The centre of the religious power in Cividate is identified with the Pieve (parish church) that generates a fortified complex called castle in the course of the 10th century.
The cult places surrounding Cividate depended on the Pieve which, at the same time, assumed the prerogative to administer the sacraments.
The inhabitants had to pay to the Pieve comple a tithe, the tenth part of the agricultural products and the animals, for the maintenance of the ecclesiastics, the bishop and the religious building.
A document of 979 testifies the battlements of the “Pieve” of Cividate comprising the rural church, the baptistry and the cemetary; around them there was a sort of village.
A wall and an outside ditch encircled the area; it was rectangular and had an inner extension of 7,000 mq.
A faint trace of the access to the fortified nucleus is found in via Porta Castello, that has preserved memory in the toponym where in the masonry incorporating ashlars  in white limestone we can note the print of arch at the base of it there is a small mass of stone 
in porphyry with engraved concentric circles and cross, perhaps border signs.
The fortification of the Pieve area confirms its function of power center and, at the same time, its role of defence for the inhabitants.
From the beginning of the 12th century there is the presents in Cividate of the “Gastaldo”, an official who manages the possessions of the bishop who lives somewhere else. 
From this time Cividate is subjected to the episcopal domination ratified subsequently by the aknowledgment of the episcopal possession ordered by Berardo Maggi in 1299 and by further documents, besides architectonic evidences such as the Palace of Bishop, built inside the fortified enclosure and next to a building with the function of  nature goods harvesting necessary to the Castle.
 The defensive system is now not very clear since it underwent a transformation which motified the urban structure of the area. Groups of families, bound to the bishop by feudal relations previously settled into the Castle, in the thirteenth century moved outside the walls, building autonomous fortified centres.
Documentary evidences testify that in 1389 the reorganization process of the “Pieve” goods brought to new residences for the clergy near the rural church.
Changes in the use and property erosion of the landed property and power, with the baptismal autonomy of the subsidiary churches change the picture of the situation. In 1476, during the Venetian domination an estimate was drawn up for taxation which represents a great relief source for the knowledge of Cividate in this period. The Middle Ages are coming now to an end and leave back numerous signs that a careful visitor may still catch.
We can sense intact corners of a big suggestion if we go along the narrow lanes of the centre where a past only apparently past, can be dispelled.