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The City

As part of his overarching effort to understand the unique development of the Western world, Weber wrote a general study of the European city and its development in antiquity and the Middle Ages titled The City. According to him, Christianity served to break the traditional bonds of kinship by causing its believers to participate in the religion as individuals. However, the institutions that formed as a result of this process were secular in nature. He also saw the rise of a unique form of non-legitimate domination in medieval European cities that successfully challenged the existing forms of legitimate domination – traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal – that had prevailed until then in the medieval world. These cities were previously under the jurisdiction of several different entities that were removed as they became autonomous. That process was caused by the granting of privileges to newer cities and the usurpation of authority in older ones.