The St. Aliquis folk have come to Pontdebois largely to attend the
great fair soon to open, but the more ordinary articles they will
purchase can be found on sale on any week day. The city is a beehive of
industry. Notwithstanding much talk about commerce in the Feudal Ages,
the means of communication and transport are so bad that it is only
the luxuries--not the essentials--that can be exported very far. It
takes thirty days in good weather to travel from Paris to Marseilles.
It takes sometimes a week to go from Pontdebois to Paris; and there is
no larger industrial city much nearer than Paris. The result is that
almost everything ordinarily needed in a château, village, or even in a
monastery, which cannot be made upon the spot, is manufactured and sold
in this Good Town.
Industrial life, however, seems to exist on a very small scale. There
are no real factories. An establishment employing more than four or
five persons, including the proprietor, is rare. Much commoner are
petty workshops conducted by the owner alone or aided by only one
youthful apprentice. This multiplicity of extremely small plants gives
Pontdebois a show of bustle and activity which its actual population
does not warrant.
When you do business in a town, simply name your desires and you can
be directed to a little winding street containing all the shops of a
given industry. There is the Glass Workers' Street, the Tanners' Row,
the Butchers' Lane, the Parchment Makers' Street (frequented by monkish
commissioners from the abbeys), the Goldsmiths' Lane, etc.
[Illustration: CLOTH MERCHANTS
From a bas-relief in the cathedral of Rheims (thirteenth century).]
[Sidenote: Shopkeepers Crying their Wares]
As a rule the goods are made up in the rear of the shop and are sold
over a small counter directly upon the street, where the customer
stands while he drives his bargain. Written signs and price cards
are practically unknown. The moment a possible purchaser comes in
sight, all the attendants near the front of the shops begin a terrific
uproar, each trying to bawl down his neighbor, praising his own wares
and almost dragging in the visitor to inspect them. Trade etiquette
permits shopkeepers to shout out the most derogatory things about
their rivals. Father Grégoire, wishing to buy some shoes, is almost
demoralized by the clamor, although this is by no means his first visit
to Pontdebois. As he enters the Shoemakers' Lane it seems as if all the
ill-favored apprentices are crowding around him. One plucks his cape.
"Here, good Father! Exactly what you want!" "Hearken not to the thief,"
shouts another; "try on our shoes and name your own price!" A third
tries to push him into yet another stall. "Good sirs," cries Grégoire,
in dismay, "for God's sake treat me gently or I'll buy no shoes at
all!" Only reluctantly do they let him make his choice, then conclude a
bargain unmolested by outsiders. In the fish, bread, and wine markets
the scenes can be even more riotous, while the phrases used by the
hucksters in crying their wares are peculiar and picturesque.
As always in trade, it is well that "the buyer should beware"; fixed
prices are really unknown and inferior goods are inordinately praised.
Nevertheless, the city and guild authorities try hard to protect
purchasers from misrepresentation. The officers are always making
unannounced rounds of inspection to see how the guild ordinances are
being obeyed.[111] The fate of the rascally woolen maker has been
noted. Heavy fines have also been imposed lately upon a rope maker who
put linen in a hemp cord, and a cutler who put silver ornaments in a
bone knife handle. This, however, was not to protect purchasers, but
because they had gone outside the line of work permitted to members of
their guild and trenched upon another set of craftsmen. Indeed, a very
short residence in Pontdebois makes one aware that within the chartered
commune the question is not, as in strictly feudal dominions, "Whose
'man' is he?" but "To what guild does he belong?" Everything apparently
revolves around the trade and craft guilds.
Some of these guilds, like that of the butchers, are alleged to be much
older than the granting of the charter; but it is undeniable that the
organizations have multiplied and grown in power since that precious
document was obtained.[112] Each special industry goes to the seigneur
(in this city to the bishop) for a special grant of privileges and
for a fee he will usually satisfy the petitioners, especially as they
desire the privileges mainly to protect them against their fellow
craftsmen, not against himself. In Paris there are more than three
hundred and fifty separate professions; in Pontdebois they are much
fewer, yet the number seems high. Many guilds have only a few members
apiece, but even the smallest is mortally jealous of its prerogatives.
One "mystery" makes men's shoes, another women's, another children's.
Some time ago the last mentioned sold some alleged "children's shoes"
which seemed very large! Result--a bitter law suit brought by the
women's shoemakers. Christian charity among the guildsmen has not been
restored yet. In Paris they say that the tailors are pushing a case
against the old-clothes dealers because the latter "repair their
garments so completely as to make them practically new." There will
soon be handsome fees for the kings' judges, if for nobody else.[113]
[Sidenote: Division and Regulations of Guilds]
Such friction arises, of course, because each guild is granted a strict
monopoly of trade within certain prescribed limits. A saddle maker from
a strange city who started a shop without being admitted to the proper
guild would soon find his shop closed, his products burned, and his
own feet in the stocks by the town donjon. The guilds are supposed to
be under strict regulations, however, in return for these privileges.
Their conditions of labor are laid down, as are the hours and days of
working. The precise quality of their products is fixed, and sometimes
even the size of the articles and the selling price. Night work, as
a rule, is forbidden, because one cannot then see to produce perfect
goods, although carpenters are allowed to make coffins after sunset.
On days before festivals everyone must close by 3 P.M., and on feast
days only pastry shops (selling cakes and sweetmeats) are allowed to be
open. Violaters are subject to a fine, which goes partly to the guild
corporation, partly to the town treasury; and these fines form a good
part of the municipal revenue.
The guilds are not labor unions. The controlling members are all
masters--the employers of labor, although usually doing business
on a very small scale. A guild is also a religious and benevolent
institution. Every corporation has its patron saint, with a special
chapel in some church where a priest is engaged to say masses for the
souls of deceased members.[114] If a member falls into misfortune
his guild is expected to succor him and especially, if he dies, to
look after his widow and assist his orphans to learn their father's
craft. Each organization also has its own banner, very splendid, hung
ordinarily beside the guild's altar, but in the civic processions
proudly carried by one of the syndics, the craft's officers. To be a
syndic in an influential guild is the ordinary ambition of about every
young industrialist. It means the acme of power and dignity attainable,
short of being elected echevin.
The road to full guild membership is a fairly difficult one, yet it
can be traversed by lads of good morals and legitimate birth if they
have application and intelligence. A master can have from one to three
apprentices and also his own son, if he has one who desires to learn
the trade. The apprentices serve from three to twelve years.
[Illustration: A COMMONER (THIRTEENTH CENTURY)
From a bas-relief in the cathedral of Rheims.]
[Sidenote: Apprentices, Hired Workers and Masters]
The more difficult the craft the longer the service; thus it takes a
ten-year apprenticeship to become a qualified jeweler. The lads thus
"bound out" cannot ordinarily quit their master under any circumstances
before the proper time. If they run away they can be haled back and
roundly punished. They are usually knocked about plentifully, are none
too well clothed, sleep in cold garrets, are fed on the leavings from
the master's table, and can seldom call a moment their own except on
holidays. Their master may give them a little pocket money, but no
regular wages. On the other hand, he is bound to teach them his trade
and to protect them against evil influences. Often enough, of course,
matters end by the favorite apprentice marrying his master's daughter
and practically taking over the establishment.
At the end of the apprenticeship the young industrialist becomes a
hired worker, perhaps in his old master's shop, perhaps somewhere
else.[115] He is engaged and paid by the week, and often changes
employers many times while in this stage of his career. The guild
protects him against gross exploitation, but his hours are long--from
5 A.M. to 7 P.M. during the summer months. Finally, if he has led a
moral life, proved a good workman, and accumulated a small capital, he
may apply to the syndics for admission as a full master himself. A kind
of examination takes place. If, for example, he has been a weaver he
must produce an extremely good bolt of cloth and show skill in actually
making and adjusting the parts of his loom. This ordeal passed, he
pays a fee (divisible between the city and the guild) and undergoes an
initiation, full of horseplay and absurd allegory. Thus a candidate for
the position of baker must solemnly present a "new pot full of walnuts
and wafers" to the chief syndic; and upon the latter's accepting the
contents, the candidate deliberately "breaks the pot against the
wall"--a proclamation that he is now a full member of the guild. The
last act is of course a grand feast--the whole fraternity guzzling down
tankard after tankard at the expense of the new "brother."
There is one quarter of the town which the St. Aliquis visitors hardly
dare to enter. Thrust away in miserable hovels wedged against one angle
of the walls live the "accursed race"--the Jews. Here are dark-haired,
dark-eyed people with Oriental physiognomies. They are exceedingly
obsequious to Christians, but the latter do not trust them. These
bearded men with earrings, these women with bright kerchiefs of Eastern
stuffs, all seem to be conducting little shops where can be bought the
cheapest furniture, household utensils, and particularly old clothes in
Pontdebois. In this quarter, too, is a small stone building which Conon
and his followers wonder that the echevins suffer to exist--a very
ancient synagogue, for the Jewish colony is as old as the town. The few
Christians who have periled their souls by venturing inside say the
windows are very small and that the dark, grimy interior is lighted by
dim lamps. Here also are strange ancient books written in a character
which no Gentile can interpret, but by whispered report containing
fearful blasphemies against the Catholic faith.
[Sidenote: The Jews and Money Lending]
Why are such folk permitted in Pontdebois? Maître Othon has to explain
that if God has consigned these Jews to eternal damnation he has
permitted many of them while in this world to possess inordinate
riches. Some of the most abject-looking of these persons, who are
compelled by law to wear a saffron circle on their breasts, can
actually find moneys sufficient to pay the costs of a duke's campaign.
Every great seigneur has "his Jew," and the king has "the royal Jew"
who will loan him money when no Christian will do so in order to wage
his wars or to push more peaceful undertakings. The Jews are indeed
hard to do without because the Church strictly forbids the loaning of
money on usury, yet somehow it seems very difficult to borrow large
sums simply upon the prospect of the bare repayment of the same.
The Jews, with no fear for their souls, do not hesitate to lend on
interest, sometimes graspingly demanding forty, fifty and even sixty
per cent.[116] This is outrageous, but ofttimes money must be had,
and what if no Christian will lend? There are certain worthy men,
especially Lombards of North Italy, who say that it were well if the
Church allowed lending at reasonable interest, and they are beginning
to make loans accordingly. This suggestion, however, savors of heresy.
In the meantime the Jews continue despised, maltreated, and mobbed
every Good Friday, but nevertheless almost indispensable.
[Illustration: MONEY-CHANGERS (CHARTRES)]
The great object which brings so many visitors to Pontdebois is the
annual fair held every August in the field by the river, just south
of the town. Then can be purchased many articles so unusual that they
are not regularly on sale in the city shops, or even at the more
general market which is held in the square before the donjon upon each
Thursday. The Pontdebois fair cannot, indeed, compete in extensiveness
with the Rouen or Dijon fairs, the famous Lendit fair (near St. Denis
and Paris), nor, above all, with the great Champagne fairs at Troyes
and elsewhere, for these are the best places for buying and selling in
all France. Nevertheless one must not despise a fair which attracts
nearly all the good folk of Quelqueparte who are intent on gains or
purchases.
In some respects the fair has many features like the tourney at St.
Aliquis. Long files of travelers on beasts or on foot are approaching,
innumerable tents are flaunting bright pennons, and the same jongleurs
who swarmed to make music or to exhibit tricks at Conon's festival
are coming hither also. But the travelers are not, as a rule, knights
in bright armor, but soberly clad merchants. Their attendants lead,
not high-stepping destrers, but heavily laden sumpter mules; the
tents are not given over to gallant feasting and gentle intrigues,
but to vigorous chaffering for that thing which all knights affect to
despise--good money. Therefore, although the bustle seems the same, the
results are very different.
There is a special complication at these fairs. In what kind of money
shall we pay? The royal coinage is supposed to circulate everywhere
and to represent the standard, but the king's power cannot suppress
a whole swarm of local coinages. There are deniers of Anjou, Maine,
Rouen, Touraine, Toulouse, Poitou, Bordeaux, and many other districts
besides the good royal coins from Paris; also a plentiful circulation
of Constantinople bezants, Venetian zechins, German groats, and English
silver shillings, in addition to many outlandish infidel coins of very
debatable value. To add to the trouble, there are varying standards for
weights and measures. You have to make sure as to which one is used in
every purchase.[117]
[Illustration: A FAIR IN CHAMPAGNE IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
In the center of the picture, a commoner and his wife going to make
more purchases; at the right, in front of a shop, cloth merchants and
their customers; a shop boy on his knees unpacks the cloth, another
carries the bales; at the left, a beggar; another establishment of
a draper; a group of people having their money weighed by the money
changer; farther back, a lord and his servants going through the crowd;
at the left a parade of mountebanks; at the right, other shops; and in
the background the walls, houses, church, etc.]
[Sidenote: Heavy Tolls On Commerce]
The "royal foot" is a pretty general measure, but sometimes it is split
into ten, sometimes into twelve, inches. Still worse is the pound
weight. A Paris pound divides into sixteen ounces, but that of Lyons
into fourteen, that of Marseilles into only thirteen. Clearly one needs
time, patience, and a level head to trade happily at this fair!
When you consider the number of tolls levied everywhere upon
commerce--a fee on about every load that crosses a bridge, traverses a
stretch of river or highway, passes a castle, etc.--the wonder grows
that it seems worth while to transport goods at all. The fees are
small, but how they multiply even on a short journey! Along the Loire
between Roanne and Nantes are about seventy-four places where something
must be paid. Things are as bad by land. Clergy and knights are usually
exempt, but merchants have to travel almost with one hand in their
pockets to satisfy the collectors of the local seigneurs. The result
is that almost nothing is brought from a distance which is not fairly
portable and for which there is a demand not readily met by the local
workshops.
Nevertheless, a good fair is a profitable asset to an intelligent
seigneur. The present fair was instituted seventy years ago by an
unusually enterprising lord bishop. He induced the barons of the region
to agree to treat visitors to the fair reasonably and to give them
protection against robbers. He also established strict regulations
to secure for every trader fair play when disposing of his wares,
commissioned sergeants to patrol the grounds, and set up a competent
provost's court right among the tents, so that persons falling into a
dispute could get a quick decision without expensive litigation.[118]
In return he laid a small tax on every article sold. The arrangement
worked well. Succeeding bishops have been wise enough to realize
that contented merchants are more profitable than those that have
been plundered. "Hare! Hare!" cry the prelate's sergeants on the
first day--announcing the opening--and then for about two weeks the
trafficking, bargain driving, amusements, and thimble rigging will
continue.
[Sidenote: Numerous Commodities at Fairs]
The time of a fair is carefully calculated. Many merchants spend all
the warmer months journeying with their wares from one fair to another.
Many of the traders at Pontdebois have spent half of June at Lendit,
where "everything is for sale, from carts and horses to fine tapestries
and silver cups." The wares at this present fair are almost equally
extensive, although the selection may be a little less choice. Besides
all kinds of French products, there are booths displaying wonderful
silks from Syria, or possibly only from Venice; there are blazing
Saracen carpets woven in Persia or even remoter lands, while local
dyers and fullers can stock up with Eastern dyestuffs--lovely red from
Damascus, indigo from Jerusalem, and many other colors. You can get
beautiful glass vessels made in Syria or imitated from Oriental models
in Venice. The monks will buy a quantity of the new paper while they
purchase their year's supply of parchment; and Adela will authorize
the St. Aliquis cook to obtain many deniers' worth of precious
spices--pepper, cinnamon, clove, and the rest essential for seasoning
all kinds of dishes, even if their cost is very dear. The spices are
sold by a swarthy, hawk-visaged Oriental who speaks French in quaint
gutturals, is uncouthly dressed, yet is hardly a Jew. It is whispered
he is a downright miscreant--_i.e._, an outrageous Infidel, possibly
not even a Mohammedan. Perhaps he is native to those lands close to the
rising place of the sun whence come the spices. Ought one to deal with
such people? Nevertheless, the spices are desirable and he sells them
cheaper than anybody else. There are many other unfamiliar characters
at the fair, including a negro mountebank, quite a few Germans from the
Rhenish trading cities, and a scattering of so-called Italians, mostly
money changers and venders of luxuries, who, however, seem to be really
Jews that are concealing their unpopular religion for the sake of gain.
After the fair commences, many articles are on sale daily; but
others are exhibited only for a short time. Thus, following the
custom at Troyes, for the first day or two cloths are displayed in
special variety; after that leather goods and furs; then various bulk
commodities, such as salt, medicinal drugs, herbs, raw wool, flax,
etc.; next comes the excitement of a horse and cattle market, when
Conon will be induced to buy for his oldest son a palfrey and for his
farms a blooded bull;[119] and after that various general articles will
hold the right of way.
[Illustration: THE SALE OF PELTRIES (BOURGES)]
The Pontdebois masters are required to close their shops and do all
their business at the fair grounds in order that there may be no unjust
competition with the visiting traders. Indeed, all business outside
the fair grounds is strictly forbidden in order to prevent fraudulent
transactions which the bishop's officers cannot suppress. Thus, besides
the costly imported wares, you can get anything you ordinarily want
from the curriers, shoemakers, coppersmiths, hardware, linen, and
garment venders, and the dealers in fish, grain, and even bread.
All this means a chaffering, chattering, and ofttimes a quarreling,
which makes one ask, "Have the days of the Tower of Babel returned?"
The sergeants are always flying about on foot or horseback among the
winding avenues of tents and booths, and frequently drag off some
vagabond for the pillory. They even seize a cut-purse red-handed and
soon give the idlers the brutal pleasure of watching a hanging. There
are a couple of tents where notaries are ready with wax and parchments
to draw up and seal contracts and bargains. Flemish merchants are
negotiating with their Bordeaux compeers to send the latter next year
a consignment of solid linseys; while a Mayence wine dealer is trying
to prove to a seigneur how much his cellars would be improved by a few
tuns of Rheingold, shipped in to mellow after the next vintage.
[Sidenote: Professional Entertainers at Fairs]
Along with all this honest traffic proceed the amusements worthy and
unworthy. There are several exhibitors of trick dogs and performing
bears. In a cage there is a creature called a "lion," though it is
certainly a sick, spiritless, and mangy one; there are also male
and female rope dancers and acrobats, professional story tellers,
professors of white magic, and, of course, jongleurs of varying quality
sawing their viols, or reciting romances and merry _fabliaux_--clever
tales, though often indescribably coarse. There are, in addition (let
the sinful truth be told) perfect swarms of brazen women of an evil
kind; and there is enough heady wine being consumed to fill a brook
into the Claire. The sergeants continually have to separate drunkards
who get to fighting, and to roll their "full brothers"--more completely
overcome--into safe places where they can sleep off their liquor
unkicked by horses and uncrushed by constantly passing carts.
This bustle continues two weeks. By that time everybody who has come
primarily to buy has spent all his money. If he has come to sell,
presumably he is satisfied. The drunkards are at last sad and sober.
"Hare! Hare!" cry the sergeants on the evening of the last day. The
fair is over. The next morning the foreign merchants pack their wares,
strike their tents, and wander off to another market fifty miles
distant, while the Pontdebois traders and industrialists resume their
normal activity. They have stocked up with necessary raw materials for
the year, they have absorbed many new ideas as to how they can make
better wares or trade to more advantage; yet probably most of them are
grumbling against "those Germans and Flemings and Jews whom the bishop
turns loose on us. Blessed saints! how much money they have taken out
of the neighborhood!" But the bishop, when his provost reports the tax
receipts, is extraordinarily well satisfied.
FOOTNOTES:
[111] These regulations for a long period were of marked value for
insuring a high grade of workmanship according to traditional methods,
but later they became a most serious impediment to any improvements
in industrial processes. Originality, new designs, and labor-saving
devices were practically prohibited, and some industries were destined
to remain almost stagnant down to the French Revolution.
[112] Among the oldest traceable guilds in Paris were the Master
Chandlers and Oilmen, who received royal privileges in 1061. The
butchers, tanners, shoemakers, drapers, furriers, and purse makers,
were other old Parisian guilds.
[113] The fullers were always suing the weavers. Could the latter, if
they wished, dye the cloth which they themselves had woven? Bakers
were always at law with keepers of small cookshops who baked their own
bread, etc.
[114] Certain saints would naturally be the patrons of certain
particular crafts--_e.g._, St. Joseph of the carpenters, St. Peter of
the fishmongers, etc.
[115] A master could not employ more than one or two paid workers, lest
he build up too big a business and ruin his competitors. The guild
system seems deliberately contrived to perpetuate the existence of a
great number of _very small_ industries.
[116] The extreme difficulty of collecting loans made to powerful
seigneurs went far to explain these astonishing rates of interest. The
chances of an unfriended Jew being unable to collect any part of his
loan were extremely great. As a rule his hopes lay in becoming the
indispensable man of business and financier of a king or other great
lord who would support him in recovering principal and interest from
lesser debtors, in return for great favors to himself. Thus Richard
I of England is alleged to have made the Jews settled in his realm
furnish nearly _one third_ of his entire revenues, as recompense for
allowing them to use his courts to collect from their private debtors.
[117] Mediæval coinages varied to such an extreme extent that it is
almost impossible to make correct general statements about their modern
values. In the time of Philip Augustus, probably the North French money
table was something like this:
1 pound (livre)--2 marks--20 (earlier 24) sous--240 deniers--4760 obols.
A sou, merely a money of account, was equal to about 20 modern francs
($3.86 gold), and the denier, a regular coin, to about one franc (19.3
cents, gold). The copper obols were thus worth about one cent. But
money in the Feudal Age had a purchasing power equal to at least ten
times what it is to-day, and attempts at close estimating are decidedly
futile.
[118] The courts of Champagne took particular pains to assure merchants
of honest treatment and protection, and their fairs were unusually
successful. Champagne, of course, by its central location between the
Seine and the Rhine, the Midi and Flemish lands, was exceedingly well
placed to attract merchants.
[119] Frequently, however, the cattle markets might be held at special
seasons entirely apart from the general fairs.