on the boundaries of the Roman cities.[47] Held in respect by the
barbarians, it therefore continued to maintain, after their occupation
of the provinces of the Empire, the municipal system upon which it had
been based. The dying out of trade and the exodus of foreign merchants
had no influence on the ecclesiastical organization. The cities where
the bishops resided became poorer and less populous without the bishops
themselves feeling the effects. On the contrary, the more that general
prosperity declined, the more their power and their influence had a
chance to assert itself. Endowed with a prestige which was the greater
because the State had disappeared, sustained by donations from their
congregations, and partners with the Carolingians in the governing of
society, they were in a commanding position by virtue of, at one and the
same time, their moral authority, their economic power, and their
political activity.
When the Empire of Charlemagne foundered, their status, far from being
adversely affected, was made still more secure. The feudal princes, who
had ruined the power of the Monarchy, did not touch that of the Church,
for its divine origin protected it from their attacks. They feared the
bishops who could fling at them the terrible weapon of excommunication.
They revered them as the supernatural guardians of order and justice. In
the midst of the anarchy of the tenth and eleventh centuries the
ascendancy of the Church remained, therefore, unimpaired, and it
appeared to merit that good fortune. To combat the plague of the private
wars which the Crown was now incapable of repressing the bishops
organized in their dioceses the institution of the “Truce of God.”[48]
This prestige of the bishops naturally lent to their places of
residence--that is to say, to the old Roman cities--considerable
importance. It is highly probable that this was what saved them. In the
economy of the ninth century they no longer had any excuse for
existence. In ceasing to be commercial centers they must have lost,
quite evidently, the greatest part of their population. The merchants
who once frequented them, or dwelt there, disappeared and with them
disappeared the urban character which they had still preserved during
the Merovingian era. Lay society no longer had the least use for them.
Round about them the great demesnes lived their own life. There is no
evidence that the State, itself constituted on a purely agricultural
basis, had any cause to be interested in their fate. It is quite
characteristic, and quite illuminating, that the palaces (_palatia_) of
the Carolingian princes were not located in the towns. They were,
without exception, in the country, in the demesnes of the dynasty: at
Herstal, at Jupille, at Meersen in the valley of the Meuse; at Ingelheim
in that of the Rhine; at Attigny in that of the Seine; and so on.
The fame of Aix-la-Chapelle should not lead to any illusion as to the
character of that locality. The resplendency in which it temporarily
gloried under Charlemagne was due only to its fortune in being the
favorite residence of the Emperor. After the reign of Louis the Pious,
it fell back into insignificance. It was to become a real city only four
centuries later.
The State, on its part, in exercising administrative powers could
contribute in no way to the continued existence of the Roman cities.
The countries which formed the political districts of the Empire were
without their chief-towns, just as the Empire itself was without a
capital. The counts, to whom the supervision of them was entrusted, did
not settle down in any fixed spot. They were constantly travelling about
their districts in order to preside over judicial assemblies, to levy
taxes, and to raise troops. The centers of their administrations were
not their places of residence but their persons. It was therefore of
little importance whether they had or did not have their domicile in a
town. Recruited from among the great proprietors of the region, they
were, after all, most accustomed to live on their estates. Their
châteaux, like the palaces of the Emperors, were customarily in the
country.[49]
On the contrary, the immobility which ecclesiastical discipline enforced
upon a bishop permanently held him to the city where was established the
see of his particular diocese. Though they had lost their function in
civil administration, the cities therefore continued to serve as the key
points in religious administration. Each diocese comprised the territory
about the city which contained its cathedral, and kept in constant
touch with it. The change in meaning of the word _civitas_ from the
beginning of the ninth century throws interesting light on this point.
It became synonymous with the bishopric and the episcopal city. The
phrase _civitas Parisiensis_ was used to designate the diocese of Paris
as well as the city of Paris itself, where the bishop had his residence.
Thus under this double connotation was preserved the memory of the
ancient municipal system adopted by the Church for her own ends.
In short, what happened in the empoverished and depopulated Carolingian
towns is a striking parallel of what, in a rather more important
theater, happened at Rome itself when, in the course of the fourth
century, the Eternal City had ceased to be the capital of the world. In
leaving it for Ravenna and then for Constantinople, the emperors
abandoned it to the Pope. What it no longer was in the government of the
State, it continued to be in the government of the Church.
The imperial city became the pontifical city. Its historical prestige
enhanced that of the successor of St. Peter. Isolated, he seemed the
greater, and he became at the same time more powerful. Men now saw only
him; in the absence of the old rulers, men now obeyed only him. By
continuing to dwell in Rome, he made it _his_ Rome, just as each bishop
made the city where he dwelt _his_ city.
During the last days of the Lower Empire, and still more during the
Merovingian era, the power of the bishops over the city populace
consistently increased. They had profited by the growing disorganization
of civil society to accept, or to arrogate to themselves, an authority
which the inhabitants did not take pains to dispute with them, and which
the State had no interest in and, moreover, no means of denying them.
The privileges which the clergy began to enjoy after the fourth century,
in the matters of jurisdiction and taxes, enhanced still further their
status. It became more conspicuous through the granting of charters of
immunity which the Frankish kings issued in their favor. By virtue of
these the bishops were freed from the interference of the counts in
their ecclesiastical demesnes. They were invested from that time on--the
eighth century--with a complete seigniory over their people and their
lands. To the ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the clergy which they
already had was added lay jurisdiction, entrusted to a tribunal, created
by them, whose principal seat was fixed, naturally, in the town where
they had their residence.
When the disappearance of trade, in the ninth century, annihilated the
last vestiges of city life and put an end to what still remained of a
municipal population, the influence of the bishops, already so
extensive, became unrivalled. Henceforward the towns were entirely under
their control. In them were to be found, in fact, practically only
inhabitants dependent more or less directly upon the Church.
Though no precise information is available, it is, nevertheless,
possible to conjecture as to the nature of this population. It was
composed of the clerics of the cathedral church and of the other
churches grouped nearby; of the monks of the monasteries which,
especially after the ninth century, came to be established, sometimes in
great numbers, in the see of the diocese; of the teachers and the
students of the ecclesiastical schools; and finally, of servitors and
artisans, free or serf, who were indispensable to the needs of the
religious group and to the daily existence of the clerical
agglomeration.
Almost always there was to be found in the town a weekly market whither
the peasants from roundabout brought their produce. Sometimes, even, an
annual fair was held there. At the gates a market toll was levied on
everything that came in or went out. A mint was in operation within the
walls. There were also to be found there a number of keeps occupied by
vassals of the bishop, by his advocate or by his castellan. To all of
this must be added, finally, the granaries and the storehouses where
were stored the harvests from the monastical demesnes brought in, at
stated periods, by the tenant-farmers. At the great yearly festivals the
congregation of the diocese poured into the town and gave it, for
several days, the animation of unaccustomed bustle and stir.[50]
All this little world accepted the bishop as both its spiritual and
temporal head. Religious and secular authority were united or, to put it
better, were blended in his person. Aided by a Council formed of priests
and canons, he administered the city and the diocese in conformity with
the precepts of Christian morality. His ecclesiastical tribune, presided
over by the archdeacon, had singularly enlarged its sphere, thanks to
the impotency, and still more to the favor, of the State. Not only were
all the clerics subject to it in every particular, but to it also
pertained jurisdiction over a number of matters affecting the laity:
matters of marriage, of wills, of civil position, etc. The province of
the lay court, which was presided over either by the castellan or the
advocate, had profited by a similar increase in scope. After the reign
of Louis the Pious its jurisdiction had been enlarged by gradual
infringements which the more and more flagrant disorders of the public
administration explain and justify. Those affected by the charters of
immunity were not the only ones subject thereto. It seems quite certain
that, at least within the actual limits of the town, everybody came
under its jurisdiction and that it had been substituted, _in fact_, for
the jurisdiction which the count still possessed, _in theory_, over the
freemen.[51] In addition, the bishop enjoyed very loosely defined police
powers, under which he supervised the markets, regulated the levying of
tolls, took care of the bridges and the ramparts. In short, there was no
longer any field in the administration of the town wherein, whether by
law or by prerogative, he did not intervene as the guardian of order,
peace, and the common weal. A theocratic form of government had
completely replaced the municipal regimen of antiquity. The populace
was governed by its bishop and no longer asked to have even the least
share in that government. True, it sometimes happened that a disturbance
broke out in the town. Bishops were assailed in their palaces and
sometimes even obliged to flee. But it is stretching a point to find in
these events the least trace of a municipal spirit. They are rather to
be explained by intrigues or personal rivalries.
It would be thoroughly fallacious to consider them the precursors of the
communal movement of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Moreover, they
were very rare. Everything indicates that the episcopal administration
was in general beneficent and popular.
This administration, as pointed out above, was not confined to the
limits of the town. It extended throughout the bishopric. The town was
its center, but the diocese was its sphere. Under it the urban
population enjoyed in no particular a privileged status. The regimen
under which it lived was the regimen of the common law. The knights, the
serfs, and the freemen whom it contained were distinguished from their
congeners outside only by being grouped in one locality. Of the special
laws and the autonomy which the bourgeoisie of the Middle Ages was to
enjoy, there was not yet a single trace to be discovered. The word
_civis_ (citizen) by which contemporary texts designated the inhabitant
of the town was only a simple topographical appellation; it did not yet
have legal significance.[52]
These towns were fortresses as well as episcopal residences. In the last
days of the Roman Empire they had been enclosed by walls as a protection
against the barbarians. These walls were still in existence almost
everywhere and the bishops busied themselves with keeping them up or
with restoring them with the greater zeal in that the incursions of the
Saracens and the Norsemen had given increasingly impressive proof,
during the ninth century, of the need of protection. The old Roman
enceintes continued, therefore, to protect the towns against new perils.
Their form remained, under Charlemagne, what it had been under
Constantine. As a general rule, it took the shape of a rectangle
surrounded by ramparts flanked by towers and communicating with the
outside by gates, customarily to the number of four. The space so
enclosed was very restricted and the length of its sides rarely exceeded
four to five hundred yards.[53] Moreover, it was far from being
entirely built up; between the houses cultivated fields and gardens were
to be found. The outskirts (_suburbium_), which in the Merovingian era
still extended beyond the walls, had disappeared.[54] Thanks to their
defences, the towns could almost always victoriously oppose the assaults
of the invaders from the north and the south. It will suffice here to
recall the famous siege of Paris by the Norsemen in 885.
The episcopal cities naturally served as a refuge for the populations of
their neighborhood upon the approach of the barbarians. There monks
came, even from very far away, to seek an asylum, as did, for example,
those from St. Vaast in 887 at Beauvais and those from St. Quentin at
Laon.[55]
In the midst of the insecurity and the disorders which imparted so
lugubrious a character to the second half of the ninth century, it
therefore fell to the towns to fulfill a true mission of protection.
They were, in every sense of the word, the ramparts of a society
invaded, under tribute, and terrorized. Soon, from another cause, they
were not to be alone in filling that rôle.
It is obvious that the anarchy of the ninth century hastened the
inevitable decomposition of the Frankish State. The counts, who were the
biggest proprietors of their districts, profited by existing conditions
to arrogate to themselves a complete autonomy, to make of their office
an hereditary estate, to combine in their hands, with the private powers
they exercised over their own demesnes, the public powers which were
delegated to them, and finally to amalgamate under their domination, in
a single principality, all the counties they could lay hold of. The
Carolingian Empire was thus parcelled out, after the middle of the ninth
century, into a number of territories subject to as many local
dynasties, and attached to the Crown only by the fragile bond of feudal
homage. The State was too feeble to resist this disintegration. It was
accomplished, unquestionably, by means of violence and abominable
perfidies. Nevertheless it was, on the whole, beneficial for society. In
seizing power, the princes forthwith accepted the obligations it
imposed. Their most evident interest was to defend and protect the lands
and the people who had become _their_ lands and _their_ people. They did
not fail in a task which a purely selfish concern for personal power had
imposed upon them. As their power grew and was consolidated, they became
more and more preoccupied with giving their principalities an
organization capable of guaranteeing public order and peace.
The first need which was manifest was that of defence, as much against
the Saracens or the Norsemen as against the neighboring princes.
Fortresses, therefore, sprang up everywhere at the beginning of the
ninth century.[56] Contemporary texts give them the most diverse names:
_castellum_, _castrum_, _oppidum_, _urbs_, _municipium_; the most usual
and in any case the most technical of these appellations is that of
_burgus_, a word borrowed from the German by the Latin of the Lower
Empire and which is preserved in all the modern languages: _burg_,
_borough_, _bourg_, _borgo_.[57]
Of these burgs of the late Middle Ages no trace remains in our day. The
sources of information, however, fortunately make it possible to form a
fairly accurate picture of them. They were walled enclosures of somewhat
restricted perimeter, customarily circular in form and surrounded by a
moat. In the center was to be found a strong-tower and a keep, the last
redoubt of defence in case of attack. A permanent garrison of knights
(_milites castrenses_) was kept stationed there. This was placed under
the orders of a castellan (_castellanus_). The prince had a home
(_domus_) in each of the burgs of his territory where he stayed with his
retinue in the course of the continual changes of residence which war or
administerial duties forced upon him. Very often a chapel, or a church
flanked by the buildings necessary to house the clergy, raised its
belfry above the battlements of the rampart. Sometimes there were also
to be found by the side of it quarters intended for the judicial
assemblies whose members came, at fixed periods, from outside to
assemble in the burg. Finally, what was never lacking were a granary and
cellars where was kept, to supply the necessities of a siege should the
case arise and to furnish subsistence to the prince during his stays,
the produce of the neighboring demesnes which he held. Prestations in
kind levied on the peasants of the district assured the subsistence of
the garrison, on its part. The upkeep of the walls devolved upon these
same peasants who were compelled to do the work by statute labor.[58]
Although from country to country the picture, which has just been
drawn, naturally differed in details, the same essential traits were to
be found everywhere. The similarity between the _bourgs_ of Flanders and
the _boroughs_ of Anglo-Saxon England is a striking one.[59] And this
similarity unquestionably proves that the same needs brought in their
train like results everywhere.
As can be easily seen, the burgs were, above all, military
establishments. But to this original function was early added that of
being administrative centers. The castellan ceased to be solely the
commandant of the knights of the castral garrison. The prince delegated
to him financial and juridical authority over a more or less extensive
district round about the walls of the burg and which took, by the tenth
century, the name of castellany. The castellany was related to the burg
as the bishopric was related to the town. In case of war, its
inhabitants found there a refuge; in time of peace, there they repaired
to take part in the assemblies of justice or to pay off the prestations
to which they were subject. Nevertheless the burg did not show the
slightest urban character. Its population comprised, aside from the
knights and the clerics who made up its essential part, only men
employed in their service and whose number was certainly of very little
importance. It was a fortress population; it was not a city population.
Neither commerce nor industry was possible or even conceivable in such
an environment. It produced nothing of itself, lived by revenues from
the surrounding country, and had no other economic rôle than that of a
simple consumer.
It is therefore a safe conclusion that the period which opened with the
Carolingian era knew cities neither in the social sense, nor in the
economic sense, nor in the legal sense of that word. The towns and the
burgs were merely fortified places and headquarters of administration.
Their inhabitants enjoyed neither special laws nor institutions of their
own, and their manner of living did not distinguish them in any way from
the rest of society.
Commercial and industrial activity were completely foreign to them. In
no respect were they out of key with the agricultural civilization of
their times. The groups they formed were, after all, of trifling
importance. It is not possible, in the lack of reliable information, to
give an exact figure, but everything indicates that the population of
the burgs never consisted of more than a few hundred men and that that
of the towns probably did not pass the figure of two to three thousand
souls.
The towns and the burgs played, however, an essential rôle in the
history of cities. They were, so to speak, the stepping-stones thereto.
Round about their walls cities were to take shape after the economic
renaissance, whose first symptoms appeared in the course of the tenth
century, had made itself manifest.
_Chapter IV_
The Revival of Commerce
The end of the ninth century was the moment when the economic
development of Western Europe that followed the closing of the
Mediterranean was at its lowest ebb. It was also the moment when the
social disorganization caused by the raids of the barbarians and the
accompanying political anarchy reached a maximum.
The tenth century, if not an era of recovery, was at least an era of
stabilization and relative peace. The surrender of Normandy to Rollo
(912) marked in the West the end of the great Scandinavian invasions,
while in the East Henry the Fowler and Otto I checked and held the Slavs
along the Elbe and the Hungarians in the valley of the Danube (934,
955). At the same time the feudal system, which had definitely displaced
the monarchy, was established in France on the débris of the old
Carolingian order. In Germany, on the contrary, the somewhat later
development of society enabled the princes of the House of Saxony to
resist the encroachments of the lay aristocracy. On their side they had
the powerful influence of the bishops and used it to restore the
ascendancy of the Monarchy. In assuming the title of Roman Emperor,
they laid claim to the universal authority which Charlemagne had
exercised.
If all this was not accomplished without bitter conflicts, nevertheless
it was decidedly productive of good. Europe ceased to be overrun by
ruthless hordes. She recovered confidence in the future, and, with that
confidence, courage and ambition. The date of the renewal of a
cooperative activity on the part of the people might well be ascribed to
the tenth century. At that date, likewise, the social authorities began
once more to acquit themselves in the rôle which it was their place to
play. From now on, in feudal as well as in episcopal principalities, the
first traces could be seen of an organized effort to better the
condition of the people. The prime need of that era, hardly rising above
anarchy, was the need of peace, the most fundamental and the most
essential of all the needs of society.
The first Truce of God was proclaimed in 989. Private wars, the greatest
of the plagues that harassed those troubled times, were energetically
combated by the territorial counts in France and by the prelates of the
imperial Church in Germany.