Winter/Spring 1991 RAIN Page 27 this region became as familiar with trade as most urbanites. This common ground between urban and rural people later allowed the Swiss to resolve conflicts within their alliance, and to fight for their mutual interests. As transalpine trade was emerging around Lake Lucerne, the Swiss were hearing from passing small merchants about broader participation in government and self-rule in northern Italian city republics. The news of the popolo stirred many Europeans. Lake Luzern, where it all began. The small city ofLuzern, and the districts of Schwyz, Unterwalden and Uri all lie on this lake, their common interest. Beyond the Alps lies Italy, and Milan is at the other end ofthe mountain route that spills into this lake. From Sebastian Munster's "Cosmographia Universalis", 1544. Take the changes in legal matters. Europe's center of legal studies, Bologna, had been overrun by the most radical of popolo groups. This drove They traded a little of their real self-sufficiency for quick economic gains based on accommodation and animal exploitation, the latter a good return per pound for transport costs since cattle transport themselves. This was the beginning of a decline in Swiss self-reliance in resources that has left modem Switzerland largely dependent on the rest of the world. In taking advantage of these new opportunities, the farmers and the transit businesses dealt directly with traders travelling through the countryside and the small rural cities. The locals were paid for their trouble, something that would not have happened had strong princes been present. The facilitation of this direct interaction between traders and locals became one of the main functions of the modified rural organizations. The new roles for the rural communal associations were crucial, because Swiss success later rested on an ability to hold together an alliance between rural and urban interests. In Italy, the cities drove the economy, and in Germany the rural nobility had more overall power than the patricians in the cities. The power. balance usually tipped in favor of either the merchant cities or the country princes. But Switzerland found a third way. legal thought towards a justification for broad popular participation in government, supporting the idea of a civil commune. Bologna began conducting law studies in Italian, rather than Latin, and boosted literacy and education in professions relating to commerce, undermining the clergy's strangle-hold on education. In addition, the Bologna popolo enacted broad measures to undermine serfdom, the stable economic base of the nobles. While the Swiss were hearing of these developments in Italy, the Holy Roman Empire fell into a kind of disuse during The Great Interregnum, several decades when there was no German King. The Holy Roman The small towns and countryside together were supplied by the edge of the commercial frenzy of the age, and at the same time cooperated in defending themselves from powerful nobles in Germany. The rural people in From a reliefon the tomb ofa law professor (Cino de Pistoia (1270-133617)) who studied in Bologna. The reliefsuggests the origin of the word 'lecture' (Latin lectura, 'a reading'): Cino reads the text along with his pupils, making comments and answering questions. After Waley, The Italian City-Republics.
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