emerged some 5,000 years ago in Babylonia and Egypt. But these ancient cities ruled by kings, despots, pharaohs, and emperors were built as warrior states. There were no citizens in the sense of those who participated in governing the city; there were only the rulers and the ruled.

Civic life as we understand it today began to emerge only with the rise of the Greek polis (city) around 600BCE. Greek democracy was still restricted to a relatively small class of property owners, with women, slaves, and foreigners excluded from citizenship. But the Greek idea of the citizen—a member of the political community of the city with full rights to participate in its governance—was a major innovation for humankind. The ancient agora (marketplace) was where all citizens assembled to debate the important questions of governance in both the city and the state. This early Greek ideal of the public sphere, with its close ties to the city and to civic and public life, continues to influence our understanding of civic life today.

In contrast with Greece, citizenship in ancient Rome was broad: Aliens and even slaves could become citizens. However, the Roman republic was ruled by nobles in the senate, and even before the fall of the republic and rise of the empire, the mass of Roman citizens had little influence on civic life.

With the fall of the Roman empire (c. 410–440 CE), Europe as a whole began its long decline into feudalism, a system in which warrior-lords ruled over an unfree population. Feudalism entailed a tangle of obligations to a hierarchy of lords: Peasants were obligated to the lord of the manor, lesser lords were obligated to greater lords, and all lords were obligated to a king or emperor. There are no citizens in a feudal system, and without citizens, civic life is unthinkable. Although developed urban civilizations existed in China, India, Mesoamerica, and Africa, these were ruled by kings, emperors, and despots. Western feudalism was also hierarchical, but the complex set of obligations that it entailed set the stage for the emergence of relatively independent cities.

The Reemergence of Civic Life in Late Medieval Europe

Civic life began to reemerge in late medieval Europe (c. 1300) in newly formed city-states in Germany, the Netherlands, Catalonia (in present-day Spain), Provence (in present-day France), and Italy. The citystates were founded both on the maritime trade that connected many of the cities to one another and on each city's trade with its own feudal hinterland. Trade itself was linked to the establishment of law (revived from ancient Rome), which was necessary to ensure predictability. With law came rights, which were central to the new city-states. The city-states were autonomous, free from feudal obligations, and relatively free from kings and emperors, although often remaining formally under their control.

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