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This was a period when the distinctive features of the modern European states system first appeared and began to evolve. At few times has the very nature of the international order been so contested. In feudal society persons of various ranks acquired authority in certain matters, such as raising armed fores, judging disputes, making laws and disposing of vacant properties. A king's domain shrank and expanded depending on his hold over neighbouring nobles. Beside all this was the parallel hierarchy of church office-holders. During the high Middle Ages there were numerous divisions of authority, yet at the same time strong impulses to concentrate power wherever possible in the interests of law and order and dynastic ambition. Towns carved out, where possible, their own legal, fiscal and economic domains. They in turn were sub-divided into craft-guilds and quarters. The village unit often retained some collective rights over agriculture and minor disputes. The tendency towards a division of political powers between different levels – Empire and papacy, kingdom, county, domain, diocese, city, guild and village – was recognised to some extent by jurists in their discussions of the limited rights of self-management that could be ascribed to corporate bodies. But these horizontal divisions of authority got little support from either philosophers or humanists; Ptolemy of Lucca was unusual in listing ‘region, province, city or borough’ and again ‘kingdom, city, borough or any college’ as instances of political society (II chs. 7–8).
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