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Summary Middle Ages II - Radboud
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This is a summary of chapters 8 to 16 of Middle Ages II. The book used is Medieval Europe, a short history. Judith M. Bennett and Sandy Bardsley
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Samenvatting Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 1 - Radboud
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MEDIEVAL HISTORY IISummary
Chapter 8 – Economic Takeoff and Social Change in Town and Court, c. 1000-1300
Important terms
Burghers A citizen of a town. Because not all inhabitants
were citizens, burgesses tended to be the
wealthiest and most powerful townspeople.
Burgess See burgher.
Urban charters A document that granted a town or city
extensive rights of self-government. See also
commune.
Communal movement The effort of cities and towns in the Central
Middle Ages to establish rights of self-
governance. These movements were often led
by associations of citizens who had sworn a
communal oath. Also known as the charter
movement, because of the charters of self-
governance that citizens sought.
Commune A municipality that had obtained a charter of
self-governance, as many towns did in the 11 th
and 12th centuries. In a few cases, rural villages
also formed communes. See also guild and
communal movement.
Usury Loaning money at interest, a practice
condemned by the medieval Church.
Guilds In a general sense, a community of people
engaged in a common purpose – for example,
the guilds of town leaders who wrested
charters from overlords in the 11th and 12th
centuries (these organizations were also known
as communes), the guilds of students or faculty
that comprised medieval universities, or the
parish guilds that helped support local religious
activities (sometimes also called
“confraternities”). In a specific sense, however,
guilds were organizations through which urban
traders and craftspeople supervised training,
quality, and sales of the products under their
jurisdiction.
Ritual murder Starting with a tale that spread through the
English town of Norwich in 1144, accusations of
ritual murder became a common pretext for
attacks on medieval Jews. In these stories, Jews
took the role of the murderers. Their victims
were usually imagines as young boys, and their
methods supposedly mimicked the crucifixion
of Jesus. These false accusations often resulted
in mass Christian assaults on Jews.
Masters For the urban and peasant classes, this was the
, term applied to a male head of household. In
urban guilds, it also designated a man who ran
his own workshop or business (under whom
might work apprentices and
journeymen/women). From this term, we get
the modern title “Mr.” See also mistress and
lord.
Apprentices A young men (or, occasionally, young woman)
training in a craft or trade. see also
journeyman/woman.
Journeymen A young man or woman who had finished an
apprenticeship but did not yet own a shop as an
independent master or mistress.
Journeymen/women were paid wages by the
day (journée in French).
Mistress For the urban and peasant classes, this term
was the equivalent of lady, signifying a woman
who was the female head of household or even
a woman who ran her own business. From this
term, comes the modern title “Mrs.” See also
master.
Courtly love A modern term coined to describe ideas about
romantic love between women and men, as
they developed in the literatures of France
during the 12th century.
INTRODUCTION
The period from 1000 to 1300 was a period of economic growth. From richer harvests grew more
people, more specialization, more demand, and more trade. townspeople and aristocrats were the
ultimate beneficiaries of the agricultural revolution. Manorialism directed most profit from peasant
work to the barns of their lords aristocrats had more money than they predecessors money
spent on traded items (luxury goods). Increased grain yields left room for non-agrarian workers to
grow in number/specialization (however, still 90% of the people worked on the land).
THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION
Trade continued after the breakdown of Charlemagne’s empire, especially along Europe’s rivers
(Rhine, Seine, Po, Loire, Danube, Thames). These rivers had attracted Viking, Magyar and Muslim
raiders. Vikings brought Baltic products to European towns and traded with Islamic/Byzantine
merchants. Jewish merchants also linked Europe with their contacts all over the world. People
bought goods in one place, transported them to another, and sold them at profit.
Invasions diminished commerce surged. French dukes, English kings, and German
emperors encouraged weekly markets that served villages in their vicinity and annual fairs that
attracted an international array of merchants/goods. Many also sought to systematize the minting of
silver coins, to:
Enhance power
Enrich treasuries
Provide reliable medium of exchange
Agricultural villages predominated, but cities became a critical part of European life by 1300
(especially in Italy [Milan, Venice, Florence, Genoa]). Cities had been critical to imperial government
in Rome, and from some Roman cities evolved cathedral towns. Some cities were “planted” by
,enterprising nobles, some developed outside the walls of monasteries, and others flourished around
a castle or fortification. These “burgs” (fortifications) were later called “borough”; a town/city
inhabited by burghers or burgesses. Medieval cities remained faithful to its saints/religious
establishments while expanding its commercial districts and developing its political/legal institutions.
Although crusades initially disrupted Mediterranean trade, they ultimately stimulated the economy
of Italian cities (Pisa, Genoa and Venice).
Cities of Flanders also grew wealthy from commerce. International demand for Flemish cloth
grew so great that Flemish merchants had to import wool from England to supplement the output of
Flemish flocks. Flanders was the industrial centre of northern Europe. Early commerce focused on
specific sorts of goods:
Silk and spices
Human cargo (slave trade)
Good-quality cloth
Economy expanded specialize in whatever good produced most efficiently selling those goods
earn money import necessities of life. In the Central Middle Ages, a much wider array of goods
moved through a much wider assortment of local, regional, and international networks. Many
trading networks were informal. However, some were formal and predictable. For example,
merchants formed leagues to ensure safer transport and better trading privileges.
Commerce lubricated the high medieval economy with an ever-increasing flow of money.
This had many consequences:
Building of cathedral
Finance charities of Christian princes
Gave substance to the magnificent religious culture
Monarch could now:
o Collect taxes in silver coins
o Governs through salaried officials
o Wage war with hired troops
Aristocratic could now buy luxury goods
Peasants could now:
o Build better houses
o Buy more land
Burghers (chief beneficiaries of the new economy) could now honour civic saints by building
churches (often honoured themselves too)
Europe was linked to the trading networks that traversed the Indian ocean and the Silk Road that
connected Africa to China.
URBAN SOCIETY
Town dwellers included some wealthy peasants, vagabonds, runaway serfs, ambitious offspring of
lesser nobility, and the surplus population. Towns (unhealthy places with high mortality) relied on
newcomers to keep up with their numbers. Women sometimes outnumbered men. They might have
travelled to towns because:
Specific work catered to female skills (spinning)
Pushed to towns by limited opportunities in the countryside (inheritance practices favoured
sons over daughters)
Towns in Christendom were not inhabited only by people of European descent: people found of
African descent. However, we cannot tell of those people of African descent happened to die while
travelling/trading or were settlers in the new towns.
Towns were initially subject to the authority of the noble, bishop, or monastery within whose
territory they lay local landowner could levy tolls/taxes and administer justice within town walls.
However, the merchants began to oppose this.
They wanted privileges essential to pursuit business:
, Freedom from servile dues
Freedom of movement
Freedom from inordinate tolls at every bridge or castle
Freedom to hold town property without any feudal/manorial services
Freedom of legal self-management
th
12 century: local landowner granted written guarantees of many privileges, contained in urban
charters. This agitation for urban self-government was so widespread that historians describe a
communal movement in Europe. Each urban charter created a semi-autonomous political/legal
entity: commune. Each commune had its own local government, court, tax-collecting agencies, and
customs. Citizens paid sums to receive a charter, and they also paid their lord/lady annually to renew
the charter/keep it effective. The citizens did so collectively, though their urban governments
urban charters grew out of collective effort and were sustained by collective responsibility. However,
they were not units of democracy/equality. Socioeconomic status, gender, and religion were
important. Prosperous merchants controlled town government and ruled over less wealthy people.
For them, political privilege went hand in hand with economic privilege.
Women worked in a variety of craft and merchant enterprises, sometimes even collecting
taxes, lending/exchanging money, illuminating and copying books, and working as druggists/barbers.
However, men still predominated them. Daughters were less likely than sons to be apprenticed in
skilled trades. Jews played a vital part in the early phases of medieval urban growth. Carolingians
encouraged Jewish settlements in their Empire, and after the Norman Conquest (1066) they were
welcomed in England. They provided critical financial service. The Church prohibited usury (loaning
money at interest), but moneylending was essential to the commercial economy. Some people
ignored this prohibition, others found ways to avoid it. Others turned to Jewish moneylenders who
were not bound by these Christian-only rules.
Still, Jews were always a distinctive element within medieval towns:
Constitutional
o Jewish communities held charters of their own that ensured protection and
exemption from municipal jurisdiction
separate corporation within the corporation of the town in which they lived
Christian attitudes toward Jews
o Mingled acceptance with anxiety
o Jews were unable to participate in civic policies, could not join most trade or craft
guilds, and were often segregated from Christians by residence in a district called the
“Jewry” or by prescribed clothing
intensified over the course of the Central Middle Ages
In 1096, Christians murdered all the Jews of Mainz, Worms and Cologne. These assaults continued,
and were soon buttressed by ritual murder stories. In Norwich, a false rumour that Jews had
murdered a young Christian boy in a mock crucifixion spread through the town. The boy was made a
saint and the Jews narrowly escaped with their lives.
GUILDS AND HOUSEHOLDS
To participate in town government, it was often necessary to belong to the single merchant guild of
the town or one of several powerful merchant guilds. Other guilds soon began to form; those of
artisans. They had many functions: social interaction, charitable activities, religious observances and
economic functions (most important one).
To limit competition and ensure good quality, craft guilds (or masters of these craft guilds)
established strict admission requirements and rules on prices, wages, standards of quality, and
operating procedures. Young men learned their trade as apprentices in the shops of master
craftsmen. After 7 years this apprenticeship ended and they might open their own shop. However,
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