who managed the town and the surrounding lands as one communidad. After the Middle Ages, selection of officials was changed from election to sortition, in order to resolve factional conflict. In Cantabria, seafaring towns led by Burgos formed the (Marsh brotherhood), an organisation similar to the Hanseatic league. In the 1470s the or Holy Brotherhood was formed, in which all municipalities sent representatives to a which would coordinate law enforcement to protect trade. Social order According to Adalberon, society was composed of the three orders: those who fight (the nobles), those who pray (the clergy) and those who work (the peasants). In theory this was a balance between spiritual and secular peers, with the third order providing labour for the other two. The urban communes were a break in this order. The Church and King both had mixed reactions to communes. On the one hand, they agreed safety and protection from lawless nobles was in everyone's best interest. The commune's intention was to keep the peace through the threat of revenge, and the Church was sympathetic to the end result of peace. However, the Church had their own ways to enforce peace, such as the Peace and Truce of God movement, for example. Some communes disrupted the order of medieval society in that the methods the commune used, eye for an eye, violence begets violence, were generally not acceptable to Church or King. There was an idea among some that communes threatened the medieval social order. Only the noble lords were allowed by custom to fight, and ostensibly the merchant townspeople were workers, not warriors. As such, the nobility and the clergy sometimes accepted communes, but other times did not. One of the most famous cases of a commune being suppressed and the resulting defiant urban revolt occurred in the French town of Laon in 1112. Rural communes The development of medieval rural communes arose more from a need to collaborate to manage the commons than out of defensive needs. In times of a weak central government, communes typically formed to ensure the safety on the roads through their territory to enable commerce (Landfrieden). One of the more successful of these medieval communities was the one in the alpine valleys north of the Gotthard Pass. This later resulted in the formation of the Old Swiss Confederacy. The Swiss had numerous written acts of alliance: for each new canton that joined