COMMUNALIES. - Also called communa, consorterie, partecipare, università, vicine, they are remnants of collective property that, owing to natural, ethnic and demographic needs, have preserved their historical vitality down to the present day.
From them originated certain Communes, especially mountain ones, which existed first as political and administrative bodies. In the collective properties the inhabitants exercised the right of grazing, of gathering wood, of gathering grass and of sowing.
Since under feudalism the lords sought to appropriate to themselves the ownership of the common goods, leaving the population only the civic use, there formed vicine of inhabitants who defended their autonomy by including in them only the descendants of the families originally of the place. Thus it happened for the Emilian partecipare and for that of the woods of Trino Vercellese, which preserves its ancient characteristics to this day and in which more than 1300 heads of family of proven Trino origin exercise the right of gathering wood over 575 hectares of woodland surface. Similarly, in order better to exploit the territory, in certain mountain localities it was divided among the families of the district, so that each came to have its own diviso, which, however, it could neither sell, nor donate, nor leave as a benefice pro remedio animae. From the 18th century onward attempts were made to absorb the collective lands into the properties of the Communes and to extend the benefit of them also to those families no longer descended from the first members of the c. The latest law on civic uses, of 16 June 1937 no. 1766, forbids the formation of new agrarian università, and imposes the ascertainment and liquidation of those civic uses whose existence is harmful or no longer answers the needs of the users.
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Giovanni Donna