MUTUAL AID IN THE MEDIAEVAL CITY
Growth of authority in Barbarian Society. Serfdom in the villages.
Revolt of fortified towns: their liberation; their charts. The guild.
Double origin of the free medieval city. Self-jurisdiction,
self-administration. Honourable position of labour. Trade by the guild
and by the city.
Sociability and need of mutual aid and support are such inherent parts
of human nature that at no time of history can we discover men living in
small isolated families, fighting each other for the means of
subsistence. On the contrary, modern research, as we saw it in the two
preceding chapters, proves that since the very beginning of their
prehistoric life men used to agglomerate into gentes, clans, or tribes,
maintained by an idea of common descent and by worship of common
ancestors. For thousands and thousands of years this organization has
kept men together, even though there was no authority whatever to impose
it. It has deeply impressed all subsequent development of mankind; and
when the bonds of common descent had been loosened by migrations on a
grand scale, while the development of the separated family within the
clan itself had destroyed the old unity of the clan, a new form of
union, territorial in its principle--the village community--was called
into existence by the social genius of man. This institution, again,
kept men together for a number of centuries, permitting them to further
develop their social institutions and to pass through some of the
darkest periods of history, without being dissolved into loose
aggregations of families and individuals, to make a further step in
their evolution, and to work out a number of secondary social
institutions, several of which have survived down to the present time.
We have now to follow the further developments of the same ever-living
tendency for mutual aid. Taking the village communities of the so-called
barbarians at a time when they were making a new start of civilization
after the fall of the Roman Empire, we have to study the new aspects
taken by the sociable wants of the masses in the middle ages, and
especially in the medieval guilds and the medieval city.
Far from being the fighting animals they have often been compared to,
the barbarians of the first centuries of our era (like so many
Mongolians, Africans, Arabs, and so on, who still continue in the same
barbarian stage) invariably preferred peace to war. With the exception
of a few tribes which had been driven during the great migrations into
unproductive deserts or highlands, and were thus compelled periodically
to prey upon their better-favoured neighbours--apart from these, the
great bulk of the Teutons, the Saxons, the Celts, the Slavonians, and so
on, very soon after they had settled in their newly-conquered abodes,
reverted to the spade or to their herds. The earliest barbarian codes
already represent to us societies composed of peaceful agricultural
communities, not hordes of men at war with each other. These barbarians
covered the country with villages and farmhouses;(1) they cleared the
forests, bridged the torrents, and colonized the formerly quite
uninhabited wilderness; and they left the uncertain warlike pursuits to
brotherhoods, scholae, or "trusts" of unruly men, gathered round
temporary chieftains, who wandered about, offering their adventurous
spirit, their arms, and their knowledge of warfare for the protection of
populations, only too anxious to be left in peace. The warrior bands
came and went, prosecuting their family feuds; but the great mass
continued to till the soil, taking but little notice of their would-be
rulers, so long as they did not interfere with the independence of their
village communities.(2) The new occupiers of Europe evolved the systems
of land tenure and soil culture which are still in force with hundreds
of millions of men; they worked out their systems of compensation for
wrongs, instead of the old tribal blood-revenge; they learned the first
rudiments of industry; and while they fortified their villages with
palisaded walls, or erected towers and earthen forts whereto to repair
in case of a new invasion, they soon abandoned the task of defending
these towers and forts to those who made of war a speciality.
The very peacefulness of the barbarians, certainly not their supposed
warlike instincts, thus became the source of their subsequent subjection
to the military chieftains. It is evident that the very mode of life of
the armed brotherhoods offered them more facilities for enrichment than
the tillers of the soil could find in their agricultural communities.
Even now we see that armed men occasionally come together to shoot down
Matabeles and to rob them of their droves of cattle, though the
Matabeles only want peace and are ready to buy it at a high price. The
scholae of old certainly were not more scrupulous than the scholae of
our own time. Droves of cattle, iron (which was extremely costly at that
time(3)), and slaves were appropriated in this way; and although most
acquisitions were wasted on the spot in those glorious feasts of which
epic poetry has so much to say--still some part of the robbed riches was
used for further enrichment. There was plenty of waste land, and no lack
of men ready to till it, if only they could obtain the necessary cattle
and implements. Whole villages, ruined by murrains, pests, fires, or
raids of new immigrants, were often abandoned by their inhabitants, who
went anywhere in search of new abodes. They still do so in Russia in
similar circumstances. And if one of the hirdmen of the armed
brotherhoods offered the peasants some cattle for a fresh start, some
iron to make a plough, if not the plough itself, his protection from
further raids, and a number of years free from all obligations, before
they should begin to repay the contracted debt, they settled upon the
land. And when, after a hard fight with bad crops, inundations and
pestilences, those pioneers began to repay their debts, they fell into
servile obligations towards the protector of the territory. Wealth
undoubtedly did accumulate in this way, and power always follows
wealth.(4) And yet, the more we penetrate into the life of those times,
the sixth and seventh centuries of our era, the more we see that another
element, besides wealth and military force, was required to constitute
the authority of the few. It was an element of law and tight, a desire
of the masses to maintain peace, and to establish what they considered
to be justice, which gave to the chieftains of the scholae--kings,
dukes, knyazes, and the like--the force they acquired two or three
hundred years later. That same idea of justice, conceived as an adequate
revenge for the wrong done, which had grown in the tribal stage, now
passed as a red thread through the history of subsequent institutions,
and, much more even than military or economic causes, it became the
basis upon which the authority of the kings and the feudal lords was
founded.
In fact, one of the chief preoccupations of the barbarian village
community always was, as it still is with our barbarian contemporaries,
to put a speedy end to the feuds which arose from the then current
conception of justice. When a quarrel took place, the community at once
interfered, and after the folkmote had heard the case, it settled the
amount of composition (wergeld) to be paid to the wronged person, or to
his family, as well as the fred, or fine for breach of peace, which had
to be paid to the community. Interior quarrels were easily appeased in
this way. But when feuds broke out between two different tribes, or two
confederations of tribes, notwithstanding all measures taken to prevent
them,(5) the difficulty was to find an arbiter or sentence-finder whose
decision should be accepted by both parties alike, both for his
impartiality and for his knowledge of the oldest law. The difficulty was
the greater as the customary laws of different tribes and confederations
were at variance as to the compensation due in different cases. It
therefore became habitual to take the sentence-finder from among such
families, or such tribes, as were reputed for keeping the law of old in
its purity; of being versed in the songs, triads, sagas, etc., by means
of which law was perpetuated in memory; and to retain law in this way
became a sort of art, a "mystery," carefully transmitted in certain
families from generation to generation. Thus in Iceland, and in other
Scandinavian lands, at every A11thing, or national folkmote, a
lövsögmathr used to recite the whole law from memory for the
enlightening of the assembly; and in Ireland there was, as is known, a
special class of men reputed for the knowledge of the old traditions,
and therefore enjoying a great authority as judges.(6) Again, when we
are told by the Russian annals that some stems of North-West Russia,
moved by the growing disorder which resulted from "clans rising against
clans," appealed to Norman varingiar to be their judges and commanders
of warrior scholae; and when we see the knyazes, or dukes, elected for
the next two hundred years always from the same Norman family, we cannot
but recognize that the Slavonians trusted to the Normans for a better
knowledge of the law which would be equally recognized as good by
different Slavonian kins. In this case the possession of runes, used for
the transmission of old customs, was a decided advantage in favour of
the Normans; but in other cases there are faint indications that the
"eldest" branch of the stem, the supposed motherbranch, was appealed to
to supply the judges, and its decisions were relied upon as just;(7)
while at a later epoch we see a distinct tendency towards taking the
sentence-finders from the Christian clergy, which, at that time, kept
still to the fundamental, now forgotten, principle of Christianity, that
retaliation is no act of justice. At that time the Christian clergy
opened the churches as places of asylum for those who fled from blood
revenge, and they willingly acted as arbiters in criminal cases, always
opposing the old tribal principle of life for life and wound for wound.
In short, the deeper we penetrate into the history of early
institutions, the less we find grounds for the military theory of origin
of authority. Even that power which later on became such a source of
oppression seems, on the contrary, to have found its origin in the
peaceful inclinations of the masses.
In all these cases the fred, which often amounted to half the
compensation, went to the folkmote, and from times immemorial it used to
be applied to works of common utility and defence. It has still the same
destination (the erection of towers) among the Kabyles and certain
Mongolian stems; and we have direct evidence that even several centuries
later the judicial fines, in Pskov and several French and German cities,
continued to be used for the repair of the city walls.(8) It was thus
quite natural that the fines should be handed over to the
sentence-finder, who was bound, in return, both to maintain the schola
of armed men to whom the defence of the territory was trusted, and to
execute the sentences. This became a universal custom in the eighth and
ninth centuries, even when the sentence-finder was an elected bishop.
The germ of a combination of what we should now call the judicial power
and the executive thus made its appearance. But to these two functions
the attributions of the duke or king were strictly limited. He was no
ruler of the people--the supreme power still belonging to the
folkmote--not even a commander of the popular militia; when the folk
took to arms, it marched under a separate, also elected, commander, who
was not a subordinate, but an equal to the king.(9) The king was a lord
on his personal domain only. In fact, in barbarian language, the word
konung, koning, or cyning synonymous with the Latin rex, had no other
meaning than that of a temporary leader or chieftain of a band of men.
The commander of a flotilla of boats, or even of a single pirate boat,
was also a konung, and till the present day the commander of fishing in
Norway is named Not-kong--"the king of the nets."(10) The veneration
attached later on to the personality of a king did not yet exist, and
while treason to the kin was punished by death, the slaying of a king
could be recouped by the payment of compensation: a king simply was
valued so much more than a freeman.(11) And when King Knu (or Canute)
had killed one man of his own schola, the saga represents him convoking
his comrades to a thing where he stood on his knees imploring pardon. He
was pardoned, but not till he had agreed to pay nine times the regular
composition, of which one-third went to himself for the loss of one of
his men, one-third to the relatives of the slain man, and one-third (the
fred) to the schola.(12) In reality, a complete change had to be
accomplished in the current conceptions, under the double influence of
the Church and the students of Roman law, before an idea of sanctity
began to be attached to the personality of the king.
However, it lies beyond the scope of these essays to follow the gradual
development of authority out of the elements just indicated. Historians,
such as Mr. and Mrs. Green for this country, Augustin Thierry, Michelet,
and Luchaire for France, Kaufmann, Janssen, W. Arnold, and even Nitzsch,
for Germany, Leo and Botta for Italy, Byelaeff, Kostomaroff, and their
followers for Russia, and many others, have fully told that tale. They
have shown how populations, once free, and simply agreeing "to feed" a
certain portion of their military defenders, gradually became the serfs
of these protectors; how "commendation" to the Church, or to a lord,
became a hard necessity for the freeman; how each lord's and bishop's
castle became a robber's nest--how feudalism was imposed, in a word--and
how the crusades, by freeing the serfs who wore the cross, gave the
first impulse to popular emancipation. All this need not be retold in
this place, our chief aim being to follow the constructive genius of the
masses in their mutual-aid institutions.
At a time when the last vestiges of barbarian freedom seemed to
disappear, and Europe, fallen under the dominion of thousands of petty
rulers, was marching towards the constitution of such theocracies and
despotic States as had followed the barbarian stage during the previous
starts of civilization, or of barbarian monarchies, such as we see now
in Africa, life in Europe took another direction. It went on on lines
similar to those it had once taken in the cities of antique Greece. With
a unanimity which seems almost incomprehensible, and for a long time was
not understood by historians, the urban agglomerations, down to the
smallest burgs, began to shake off the yoke of their worldly and
clerical lords. The fortified village rose against the lord's castle,
defied it first, attacked it next, and finally destroyed it. The
movement spread from spot to spot, involving every town on the surface
of Europe, and in less than a hundred years free cities had been called
into existence on the coasts of the Mediterranean, the North Sea, the
Baltic, the Atlantic Ocean, down to the fjords of Scandinavia; at the
feet of the Apennines, the Alps, the Black Forest, the Grampians, and
the Carpathians; in the plains of Russia, Hungary, France and Spain.
Everywhere the same revolt took place, with the same features, passing
through the same phases, leading to the same results. Wherever men had
found, or expected to find, some protection behind their town walls,
they instituted their "co-jurations," their "fraternities," their
"friendships," united in one common idea, and boldly marching towards a
new life of mutual support and liberty. And they succeeded so well that
in three or four hundred years they had changed the very face of Europe.
They had covered the country with beautiful sumptuous buildings,
expressing the genius of free unions of free men, unrivalled since for
their beauty and expressiveness; and they bequeathed to the following
generations all the arts, all the industries, of which our present
civilization, with all its achievements and promises for the future, is
only a further development. And when we now look to the forces which
have produced these grand results, we find them--not in the genius of
individual heroes, not in the mighty organization of huge States or the
political capacities of their rulers, but in the very same current of
mutual aid and support which we saw at work in the village community,
and which was vivified and reinforced in the Middle Ages by a new form
of unions, inspired by the very same spirit but shaped on a new
model--the guilds.
It is well known by this time that feudalism did not imply a dissolution
of the village community. Although the lord had succeeded in imposing
servile labour upon the peasants, and had appropriated for himself such
rights as were formerly vested in the village community alone (taxes,
mortmain, duties on inheritances and marriages), the peasants had,
nevertheless, maintained the two fundamental rights of their
communities: the common possession of the land, and self-jurisdiction.
In olden times, when a king sent his vogt to a village, the peasants
received him with flowers in one hand and arms in the other, and asked
him--which law he intended to apply: the one he found in the village, or
the one he brought with him? And, in the first case, they handed him the
flowers and accepted him; while in the second case they fought him.(13)
Now, they accepted the king's or the lord's official whom they could not
refuse; but they maintained the folkmote's jurisdiction, and themselves
nominated six, seven, or twelve judges, who acted with the lord's judge,
in the presence of the folkmote, as arbiters and sentence-finders. In
most cases the official had nothing left to him but to confirm the
sentence and to levy the customary fred. This precious right of
self-jurisdiction, which, at that time, meant self-administration and
self-legislation, had been maintained through all the struggles; and
even the lawyers by whom Karl the Great was surrounded could not abolish
it; they were bound to confirm it. At the same time, in all matters
concerning the community's domain, the folkmote retained its supremacy
and (as shown by Maurer) often claimed submission from the lord himself
in land tenure matters. No growth of feudalism could break this
resistance; the village community kept its ground; and when, in the
ninth and tenth centuries, the invasions of the Normans, the Arabs, and
the Ugrians had demonstrated that military scholae were of little value
for protecting the land, a general movement began all over Europe for
fortifying the villages with stone walls and citadels. Thousands of
fortified centres were then built by the energies of the village
communities; and, once they had built their walls, once a common
interest had been created in this new sanctuary--the town walls--they
soon understood that they could henceforward resist the encroachments of
the inner enemies, the lords, as well as the invasions of foreigners. A
new life of freedom began to develop within the fortified enclosures.
The medieval city was born.(14)
No period of history could better illustrate the constructive powers of
the popular masses than the tenth and eleventh centuries, when the
fortified villages and market-places, representing so many "oases amidst
the feudal forest," began to free themselves from their lord's yoke, and
slowly elaborated the future city organization; but, unhappily, this is
a period about which historical information is especially scarce: we
know the results, but little has reached us about the means by which
they were achieved. Under the protection of their walls the cities'
folkmotes--either quite independent, or led by the chief noble or
merchant families--conquered and maintained the right of electing the
military defensor and supreme judge of the town, or at least of choosing
between those who pretended to occupy this position. In Italy the young
communes were continually sending away their defensors or domini,
fighting those who refused to go. The same went on in the East. In
Bohemia, rich and poor alike (Bohemicae gentis magni et parvi, nobiles
et ignobiles) took part in the election;(15) while, the vyeches
(folkmotes) of the Russian cities regularly elected their dukes--always
from the same Rurik family--covenanted with them, and sent the knyaz
away if he had provoked discontent.(16) At the same time in most cities
of Western and Southern Europe, the tendency was to take for defensor a
bishop whom the city had elected itself; and so many bishops took the
lead in protecting the "immunities" of the towns and in defending their
liberties, that numbers of them were considered, after their death, as
saints and special patrons of different cities. St. Uthelred of
Winchester, St. Ulrik of Augsburg, St. Wolfgang of Ratisbon, St.
Heribert of Cologne, St. Adalbert of Prague, and so on, as well as many
abbots and monks, became so many cities' saints for having acted in
defence of popular rights.(17) And under the new defensors, whether laic
or clerical, the citizens conquered full self-jurisdiction and
self-administration for their folkmotes.(18)
The whole process of liberation progressed by a series of imperceptible
acts of devotion to the common cause, accomplished by men who came out
of the masses--by unknown heroes whose very names have not been
preserved by history. The wonderful movement of the God's peace (treuga
Dei) by which the popular masses endeavoured to put a limit to the
endless family feuds of the noble families, was born in the young towns,
the bishops and the citizens trying to extend to the nobles the peace
they had established within their town walls.(19) Already at that
period, the commercial cities of Italy, and especially Amalfi (which had
its elected consuls since 844, and frequently changed its doges in the
tenth century)(20) worked out the customary maritime and commercial law
which later on became a model for all Europe; Ravenna elaborated its
craft organization, and Milan, which had made its first revolution in
980, became a great centre of commerce, its trades enjoying a full
independence since the eleventh century.(21) So also Brugge and Ghent;
so also several cities of France in which the Mahl or forum had become a
quite independent institution.(22) And already during that period began
the work of artistic decoration of the towns by works of architecture,
which we still admire and which loudly testify of the intellectual
movement of the times. "The basilicae were then renewed in almost all
the universe," Raoul Glaber wrote in his chronicle, and some of the
finest monuments of medieval architecture date from that period: the
wonderful old church of Bremen was built in the ninth century, Saint
Marc of Venice was finished in 1071, and the beautiful dome of Pisa in
1063. In fact, the intellectual movement which has been described as the
Twelfth Century Renaissance(23) and the Twelfth Century Rationalism--the
precursor of the Reform(24) date from that period, when most cities were
still simple agglomerations of small village communities enclosed by
walls.
However, another element, besides the village-community principle, was
required to give to these growing centres of liberty and enlightenment
the unity of thought and action, and the powers of initiative, which
made their force in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. With the
growing diversity of occupations, crafts and arts, and with the growing
commerce in distant lands, some new form of union was required, and this
necessary new element was supplied by the guilds. Volumes and volumes
have been written about these unions which, under the name of guilds,
brotherhoods, friendships and druzhestva, minne, artels in Russia,
esnaifs in Servia and Turkey, amkari in Georgia, and so on, took such a
formidable development in medieval times and played such an important
part in the emancipation of the cities. But it took historians more than
sixty years before the universality of this institution and its true
characters were understood. Only now, when hundreds of guild statutes
have been published and studied, and their relationship to the Roman
collegiae, and the earlier unions in Greece and in India,(25) is known,
can we maintain with full confidence that these brotherhoods were but a
further development of the same principles which we saw at work in the
gens and the village community.
Nothing illustrates better these medieval brother hoods than those
temporary guilds which were formed on board ships. When a ship of the
Hansa had accomplished her first half-day passage after having left the
port, the captain (Schiffer) gathered all crew and passengers on the
deck, and held the following language, as reported by a contemporary:--
"'As we are now at the mercy of God and the waves,' he said, 'each one
must be equal to each other. And as we are surrounded by storms, high
waves, pirates and other dangers, we must keep a strict order that we
may bring our voyage to a good end. That is why we shall pronounce the
prayer for a good wind and good success, and, according to marine law,
we shall name the occupiers of the judges' seats (Schoffenstellen).'
Thereupon the crew elected a Vogt and four scabini, to act as their
judges. At the end of the voyage the Vogt and the scabini abdicated
their functions and addressed the crew as follows:--'What has happened on board ship, we
must pardon to each other and consider as dead (todt
und ab sein lassen). What we have judged right, was for the sake of
justice. This is why we beg you all, in the name of honest justice, to
forget all the animosity one may nourish against another, and to swear
on bread and salt that he will not think of it in a bad spirit. If any
one, however, considers himself wronged, he must appeal to the land Vogt
and ask justice from him before sunset.' On landing, the Stock with the
fredfines was handed over to the Vogt of the sea-port for distribution
among the poor."(26)
This simple narrative, perhaps better than anything else, depicts the
spirit of the medieval guilds. Like organizations came into existence
wherever a group of men--fishermen, hunters, travelling merchants,
builders, or settled craftsmen--came together for a common pursuit.
Thus, there was on board ship the naval authority of the captain; but,
for the very success of the common enterprise, all men on board, rich
and poor, masters and crew, captain and sailors, agreed to be equals in
their mutual relations, to be simply men, bound to aid each other and to
settle their possible disputes before judges elected by all of them. So
also when a number of craftsmen--masons, carpenters, stone-cutters,
etc.--came together for building, say, a cathedral, they all belonged to
a city which had its political organization, and each of them belonged
moreover to his own craft; but they were united besides by their common
enterprise, which they knew better than any one else, and they joined
into a body united by closer, although temporary, bonds; they founded
the guild for the building of the cathedral.(27) We may see the same
till now in the Kabylian. cof:(28) the Kabyles have their village
community; but this union is not sufficient for all political,
commercial, and personal needs of union, and the closer brotherhood of
the cof is constituted.
As to the social characters of the medieval guild, any guild-statute may
illustrate them. Taking, for instance, the skraa of some early Danish
guild, we read in it, first, a statement of the general brotherly
feelings which must reign in the guild; next come the regulations
relative to self-jurisdiction in cases of quarrels arising between two
brothers, or a brother and a stranger; and then, the social duties of
the brethren are enumerated. If a brother's house is burned, or he has
lost his ship, or has suffered on a pilgrim's voyage, all the brethren
must come to his aid. If a brother falls dangerously ill, two brethren
must keep watch by his bed till he is out of danger, and if he dies, the
brethren must bury him--a great affair in those times of
pestilences--and follow him to the church and the grave. After his death
they must provide for his children, if necessary; very often the widow
becomes a sister to the guild.(29)
These two leading features appeared in every brotherhood formed for any
possible purpose. In each case the members treated each other as, and
named each other, brother and sister;(30) all were equals before the
guild. They owned some "chattel" (cattle, land, buildings, places of
worship, or "stock") in common. All brothers took the oath of abandoning
all feuds of old; and, without imposing upon each other the obligation
of never quarrelling again, they agreed that no quarrel should
degenerate into a feud, or into a law-suit before another court than the
tribunal of the brothers themselves. And if a brother was involved in a
quarrel with a stranger to the guild, they agreed to support him for bad
and for good; that is, whether he was unjustly accused of aggression, or
really was the aggressor, they had to support him, and to bring things
to a peaceful end. So long as his was not a secret aggression--in which
case he would have been treated as an outlaw--the brotherhood stood by
him.(31) If the relatives of the wronged man wanted to revenge the
offence at once by a new aggression, the brother-hood supplied him with
a horse to run away, or with a boat, a pair of oars, a knife and a steel
for striking light; if he remained in town, twelve brothers accompanied
him to protect him; and in the meantime they arranged the composition.
They went to court to support by oath the truthfulness of his
statements, and if he was found guilty they did not let him go to full
ruin and become a slave through not paying the due compensation: they
all paid it, just as the gens did in olden times. Only when a brother
had broken the faith towards his guild-brethren, or other people, he was
excluded from the brotherhood "with a Nothing's name" (tha scal han
maeles af brodrescap met nidings nafn).(32)
Such were the leading ideas of those brotherhoods which gradually
covered the whole of medieval life. In fact, we know of guilds among all
possible professions: guilds of serfs,(33) guilds of freemen, and guilds
of both serfs and freemen; guilds called into life for the special
purpose of hunting, fishing, or a trading expedition, and dissolved when
the special purpose had been achieved; and guilds lasting for centuries
in a given craft or trade. And, in proportion as life took an always
greater variety of pursuits, the variety in the guilds grew in
proportion. So we see not only merchants, craftsmen, hunters, and
peasants united in guilds; we also see guilds of priests, painters,
teachers of primary schools and universities, guilds for performing the
passion play, for building a church, for developing the "mystery" of a
given school of art or craft, or for a special recreation--even guilds
among beggars, executioners, and lost women, all organized on the same
double principle of self-jurisdiction and mutual support.(34) For Russia
we have positive evidence showing that the very "making of Russia" was
as much the work of its hunters', fishermen's, and traders' artels as of
the budding village communities, and up to the present day the country
is covered with artels.(35)
These few remarks show how incorrect was the view taken by some early
explorers of the guilds when they wanted to see the essence of the
institution in its yearly festival. In reality, the day of the common
meal was always the day, or the morrow of the day, of election of
aldermen, of discussion of alterations in the statutes, and very often
the day of judgment of quarrels that had risen among the brethren,(36)
or of renewed allegiance to the guild. The common meal, like the
festival at the old tribal folkmote--the mahl or malum--or the Buryate
aba, or the parish feast and the harvest supper, was simply an
affirmation of brotherhood. It symbolized the times when everything was
kept in common by the clan. This day, at least, all belonged to all; all
sate at the same table and partook of the same meal. Even at a much
later time the inmate of the almshouse of a London guild sat this day by
the side of the rich alderman. As to the distinction which several
explorers have tried to establish between the old Saxon "frith guild"
and the so-called "social" or "religious" guilds--all were frith guilds
in the sense above mentioned,(37) and all were religious in the sense in
which a village community or a city placed under the protection of a
special saint is social and religious. If the institution of the guild
has taken such an immense extension in Asia, Africa, and Europe, if it
has lived thousands of years, reappearing again and again when similar
conditions called it into existence, it is because it was much more than
an eating association, or an association for going to church on a
certain day, or a burial club. It answered to a deeply inrooted want of
human nature; and it embodied all the attributes which the State
appropriated later on for its bureaucracy and police, and much more than
that. It was an association for mutual support in all circumstances and
in all accidents of life, "by deed and advise," and it was an
organization for maintaining justice--with this difference from the
State, that on all these occasions a humane, a brotherly element was
introduced instead of the formal element which is the essential
characteristic of State interference. Even when appearing before the
guild tribunal, the guild-brother answered before men who knew him well
and had stood by him before in their daily work, at the common meal, in
the performance of their brotherly duties: men who were his equals and
brethren indeed, not theorists of law nor defenders of some one else's
interests.(38)
It is evident that an institution so well suited to serve the need of
union, without depriving the individual of his initiative, could but
spread, grow, and fortify. The difficulty was only to find such form as
would permit to federate the unions of the guilds without interfering
with the unions of the village communities, and to federate all these
into one harmonious whole. And when this form of combination had been
found, and a series of favourable circumstances permitted the cities to
affirm their independence, they did so with a unity of thought which can
but excite our admiration, even in our century of railways, telegraphs,
and printing. Hundreds of charters in which the cities inscribed their
liberation have reached us, and through all of them--notwithstanding the
infinite variety of details, which depended upon the more or less
greater fulness of emancipation--the same leading ideas run. The city
organized itself as a federation of both small village communities and
guilds.
"All those who belong to the friendship of the town"--so runs a charter
given in 1188 to the burghesses of Aire by Philip, Count of
Flanders--"have promised and confirmed by faith and oath that they will
aid each other as brethren, in whatever is useful and honest. That if
one commits against another an offence in words or in deeds, the one who
has suffered there from will not take revenge, either himself or his
people ... he will lodge a complaint and the offender will make good for
his offence, according to what will be pronounced by twelve elected
judges acting as arbiters, And if the offender or the offended, after
having been warned thrice, does not submit to the decision of the
arbiters, he will be excluded from the friendship as a wicked man and a
perjuror.(39)
"Each one of the men of the commune will be faithful to his con-juror,
and will give him aid and advice, according to what justice will dictate
him"--the Amiens and Abbeville charters say. "All will aid each other,
according to their powers, within the boundaries of the Commune, and
will not suffer that any one takes anything from any one of them, or
makes one pay contributions"--do we read in the charters of Soissons,
Compiegne, Senlis, and many others of the same type.(40) And so on with
countless variations on the same theme.
"The Commune," Guilbert de Nogent wrote, "is an oath of mutual aid
(mutui adjutorii conjuratio) ... A new and detestable word. Through it
the serfs (capite sensi) are freed from all serfdom; through it, they
can only be condemned to a legally determined fine for breaches of the
law; through it, they cease to be liable to payments which the serfs
always used to pay."(41)
The same wave of emancipation ran, in the twelfth century, through all
parts of the continent, involving both rich cities and the poorest
towns. And if we may say that, as a rule, the Italian cities were the
first to free themselves, we can assign no centre from which the
movement would have spread. Very often a small burg in central Europe
took the lead for its region, and big agglomerations accepted the little
town's charter as a model for their own. Thus, the charter of a small
town, Lorris, was adopted by eighty-three towns in south-west France,
and that of Beaumont became the model for over five hundred towns and
cities in Belgium and France. Special deputies were dispatched by the
cities to their neighbours to obtain a copy from their charter, and the
constitution was framed upon that model. However, they did not simply
copy each other: they framed their own charters in accordance with the
concessions they had obtained from their lords; and the result was that,
as remarked by an historian, the charters of the medieval communes offer
the same variety as the Gothic architecture of their churches and
cathedrals. The same leading ideas in all of them--the cathedral
symbolizing the union of parish and guild in the, city--and the same
infinitely rich variety of detail.
Self-jurisdiction was the essential point, and self-jurisdiction meant
self-administration. But the commune was not simply an "autonomous" part
of the State--such ambiguous words had not yet been invented by that
time--it was a State in itself. It had the right of war and peace, of
federation and alliance with its neighbours. It was sovereign in its own
affairs, and mixed with no others. The supreme political power could be
vested entirely in a democratic forum, as was the case in Pskov, whose
vyeche sent and received ambassadors, concluded treaties, accepted and
sent away princes, or went on without them for dozens of years; or it
was vested in, or usurped by, an aristocracy of merchants or even
nobles, as was the case in hundreds of Italian and middle European
cities. The principle, nevertheless, remained the same: the city was a
State and--what was perhaps still more remarkable--when the power in the
city was usurped by an aristocracy of merchants or even nobles, the
inner life of the city and the democratism of its daily life did not
disappear: they depended but little upon what may be called the
political form of the State.
The secret of this seeming anomaly lies in the fact that a medieval city
was not a centralized State. During the first centuries of its
existence, the city hardly could be named a State as regards its
interior organization, because the middle ages knew no more of the
present centralization of functions than of the present territorial
centralization. Each group had its share of sovereignty. The city was
usually divided into four quarters, or into five to seven sections
radiating from a centre, each quarter or section roughly corresponding
to a certain trade or profession which prevailed in it, but nevertheless
containing inhabitants of different social positions and
occupations--nobles, merchants, artisans, or even half-serfs; and each
section or quarter constituted a quite independent agglomeration. In
Venice, each island was an independent political community. It had its
own organized trades, its own commerce in salt, its own jurisdiction and
administration, its own forum; and the nomination of a doge by the city
changed nothing in the inner independence of the units.(42) In Cologne,
we see the inhabitants divided into Geburschaften and Heimschaften
(viciniae), i.e. neighbour guilds, which dated from the Franconian
period. Each of them had its judge (Burrichter) and the usual twelve
elected sentence-finders (Schoffen), its Vogt, and its greve or
commander of the local militia.(43) The story of early London before the
Conquest--Mr. Green says--is that "of a number of little groups
scattered here and there over the area within the walls, each growing up
with its own life and institutions, guilds, sokes, religious houses and
the like, and only slowly drawing together into a municipal union."(44)
And if we refer to the annals of the Russian cities, Novgorod and Pskov,
both of which are relatively rich in local details, we find the section
(konets) consisting of independent streets (ulitsa), each of which,
though chiefly peopled with artisans of a certain craft, had also
merchants and landowners among its inhabitants, and was a separate
community. It had the communal responsibility of all members in case of
crime, its own jurisdiction and administration by street aldermen
(ulichanskiye starosty), its own seal and, in case of need, its own
forum; its own militia, as also its self-elected priests and its, own
collective life and collective enterprise.(45)
The medieval city thus appears as a double federation: of all
householders united into small territorial unions--the street, the
parish, the section--and of individuals united by oath into guilds
according to their professions; the former being a produce of the
village-community origin of the city, while the second is a subsequent
growth called to life by new conditions.
To guarantee liberty, self-administration, and peace was the chief aim
of the medieval city; and labour, as we shall presently see when
speaking of the craft guilds, was its chief foundation. But "production"
did not absorb the whole attention of the medieval economist. With his
practical mind, he understood that "consumption" must be guaranteed in
order to obtain production; and therefore, to provide for "the common
first food and lodging of poor and rich alike" (gemeine notdurft und
gemach armer und richer(46)) was the fundamental principle in each city.
The purchase of food supplies and other first necessaries (coal, wood,
etc.) before they had reached the market, or altogether in especially
favourable conditions from which others would be excluded--the
preempcio, in a word--was entirely prohibited. Everything had to go to
the market and be offered there for every one's purchase, till the
ringing of the bell had closed the market. Then only could the retailer
buy the remainder, and even then his profit should be an "honest profit"
only.(47) Moreover, when corn was bought by a baker wholesale after the
close of the market, every citizen had the right to claim part of the
corn (about half-a-quarter) for his own use, at wholesale price, if he
did so before the final conclusion of the bargain; and reciprocally,
every baker could claim the same if the citizen purchased corn for
re-selling it. In the first case, the corn had only to be brought to the
town mill to be ground in its proper turn for a settled price, and the
bread could be baked in the four banal, or communal oven.(48) In short,
if a scarcity visited the city, all had to suffer from it more or less;
but apart from the calamities, so long as the free cities existed no one
could die in their midst from starvation, as is unhappily too often the
case in our own times.
However, all such regulations belong to later periods of the cities'
life, while at an earlier period it was the city itself which used to
buy all food supplies for the use of the citizens. The documents
recently published by Mr. Gross are quite positive on this point and
fully support his conclusion to the effect that the cargoes of
subsistences "were purchased by certain civic officials in the name of
the town, and then distributed in shares among the merchant burgesses,
no one being allowed to buy wares landed in the port unless the
municipal authorities refused to purchase them. This seem--she adds--to
have been quite a common practice in England, Ireland, Wales and
Scotland."(49) Even in the sixteenth century we find that common
purchases of corn were made for the "comoditie and profitt in all things
of this.... Citie and Chamber of London, and of all the Citizens and
Inhabitants of the same as moche as in us lieth"--as the Mayor wrote in
1565.(50) In Venice, the whole of the trade in corn is well known to
have been in the hands of the city; the "quarters," on receiving the
cereals from the board which administrated the imports, being bound to
send to every citizen's house the quantity allotted to him.(51) In
France, the city of Amiens used to purchase salt and to distribute it to
all citizens at cost price;(52) and even now one sees in many French
towns the halles which formerly were municipal depots for corn and
salt.(53) In Russia it was a regular custom in Novgorod and Pskov.
The whole matter relative to the communal purchases for the use of the
citizens, and the manner in which they used to be made, seems not to
have yet received proper attention from the historians of the period;
but there are here and there some very interesting facts which throw a
new light upon it. Thus there is, among Mr. Gross's documents, a
Kilkenny ordinance of the year 1367, from which we learn how the prices
of the goods were established. "The merchants and the sailors," Mr.
Gross writes, "were to state on oath the first cost of the goods and the
expenses of transportation. Then the mayor of the town and two discreet
men were to name the price at which the wares were to be sold." The same
rule held good in Thurso for merchandise coming "by sea or land." This
way of "naming the price" so well answers to the very conceptions of
trade which were current in medieval times that it must have been all
but universal. To have the price established by a third person was a
very old custom; and for all interchange within the city it certainly
was a widely-spread habit to leave the establishment of prices to
"discreet men"--to a third party--and not to the vendor or the buyer.
But this order of things takes us still further back in the history of
trade--namely, to a time when trade in staple produce was carried on by
the whole city, and the merchants were only the commissioners, the
trustees, of the city for selling the goods which it exported. A
Waterford ordinance, published also by Mr. Gross, says "that all manere
of marchandis what so ever kynde thei be of ... shal be bought by the
Maire and balives which bene commene biers [common buyers, for the town]
for the time being, and to distribute the same on freemen of the citie
(the propre goods of free citisains and inhabitants only excepted)."
This ordinance can hardly be explained otherwise than by admitting that
all the exterior trade of the town was carried on by its agents.
Moreover, we have direct evidence of such having been the case for
Novgorod and Pskov. It was the Sovereign Novgorod and the Sovereign
Pskov who sent their caravans of merchants to distant lands.
We know also that in nearly all medieval cities of Middle and Western
Europe, the craft guilds used to buy, as a body, all necessary raw
produce, and to sell the produce of their work through their officials,
and it is hardly possible that the same should not have been done for
exterior trade--the more so as it is well known that up to the
thirteenth century, not only all merchants of a given city were
considered abroad as responsible in a body for debts contracted by any
one of them, but the whole city as well was responsible for the debts of
each one of its merchants. Only in the twelfth and thirteenth century
the towns on the Rhine entered into special treaties abolishing this
responsibility.(54) And finally we have the remarkable Ipswich document
published by Mr. Gross, from which document we learn that the merchant
guild of this town was constituted by all who had the freedom of the
city, and who wished to pay their contribution ("their hanse") to the
guild, the whole community discussing all together how better to
maintain the merchant guild, and giving it certain privileges. The
merchant guild of Ipswich thus appears rather as a body of trustees of
the town than as a common private guild.
In short, the more we begin to know the mediaeval city the more we see
that it was not simply a political organization for the protection of
certain political liberties. It was an attempt at organizing, on a much
grander scale than in a village community, a close union for mutual aid
and support, for consumption and production, and for social life
altogether, without imposing upon men the fetters of the State, but
giving full liberty of expression to the creative genius of each
separate group of individuals in art, crafts, science, commerce, and
political organization. How far this attempt has been successful will be
best seen when we have analyzed in the next chapter the organization of
labour in the medieval city and the relations of the cities with the
surrounding peasant population.
NOTES:
1. W. Arnold, in his Wanderungen und Ansiedelungen der deutschen Stamme,
p. 431, even maintains that one-half of the now arable area in middle
Germany must have been reclaimed from the sixth to the ninth century.
Nitzsch (Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, Leipzig, 1883, vol. i.) shares
the same opinion.
2. Leo and Botta, Histoire d'Italie, French edition, 1844, t. i., p. 37.
3. The composition for the stealing of a simple knife was 15 solidii and
of the iron parts of a mill, 45 solidii (See on this subject Lamprecht's
Wirthschaft und Recht der Franken in Raumer's Historisches Taschenbuch,
1883, p. 52.) According to the Riparian law, the sword, the spear, and
the iron armour of a warrior attained the value of at least twenty-five
cows, or two years of a freeman's labour. A cuirass alone was valued in
the Salic law (Desmichels, quoted by Michelet) at as much as thirty-six
bushels of wheat.
4. The chief wealth of the chieftains, for a long time, was in their
personal domains peopled partly with prisoner slaves, but chiefly in the
above way. On the origin of property see Inama Sternegg's Die Ausbildung
der grossen Grundherrschaften in Deutschland, in Schmoller's
Forschungen, Bd. I., 1878; F. Dahn's Urgeschichte der germanischen und
romanischen Volker, Berlin, 1881; Maurer's Dorfverfassung; Guizot's
Essais sur l'histoire de France; Maine's Village Community; Botta's
Histoire d'Italie; Seebohm, Vinogradov, J. R. Green, etc.
5. See Sir Henry Maine's International Law, London, 1888.
6. Ancient Laws of Ireland, Introduction; E. Nys, Etudes de droit
international, t. i., 1896, pp. 86 seq. Among the Ossetes the arbiters
from three oldest villages enjoy a special reputation (M. Kovalevsky's
Modern Custom and Old Law, Moscow, 1886, ii. 217, Russian).
7. It is permissible to think that this conception (related to the
conception of tanistry) played an important part in the life of the
period; but research has not yet been directed that way.
8. It was distinctly stated in the charter of St. Quentin of the year
1002 that the ransom for houses which had to be demolished for crimes
went for the city walls. The same destination was given to the Ungeld in
German cities. At Pskov the cathedral was the bank for the fines, and
from this fund money was taken for the wails.
9. Sohm, Frankische Rechts-und Gerichtsverfassung, p. 23; also Nitzsch,
Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, i. 78.
10. See the excellent remarks on this subject in Augustin Thierry's
Lettres sur l'histoire de France. 7th Letter. The barbarian translations
of parts of the Bible are extremely instructive on this point.
11. Thirty-six times more than a noble, according to the Anglo-Saxon
law. In the code of Rothari the slaying of a king is, however, punished
by death; but (apart from Roman influence) this new disposition was
introduced (in 646) in the Lombardian law--as remarked by Leo and
Botta--to cover the king from blood revenge. The king being at that time
the executioner of his own sentences (as the tribe formerly was of its
own sentences), he had to be protected by a special disposition, the
more so as several Lombardian kings before Rothari had been slain in
succession (Leo and Botta, l.c., i. 66-90).
12. Kaufmann, Deutsche Geschichte, Bd. I. "Die Germanen der Urzeit," p.
133.
13. Dr. F. Dahn, Urgeschichte der germanischen und romanischen Volker,
Berlin, 1881, Bd. I. 96.
14. If I thus follow the views long since advocated by Maurer
(Geschichte der Stadteverfassung in Deutschland, Erlangen, 1869), it is
because he has fully proved the uninterrupted evolution from the village
community to the mediaeval city, and that his views alone can explain
the universality of the communal movement. Savigny and Eichhorn and
their followers have certainly proved that the traditions of the Roman
municipia had never totally disappeared. But they took no account of the
village community period which the barbarians lived through before they
had any cities. The fact is, that whenever mankind made a new start in
civilization, in Greece, Rome, or middle Europe, it passed through the
same stages--the tribe, the village community, the free city, the
state--each one naturally evolving out of the preceding stage. Of
course, the experience of each preceding civilization was never lost.
Greece (itself influenced by Eastern civilizations) influenced Rome, and
Rome influenced our civilization; but each of them begin from the same
beginning--the tribe. And just as we cannot say that our states are
continuations of the Roman state, so also can we not say that the
mediaeval cities of Europe (including Scandinavia and Russia) were a
continuation of the Roman cities. They were a continuation of the
barbarian village community, influenced to a certain extent by the
traditions of the Roman towns.
15. M. Kovalevsky, Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia (Ilchester
Lectures, London, 1891, Lecture 4).
16. A considerable amount of research had to be done before this
character of the so-called udyelnyi period was properly established by
the works of Byelaeff (Tales from Russian History), Kostomaroff (The
Beginnings of Autocracy in Russia), and especially Professor Sergievich
(The Vyeche and the Prince). The English reader may find some
information about this period in the just-named work of M. Kovalevsky,
in Rambaud's History of Russia, and, in a short summary, in the article
"Russia" of the last edition of Chambers's Encyclopaedia.
17. Ferrari, Histoire des revolutions d'Italie, i. 257; Kallsen, Die
deutschen Stadte im Mittelalter, Bd. I. (Halle, 1891).
18. See the excellent remarks of Mr. G.L. Gomme as regards the folkmote
of London (The Literature of Local Institutions, London, 1886, p. 76).
It must, however, be remarked that in royal cities the folkmote never
attained the independence which it assumed elsewhere. It is even certain
that Moscow and Paris were chosen by the kings and the Church as the
cradles of the future royal authority in the State, because they did not
possess the tradition of folkmotes accustomed to act as sovereign in all
matters.
19. A. Luchaire, Les Communes francaises; also Kluckohn, Geschichte des
Gottesfrieden, 1857. L. Semichon (La paix et la treve de Dieu, 2 vols.,
Paris, 1869) has tried to represent the communal movement as issued from
that institution. In reality, the treuga Dei, like the league started
under Louis le Gros for the defence against both the robberies of the
nobles and the Norman invasions, was a thoroughly popular movement. The
only historian who mentions this last league--that is,
Vitalis--describes it as a "popular community" ("Considerations sur
l'histoire de France," in vol. iv. of Aug. Thierry's OEuvres, Paris,
1868, p. 191 and note).
20. Ferrari, i. 152, 263, etc.
21. Perrens, Histoire de Florence, i. 188; Ferrari, l.c., i. 283.
22. Aug. Thierry, Essai sur l'histoire du Tiers Etat, Paris, 1875, p.
414, note.
23. F. Rocquain, "La Renaissance au XIIe siecle," in Etudes sur
l'histoire de France, Paris, 1875, pp. 55-117.
24. N. Kostomaroff, "The Rationalists of the Twelfth Century," in his
Monographies and Researches (Russian).
25. Very interesting facts relative to the universality of guilds will
be found in "Two Thousand Years of Guild Life," by Rev. J. M. Lambert,
Hull, 1891. On the Georgian amkari, see S. Eghiazarov, Gorodskiye Tsekhi
("Organization of Transcaucasian Amkari"), in Memoirs of the Caucasian
Geographical Society, xiv. 2, 1891.
26. J.D. Wunderer's "Reisebericht" in Fichard's Frankfurter Archiv, ii.
245; quoted by Janssen, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, i. 355.
27. Dr. Leonard Ennen, Der Dom zu Koln, Historische Einleitung, Koln,
1871, pp. 46, 50.
28. See previous chapter.
29. Kofod Ancher, Om gamle Danske Gilder og deres Undergang, Copenhagen,
1785. Statutes of a Knu guild.
30. Upon the position of women in guilds, see Miss Toulmin Smith's
introductory remarks to the English Guilds of her father. One of the
Cambridge statutes (p. 281) of the year 1503 is quite positive in the
following sentence: "Thys statute is made by the comyne assent of all
the bretherne and sisterne of alhallowe yelde."
31. In medieval times, only secret aggression was treated as a murder.
Blood-revenge in broad daylight was justice; and slaying in a quarrel
was not murder, once the aggressor showed his willingness to repent and
to repair the wrong he had done. Deep traces of this distinction still
exist in modern criminal law, especially in Russia.
32. Kofod Ancher, l.c. This old booklet contains much that has been lost
sight of by later explorers.
33. They played an important part in the revolts of the serfs, and were
therefore prohibited several times in succession in the second half of
the ninth century. Of course, the king's prohibitions remained a dead
letter.
34. The medieval Italian painters were also organized in guilds, which
became at a later epoch Academies of art. If the Italian art of those
times is impressed with so much individuality that we distinguish, even
now, between the different schools of Padua, Bassano, Treviso, Verona,
and so on, although all these cities were under the sway of Venice, this
was due--J. Paul Richter remarks--to the fact that the painters of each
city belonged to a separate guild, friendly with the guilds of other
towns, but leading a separate existence. The oldest guild-statute known
is that of Verona, dating from 1303, but evidently copied from some much
older statute. "Fraternal assistance in necessity of whatever kind,"
"hospitality towards strangers, when passing through the town, as thus
information may be obtained about matters which one may like to learn,"
and "obligation of offering comfort in case of debility" are among the
obligations of the members (Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1890, and Aug.
1892).
35. The chief works on the artels are named in the article "Russia" of
the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition, p. 84.
36. See, for instance, the texts of the Cambridge guilds given by
Toulmin Smith (English Guilds, London, 1870, pp. 274-276), from which it
appears that the "generall and principall day" was the "eleccioun day;"
or, Ch. M. Clode's The Early History of the Guild of the Merchant
Taylors, London, 1888, i. 45; and so on. For the renewal of allegiance,
see the Jomsviking saga, mentioned in Pappenheim's Altdanische
Schutzgilden, Breslau, 1885, p. 67. It appears very probable that when
the guilds began to be prosecuted, many of them inscribed in their
statutes the meal day only, or their pious duties, and only alluded to
the judicial function of the guild in vague words; but this function did
not disappear till a very much later time. The question, "Who will be my
judge?" has no meaning now, since the State has appropriated for its
bureaucracy the organization of justice; but it was of primordial
importance in medieval times, the more so as self-jurisdiction meant
self-administration. It must also be remarked that the translation of
the Saxon and Danish "guild-bretheren," or "brodre," by the Latin
convivii must also have contributed to the above confusion.
37. See the excellent remarks upon the frith guild by J.R. Green and
Mrs. Green in The Conquest of England, London, 1883, pp. 229-230.
38. None
39. Recueil des ordonnances des rois de France, t. xii. 562; quoted by
Aug. Thierry in Considerations sur l'histoire de France, p. 196, ed.
12mo.
40. A. Luchaire, Les Communes francaises, pp, 45-46.
41. Guilbert de Nogent, De vita sua, quoted by Luchaire, l.c., p. 14.
42. Lebret, Histoire de Venise, i. 393; also Marin, quoted by Leo and
Botta in Histoire de l'Italie, French edition, 1844, t. i 500.
43. Dr. W. Arnold, Verfassungsgeschichte der deutschen Freistadte, 1854,
Bd. ii. 227 seq.; Ennen, Geschichte der Stadt Koeln, Bd. i. 228-229;
also the documents published by Ennen and Eckert.
44. Conquest of England, 1883, p. 453.
45. Byelaeff, Russian History, vols. ii. and iii.
46. W. Gramich, Verfassungs und Verwaltungsgeschichte der Stadt Wurzburg
im 13. bis zum 15. Jahrhundert, Wurzburg, 1882, p. 34.
47. When a boat brought a cargo of coal to Wurzburg, coal could only be
sold in retail during the first eight days, each family being entitled
to no more than fifty basketfuls. The remaining cargo could be sold
wholesale, but the retailer was allowed to raise a zittlicher profit
only, the unzittlicher, or dishonest profit, being strictly forbidden
(Gramich, l.c.). Same in London (Liber albus, quoted by Ochenkowski, p.
161), and, in fact, everywhere.
48. See Fagniez, Etudes sur l'industrie et la classe industrielle a
Paris au XIIIme et XIVme siecle, Paris, 1877, pp. 155 seq. It hardly
need be added that the tax on bread, and on beer as well, was settled
after careful experiments as to the quantity of bread and beer which
could be obtained from a given amount of corn. The Amiens archives
contain the minutes of such experiences (A. de Calonne, l.c. pp. 77,
93). Also those of London (Ochenkowski, England's wirthschaftliche
Entwickelung, etc., Jena, 1879, p. 165).
49. Ch. Gross, The Guild Merchant, Oxford, 1890, i. 135. His documents
prove that this practice existed in Liverpool (ii. 148-150), Waterford
in Ireland, Neath in Wales, and Linlithgow and Thurso in Scotland. Mr.
Gross's texts also show that the purchases were made for distribution,
not only among the merchant burgesses, but "upon all citsains and
commynalte" (p. 136, note), or, as the Thurso ordinance of the
seventeenth century runs, to "make offer to the merchants, craftsmen,
and inhabitants of the said burgh, that they may have their proportion
of the same, according to their necessitys and ability."
50. The Early History of the Guild of Merchant Taylors, by Charles M.
Clode, London, 1888, i. 361, appendix 10; also the following appendix
which shows that the same purchases were made in 1546.
51. Cibrario, Les conditions economiques de l'Italie au temps de Dante,
Paris, 1865, p. 44.
52. A. de Calonne, La vie municipale au XVme siecle dans le Nord de la
France, Paris, 1880, pp. 12-16. In 1485 the city permitted the export to
Antwerp of a certain quantity of corn, "the inhabitants of Antwerp being
always ready to be agreeable to the merchants and burgesses of Amiens"
(ibid., pp. 75-77 and texts).
53. A. Babeau, La ville sous l'ancien regime, Paris, 1880.
54. Ennen, Geschichte der Stadt Koln, i. 491, 492, also texts.