MUTUAL AID IN THE MEDIAEVAL CITY (continued)
Likeness and diversity among the medieval cities. The craftguilds:
State-attributes in each of them. Attitude of the city towards the
peasants; attempts to free them. The lords. Results achieved by the
medieval city: in arts, in learning. Causes of decay.
The medieval cities were not organized upon some preconceived plan in
obedience to the will of an outside legislator. Each of them was a
natural growth in the full sense of the word--an always varying result
of struggle between various forces which adjusted and re-adjusted
themselves in conformity with their relative energies, the chances of
their conflicts, and the support they found in their surroundings.
Therefore, there are not two cities whose inner organization and
destinies would have been identical. Each one, taken separately, varies
from century to century. And yet, when we cast a broad glance upon all
the cities of Europe, the local and national unlikenesses disappear, and
we are struck to find among all of them a wonderful resemblance,
although each has developed for itself, independently from the others,
and in different conditions. A small town in the north of Scotland, with
its population of coarse labourers and fishermen; a rich city of
Flanders, with its world-wide commerce, luxury, love of amusement and
animated life; an Italian city enriched by its intercourse with the
East, and breeding within its walls a refined artistic taste and
civilization; and a poor, chiefly agricultural, city in the marsh and
lake district of Russia, seem to have little in common. And
nevertheless, the leading lines of their organization, and the spirit
which animates them, are imbued with a strong family likeness.
Everywhere we see the same federations of small communities and guilds,
the same "sub-towns" round the mother city, the same folkmote, and the
same insigns of its independence. The defensor of the city, under
different names and in different accoutrements, represents the same
authority and interests; food supplies, labour and commerce, are
organized on closely similar lines; inner and outer struggles are fought
with like ambitions; nay, the very formulae used in the struggles, as
also in the annals, the ordinances, and the rolls, are identical; and
the architectural monuments, whether Gothic, Roman, or Byzantine in
style, express the same aspirations and the same ideals; they are
conceived and built in the same way. Many dissemblances are mere
differences of age, and those disparities between sister cities which
are real are repeated in different parts of Europe. The unity of the
leading idea and the identity of origin make up for differences of
climate, geographical situation, wealth, language and religion. This is
why we can speak of the medieval city as of a well-defined phase of
civilization; and while every research insisting upon local and
individual differences is most welcome, we may still indicate the chief
lines of development which are common to all cities.(1)
There is no doubt that the protection which used to be accorded to the
market-place from the earliest barbarian times has played an important,
though not an exclusive, part in the emancipation of the medieval city.
The early barbarians knew no trade within their village communities;
they traded with strangers only, at certain definite spots, on certain
determined days. And, in order that the stranger might come to the
barter-place without risk of being slain for some feud which might be
running between two kins, the market was always placed under the special
protection of all kins. It was inviolable, like the place of worship
under the shadow of which it was held. With the Kabyles it is still
annaya, like the footpath along which women carry water from the well;
neither must be trodden upon in arms, even during inter-tribal wars. In
medieval times the market universally enjoyed the same protection.(2) No
feud could be prosecuted on the place whereto people came to trade, nor
within a certain radius from it; and if a quarrel arose in the motley
crowd of buyers and sellers, it had to be brought before those under
whose protection the market stood--the community's tribunal, or the
bishop's, the lord's, or the king's judge. A stranger who came to trade
was a guest, and he went on under this very name. Even the lord who had
no scruples about robbing a merchant on the high road, respected the
Weichbild, that is, the pole which stood in the market-place and bore
either the king's arms, or a glove, or the image of the local saint, or
simply a cross, according to whether the market was under the protection
of the king, the lord, the local church, or the folkmote--the vyeche.(3)
It is easy to understand how the self-jurisdiction of the city could
develop out of the special jurisdiction in the market-place, when this
last right was conceded, willingly or not, to the city itself. And such
an origin of the city's liberties, which can be traced in very many
cases, necessarily laid a special stamp upon their subsequent
development. It gave a predominance to the trading part of the
community. The burghers who possessed a house in the city at the time
being, and were co-owners in the town-lands, constituted very often a
merchant guild which held in its hands the city's trade; and although at
the outset every burgher, rich and poor, could make part of the merchant
guild, and the trade itself seems to have been carried on for the entire
city by its trustees, the guild gradually became a sort of privileged
body. It jealously prevented the outsiders who soon began to flock into
the free cities from entering the guild, and kept the advantages
resulting from trade for the few "families" which had been burghers at
the time of the emancipation. There evidently was a danger of a merchant
oligarchy being thus constituted. But already in the tenth, and still
more during the two next centuries, the chief crafts, also organized in
guilds, were powerful enough to check the oligarchic tendencies of the
merchants.
The craft guild was then a common seller of its produce and a common
buyer of the raw materials, and its members were merchants and manual
workers at the same time. Therefore, the predominance taken by the old
craft guilds from the very beginnings of the free city life guaranteed
to manual labour the high position which it afterwards occupied in the
city.(4) In fact, in a medieval city manual labour was no token of
inferiority; it bore, on the contrary, traces of the high respect it had
been kept in in the village community. Manual labour in a "mystery" was
considered as a pious duty towards the citizens: a public function
(Amt), as honourable as any other. An idea of "justice" to the
community, of "right" towards both producer and consumer, which would
seem so extravagant now, penetrated production and exchange. The
tanner's, the cooper's, or the shoemaker's work must be "just," fair,
they wrote in those times. Wood, leather or thread which are used by the
artisan must be "right"; bread must be baked "in justice," and so on.
Transport this language into our present life, and it would seem
affected and unnatural; but it was natural and unaffected then, because
the medieval artisan did not produce for an unknown buyer, or to throw
his goods into an unknown market. He produced for his guild first; for a
brotherhood of men who knew each other, knew the technics of the craft,
and, in naming the price of each product, could appreciate the skill
displayed in its fabrication or the labour bestowed upon it. Then the
guild, not the separate producer, offered the goods for sale in the
community, and this last, in its turn, offered to the brotherhood of
allied communities those goods which were exported, and assumed
responsibility for their quality. With such an organization, it was the
ambition of each craft not to offer goods of inferior quality, and
technical defects or adulterations became a matter concerning the whole
community, because, an ordinance says, "they would destroy public
confidence."(5) Production being thus a social duty, placed under the
control of the whole amitas, manual labour could not fall into the
degraded condition which it occupies now, so long as the free city was
living.
A difference between master and apprentice, or between master and worker
(compayne, Geselle), existed but in the medieval cities from their very
beginnings; this was at the outset a mere difference of age and skill,
not of wealth and power. After a seven years' apprenticeship, and after
having proved his knowledge and capacities by a work of art, the
apprentice became a master himself. And only much later, in the
sixteenth century, after the royal power had destroyed the city and the
craft organization, was it possible to become master in virtue of simple
inheritance or wealth. But this was also the time of a general decay in
medieval industries and art.
There was not much room for hired work in the early flourishing periods
of the medieval cities, still less for individual hirelings. The work of
the weavers, the archers, the smiths, the bakers, and so on, was
performed for the craft and the city; and when craftsmen were hired in
the building trades, they worked as temporary corporations (as they
still do in the Russian artels), whose work was paid en bloc. Work for a
master began to multiply only later on; but even in this case the worker
was paid better than he is paid now, even in this country, and very much
better than he used to be paid all over Europe in the first half of this
century. Thorold Rogers has familiarized English readers with this idea;
but the same is true for the Continent as well, as is shown by the
researches of Falke and Schonberg, and by many occasional indications.
Even in the fifteenth century a mason, a carpenter, or a smith worker
would be paid at Amiens four sols a day, which corresponded to
forty-eight pounds of bread, or to the eighth part of a small ox
(bouvard). In Saxony, the salary of the Geselle in the building trade
was such that, to put it in Falke's words, he could buy with his six
days' wages three sheep and one pair of shoes.(6) The donations of
workers (Geselle) to cathedrals also bear testimony of their relative
well-being, to say nothing of the glorious donations of certain craft
guilds nor of what they used to spend in festivities and pageants.(7) In
fact, the more we learn about the medieval city, the more we are
convinced that at no time has labour enjoyed such conditions of
prosperity and such respect as when city life stood at its highest.
More than that; not only many aspirations of our modern radicals were
already realized in the middle ages, but much of what is described now
as Utopian was accepted then as a matter of fact. We are laughed at when
we say that work must be pleasant, but--"every one must be pleased with
his work," a medieval Kuttenberg ordinance says, "and no one shall,
while doing nothing (mit nichts thun), appropriate for himself what
others have produced by application and work, because laws must be a
shield for application and work."(8) And amidst all present talk about
an eight hours' day, it may be well to remember an ordinance of
Ferdinand the First relative to the Imperial coal mines, which settled
the miner's day at eight hours, "as it used to be of old" (wie vor
Alters herkommen), and work on Saturday afternoon was prohibited. Longer
hours were very rare, we are told by Janssen, while shorter hours were
of common occurrence. In this country, in the fifteenth century, Rogers
says, "the workmen worked only forty-eight hours a week."(9) The
Saturday half-holiday, too, which we consider as a modern conquest, was
in reality an old medieval institution; it was bathing-time for a great
part of the community, while Wednesday afternoon was bathing-time for
the Geselle.(10) And although school meals did not exist--probably
because no children went hungry to school--a distribution of bath-money
to the children whose parents found difficulty in providing it was
habitual in several places. As to Labour Congresses, they also were a
regular Feature of the middles ages. In some parts of Germany craftsmen
of the same trade, belonging to different communes, used to come
together every year to discuss questions relative to their trade, the
years of apprenticeship, the wandering years, the wages, and so on; and
in 1572, the Hanseatic towns formally recognized the right of the crafts
to come together at periodical congresses, and to take any resolutions,
so long as they were not contrary to the cities' rolls, relative to the
quality of goods. Such Labour Congresses, partly international like the
Hansa itself, are known to have been held by bakers, founders, smiths,
tanners, sword-makers and cask-makers.(11)
The craft organization required, of course, a close supervision of the
craftsmen by the guild, and special jurates were always nominated for
that purpose. But it is most remarkable that, so long as the cities
lived their free life, no complaints were heard about the supervision;
while, after the State had stepped in, confiscating the property of the
guilds and destroying their independence in favour of its own
bureaucracy, the complaints became simply countless.(12) On the other
hand, the immensity of progress realized in all arts under the mediaeval
guild system is the best proof that the system was no hindrance to
individual initiative.(13) The fact is, that the medieval guild, like
the medieval parish, "street," or "quarter," was not a body of citizens,
placed under the control of State functionaries; it was a union of all
men connected with a given trade: jurate buyers of raw produce, sellers
of manufactured goods, and artisans--masters, "compaynes," and
apprentices. For the inner organization of the trade its assembly was
sovereign, so long as it did not hamper the other guilds, in which case
the matter was brought before the guild of the guilds--the city. But
there was in it something more than that. It had its own
self-jurisdiction, its own military force, its own general assemblies,
its own traditions of struggles, glory, and independence, its own
relations with other guilds of the same trade in other cities: it had,
in a word, a full organic life which could only result from the
integrality of the vital functions. When the town was called to arms,
the guild appeared as a separate company (Schaar), armed with its own
arms (or its own guns, lovingly decorated by the guild, at a subsequent
epoch), under its own self-elected commanders. It was, in a word, as
independent a unit of the federation as the republic of Uri or Geneva
was fifty years ago in the Swiss Confederation. So that, to compare it
with a modern trade union, divested of all attributes of State
sovereignty, and reduced to a couple of functions of secondary
importance, is as unreasonable as to compare Florence or Brugge with a
French commune vegetating under the Code Napoleon, or with a Russian
town placed under Catherine the Second's municipal law. Both have
elected mayors, and the latter has also its craft corporations; but the
difference is--all the difference that exists between Florence and
Fontenay-les-Oies or Tsarevokokshaisk, or between a Venetian doge and a
modern mayor who lifts his hat before the sous-prefet's clerk.
The medieval guilds were capable of maintaining their independence; and,
later on, especially in the fourteenth century, when, in consequence of
several causes which shall presently be indicated, the old municipal
life underwent a deep modification, the younger crafts proved strong
enough to conquer their due share in the management of the city affairs.
The masses, organized in "minor" arts, rose to wrest the power out of
the hands of a growing oligarchy, and mostly succeeded in this task,
opening again a new era of prosperity. True, that in some cities the
uprising was crushed in blood, and mass decapitations of workers
followed, as was the case in Paris in 1306, and in Cologne in 1371. In
such cases the city's liberties rapidly fell into decay, and the city
was gradually subdued by the central authority. But the majority of the
towns had preserved enough of vitality to come out of the turmoil with a
new life and vigour.(14) A new period of rejuvenescence was their
reward. New life was infused, and it found its expression in splendid
architectural monuments, in a new period of prosperity, in a sudden
progress of technics and invention, and in a new intellectual movement
leading to the Renaissance and to the Reformation.
The life of a mediaeval city was a succession of hard battles to conquer
liberty and to maintain it. True, that a strong and tenacious race of
burghers had developed during those fierce contests; true, that love and
worship of the mother city had been bred by these struggles, and that
the grand things achieved by the mediaeval communes were a direct
outcome of that love. But the sacrifices which the communes had to
sustain in the battle for freedom were, nevertheless, cruel, and left
deep traces of division on their inner life as well. Very few cities had
succeeded, under a concurrence of favourable circumstances, in obtaining
liberty at one stroke, and these few mostly lost it equally easily;
while the great number had to fight fifty or a hundred years in
succession, often more, before their rights to free life had been
recognized, and another hundred years to found their liberty on a firm
basis--the twelfth century charters thus being but one of the
stepping-stones to freedom.(15) In reality, the mediaeval city was a
fortified oasis amidst a country plunged into feudal submission, and it
had to make room for itself by the force of its arms. In consequence of
the causes briefly alluded to in the preceding chapter, each village
community had gradually fallen under the yoke of some lay or clerical
lord. His house had grown to be a castle, and his brothers-in-arms were
now the scum of adventurers, always ready to plunder the peasants. In
addition to three days a week which the peasants had to work for the
lord, they had also to bear all sorts of exactions for the right to sow
and to crop, to be gay or sad, to live, to marry, or to die. And, worst
of all, they were continually plundered by the armed robbers of some
neighbouring lord, who chose to consider them as their master's kin, and
to take upon them, and upon their cattle and crops, the revenge for a
feud he was fighting against their owner. Every meadow, every field,
every river, and road around the city, and every man upon the land was
under some lord.
The hatred of the burghers towards the feudal barons has found a most
characteristic expression in the wording of the different charters which
they compelled them to sign. Heinrich V. is made to sign in the charter
granted to Speier in 1111, that he frees the burghers from "the horrible
and execrable law of mortmain, through which the town has been sunk into
deepest poverty" (von dem scheusslichen und nichtswurdigen Gesetze,
welches gemein Budel genannt wird, Kallsen, i. 307). The coutume of
Bayonne, written about 1273, contains such passages as these: "The
people is anterior to the lords. It is the people, more numerous than
all others, who, desirous of peace, has made the lords for bridling and
knocking down the powerful ones," and so on (Giry, Etablissements de
Rouen, i. 117, Quoted by Luchaire, p. 24). A charter submitted for King
Robert's signature is equally characteristic. He is made to say in it:
"I shall rob no oxen nor other animals. I shall seize no merchants, nor
take their moneys, nor impose ransom. From Lady Day to the All Saints'
Day I shall seize no horse, nor mare, nor foals, in the meadows. I shall
not burn the mills, nor rob the flour ... I shall offer no protection to
thieves," etc. (Pfister has published that document, reproduced by
Luchaire). The charter "granted" by the Besancon Archbishop Hugues, in
which he has been compelled to enumerate all the mischiefs due to his
mortmain rights, is equally characteristic.(16) And so on.
Freedom could not be maintained in such surroundings, and the cities
were compelled to carry on the war outside their walls. The burghers
sent out emissaries to lead revolt in the villages; they received
villages into their corporations, and they waged direct war against the
nobles. It Italy, where the land was thickly sprinkled with feudal
castles, the war assumed heroic proportions, and was fought with a stern
acrimony on both sides. Florence sustained for seventy-seven years a
succession of bloody wars, in order to free its contado from the nobles;
but when the conquest had been accomplished (in 1181) all had to begin
anew. The nobles rallied; they constituted their own leagues in
opposition to the leagues of the towns, and, receiving fresh support
from either the Emperor or the Pope, they made the war last for another
130 years. The same took place in Rome, in Lombardy, all over Italy.
Prodigies of valour, audacity, and tenaciousness were displayed by the
citizens in these wars. But the bows and the hatchets of the arts and
crafts had not always the upper hand in their encounters with the
armour-clad knights, and many castles withstood the ingenious
siege-machinery and the perseverance of the citizens. Some cities, like
Florence, Bologna, and many towns in France, Germany, and Bohemia,
succeeded in emancipating the surrounding villages, and they were
rewarded for their efforts by an extraordinary prosperity and
tranquillity. But even here, and still more in the less strong or less
impulsive towns, the merchants and artisans, exhausted by war, and
misunderstanding their own interests, bargained over the peasants'
heads. They compelled the lord to swear allegiance to the city; his
country castle was dismantled, and he agreed to build a house and to
reside in the city, of which he became a co-burgher (com-bourgeois,
con-cittadino); but he maintained in return most of his rights upon the
peasants, who only won a partial relief from their burdens. The burgher
could not understand that equal rights of citizenship might be granted
to the peasant upon whose food supplies he had to rely, and a deep rent
was traced between town and village. In some cases the peasants simply
changed owners, the city buying out the barons' rights and selling them
in shares to her own citizens.(17) Serfdom was maintained, and only much
later on, towards the end of the thirteenth century, it was the craft
revolution which undertook to put an end to it, and abolished personal
servitude, but dispossessed at the same time the serfs of the land.(18)
It hardly need be added that the fatal results of such policy were soon
felt by the cities themselves; the country became the city's enemy.
The war against the castles had another bad effect. It involved the
cities in a long succession of mutual wars, which have given origin to
the theory, till lately in vogue, namely, that the towns lost their
independence through their own jealousies and mutual fights. The
imperialist historians have especially supported this theory, which,
however, is very much undermined now by modern research. It is certain
that in Italy cities fought each other with a stubborn animosity, but
nowhere else did such contests attain the same proportions; and in Italy
itself the city wars, especially those of the earlier period, had their
special causes. They were (as was already shown by Sismondi and Ferrari)
a mere continuation of the war against the castles--the free municipal
and federative principle unavoidably entering into a fierce contest with
feudalism, imperialism, and papacy. Many towns which had but partially
shaken off the yoke of the bishop, the lord, or the Emperor, were simply
driven against the free cities by the nobles, the Emperor, and Church,
whose policy was to divide the cities and to arm them against each
other. These special circumstances (partly reflected on to Germany also)
explain why the Italian towns, some of which sought support with the
Emperor to combat the Pope, while the others sought support from the
Church to resist the Emperor, were soon divided into a Gibelin and a
Guelf camp, and why the same division appeared in each separate
city.(19)
The immense economical progress realized by most italian cities just at
the time when these wars were hottest,(20) and the alliances so easily
concluded between towns, still better characterize those struggles and
further undermine the above theory. Already in the years 1130-1150
powerful leagues came into existence; and a few years later, when
Frederick Barbarossa invaded Italy and, supported by the nobles and some
retardatory cities, marched against Milan, popular enthusiasm was roused
in many towns by popular preachers. Crema, Piacenza, Brescia, Tortona,
etc., went to the rescue; the banners of the guilds of Verona, Padua,
Vicenza, and Trevisa floated side by side in the cities' camp against
the banners of the Emperor and the nobles. Next year the Lombardian
League came into existence, and sixty years later we see it reinforced
by many other cities, and forming a lasting organization which had half
of its federal war-chest in Genoa and the other half in Venice.(21) In
Tuscany, Florence headed another powerful league, to which Lucca,
Bologna, Pistoia, etc., belonged, and which played an important part in
crushing down the nobles in middle Italy, while smaller leagues were of
common occurrence. It is thus certain that although petty jealousies
undoubtedly existed, and discord could be easily sown, they did not
prevent the towns from uniting together for the common defence of
liberty. Only later on, when separate cities became little States, wars
broke out between them, as always must be the case when States struggle
for supremacy or colonies.
Similar leagues were formed in Germany for the same purpose. When, under
the successors of Conrad, the land was the prey of interminable feuds
between the nobles, the Westphalian towns concluded a league against the
knights, one of the clauses of which was never to lend money to a knight
who would continue to conceal stolen goods.(22) When "the knights and
the nobles lived on plunder, and murdered whom they chose to murder," as
the Wormser Zorn complains, the cities on the Rhine (Mainz, Cologne,
Speier, Strasburg, and Basel) took the initiative of a league which soon
numbered sixty allied towns, repressed the robbers, and maintained
peace. Later on, the league of the towns of Suabia, divided into three
"peace districts" (Augsburg, Constance, and Ulm), had the same purpose.
And even when such leagues were broken,(23) they lived long enough to
show that while the supposed peacemakers--the kings, the emperors, and
the Church-fomented discord, and were themselves helpless against the
robber knights, it was from the cities that the impulse came for
re-establishing peace and union. The cities--not the emperors--were the
real makers of the national unity.(24)
Similar federations were organized for the same purpose among small
villages, and now that attention has been drawn to this subject by
Luchaire we may expect soon to learn much more about them. Villages
joined into small federations in the contado of Florence, so also in the
dependencies of Novgorod and Pskov. As to France, there is positive
evidence of a federation of seventeen peasant villages which has existed
in the Laonnais for nearly a hundred years (till 1256), and has fought
hard for its independence. Three more peasant republics, which had sworn
charters similar to those of Laon and Soissons, existed in the
neighbourhood of Laon, and, their territories being contiguous, they
supported each other in their liberation wars. Altogether, Luchaire is
of the opinion that many such federations must have come into existence
in France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but that documents
relative to them are mostly lost. Of course, being unprotected by walls,
they could easily be crushed down by the kings and the lords; but in
certain favourable circumstances, when they found support in a league of
towns and protection in their mountains, such peasant republics became
independent units of the Swiss Confederation.(25)
As to unions between cities for peaceful purposes, they were of quite
common occurrence. The intercourse which had been established during the
period of liberation was not interrupted afterwards. Sometimes, when the
scabini of a German town, having to pronounce judgment in a new or
complicated case, declared that they knew not the sentence (des
Urtheiles nicht weise zu sein), they sent delegates to another city to
get the sentence. The same happened also in France;(26) while Forli and
Ravenna are known to have mutually naturalized their citizens and
granted them full rights in both cities. To submit a contest arisen
between two towns, or within a city, to another commune which was
invited to act as arbiter, was also in the spirit of the times.(27) As
to commercial treaties between cities, they were quite habitual.(28)
Unions for regulating the production and the sizes of casks which were
used for the commerce in wine, "herring unions," and so on, were mere
precursors of the great commercial federations of the Flemish Hansa,
and, later on, of the great North German Hansa, the history of which
alone might contribute pages and pages to illustrate the federation
spirit which permeated men at that time. It hardly need be added, that
through the Hanseatic unions the medieval cities have contributed more
to the development of international intercourse, navigation, and
maritime discovery than all the States of the first seventeen centuries
of our era.
In a word, federations between small territorial units, as well as among
men united by common pursuits within their respective guilds, and
federations between cities and groups of cities constituted the very
essence of life and thought during that period. The first five of the
second decade of centuries of our era may thus be described as an
immense attempt at securing mutual aid and support on a grand scale, by
means of the principles of federation and association carried on through
all manifestations of human life and to all possible degrees. This
attempt was attended with success to a very great extent. It united men
formerly divided; it secured them a very great deal of freedom, and it
tenfolded their forces. At a time when particularism was bred by so many
agencies, and the causes of discord and jealousy might have been so
numerous, it is gratifying to see that cities scattered over a wide
continent had so much in common, and were so ready to confederate for
the prosecution of so many common aims. They succumbed in the long run
before powerful enemies; not having understood the mutual-aid principle
widely enough, they themselves committed fatal faults; but they did not
perish through their own jealousies, and their errors were not a want of
federation spirit among themselves.
The results of that new move which mankind made in the medieval city
were immense. At the beginning of the eleventh century the towns of
Europe were small clusters of miserable huts, adorned but with low
clumsy churches, the builders of which hardly knew how to make an arch;
the arts, mostly consisting of some weaving and forging, were in their
infancy; learning was found in but a few monasteries. Three hundred and
fifty years later, the very face of Europe had been changed. The land
was dotted with rich cities, surrounded by immense thick walls which
were embellished by towers and gates, each of them a work of art in
itself. The cathedrals, conceived in a grand style and profusely
decorated, lifted their bell-towers to the skies, displaying a purity of
form and a boldness of imagination which we now vainly strive to attain.
The crafts and arts had risen to a degree of perfection which we can
hardly boast of having superseded in many directions, if the inventive
skill of the worker and the superior finish of his work be appreciated
higher than rapidity of fabrication. The navies of the free cities
furrowed in all directions the Northern and the Southern Mediterranean;
one effort more, and they would cross the oceans. Over large tracts of
land well-being had taken the place of misery; learning had grown and
spread. The methods of science had been elaborated; the basis of natural
philosophy had been laid down; and the way had been paved for all the
mechanical inventions of which our own times are so proud. Such were the
magic changes accomplished in Europe in less than four hundred years.
And the losses which Europe sustained through the loss of its free
cities can only be understood when we compare the seventeenth century
with the fourteenth or the thirteenth. The prosperity which formerly
characterized Scotland, Germany, the plains of Italy, was gone. The
roads had fallen into an abject state, the cities were depopulated,
labour was brought into slavery, art had vanished, commerce itself was
decaying.(29)
If the medieval cities had bequeathed to us no written documents to
testify of their splendour, and left nothing behind but the monuments of
building art which we see now all over Europe, from Scotland to Italy,
and from Gerona in Spain to Breslau in Slavonian territory, we might yet
conclude that the times of independent city life were times of the
greatest development of human intellect during the Christian era down to
the end of the eighteenth century. On looking, for instance, at a
medieval picture representing Nuremberg with its scores of towers and
lofty spires, each of which bore the stamp of free creative art, we can
hardly conceive that three hundred years before the town was but a
collection of miserable hovels. And our admiration grows when we go into
the details of the architecture and decorations of each of the countless
churches, bell-towers, gates, and communal houses which are scattered
all over Europe as far east as Bohemia and the now dead towns of Polish
Galicia. Not only Italy, that mother of art, but all Europe is full of
such monuments. The very fact that of all arts architecture--a social
art above all--had attained the highest development, is significant in
itself. To be what it was, it must have originated from an eminently
social life.
Medieval architecture attained its grandeur--not only because it was a
natural development of handicraft; not only because each building, each
architectural decoration, had been devised by men who knew through the
experience of their own hands what artistic effects can be obtained from
stone, iron, bronze, or even from simple logs and mortar; not only
because, each monument was a result of collective experience,
accumulated in each "mystery" or craft(30)--it was grand because it was
born out of a grand idea. Like Greek art, it sprang out of a conception
of brotherhood and unity fostered by the city. It had an audacity which
could only be won by audacious struggles and victories; it had that
expression of vigour, because vigour permeated all the life of the city.
A cathedral or a communal house symbolized the grandeur of an organism
of which every mason and stone-cutter was the builder, and a medieval
building appears--not as a solitary effort to which thousands of slaves
would have contributed the share assigned them by one man's imagination;
all the city contributed to it. The lofty bell-tower rose upon a
structure, grand in itself, in which the life of the city was
throbbing--not upon a meaningless scaffold like the Paris iron tower,
not as a sham structure in stone intended to conceal the ugliness of an
iron frame, as has been done in the Tower Bridge. Like the Acropolis of
Athens, the cathedral of a medieval city was intended to glorify the
grandeur of the victorious city, to symbolize the union of its crafts,
to express the glory of each citizen in a city of his own creation.
After having achieved its craft revolution, the city often began a new
cathedral in order to express the new, wider, and broader union which
had been called into life.
The means at hand for these grand undertakings were disproportionately
small. Cologne Cathedral was begun with a yearly outlay of but 500
marks; a gift of 100 marks was inscribed as a grand donation;(31) and
even when the work approached completion, and gifts poured in in
proportion, the yearly outlay in money stood at about 5,000 marks, and
never exceeded 14,000. The cathedral of Basel was built with equally
small means. But each corporation contributed its part of stone, work,
and decorative genius to their common monument. Each guild expressed in
it its political conceptions, telling in stone or in bronze the history
of the city, glorifying the principles of "Liberty, equality, and
fraternity,"(32) praising the city's allies, and sending to eternal fire
its enemies. And each guild bestowed its love upon the communal monument
by richly decorating it with stained windows, paintings, "gates, worthy
to be the gates of Paradise," as Michel Angelo said, or stone
decorations of each minutest corner of the building.(33) Small cities,
even small parishes,(34) vied with the big agglomerations in this work,
and the cathedrals of Laon and St. Ouen hardly stand behind that of
Rheims, or the Communal House of Bremen, or the folkmote's bell-tower of
Breslau. "No works must be begun by the commune but such as are
conceived in response to the grand heart of the commune, composed of the
hearts of all citizens, united in one common will"--such were the words
of the Council of Florence; and this spirit appears in all communal
works of common utility, such as the canals, terraces, vineyards, and
fruit gardens around Florence, or the irrigation canals which
intersected the plains of Lombardy, or the port and aqueduct of Genoa,
or, in fact, any works of the kind which were achieved by almost every
city.(35)
All arts had progressed in the same way in the medieval cities, those of
our own days mostly being but a continuation of what had grown at that
time. The prosperity of the Flemish cities was based upon the fine
woollen cloth they fabricated. Florence, at the beginning of the
fourteenth century, before the black death, fabricated from 70,000 to
100,000 panni of woollen stuffs, which were valued at 1,200,000 golden
florins.(36) The chiselling of precious metals, the art of casting, the
fine forging of iron, were creations of the mediaeval "mysteries" which
had succeeded in attaining in their own domains all that could be made
by the hand, without the use of a powerful prime motor. By the hand and
by invention, because, to use Whewell's words:
"Parchment and paper, printing and engraving, improved glass and steel,
gunpowder, clocks, telescopes, the mariner's compass, the reformed
calendar, the decimal notation; algebra, trigonometry, chemistry,
counterpoint (an invention equivalent to a new creation of music); these
are all possessions which we inherit from that which has so
disparagingly been termed the Stationary Period" (History of Inductive
Sciences, i. 252).
True that no new principle was illustrated by any of these discoveries,
as Whewell said; but medieval science had done something more than the
actual discovery of new principles. It had prepared the discovery of all
the new principles which we know at the present time in mechanical
sciences: it had accustomed the explorer to observe facts and to reason
from them. It was inductive science, even though it had not yet fully
grasped the importance and the powers of induction; and it laid the
foundations of both mechanics and natural philosophy. Francis Bacon,
Galileo, and Copernicus were the direct descendants of a Roger Bacon and
a Michael Scot, as the steam engine was a direct product of the
researches carried on in the Italian universities on the weight of the
atmosphere, and of the mathematical and technical learning which
characterized Nuremberg.
But why should one take trouble to insist upon the advance of science
and art in the medieval city? Is it not enough to point to the
cathedrals in the domain of skill, and to the Italian language and the
poem of Dante in the domain of thought, to give at once the measure of
what the medieval city created during the four centuries it lived?
The medieval cities have undoubtedly rendered an immense service to
European civilization. They have prevented it from being drifted into
the theocracies and despotical states of old; they have endowed it with
the variety, the self-reliance, the force of initiative, and the immense
intellectual and material energies it now possesses, which are the best
pledge for its being able to resist any new invasion of the East. But
why did these centres of civilization, which attempted to answer to
deeply-seated needs of human nature, and were so full of life, not live
further on? Why were they seized with senile debility in the sixteenth
century? and, after having repulsed so many assaults from without, and
only borrowed new vigour from their interior struggles, why did they
finally succumb to both?
Various causes contributed to this effect, some of them having their
roots in the remote past, while others originated in the mistakes
committed by the cities themselves. Towards the end of the fifteenth
century, mighty States, reconstructed on the old Roman pattern, were
already coming into existence. In each country and each region some
feudal lord, more cunning, more given to hoarding, and often less
scrupulous than his neighbours, had succeeded in appropriating to
himself richer personal domains, more peasants on his lands, more
knights in his following, more treasures in his chest. He had chosen for
his seat a group of happily-situated villages, not yet trained into free
municipal life--Paris, Madrid, or Moscow--and with the labour of his
serfs he had made of them royal fortified cities, whereto he attracted
war companions by a free distribution of villages, and merchants by the
protection he offered to trade. The germ of a future State, which began
gradually to absorb other similar centres, was thus laid. Lawyers,
versed in the study of Roman law, flocked into such centres; a tenacious
and ambitious race of men issued from among the burgesses, who equally
hated the naughtiness of the lords and what they called the lawlessness
of the peasants. The very forms of the village community, unknown to
their code, the very principles of federalism were repulsive to them as
"barbarian" inheritances. Caesarism, supported by the fiction of popular
consent and by the force of arms, was their ideal, and they worked hard
for those who promised to realize it.(37)
The Christian Church, once a rebel against Roman law and now its ally,
worked in the same direction. The attempt at constituting the theocratic
Empire of Europe having proved a failure, the more intelligent and
ambitious bishops now yielded support to those whom they reckoned upon
for reconstituting the power of the Kings of Israel or of the Emperors
of Constantinople. The Church bestowed upon the rising rulers her
sanctity, she crowned them as God's representatives on earth, she
brought to their service the learning and the statesmanship of her
ministers, her blessings and maledictions, her riches, and the
sympathies she had retained among the poor. The peasants, whom the
cities had failed or refused to free, on seeing the burghers impotent to
put an end to the interminable wars between the knights--which wars they
had so dearly to pay for--now set their hopes upon the King, the
Emperor, or the Great Prince; and while aiding them to crush down the
mighty feudal owners, they aided them to constitute the centralized
State. And finally, the invasions of the Mongols and the Turks, the holy
war against the Maures in Spain, as well as the terrible wars which soon
broke out between the growing centres of sovereignty--Ile de France and
Burgundy, Scotland and England, England and France, Lithuania and
Poland, Moscow and Tver, and so on--contributed to the same end. Mighty
States made their appearance; and the cities had now to resist not only
loose federations of lords, but strongly-organized centres, which had
armies of serfs at their disposal.
The worst was, that the growing autocracies found support in the
divisions which had grown within the cities themselves. The fundamental
idea of the medieval city was grand, but it was not wide enough. Mutual
aid and support cannot be limited to a small association; they must
spread to its surroundings, or else the surroundings will absorb the
association. And in this respect the medieval citizen had committed a
formidable mistake at the outset. Instead of looking upon the peasants
and artisans who gathered under the protection of his walls as upon so
many aids who would contribute their part to the making of the city--as
they really did--a sharp division was traced between the "families" of
old burghers and the newcomers. For the former, all benefits from
communal trade and communal lands were reserved, and nothing was left
for the latter but the right of freely using the skill of their own
hands. The city thus became divided into "the burghers" or "the
commonalty," and "the inhabitants."(38) The trade, which was formerly
communal, now became the privilege of the merchant and artisan
"families," and the next step--that of becoming individual, or the
privilege of oppressive trusts--was unavoidable.
The same division took place between the city proper and the surrounding
villages. The commune had well tried to free the peasants, but her wars
against the lords became, as already mentioned, wars for freeing the
city itself from the lords, rather than for freeing the peasants. She
left to the lord his rights over the villeins, on condition that he
would molest the city no more and would become co-burgher. But the
nobles "adopted" by the city, and now residing within its walls, simply
carried on the old war within the very precincts of the city. They
disliked to submit to a tribunal of simple artisans and merchants, and
fought their old feuds in the streets. Each city had now its Colonnas
and Orsinis, its Overstolzes and Wises. Drawing large incomes from the
estates they had still retained, they surrounded themselves with
numerous clients and feudalized the customs and habits of the city
itself. And when discontent began to be felt in the artisan classes of
the town, they offered their sword and their followers to settle the
differences by a free fight, instead of letting the discontent find out
the channels which it did not fail to secure itself in olden times.
The greatest and the most fatal error of most cities was to base their
wealth upon commerce and industry, to the neglect of agriculture. They
thus repeated the error which had once been committed by the cities of
antique Greece, and they fell through it into the same crimes.(39) The
estrangement of so many cities from the land necessarily drew them into
a policy hostile to the land, which became more and more evident in the
times of Edward the Third,(40) the French Jacqueries, the Hussite wars,
and the Peasant War in Germany. On the other hand, a commercial policy
involved them in distant enterprises. Colonies were founded by the
Italians in the south-east, by German cities in the east, by Slavonian
cities in the far northeast. Mercenary armies began to be kept for
colonial wars, and soon for local defence as well. Loans were contacted
to such an extent as to totally demoralize the citizens; and internal
contests grew worse and worse at each election, during which the
colonial politics in the interest of a few families was at stake. The
division into rich and poor grew deeper, and in the sixteenth century,
in each city, the royal authority found ready allies and support among
the poor.
And there is yet another cause of the decay of communal institutions,
which stands higher and lies deeper than all the above. The history of
the medieval cities offers one of the most striking illustrations of the
power of ideas and principles upon the destinies of mankind, and of the
quite opposed results which are obtained when a deep modification of
leading ideas has taken place. Self-reliance and federalism, the
sovereignty of each group, and the construction of the political body
from the simple to the composite, were the leading ideas in the eleventh
century. But since that time the conceptions had entirely changed. The
students of Roman law and the prelates of the Church, closely bound
together since the time of Innocent the Third, had succeeded in
paralyzing the idea--the antique Greek idea--which presided at the
foundation of the cities. For two or three hundred years they taught
from the pulpit, the University chair, and the judges' bench, that
salvation must be sought for in a strongly-centralized State, placed
under a semi-divine authority;(41) that one man can and must be the
saviour of society, and that in the name of public salvation he can
commit any violence: burn men and women at the stake, make them perish
under indescribable tortures, plunge whole provinces into the most
abject misery. Nor did they fail to give object lessons to this effect
on a grand scale, and with an unheard-of cruelty, wherever the king's
sword and the Church's fire, or both at once, could reach. By these
teachings and examples, continually repeated and enforced upon public
attention, the very minds of the citizens had been shaped into a new
mould. They began to find no authority too extensive, no killing by
degrees too cruel, once it was "for public safety." And, with this new
direction of mind and this new belief in one man's power, the old
federalist principle faded away, and the very creative genius of the
masses died out. The Roman idea was victorious, and in such
circumstances the centralized State had in the cities a ready prey.
Florence in the fifteenth century is typical of this change. Formerly a
popular revolution was the signal of a new departure. Now, when the
people, brought to despair, insurged, it had constructive ideas no more;
no fresh idea came out of the movement. A thousand representatives were
put into the Communal Council instead of 400; 100 men entered the
signoria instead of 80. But a revolution of figures could be of no
avail. The people's discontent was growing up, and new revolts followed.
A saviour--the "tyran"--was appealed to; he massacred the rebels, but
the disintegration of the communal body continued worse than ever. And
when, after a new revolt, the people of Florence appealed to their most
popular man, Gieronimo Savonarola, for advice, the monk's answer
was:--"Oh, people mine, thou knowest that I cannot go into State affairs
... purify thy soul, and if in such a disposition of mind thou reformest
thy city, then, people of Florence, thou shalt have inaugurated the
reform in all Italy!" Carnival masks and vicious books were burned, a
law of charity and another against usurers were passed--and the
democracy of Florence remained where it was. The old spirit had gone. By
too much trusting to government, they had ceased to trust to themselves;
they were unable to open new issues. The State had only to step in and
to crush down their last liberties.
And yet, the current of mutual aid and support did not die out in the
masses, it continued to flow even after that defeat. It rose up again
with a formidable force, in answer to the communist appeals of the first
propagandists of the reform, and it continued to exist even after the
masses, having failed to realize the life which they hoped to inaugurate
under the inspiration of a reformed religion, fell under the dominions
of an autocratic power. It flows still even now, and it seeks its way to
find out a new expression which would not be the State, nor the medieval
city, nor the village community of the barbarians, nor the savage clan,
but would proceed from all of them, and yet be superior to them in its
wider and more deeply humane conceptions.
NOTES:
1. The literature of the subject is immense; but there is no work yet
which treats of the medieval city as of a whole. For the French
Communes, Augustin Thierry's Lettres and Considerations sur l'histoire
de France still remain classical, and Luchaire's Communes francaises is
an excellent addition on the same lines. For the cities of Italy, the
great work of Sismondi (Histoire des republiques italiennes du moyen
age, Paris, 1826, 16 vols.), Leo and Botta's History of Italy, Ferrari's
Revolutions d'Italie, and Hegel's Geschichte der Stadteverfassung in
Italien, are the chief sources of general information. For Germany we
have Maurer's Stadteverfassung, Barthold's Geschichte der deutschen
Stadte, and, of recent works, Hegel's Stadte und Gilden der germanischen
Volker (2 vols. Leipzig, 1891), and Dr. Otto Kallsen's Die deutschen
Stadte im Mittelalter (2 vols. Halle, 1891), as also Janssen's
Geschichte des deutschen Volkes (5 vols. 1886), which, let us hope, will
soon be translated into English (French translation in 1892). For
Belgium, A. Wauters, Les Libertes communales (Bruxelles, 1869-78, 3
vols.). For Russia, Byelaeff's, Kostomaroff's and Sergievich's works.
And finally, for England, we posses one of the best works on cities of a
wider region in Mrs. J.R. Green's Town Life in the Fifteenth Century (2
vols. London, 1894). We have, moreover, a wealth of well-known local
histories, and several excellent works of general or economical history
which I have so often mentioned in this and the preceding chapter. The
richness of literature consists, however, chiefly in separate, sometimes
admirable, researches into the history of separate cities, especially
Italian and German; the guilds; the land question; the economical
principles of the time; the economical importance of guilds and crafts;
the leagues between, cities (the Hansa); and communal art. An incredible
wealth of information is contained in works of this second category, of
which only some of the more important are named in these pages.
2. Kulischer, in an excellent essay on primitive trade (Zeitschrift für
Volkerpsychologie, Bd. x. 380), also points out that, according to
Herodotus, the Argippaeans were considered inviolable, because the trade
between the Scythians and the northern tribes took place on their
territory. A fugitive was sacred on their territory, and they were often
asked to act as arbiters for their neighbours. See Appendix XI.
3. Some discussion has lately taken place upon the Weichbild and the
Weichbild-law, which still remain obscure (see Zopfl, Alterthumer des
deutschen Reichs und Rechts, iii. 29; Kallsen, i. 316). The above
explanation seems to be the more probable, but, of course, it must be
tested by further research. It is also evident that, to use a Scotch
expression, the "mercet cross" could be considered as an emblem of
Church jurisdiction, but we find it both in bishop cities and in those
in which the folkmote was sovereign.
4. For all concerning the merchant guild see Mr. Gross's exhaustive
work, The Guild Merchant (Oxford, 1890, 2 vols.); also Mrs. Green's
remarks in Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, vol. ii. chaps. v. viii.
x; and A. Doren's review of the subject in Schmoller's Forschungen, vol.
xii. If the considerations indicated in the previous chapter (according
to which trade was communal at its beginnings) prove to be correct, it
will be permissible to suggest as a probable hypothesis that the guild
merchant was a body entrusted with commerce in the interest of the whole
city, and only gradually became a guild of merchants trading for
themselves; while the merchant adventurers of this country, the Novgorod
povolniki (free colonizers and merchants) and the mercati personati,
would be those to whom it was left to open new markets and new branches
of commerce for themselves. Altogether, it must be remarked that the
origin of the mediaeval city can be ascribed to no separate agency. It
was a result of many agencies in different degrees.
5. Janssen's Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, i. 315; Gramich's
Wurzburg; and, in fact, any collection of ordinances.
6. Falke, Geschichtliche Statistik, i. 373-393, and ii. 66; quoted in
Janssen's Geschichte, i. 339; J.D. Blavignac, in Comptes et depenses de
la construction du clocher de Saint-Nicolas a Fribourg en Suisse, comes
to a similar conclusion. For Amiens, De Calonne's Vie Municipale, p. 99
and Appendix. For a thorough appreciation and graphical representation
of the medieval wages in England and their value in bread and meat, see
G. Steffen's excellent article and curves in The Nineteenth Century for
1891, and Studier ofver lonsystemets historia i England, Stockholm,
1895.
7. To quote but one example out of many which may be found in
Schonberg's and Falke's works, the sixteen shoemaker workers
(Schusterknechte) of the town Xanten, on the Rhine, gave, for erecting a
screen and an altar in the church, 75 guldens of subscriptions, and 12
guldens out of their box, which money was worth, according to the best
valuations, ten times its present value.
8. Quoted by Janssen, l.c. i. 343.
9. The Economical Interpretation of History, London, 1891, p. 303.
10. Janssen, l.c. See also Dr. Alwin Schultz, Deutsches Leben im XIV und
XV Jahrhundert, grosse Ausgabe, Wien, 1892, pp. 67 seq. At Paris, the
day of labour varied from seven to eight hours in the winter to fourteen
hours in summer in certain trades, while in others it was from eight to
nine hours in winter, to from ten to twelve in Summer. All work was
stopped on Saturdays and on about twenty-five other days (jours de
commun de vile foire) at four o'clock, while on Sundays and thirty other
holidays there was no work at all. The general conclusion is, that the
medieval worker worked less hours, all taken, than the present-day
worker (Dr. E. Martin Saint-Leon, Histoire des corporations, p. 121).
11. W. Stieda, "Hansische Vereinbarungen uber stadtisches Gewerbe im XIV
und XV Jahrhundert," in Hansische Geschichtsblatter, Jahrgang 1886, p.
121. Schonberg's Wirthschaftliche Bedeutung der Zunfte; also, partly,
Roscher.
12. See Toulmin Smith's deeply-felt remarks about the royal spoliation
of the guilds, in Miss Smith's Introduction to English Guilds. In France
the same royal spoliation and abolition of the guilds' jurisdiction was
begun from 1306, and the final blow was struck in 1382 (Fagniez, l.c.
pp. 52-54).
13. Adam Smith and his contemporaries knew well what they were
condemning when they wrote against the State interference in trade and
the trade monopolies of State creation. Unhappily, their followers, with
their hopeless superficiality, flung medieval guilds and State
interference into the same sack, making no distinction between a
Versailles edict and a guild ordinance. It hardly need be said that the
economists who have seriously studied the subject, like Schonberg (the
editor of the well-known course of Political Economy), never fell into
such an error. But, till lately, diffuse discussions of the above type
went on for economical "science."
14. In Florence the seven minor arts made their revolution in 1270-82,
and its results are fully described by Perrens (Histoire de Florence,
Paris, 1877, 3 vols.), and especially by Gino Capponi (Storia della
repubblica di Firenze, 2da edizione, 1876, i. 58-80; translated into
German). In Lyons, on the contrary, where the movement of the minor
crafts took place in 1402, the latter were defeated and lost the right
of themselves nominating their own judges. The two parties came
apparently to a compromise. In Rostock the same movement took place in
1313; in Zurich in 1336; in Bern in 1363; in Braunschweig in 1374, and
next year in Hamburg; in Lubeck in 1376-84; and so on. See Schmoller's
Strassburg zur Zeit der Zunftkampfe and Strassburg's Bluthe; Brentano's
Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1871-72; Eb. Bain's
Merchant and Craft Guilds, Aberdeen, 1887, pp. 26-47, 75, etc. As to Mr.
Gross's opinion relative to the same struggles in England, see Mrs.
Green's remarks in her Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, ii. 190-217;
also the chapter on the Labour Question, and, in fact, the whole of this
extremely interesting volume. Brentano's views on the crafts' struggles,
expressed especially in iii. and iv. of his essay "On the History and
Development of Guilds," in Toulmin Smith's English Guilds remain
classical for the subject, and may be said to have been again and again
confirmed by subsequent research.
15. To give but one example--Cambrai made its first revolution in 907,
and, after three or four more revolts, it obtained its charter in 1076.
This charter was repealed twice (1107 and 1138), and twice obtained
again (in 1127 and 1180). Total, 223 years of struggles before
conquering the right to independence. Lyons--from 1195 to 1320.
16. See Tuetey, "Etude sur Le droit municipal ... en Franche-Comte," in
Memoires de la Societe d'emulation de Montbeliard, 2e serie, ii. 129
seq.
17. This seems to have been often the case in Italy. In Switzerland,
Bern bought even the towns of Thun and Burgdorf.
18. Such was, at least, the case in the cities of Tuscany (Florence,
Lucca, Sienna, Bologna, etc.), for which the relations between city and
peasants are best known. (Luchitzkiy, "Slavery and Russian Slaves in
Florence," in Kieff University Izvestia for 1885, who has perused
Rumohr's Ursprung der Besitzlosigkeit der Colonien in Toscana, 1830.)
The whole matter concerning the relations between the cities and the
peasants requires much more study than has hitherto been done.
19. Ferrari's generalizations are often too theoretical to be always
correct; but his views upon the part played by the nobles in the city
wars are based upon a wide range of authenticated facts.
20. Only such cities as stubbornly kept to the cause of the barons, like
Pisa or Verona, lost through the wars. For many towns which fought on
the barons' side, the defeat was also the beginning of liberation and
progress.
21. Ferrari, ii. 18, 104 seq.; Leo and Botta, i. 432.
22. Joh. Falke, Die Hansa Als Deutsche See-und Handelsmacht, Berlin,
1863, pp. 31, 55.
23. For Aachen and Cologne we have direct testimony that the bishops of
these two cities--one of them bought by the enemy opened to him the
gates.
24. See the facts, though not always the conclusions, of Nitzsch, iii.
133 seq.; also Kallsen, i. 458, etc.
25. On the Commune of the Laonnais, which, until Melleville's researches
(Histoire de la Commune du Laonnais, Paris, 1853), was confounded with
the Commune of Laon, see Luchaire, pp. 75 seq. For the early peasants'
guilds and subsequent unions see R. Wilman's "Die landlichen
Schutzgilden Westphaliens," in Zeitschrift für Kulturgeschichte, neue
Folge, Bd. iii., quoted in Henne-am-Rhyn's Kulturgeschichte, iii. 249.
26. Luchaire, p. 149.
27. Two important cities, like Mainz and Worms, would settle a political
contest by means of arbitration. After a civil war broken out in
Abbeville, Amiens would act, in 1231, as arbiter (Luchaire, 149); and so
on.
28. See, for instance, W. Stieda, Hansische Vereinbarungen, l.c., p.
114.
29. Cosmo Innes's Early Scottish History and Scotland in Middle Ages,
quoted by Rev. Denton, l.c., pp. 68, 69; Lamprecht's Deutsches
wirthschaftliche Leben im Mittelalter, review by Schmoller in his
Jahrbuch, Bd. xii.; Sismondi's Tableau de l'agriculture toscane, pp. 226
seq. The dominions of Florence could be recognized at a glance through
their prosperity.
30. Mr. John J. Ennett (Six Essays, London, 1891) has excellent pages on
this aspect of medieval architecture. Mr. Willis, in his appendix to
Whewell's History of Inductive Sciences (i. 261-262), has pointed out
the beauty of the mechanical relations in medieval buildings. "A new
decorative construction was matured," he writes, "not thwarting and
controlling, but assisting and harmonizing with the mechanical
construction. Every member, every moulding, becomes a sustainer of
weight; and by the multiplicity of props assisting each other, and the
consequent subdivision of weight, the eye was satisfied of the stability
of the structure, notwithstanding curiously slender aspects of the
separate parts." An art which sprang out of the social life of the city
could not be better characterized.
31. Dr. L. Ennen, Der Dom zu Koln, seine Construction und Anstaltung,
Koln, 1871.
32. The three statues are among the outer decorations of Notre Dame de
Paris.
33. Mediaeval art, like Greek art, did not know those curiosity shops
which we call a National Gallery or a Museum. A picture was painted, a
statue was carved, a bronze decoration was cast to stand in its proper
place in a monument of communal art. It lived there, it was part of a
whole, and it contributed to give unity to the impression produced by
the whole.
34. Cf. J. T. Ennett's "Second Essay," p. 36.
35. Sismondi, iv. 172; xvi. 356. The great canal, Naviglio Grande, which
brings the water from the Tessino, was begun in 1179, i.e. after the
conquest of independence, and it was ended in the thirteenth century. On
the subsequent decay, see xvi. 355.
36. In 1336 it had 8,000 to 10,000 boys and girls in its primary
schools, 1,000 to 1,200 boys in its seven middle schools, and from 550
to 600 students in its four universities. The thirty communal hospitals
contained over 1,000 beds for a population of 90,000 inhabitants
(Capponi, ii. 249 seq.). It has more than once been suggested by
authoritative writers that education stood, as a rule, at a much higher
level than is generally supposed. Certainly so in democratic Nuremberg.
37. Cf. L. Ranke's excellent considerations upon the essence of Roman
Law in his Weltgeschichte, Bd. iv. Abth. 2, pp. 20-31. Also Sismondi's
remarks upon the part played by the legistes in the constitution of
royal authority, Histoire des Francais, Paris, 1826, viii. 85-99. The
popular hatred against these "weise Doktoren und Beutelschneider des
Volks" broke out with full force in the first years of the sixteenth
century in the sermons of the early Reform movement.
38. Brentano fully understood the fatal effects of the struggle between
the "old burghers" and the new-comers. Miaskowski, in his work on the
village communities of Switzerland, has indicated the same for village
communities.
39. The trade in slaves kidnapped in the East was never discontinued in
the Italian republics till the fifteenth century. Feeble traces of it
are found also in Germany and elsewhere. See Cibrario. Della schiavitu e
del servaggio, 2 vols. Milan, 1868; Professor Luchitzkiy, "Slavery and
Russian Slaves in Florence in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,"
in Izvestia of the Kieff University, 1885.
40. J.R. Green's History of the English People, London, 1878, i. 455.
41. See the theories expressed by the Bologna lawyers, already at the
Congress of Roncaglia in 1158.