Nevertheless Ravenna, for so long the citadel of the empire in the
West, of all the cities of Italy was least likely to forget her origin
or to forsake her memories, and it is both curious and interesting to
watch her entry, little splendid though that entry be, into the
marvellously vital world of the Middle Age in Italy.
The slow re-establishment of Latin power which followed the crowning
of Charlemagne, and which the Church secured by that act, first began
to come to its own with the rise of the bishops to civil power in the
cities of Italy. Now Ravenna had certainly been governed by her
archbishop ever since Pepin in 754 had forced Aistulf to place the
keys of the city upon the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles. If
nowhere else in the Cisalpine plain, Latin civilisation and law, then,
never failed in Ravenna, and whatever may have happened elsewhere it
might seem certain that here in Ravenna and probably throughout the
exarchate the curia existed and endured throughout the barbarian
confusion.
This would explain the early and extraordinary development of communal
institutions in Ravenna.
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