In all the struggles from the twelfth to the fifteenth century with the Empire and with the Church, the Italians invariably appealed to the traditions of Ancient Rome; and their appeal was not to a remote civilisation, but to a living tradition of their own, opposed to the feudal institutions of the barbarians. At the time of the Communes this attitude is particularly striking. The peasantry had taken shelter from feudal oppression in towns protected by the authority of a bishop, and there with the developments of commerce they grew in wealth and political power. We thus find a new social class, the burgher, that contributed immensely to the growing importance of the cities. These strong practical men were distinguished by that common sense and pride that to-day distinguishes the sturdy and self-assertive Fascists. Having established their institutions, they considered them a living part of their own persons, and brought into political life their sense of personal dignity and the energy of the mediæval Christian, ready to die for the ideas represented by his Corporation, even as the Fascist is ready to die for his symbolic Black Shirt. The Communes, in spite of their novelty, perhaps indeed in consequence of the novelty of their self-assertion, were responsible for one of the strongest historical bonds with the past. For in their opposition to the feudal rights acknowledged by mediæval law, they appealed to Roman jurisprudence in order to prove the legal grounds of their liberties. They instinctively conformed to the past, creating forms of government rich in future possibilities, and such conformity was not, according to Professor Reggio, a mere question of high-sounding names. The Communes reproduced of the actual and essential features of the City-State, all those that could be revived. Their classicism was by no means artificial, it was intimately felt as the surest means of destroying feudalism, at that time the most assertive form of individualism. Even the present Fascist appeal to Rome is far from being mere rhetoric; Rome is considered the one force antagonistic to that anti-historical mentality due to illuminism, that has given rise to abstract demagogy and individualism.