COMUNALIE. — Also called communa, consorterie, partecipare, università, vicine, these are remnants of collective ownership which, owing to natural, ethnic, and demographic factors, have preserved their historical vitality to the present day.
Some Municipalities, especially in mountainous areas, originated from them, having first existed as political and administrative bodies. In collective properties, the inhabitants exercised the rights of pasture, the gathering of firewood, grazing, and sowing.
Since, under feudalism, the lords sought to appropriate the dominion over common goods, leaving the population only civic use, vicine of inhabitants were formed to defend their autonomy, including within them only the descendants of the families originally from the locality. This occurred with the partecipare of Emilia and with that of the woods of Trino Vercellese, which still preserves its ancient characteristics and in which more than 1,300 heads of families of proven Trinese origin exercise the right to gather firewood over 575 hectares of woodland. Similarly, in order to exploit the territory more effectively, in certain mountainous localities it was divided among the families of the district, so that each came to possess its own diviso, which, however, could neither be sold nor donated nor left as a benefice pro remedio animae. From the eighteenth century onward, efforts were made to absorb collective lands into the properties of the Municipalities and to extend their benefits also to families no longer descended from the original members of the c. The latest law on civic uses, of 16 June 1937, no. 1766, prohibits the formation of new agrarian universities and requires the ascertainment and liquidation of those civic uses whose existence is harmful or no longer corresponds to the needs of the users.
BIBLI: G. Curis, Usi civici, proprietà collettive e latifondi, Naples 1917; C. Frassoldati, Le partecipare agrarie emiliane, Padua 1936; A. Solmi, Sulla natura giuridica delle «Società degli antichi originari» e delle partecipare agrarie nel sistema della proprietà fondiaria dell'Italia superiore, in Studi sulla proprietà fondiaria nel medioevo, Rome 1937, pp. 329–60; G. Papaloni, Il «divisi» e le origini di Pradibondo, in Studi trentini di scienze stor. 23 (1940), pp. 109–21. Giovanni Donna