CITY. In Great Brig in strictly speaking "city" is an honorary title officially applied to those towns which, in virtue of some pre eminence (e.g., as being episcopal sees or great industrial centres), have by traditional usage or royal charter acquired the right to the designation. The official style of "city" does not necessarily involve the possession of municipal power greater than those of the ordinary boroughs, nor indeed the possession of a corporation at all (e.g., Ely). In the United States and the British dominions, on the other hand, the official application of the term "city" de pends on the kind and extent of the municipal privileges possessed by the corporations, and charters are given raising towns and villages to the rank of cities. Both in France and England the word is also used to distinguish the older and central nucleus of some of the large towns, e.g., the cite in Paris, and the "square mile" under the jurisdiction of the lord mayor which is the "City of London." In common usage, however, the word is loosely ap plied to any large centre of population, and in the United States any town, whether technically a city or not, is usually so desig nated, with little regard to its actual size or importance.
As the translation of the Greek iroXcs or Latin civitas, the word involves the ancient conception of the state or "city-state," i.e., of the state as not too large to prevent its government through the assembled body of the citizens, and is applied not to the place but to the whole body politic. From this conception both the word and its dignified connotation are without doubt historically derived. On the occupation of Gaul the Gallic states and tribes were called civitates by the Romans, and subsequently the name was confined to the chief towns of the various administrative districts. These were also the seats of the bishops. It is thus affirmed that in France from the 5th to the century the name civitas or cite was confined to such towns as were episcopal sees, and Du Cange (Gloss. s.v. civitas) defines that word as urbs epis copalis, and states that other towns were termed castra or oppida. How far any such distinction can be sharply drawn may be doubted. No definite line can be drawn between those English towns to which the name civitas or cite is given in mediaeval doc uments and those called burgi or boroughs (see J. H. Round, Feudal England; F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and After). It was, however, maintained by Coke and Blackstone that a city is a town incorporate which is or has been the see of a bishop. It is true that the actual sees in England all have a formal right to the title and the boroughs erected into episcopal sees by Henry VIII. thereby became "cities"; but towns such as Thetford, Sherborne and Dorchester are not so designated, though they are regularly incorporated and were once episcopal sees. In 1075 the bishop's see was transferred from Sherborne to Salisbury. After eight and a half centuries, by an order published in the London Gazette of Feb. 1 o, 1924, Sherborne was re-created a suffragan bishopric. On the other hand it has only been since the latter part of the 19th century that the official style of "city" has, in Great Britain, been conferred by royal authority on certain important towns which were not episcopal sees, Birmingham in 1889 being the first to be so distinguished. London contains two cities, one (the City of London) outside, the other (the City of Westminster) included in the administrative county.
For the history of the origin and development of modern city government see BOROUGH and COMMUNE, MEDIAEVAL.