It will, however, be impossible for us to understand thoroughly the relations of the city under Lombard and Frankish rule to the central and to the local government, unless we know somewhat of the local and state officers who exercised jurisdiction within the territorial limits just described. By a consideration of their special powers and of their special duties, we must learn all that we can know with any degree of certainty with regard to the position of the city in these times. With this in mind, let us first examine the office whose functions it is at once the most difficult and the most important for us to understand in all its bearings--that of the _Judex_. We must consider it not only in the relation which it bears to the higher grade of officers, the Lombard duke and the Frankish count, but also in its relation with the lower officials who severally enjoyed more or less of the powers attached to its possession, namely, the gastald, the sculdahis, the scabino, and even the rural counts and the bishop. And in tracing its development we must note the influence it bore on the growth of the municipal idea, and also its connection with the political jurisdiction, commonly combined with it in the person of a single official. In considering the institutions of a comparatively crude state of society, such as existed in Europe in the early middle ages, it is misleading if not impossible to differentiate to any great extent the various functions and kinds of power which were commonly centered in the same individual. Consequently the only safe way to give a clear idea of the position and the powers of the _judex_, is to give a description of the various offices to which judicial authority was attached, in degrees more or less complete, corresponding to the social and political importance of the person exercising this authority.