MEDIEVAL CITIES:
THEIR ORIGINS AND THE
REVIVAL OF TRADE
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
MEDIEVAL CITIES
THEIR ORIGINS AND THE REVIVAL OF TRADE
BY HENRI PIRENNE
_of the University of Ghent_
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
BY FRANK D. HALSEY
PRINCETON
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
1925
_Copyrighted 1925 Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J._
SECOND PRINTING, 1934
_Printed at Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., U.S.A._
TO PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
_Preface_
This _little volume contains the substance of lectures which I delivered
from October to December 1922 in several American universities. It is an
attempt to expound, in a general way, the economic awakening and the
birth of urban civilization in Western Europe during the Middle Ages._
_The bibliography placed at the end of the volume will permit the
reader, who may be interested in the subject discussed herein, to inform
himself more precisely of the details and to verify my assertions. It
would be obviously impossible, in a general outline such as this, to go
into particulars or take up exceptions and anomalies, and still more so
to give way to controversy. Here, then, will be found only a synthesis,
the result of long years of study and research._
_It is particularly gratifying to me to see this book published by the
Press of a University which showed me so cordial a sympathy during the
war, and to which I am very happy to dedicate the work as a mark of my
profound gratitude._
_Contents_
I. THE MEDITERRANEAN 1
II. THE NINTH CENTURY 25
III. CITY ORIGINS 56
IV. THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE 78
V. THE MERCHANT CLASS 109
VI. THE MIDDLE CLASS 135
VII. MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 174
VIII. CITIES AND EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION 221
BIBLIOGRAPHY 245
MEDIEVAL CITIES
_Chapter I_
The Mediterranean
The Roman Empire, at the end of the third century, had one outstanding
general characteristic: it was an essentially Mediterranean
commonwealth. Virtually all of its territory lay within the watershed of
that great land-locked sea; the distant frontiers of the Rhine, the
Danube, the Euphrates and the Sahara, may be regarded merely as an
advanced circle of outer defences protecting the approaches.
The Mediterranean was, without question, the bulwark of both its
political and economic unity. Its very existence depended on sea
mastery. Without that great trade route, neither the government, nor the
defence, nor the administration of the _orbis romanus_ would have been
possible.
As the Empire grew old this fundamentally maritime character was,
interestingly enough, not only preserved but was still more sharply
defined. When the former inland capital, Rome, was abandoned, its place
was taken by a city which not only served as a capital but which was at
the same time an admirable port--Constantinople.
The Empire’s cultural development, to be sure, had clearly passed its
peak. Population decreased, the spirit of enterprise waned, barbarian
hordes commenced to threaten the frontiers, and the increasing expenses
of the government, fighting for its very life, brought in their train a
fiscal system which more and more enslaved men to the State.
Nevertheless this general deterioration does not seem to have
appreciably affected the shipping of the Mediterranean. It continued to
be active and well-sustained, in marked contrast with the growing apathy
that characterized the continental provinces. Trade continued to keep
the East and the West in close contact with each other. There was no
interruption to the intimate commercial relations between those diverse
climes bathed by one and the same sea. Both manufactured and natural
products were still extensively dealt in: textiles from Constantinople,
Edessa, Antioch, and Alexandria; wines, oils and spices from Syria;
papyrus from Egypt; wheat from Egypt, Africa, and Spain; and wines from
Gaul and Italy. There was even a reform of the monetary system based on
the gold _solidus_, which served materially to encourage commercial
operations by giving them the benefit of an excellent currency,
universally adopted as an instrument of exchange and as a means of
quoting prices.
Of the two great regions of the Empire, the East and the West, the first
far surpassed the second, both in superiority of civilization and in a
much higher level of economic development. At the beginning of the
fourth century there were no longer any really great cities save in the
East. The center of the export trade was in Syria and in Asia Minor, and
here also was concentrated, in particular, the textile industry for
which the whole Roman world was the market and for which Syrian ships
were the carriers.
The commercial prominence of the Syrians is one of the most interesting
facts in the history of the Lower Empire.[1] It undoubtedly contributed
largely to that progressive orientalization of society which was due
eventually to end in Byzantinism. And this orientalization, of which the
sea was the vehicle, is clear proof of the increasing importance which
the Mediterranean acquired as the ageing Empire grew weak, gave way in
the North beneath the pressure of the barbarians, and contracted more
and more about the shores of this inland sea.
The persistence of the Germanic tribes in striving, from the very
beginning of the period of the invasions, to reach these same shores and
to settle there is worth special notice. When, in the course of the
fourth century, the frontiers gave way for the first time under their
blows, they poured southward in a living flood. The Quadi and the
Marcomanni invaded Italy; the Goths marched on the Bosphorus; the
Franks, the Suevi, and the Vandals, who had crossed the Rhine, pushed on
unhesitatingly towards Aquitaine and Spain. They had no thought of
merely colonizing the provinces they coveted. Their dream was rather to
settle down, themselves, in those happy regions where the mildness of
the climate and the fertility of the soil were matched by the charms and
the wealth of civilization.
This initial attempt produced nothing more permanent than the ruins
which remained as its result. Rome was still strong enough to drive the
invaders back beyond the Rhine and the Danube. For a century and a half
she succeeded in restraining them, but at the cost of exhausting her
armies and her finances.
More and more unequal became the balance of power. The assaults of the
barbarians grew more relentless as their increasing numbers made the
acquisition of new territory more imperative, while the decreasing
population of the Empire made a successful resistance constantly less
possible. Despite the extraordinary skill and determination with which
the Empire sought to stave off disaster, the outcome was inevitable.
At the beginning of the fifth century, all was over. The whole West was
invaded. Roman provinces were transformed into Germanic kingdoms. The
Vandals were installed in Africa, the Visigoths in Aquitaine and in
Spain, the Burgundians in the Valley of the Rhône, the Ostrogoths in
Italy.
This nomenclature is significant. It includes only Mediterranean
countries, and little more is needed to show that the objective of the
conquerors, free at last to settle down where they pleased, was the
sea,--that sea which for so long a time the Romans had called, with as
much affection as pride, _mare nostrum_. Towards the sea, as of one
accord, they all turned their steps, impatient to settle along its
shores and to enjoy its beauty.
If the Franks did not reach the Mediterranean at their first attempt, it
is because, having come too late, they found the ground already
occupied. But they too persisted in striving for a foothold there. One
of Clovis’s earliest ambitions was to conquer Provence, and only the
intervention of Theodoric kept him from extending the frontiers of his
kingdom as far as the Côte d’Azur. Yet this first lack of success was
not due to discourage his successors. A quarter of a century later, in
536, the Franks made good use of Justinian’s offensive against the
Ostrogoths and wrung from their hard-pressed rivals the grant of the
coveted territory. It is interesting to see how consistently the
Merovingian dynasty tended, from that date on, to become in its turn a
Mediterranean power.
Childebert and Clotaire, for example, ventured upon an expedition beyond
the Pyrenees in 542, which, however, proved to be ill-starred. But it
was Italy in particular that aroused the cupidity of the Frankish kings.
They formed an alliance, first with the Byzantines and then with the
Lombards, in the hope of setting foot south of the Alps. Repeatedly
thwarted, they persisted in fresh attempts. By 539, Theudebert had
crossed the Alps, and the territories which he had occupied were
reconquered by Narses in 553. Numerous efforts were made in 584-585 and
from 588 to 590 to get possession anew.
The appearance of the Germanic tribes on the shore of the Mediterranean
was by no means a critical point marking the advent of a new era in the
history of Europe. Great as were the consequences which it entailed, it
did not sweep the boards clean nor even break the tradition. The aim of
the invaders was not to destroy the Roman Empire but to settle there and
enjoy it. By and large, what they preserved far exceeded what they
destroyed and what they brought that was new. It is true that the
kingdoms they established on the soil of the Empire made an end of the
latter in so far as being a _State_ in Western Europe. From a political
point of view the _orbis romanus_, now strictly localized in the East,
lost that ecumenical character which had made its frontiers coincide
with the frontiers of Christianity. The Empire, however, was far from
being estranged to the lost provinces. Its civilization there outlived
its authority. By the Church, by language, by a superiority of
institutions and law, it prevailed over the conquerors. In the midst of
the troubles, the insecurity, the misery and the anarchy which
accompanied the invasions there was naturally a certain decline, but
even in that decline there was preserved a physiognomy still distinctly
Roman. The Germanic tribes were unable, and in fact did not want, to do
without it. They barbarised, but they did not consciously germanise.
Nothing is better proof of this assertion than the persistence in the
last days of the Empire--from the fifth to the eighth century--of that
maritime character pointed out above. The importance of the
Mediterranean did not grow less after the period of the invasions. The
sea remained for the Germanic tribes what it had been before their
arrival--the very center of Europe, the _mare nostrum_. The sea had had
such great importance in the political order that the deposing of the
last Roman Emperor in the West (476) was not enough in itself to turn
historical evolution from its time-honored direction. It continued, on
the contrary, to develop in the same theater and under the same
influences. No indication yet gave warning of the end of the
commonwealth of civilization created by the Empire from the Pillars of
Hercules to the Aegean Sea, from the coasts of Egypt and Africa to the
shores of Gaul, Italy and Spain. In spite of the invasion of the
barbarians the new world conserved, in all essential characteristics,
the physiognomy of the old. To follow the course of events from Romulus
Augustulus to Charlemagne it is necessary to keep the Mediterranean
constantly in view.[2]
All the great events in political history are unfolded on its shores.
From 493 to 526 Italy, governed by Theodoric, maintained a hegemony over
all the Germanic kingdoms, a hegemony through which the power of the
Roman tradition was perpetuated and assured. After Theodoric, this power
was still more clearly shown. Justinian failed by but little of
restoring imperial unity (527-565). Africa, Spain, and Italy were
reconquered. The Mediterranean became again a Roman lake. Byzantium, it
is true, weakened by the immense effort she had just put forth, could
neither finish nor even preserve intact the astonishing work which she
had accomplished. The Lombards took Northern Italy away from her (568);
the Visigoths freed themselves from her yoke. Nevertheless she did not
abandon her ambitions. She retained, for a long time to come, Africa,
Sicily, Southern Italy. Nor did she loose her grip on the West--thanks
to the sea, the mastery of which her fleets so securely held that the
fate of Europe rested at that moment, more than ever, on the waves of
the Mediterranean.
What was true of the political situation held equally well for
civilization. It seems hardly necessary to recall that Boëthius
(480-525) and Cassiodorus (477-_c._ 562) were Italians as were St.
Benedict (480-534) and Gregory the Great (590-604), and that Isidorus
of Seville (570-636) was a Spaniard. It was Italy that maintained the
last schools at the same time that she was fostering the spread of
monachism north of the Alps. It was in Italy, also, that what was left
of the ancient culture flourished side by side with what was brought
forth anew in the bosom of the Church. All the strength and vigor that
the Church possessed was concentrated in the region of the
Mediterranean. There alone she gave evidence of an organization and
spirit capable of initiating great enterprises. An interesting example
of this is the fact that Christianity was brought to the Anglo-Saxons
(596) from the distant shores of Italy, not from the neighboring shores
of Gaul. The mission of St. Augustine is therefore an illuminating
sidelight on the historic influence retained by the Mediterranean. And
it seems more significant still when we recall that the evangelization
of Ireland was due to missionaries sent out from Marseilles, and that
the apostles of Belgium, St. Amand (689-693) and St. Remade (_c._ 668),
were Aquitanians.
A brief survey of the economic development of Europe will give the
finishing touch to the substantiation of the theory which has here been
put forward. That development is, obviously, a clear-cut, direct
continuation of the economy of the Roman Empire. In it are rediscovered
all the latter’s principal traits and, above all, that Mediterranean
character which here is unmistakable. To be sure, a general let-down in
social activity was apparent in this region as in all others. By the
last days of the Empire there was a clearly marked decline which the
catastrophe of the invasions naturally helped accentuate. But it would
be a decided mistake to imagine that the arrival of the Germanic tribes
had as a result the substitution of a purely agricultural economy and a
general stagnation in trade for urban life and commercial activity.[3]
The supposed dislike of the barbarians for towns is an admitted fable to
which reality has given the lie. If, on the extreme frontiers of the
Empire, certain towns were put to the torch, destroyed and pillaged, it
is none the less true that the immense majority survived the invasions.
A statistical survey of cities in existence at the present day in
France, in Italy and even on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube,
gives proof that, for the most part, these cities now stand on the sites
where rose the Roman cities, and that their very names are often but a
transformation of Roman names.
The Church had of course closely patterned the religious districts after
the administrative districts of the Empire. As a general rule, each
diocese corresponded to a _civitas_. Since the ecclesiastical
organization suffered no change during the era of the Germanic
invasions, the result was that in the new kingdoms founded by the
conquerors it preserved intact this characteristic feature. In fact,
from the beginning of the sixth century the word _civitas_ took the
special meaning of “episcopal city,” the center of the diocese. In
surviving the Empire on which it was based, the Church therefore
contributed very largely to the safeguarding of the existence of the
Roman cities.
But it must not be overlooked, on the other hand, that these cities in
themselves long retained a considerable importance. Their municipal
institutions did not suddenly disappear upon the arrival of the Germanic
tribes. Not only in Italy, but also in Spain and even in Gaul, they kept
their _decuriones_--a corps of magistrates provided with a judicial and
administrative authority, the details of which are not clear but whose
existence and Roman origin is a matter of record.[4] They continued,
likewise, the office of the _defensor civitatis_, and the practice of
committing to writing the authentic laws found in the _gesta
municipalia_.
It is also well established that these cities were the centers of an
economic activity which itself was a survival of the preceding
civilization. Each city was the market for the surrounding countryside,
the winter home of the great landed proprietors of the neighborhood and,
if favorably situated, the center of a commerce the more highly
developed in proportion to its nearness to the shores of the
Mediterranean. A perusal of Gregory of Tours gives ample proof that in
the Gaul of his time there was still a professional merchant class
residing in the towns. He cites, in some thoroughly characteristic
passages, those of Verdun, Paris, Orleans, Clermont-Ferrand, Marseilles,
Nimes, and Bordeaux, and the information which he supplies concerning
them is all the more significant in that it is brought into his
narrative only incidentally.[5] Care should of course be taken not to
exaggerate its value. An equally great fault would be to undervalue it.
Certainly the economic order of Merovingian Gaul was founded on
agriculture rather than on any other form of activity. More certainly
still this had already been the case under the Roman Empire.
But this does not preclude the fact that inland traffic, the import and
export of goods and merchandise, was carried on to a considerable
extent. It was an important factor in the maintenance of society. An
indirect proof of this is furnished by the institution of market-tolls
(_teloneum_). Thus were called the tolls set up by the Roman
administration along the roads, in the ports, at bridge crossings, and
elsewhere. The Frankish kings let them all stay in force and drew from
them such copious revenues that the collectors of this class of taxes
(_telonearii_) figured among the number of their most useful
functionaires.
The continued commercial activity after the disappearance of the Empire
and, likewise, the survival of the towns that were the centers thereof
and the merchants who were the instruments, is explained by the
continuation of Mediterranean trade. In all the chief characteristics it
was the same, from the fifth to the eighth centuries, as it had been
just after Constantine. If, as is probable, the decline was the more
rapid after the Germanic invasions, it remains none the less true that
there is presented a picture of uninterrupted intercourse between the
Byzantine East and the West dominated by the barbarians. By means of the
shipping which was carried on from the coasts of Spain and Gaul to
those of Syria and Asia Minor, the basin of the Mediterranean did not
cease, despite the political subdivisions which it had seen take place,
to consolidate the economic unity which it had shaped for centuries
under the imperial commonwealth. Because of this fact, the economic
organization of the world lived on after the political transformation.
In lack of other proofs, the monetary system of the Frankish kings would
alone establish this truth convincingly. This system, as is too well
known to make necessary any lengthy consideration here, was purely Roman
or, strictly speaking, Romano-Byzantine. This is shown by the coins that
were minted: the _solidus_, the _triens_, and the _denarius_--that is to
say, the _sou_, the _third-sou_ and the _denier_. It is shown further by
the metal which was employed: gold, used for the coinage of the
_solidus_ and the _triens_. It is also shown by the weight which was
given to specie. It is shown, finally, by the effigies which were minted
on the coins. In this connection it is worth noting that the mints
continued for a long time, under the Merovingian kings, the custom of
representing the bust of the Emperor on the coins and of showing on the
reverse of the pieces the _Victoria Augusti_ and that, carrying this
imitation to the extreme, when the Byzantines substituted the cross for
the symbol of that victory they went and did the same. Such extreme
servility can be explained only by the continuing influence of the
Empire. The obvious reason was the necessity of preserving, between the
local currency and the imperial currency, a conformity which would be
purposeless if the most intimate relations had not existed between
Merovingian commerce and the general commerce of the Mediterranean. In
other words, this commerce continued to be closely bound up with the
commerce of the Byzantine Empire. Of such ties, moreover, there are
abundant proofs and it will suffice to mention merely a few of the most
significant.[6]
It should be borne in mind, first of all, that at the start of the
eighth century Marseilles was still the great port of Gaul. The terms
employed by Gregory of Tours, in the numerous anecdotes in which he
happens to speak of that city, make it seem a singularly animated
economic center.[7] A very active shipping bound it to Constantinople,
to Syria, Africa, Egypt, Spain and Italy. The products of the
East--papyrus, spices, costly textiles, wine and oil--were the basis of
a regular import trade. Foreign merchants, Jews and Syrians for the most
part, had their residence there, and their nationality is itself an
indication of the close relations kept up by Marseilles with Byzantium.
Finally, the extraordinary quantity of coins which were struck there
during the Merovingian era gives material proof of the activity of its
commerce.[8] The population of the city must have comprised, aside from
the merchants, a rather numerous class of artisans.[9] In every respect
it seems, then, to have accurately preserved, under the government of
the Frankish kings, the clearly municipal character of Roman cities.
The economic development of Marseilles naturally made itself felt in the
_hinterland_ of the port. Under its attraction, all the commerce of Gaul
was oriented toward the Mediterranean. The most important market-tolls
of the Frankish kingdom were situated in the neighborhood of the town at
Fos, at Arles, at Toulon, at Sorgues, at Valence, at Vienne, and at
Avignon[10]. Here is clear proof that merchandise landed in the city was
expedited to the interior. By the course of the Rhône and of the Saone,
as well as by the Roman roads, it reached the North of the country. The
charters are still in existence by which the Abbey of Corbie (Department
of Pas-de-Calais) obtained from the kings an exemption from tolls at Fos
on a number of commodities, among which may be remarked a surprising
variety of spices of eastern origin, as well as papyrus.[11] In these
circumstances it does not seem unwarranted to assume that the commercial
activity of the ports of Rouen and Nantes, on the shores of the Atlantic
Ocean, as well as of Quentovic and Duurstede, on the shores of the North
Sea, was sustained by the ramifications of the export traffic from
far-off Marseilles.
But it was in the South of the country that this effect was the most
appreciable. All the largest cities of Merovingian Gaul were still to be
found, as in the days of the Roman Empire, south of the Loire. The
details which Gregory of Tours supplies concerning Clermont-Ferrand and
Orleans show that they had within their walls veritable colonies of
Jews and Syrians, and if it was so with those towns which there is no
reason for believing enjoyed a privileged status, it must have been so
also with the much more important centers such as Bordeaux or Lyons. It
is an established fact, moreover, that Lyons still had at the
Carolingian era a quite numerous Jewish population.[12]
Here, then, is quite enough to support the conclusion that Merovingian
times knew, thanks to the continuance of Mediterranean shipping and the
intermediary of Marseilles, what we may safely call a great commerce. It
would certainly be an error to assume that the dealings of the oriental
merchants of Gaul were restricted solely to articles of luxury. Probably
the sale of jewelry, enamels and silk stuffs resulted in handsome
profits, but this would not be enough to explain their number and their
extraordinary diffusion throughout all the country. The traffic of
Marseilles was, above all else, supported by goods for general
consumption such as wine and oil, spices and papyrus. These commodities,
as has already been pointed out, were regularly exported to the North.
The oriental merchants of the Frankish Empire were virtually engaged in
wholesale trade. Their boats, after being discharged on the quays of
Marseilles, certainly carried back, on leaving the shores of Provence,
not only passengers but return freight. Our sources of information, to
be sure, do not tell much about the nature of this freight. Among the
possible conjectures, one of the most likely is that it probably
consisted, at least for a good part, in human chattels--that is to say,
in slaves. Traffic in slaves did not cease to be carried on in the
Frankish Empire until the end of the ninth century. The wars waged
against the barbarians of Saxony, Thuringia and the Slavic regions
provided a source of supply which seems to have been abundant enough.
Gregory of Tours speaks of Saxon slaves belonging to a merchant of
Orleans,[13] and it is a good guess that this Samo, who departed in the
first half of the seventh century with a band of companions for the
country of Wends, whose king he eventually became, was very probably
nothing more than an adventurer trafficking in slaves.[14] And it is of
course obvious that the slave trade, to which the Jews still assiduously
applied themselves in the ninth century, must have had its origin in an
earlier era.
If the bulk of the commerce in Merovingian Gaul was to be found in the
hands of oriental merchants, their influence, however, should not be
exaggerated. Side by side with them, and according to all indications in
constant relations with them, are mentioned indigenous merchants.
Gregory of Tours does not fail to supply information concerning them,
which would evidently be more voluminous if it had not been brought into
his narrative only incidentally. He shows the King consenting to a loan
to the merchants of Verdun, whose business prospers so well that they
soon find themselves in a position to reimburse him.[15] He mentions the
existence in Paris of a _domus negotiantum_--that is to say, apparently,
of a sort of market or bazaar.[16] He speaks of a merchant profiteering
during the great famine of 585 and getting rich.[17] And in all these
anecdotes he is dealing, without the least doubt, with professionals and
not with merely casual buyers or sellers.
The picture which the commerce of Merovingian Gaul presents is repeated,
naturally, in the other riparian Germanic kingdoms of the
Mediterranean--among the Ostrogoths of Italy, among the Vandals of
Africa, among the Visigoths of Spain. The Edict of Theodoric contained a
quantity of stipulations relative to merchants. Carthage continued to be
an important port in close relations with Spain, and her ships,
apparently, went up the coast as far as Bordeaux. The laws of the
Visigoths mentioned merchants from overseas.[18]
In all of this is clearly manifest the vigorous continuity of the
commercial development of the Roman Empire after the Germanic invasions.
They did not put an end to the economic unity of antiquity. By means of
the Mediterranean and the relations kept up thereby between the West and
the East, this unity, on the contrary, was preserved with a remarkable
distinctiveness. The great inland sea of Europe no longer belonged, as
before, to a single State. But nothing yet gave reason to predict that
it would soon cease to have its time-honored importance. Despite the
transformations which it had undergone, the new world had not lost the
Mediterranean character of the old. On the shores of the sea was still
concentrated the better part of its activities. No indication yet gave
warning of the end of the commonwealth of civilization, created by the
Roman Empire from the Pillars of Hercules to the Aegean Sea. At the
beginning of the seventh century, anyone who sought to look into the
future would have been unable to discern any reason for not believing in
the continuance of the old tradition.
Yet what was then natural and reasonable to predict was not to be
realized. The world-order which had survived the Germanic invasions was
not able to survive the invasion of Islam.
It is thrown across the path of history with the elemental force of a
cosmic cataclysm. Even in the lifetime of Mahomet (571-632) no one could
have imagined the consequences or prepared for them. Yet the movement
took no more than fifty years to spread from the China Sea to the
Atlantic Ocean. Nothing was able to withstand it. At the first blow, it
overthrew the Persian Empire (637-644). It took from the Byzantine
Empire, in quick succession, Syria (634-636), Egypt (640-642), Africa
(698). It reached into Spain (711). The resistless advance was not to
slow down until the start of the eighth century, when the walls of
Constantinople on the one side (713) and the soldiers of Charles Martel
on the other (732) broke that great enveloping offensive against the two
flanks of Christianity.
But if its force of expansion was exhausted, it had none the less
changed the face of the world. Its sudden thrust had destroyed ancient
Europe. It had put an end to the Mediterranean commonwealth in which it
had gathered its strength.
The familiar and almost “family” sea which once united all the parts of
this commonwealth was to become a barrier between them. On all its
shores, for centuries, social life, in its fundamental characteristics,
had been the same; religion, the same; customs and ideas, the same or
very nearly so. The invasion of the barbarians from the North had
modified nothing essential in that situation.
But now, all of a sudden, the very lands where civilization had been
born were torn away; the Cult of the Prophet was substituted for the
Christian Faith, Moslem law for Roman law, the Arab tongue for the Greek
and the Latin tongue.
The Mediterranean had been a Roman lake; it now became, for the most
part, a Moslem lake. From this time on it separated, instead of uniting,
the East and the West of Europe. The tie which was still binding the
Byzantine Empire to the Germanic kingdoms of the West was broken.
_Chapter II_
The Ninth Century
The tremendous effect the invasion of Islam had upon Western Europe has
not, perhaps, been fully appreciated.
Out of it arose a new and unparalleled situation, unlike anything that
had gone before. Through the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and finally the
Romans, Western Europe had always received the cultural stamp of the
East. It had lived, as it were, by virtue of the Mediterranean; now for
the first time it was forced to live by its own resources. The center of
gravity, heretofore on the shore of the Mediterranean, was shifted to
the North. As a result the Frankish Empire, which had so far been
playing only a minor rôle in the history of Europe, was to become the
arbiter of Europe’s destinies.
There is obviously more than mere coincidence in the simultaneity of the
closing of the Mediterranean by Islam and the entry of the Carolingians
on the scene. There is the distinct relation of cause and effect between
the two. The Frankish Empire was fated to lay the foundations of the
Europe of the Middle Ages. But the mission which it fulfilled had as an
essential prior condition the overthrow of the traditional world-order.
The Carolingians would never have been called upon to play the part they
did if historical evolution had not been turned aside from its course
and, so to speak, “de-Saxoned” by the Moslem invasion. Without Islam,
the Frankish Empire would probably never have existed and Charlemagne,
without Mahomet, would be inconceivable.[19]
This is made plain enough by the many contrasts between the Merovingian
era, during which the Mediterranean retained its time-honored historical
importance, and the Carolingian era, when that influence ceased to make
itself felt. These contrasts were in evidence everywhere: in religious
sentiment, in political and social institutions, in literature, in
language and even in handwriting. From whatever standpoint it is
studied, the civilization of the ninth century shows a distinct break
with the civilization of antiquity. Nothing would be more fallacious
than to see therein a simple continuation of the preceding centuries.
The _coup d’état_ of Pepin le Bref was considerably more than the
substitution of one dynasty for another. It marked a new orientation of
the course hitherto followed by history. At first glance there seems
reason to believe that Charlemagne, in assuming the title of Roman
Emperor and Augustus, wished to restore the ancient tradition. In
reality, in setting himself up against the Emperor of Constantinople, he
broke that tradition. His Empire was Roman only insofar as the Catholic
Church was Roman. For it was from the Church, and the Church alone, that
came its inspiration. The forces which he placed at her service were,
moreover, forces of the North. His principal collaborators, in religious
and cultural matters, were no longer, as they had previously been,
Italians, Aquitanians, or Spaniards; they were Anglo-Saxons--a St.
Boniface or an Alcuin--or they were Swabians, like Einhard. In the
affairs of the State, which was now cut off from the Mediterranean,
southerners played scarcely any rôle. The Germanic influence commenced
to dominate at the very moment when the Frankish Empire, forced to turn
away from the Mediterranean, spread over northern Europe and pushed its
frontiers as far as the Elbe and the mountains of Bohemia.[20]
In the field of economics the contrast, which the Carolingian period
shows to Merovingian times, is especially striking.[21] In the days of
the Merovingians, Gaul was still a maritime country and trade and
traffic flourished because of that fact. The Empire of Charlemagne, on
the contrary, was essentially an inland one. No longer was there any
communication with the exterior; it was a closed State, a State without
foreign markets, living in a condition of almost complete isolation.
To be sure, the transition from one era to the other was not clear-cut.
The trade of Marseilles did not suddenly cease but, from the middle of
the seventh century, waned gradually as the Moslems advanced in the
Mediterranean. Syria, conquered by them in 633-638, no longer kept it
thriving with her ships and her merchandise. Shortly afterwards, Egypt
passed in her turn under the yoke of Islam (638-640), and papyrus no
longer came to Gaul. A characteristic consequence is that, after 677,
the royal chancellory stopped using papyrus.[22] The importation of
spices kept up for a while, for the monks of Corbie, in 716, believed it
useful to have ratified for the last time their privileges of the
_tonlieu_ of Fos.[23] A half century later, solitude reigned in the port
of Marseilles. Her foster-mother, the sea, was shut off from her and the
economic life of the inland regions which had been nourished through her
intermediary was definitely extinguished. By the ninth century Provence,
once the richest country of Gaul, had become the poorest.[24]
More and more, the Moslems consolidated their domination over the sea.
In the course of the ninth century they seized the Balearic Isles,
Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily. On the coasts of Africa they founded new
ports: Tunis (698-703); later on, Mehdia to the south of this city; then
Cairo, in 973. Palermo, where stood a great arsenal, became their
principal base in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Their fleets sailed it in complete
mastery; commercial flotillas transported the products of the West to
Cairo, whence they were redispatched to Bagdad, or pirate fleets
devastated the coasts of Provence and Italy and put towns to the torch
after they had been pillaged and their inhabitants captured to be sold
as slaves. In 889 a band of these plunderers even laid hold of
Fraxinetum (the present Garde-Frainet, in the Department of the Var) not
far from Nice, the garrison of which, for nearly a century, had
subjected the neighboring populace to continual raids and menaced the
roads which led across the Alps from France to Italy.[25]
The efforts of Charlemagne and his successors to protect the coasts from
Saracen raiders were as impotent as their attempts to oppose the
invasions of the Norsemen in the North and West. The hardihood and
seamanship of the Danes and Norwegians made it easy for them to plunder
the coasts of the Carolingian Empire during the whole of the eleventh
century. They conducted their raids not only from the North Sea, the
Channel, and the Gulf of Gascony, but at times even from the
Mediterranean. Every river which emptied into these seas was, at one
time or another, ascended by their skilfully constructed barks, splendid
specimens whereof, brought to light by recent excavations, are now
preserved at Christiania. Periodically the valleys of the Rhine, the
Meuse, the Scheldt, the Seine, the Loire, the Garonne and the Rhône were
the scene of systematic and persistent pillaging.[26] The devastation
was so complete that, in many cases indeed, the population itself
disappeared. And nothing is a better illustration of the essentially
inland character of the Frankish Empire than its inability to organize
the defence of its coasts, against either Saracens or Norsemen. For that
defence, to be effective, should have been a naval defence, and the
Empire had no fleets, or hastily improvised ones at best.[27]
Such conditions were incompatible with the existence of a commerce of
first rate importance. The historical literature of the ninth century
contains, it is true, certain references to merchants (_mercatores_,
_negociatores_),[28] but no illusion should be cherished as to their
importance. Compared to the number of texts which have been preserved
from that era, these references are extremely rare. The capitularies,
those regulations touching upon every phase of social life, are
remarkably meagre in so far as applies to commerce. From this it may be
assumed that the latter played a rôle of only secondary, negligible
importance. It was only in the North of Gaul that, during the first half
of the ninth century, trade showed any signs of activity.
The ports of Quentovic (a place now vanished, near Etaples in the
Department of Pas-de-Calais) and Duurstede (on the Rhine, southwest of
Utrecht) which under the Merovingian Monarchy were already trading with
England and Denmark, seem to have been centers of a widely extended
shipping. It is a safe conjecture that because of them the river
transport of the Friesians along the Rhine, the Scheldt and the Meuse
enjoyed an importance that was matched by no other region during the
reigns of Charlemagne and his successors. The cloths woven by the
peasants of Flanders, and which contemporary texts designate by the name
of Friesian cloaks (_pallia fresonica_),[29] together with the wines of
Rhenish Germany, supplied to that river traffic the substance of an
export trade which seems to have been fairly regular up to the day when
the Norsemen took possession of the ports in question. It is known,
moreover, that the _deniers_ coined at Duurstede had a very extensive
circulation. They served as prototypes for the oldest coins of Sweden
and Poland,[30] evident proof that they early penetrated, no doubt at
the hands of the Norsemen, as far as the Baltic Sea. Attention may also
be called, as having been the substance of a rather extensive trade, to
the salt industry of Noirmoutier, where Irish ships were to be seen.[31]
Salzburg salt, on the other hand, was shipped along the Danube and its
affluents to the interior of the Empire.[32] The sale of slaves, despite
the prohibitions that were laid down by the sovereigns, was carried on
along the western frontiers, where the prisoners of war taken from among
the pagan Slavs found numerous purchasers.
The Jews seem to have applied themselves particularly to this sort of
traffic. They were still numerous, and were found in every part of
Francia. Those in the South of Gaul were in close relations with their
coreligionists of Moslem Spain, to whom they are accused of having sold
Christian children.[33]
It was probably from Spain, or perhaps also from Venice, that these Jews
obtained the spices and the valuable textiles in which they dealt.
However, the obligation to which they were subjected of having their
children baptised must have caused a great number of them to emigrate
south of the Pyrenees at an early date, and their commercial importance
steadily declined in the course of the ninth century. As for the
Syrians, they were no longer of importance at this era.[34]
It is, then, most likely that the commerce of Carolingian times was very
much reduced. Except in the neighborhood of Quentovic and Duurstede, it
consisted only in the transport of indispensable commodities, such as
wine and salt, in the prohibited traffic of a few slaves, and in the
barter, through the intermediary of the Jews, of a small number of
products from the East.
Of a regular and normal commercial activity, of steady trading carried
on by a class of professional merchants, in short, of all that
constitutes the very essence of an economy of exchange worthy of the
name, no traces are to be found after the closing off of the
Mediterranean by the Islamic invasion. The great number of markets
(_mercatus_), which were to be found in the ninth century, in no way
contradicts this assertion. They were, as a matter of fact, only small
local market-places, instituted for the weekly provisioning of the
populace by means of the retail sale of foodstuffs from the country. As
a proof of the commercial activity of the Carolingian era, it would be
equally beside the point to speak of the existence of the street
occupied by merchants (_vicus mercatorum_)[35] at Aix-la-Chapelle near
the palace of Charlemagne, or of similar streets near certain great
abbeys such as, for example, that of St. Riquier. The merchants with
whom we have to do here were not, in fact, professional merchants but
servitors charged with the duty of supplying the Court or the monks.
They were, so to speak, employees of the seignorial household staff and
were in no respect merchants.
There is, moreover, material proof of the economic decline which
affected Western Europe from the day when she ceased to belong to the
Mediterranean commonwealth. It is furnished by the reform of the
monetary system, initiated by Pepin le Bref and completed by
Charlemagne. That reform abandoned gold coinage and substituted silver
in its place. The _solidus_ which had heretofore, conforming to the
Roman tradition, constituted the basic monetary unit, was now only
nominal money. The only real coins from this time on were the silver
_deniers_, weighing about two grams, the metallic value of which,
compared to that of the dollar, was approximately eight and one-half
cents.[36] The metallic value of the Merovingian gold _solidus_ being
nearly three dollars, the importance of the reform can be readily
appreciated. Undoubtedly it is to be explained only by a prodigious
falling off of both trading and wealth.
If it is admitted, and it must be admitted, that the reappearance of
gold coinage, with the florins of Florence and the ducats of Venice in
the thirteenth century, characterised the economic renaissance of
Europe, the inverse is also true: the abandoning of gold coinage in the
eighth century was the manifestation of a profound decline. It is not
enough to say that Pepin and Charlemagne wished to remedy the monetary
disorder of the last days of the Merovingian era. It would have been
quite possible for them to find a remedy without giving up the gold
standard. They gave up the standard, obviously, from necessity--that is
to say, as a result of the disappearance of the yellow metal in Gaul.
And this disappearance had no other cause than the interruption of the
commerce of the Mediterranean. The proof of this is given by the fact
that Southern Italy, remaining in contact with Constantinople, retained
like the latter a gold standard, for which the Carolingian sovereigns
were forced to substitute a silver standard. The very light weight of
their _deniers_, moreover, testifies to the economic isolation of their
Empire. It is inconceivable that they would have reduced the monetary
unit to a thirtieth of its former value if there had been preserved the
slightest bond between their States and the Mediterranean regions where
the gold _solidus_ continued to circulate.
But this is not all. The monetary reform of the ninth century not only
was in keeping with the general impoverishment of the era in which it
took place, but with the circulation of money which was noteworthy for
both lightness and inadequacy. In the absence of centers of attraction
sufficiently powerful to draw money from afar, it remained, so to
speak, stagnant. Charlemagne and his successors in vain ordered that
_deniers_ should be coined only in the royal mints. Under the reign of
Louis the Pious, it was necessary to give to certain churches
authorization to coin money, in view of the difficulties, under which
they labored, of obtaining cash. From the second half of the ninth
century on, the authorization to establish a market was almost always
accompanied by the authorization to establish a mint in the same
place.[37] The State could not retain the monopoly of minting coins. It
was consistently frittered away. And that is again a manifestation, by
no means equivocal, of the economic decline. History shows that the
better commerce is sustained, the more the monetary system is
centralized and simplified. The dispersion, the variety, and in fact the
anarchy which it manifests as we follow the course of the ninth century,
ends by giving striking confirmation to the general theory here put
forward.
There have been some attempts to attribute to Charlemagne a farseeing
political economy. This is to lend him ideas which, however great we
suppose his genius to have been, it is impossible for him to have had.
No one can submit with any likelihood of truth that the works which he
commenced in 793, to join the Rednitz to the Altmühl and so establish
communication between the Rhine and the Danube, could have had any other
purpose than the transport of troops, or that the wars against the Avars
were provoked by the desire to open up a commercial route to
Constantinople. The stipulations, in other respects inoperative, of the
capitularies regarding coinages, weights and measures, the market-tolls
and the markets, were intimately bound up with the general system of
regulation and control which was typical of Carolingian legislation. The
same is true regarding the measures taken against usury and the
prohibition enjoining members of the clergy from engaging in business.
Their purpose was to combat fraud, disorder and indiscipline and to
impose a Christian morality on the people. Only a prejudiced point of
view can see in them an attempt to stimulate the economic development of
the Empire.