in outline the picture which the eleventh century presents. The famous
legend of the terrors of the year 1000 is not devoid, in this respect,
of symbolic significance. It is doubtless untrue that men expected the
end of the world in the year 1000. Yet the century which came in at that
date is characterized, in contrast with the preceding one, by a
recrudescence of activity so marked that it could pass for the vigorous
and joyful awakening of a society long oppressed by a nightmare of
anguish. In every demesne was to be seen the same burst of energy and,
for that matter, of optimism. The Church, revivified by the Clunisian
reform, undertook to purify herself of the abuses which had crept into
her discipline and to shake off the bondage in which the Emperors held
her. A mystic enthusiasm, of which she was the inspiration, animated her
congregations and launched them upon the heroic and grandiose enterprise
of the Crusades which brought Western Christianity to grips with Islam.
The military spirit of feudalism led her to initiate and to succeed in
epic undertakings. Norman knights went to battle with Byzantines and
Moslems in Southern Italy, and founded there the principalities out of
which was later to arise the Kingdom of Sicily; other Normans, with whom
were associated Flemings and Frenchmen from the North, conquered
England under the leadership of Duke William. South of the Pyrenees the
Christians drove before them the Saracens of Spain; Toledo and Valencia
fell to their hands (1072-1109).
Such undertakings testify not only to energy and vigor of spirit; they
testify also to the health of society. They would have obviously been
impossible without that native strength which is one of the
characteristics of the eleventh century. The fecundity of families
seemed, at this date, to be as general among the nobility as among the
peasants. Younger sons abounded everywhere, feeling themselves crowded
for room on their natal soil and eager to try their fortunes abroad.
Everywhere were to be met adventurers in search of gain or work. The
armies were full of mercenaries, “Coterelli” or “Brabantiones,” letting
their services to whoever wished to employ them. From Flanders and
Holland bands of peasants were setting out, by the beginning of the
twelfth century, to drain the _Mooren_ on the banks of the Elbe. In
every part of Europe arms were offered in superabundant quantity and
this is undoubtedly the explanation of the increasing number, from then
on, of great reclamation projects in clearing land and diking streams.
It does not appear that, from the Roman era to the eleventh century,
the area of cultivated land had been perceptibly increased. Save in the
Germanic countries, the monasteries had hardly altered, in this respect,
the existing situation. They were almost always established on old
estates and did nothing to decrease the extent of the woods, the heaths
and the marshes contained within their demesnes. But it was quite a
different matter when once the increase of population permitted these
unproductive terrains to be put to good use. Just about the year 1000
there began a period of reclamation which was to continue, with steady
increase, up to the end of the twelfth century. Europe “colonized”
herself, thanks to the increase of her inhabitants. The princes and the
great proprietors turned to the founding of new towns, where flocked the
“younger sons” in quest of lands to cultivate.[60] The great forests
began to be cleared. In Flanders appeared, about 1150, the first
_polders_.[61] (A “polder” is diked land, reclaimed from the sea.) The
Order of the Cistercians, founded in 1098, gave itself over at once to
reclamation projects and the clearing of the land.
It is easy to see that the increase in population and the burst of
renewed general activity of which it was both cause and effect, operated
from the very first to the benefit of an agricultural economy. But this
condition should, before long, have had its effect upon trade as well.
The eleventh century, in fact, brings us face to face with a real
commercial revival. This revival received its impetus from two centers
of activity, one located in the south and the other in the north: Venice
on one side and the Flemish Coast on the other. And this is merely
another way of saying that it was the result of an external stimulus.
The contact with foreign trade, maintained at these two points, first
caused it to appear and spread. Quite likely it could have come about in
some other way. Commercial activity might have been revived by virtue of
the trend of general economic life. The fact is, however, that this
wasn’t the case. Just as the trade of the West disappeared with the
shutting off of its foreign markets, just so it was renewed when these
markets were reopened.
Venice, whose effect was felt from the very first, has a well-recognized
and singular place in the economic history of Europe. Like Tyre, Venice
shows an exclusively commercial character. Her first inhabitants,
fleeing before the approach of the Huns, the Goths and the Lombards,
had sought (in the fifth and sixth centuries) a refuge on the barren
islets of the lagoons at Rialto, at Olivolo, at Spinalunga, at
Dorsoduro.[62] To exist in these marshes they had to tax their ingenuity
and to fight against Nature herself. Everything was wanting: even
drinking water was lacking. But the sea was enough for the existence of
a folk who knew how to manage things. Fishing and the preparation of
salt supplied an immediate means of livelihood to the Venetians. They
were able to procure wheat by exchanging their products with the
inhabitants of the neighboring shores.
Trade was thus forced upon them by the very conditions under which they
lived. And they had the energy and the genius to turn to profit the
unlimited possibilities which trade offered them. By the eighth century
the group of islets they occupied was already thickly populated enough
to become the see of a special diocese.
At the date when the city was founded, all Italy still belonged to the
Byzantine Empire. Thanks to her insular situation, the conquerors who
successively overran the Peninsula--first the Lombards, then
Charlemagne, and finally, still later, the German emperors--were not
successful in their attempts to gain possession. She remained,
therefore, under the sovereignty of Constantinople, thus forming at the
upper end of the Adriatic and at the foot of the Alps an isolated
outpost of Byzantine civilization. While Western Europe was detaching
herself from the East, she continued to be part of it. And this
circumstance is of capital importance. The consequence was that Venice
did not cease to gravitate in the orbit of Constantinople. Across the
waters, she was subject to the attraction of that great city and herself
grew great under its influence.
Constantinople, even in the eleventh century, appears not only as a
great city, but as the greatest city of the whole Mediterranean basin.
Her population was not far from reaching the figure of a million
inhabitants, and that population was singularly active.[63] She was not
content, as had been the population of Rome under the Republic and the
Empire, to consume without producing. She gave herself over, with a zeal
which the fiscal system shackled but did not choke, not only to trading
but to industry. For Constantinople was a great port and a first-rate
manufacturing center as well as a political capital. Here were to be
found every manner of life and every form of social activity. Alone, in
the Christian world, she presented a picture analogous to that of great
modern cities with all the complexities, all the defects but also with
all the refinements of an essentially urban civilization. An
uninterrupted shipping kept her in touch with the coasts of the Black
Sea, Asia Minor, Southern Italy, and the shores of the Adriatic. Her
fleets of war secured to her the mastery of the sea, without which she
would not have been able to live. As long as she remained powerful, she
was able to maintain, in the face of Islam, her dominion over all the
waters of the Eastern Mediterranean.
It is easy to understand how Venice profited by her alliance with a
world so different from the European West. To it she not only owed the
prosperity of her commerce, but from it she first learned those higher
forms of civilization, that perfected technique, that business
enterprise, and that political and administrative organization which
gave her a place apart in the Europe of the Middle Ages. By the eighth
century she was devoting herself with greater and greater success to
the provisioning of Constantinople. Her ships transported thither the
products of the countries which were contiguous to her on the east and
the west: wheat and wine from Italy, wood from Dalmatia, salt from the
lagoons, and, in spite of the prohibitions of the Pope and the Emperor
himself, slaves which she easily secured among the Slavic peoples of the
shores of the Adriatic. Thence they brought back, in return, the
precious fabrics of Byzantine manufacture, as well as spices which Asia
furnished to Constantinople. By the tenth century the activity of the
port had already attained extraordinary proportions.[64] And with the
extension of trade, the love of gain became irresistible. No scruple had
any weight with the Venetians. Their religion was a religion of business
men. It mattered little to them that the Moslems were the enemies of
Christ, if business with them was profitable. After the ninth century
they began more and more to frequent Aleppo, Cairo, Damascus, Kairwan,
Palermo. Treaties of commerce assured their merchants a privileged
status in the markets of Islam.
By the start of the eleventh century, the power of Venice was making as
marvellous progress as her wealth. Under the Doge Pietro II Orseolo,
she cleared the Adriatic of the Slavic pirates, subjected Istria and had
at Zara, Veglia, Arbe, Trau, Spalato, Curzola, and Lagosta settlements
or military establishments. John the Deacon extols the splendor and the
glory of _Venetia Aurea_, and Guglielmo of Apuleia vaunts the city “rich
in money, rich in men,” and declares that “no people in the world are
more valorous in naval warfare, more skilful in the art of guiding ships
on the sea.”
It was inevitable that the powerful economic movement, of which Venice
was the center, should be communicated to the countries of Italy from
which she was separated only by the lagoons. There she obtained the
wheat and wine which she either consumed herself or exported, and she
naturally sought to create there a market for the eastern merchandise
which her mariners unloaded in greater and greater quantity on the quays
by the Po. She entered into relations with Pavia, which was not long in
being animated by her infectious activity.[65] She obtained from the
German emperors the right to trade freely first with the nearby cities
and then with all Italy, as well as the shipping monopoly for all goods
arriving in her port.
In the course of the tenth century Lombardy was inspired, by her
example, with commercial life. Trade rapidly spread from Pavia to the
neighboring cities. All of them made haste to share in the traffic of
which Venice had given them the outstanding example and which it was to
her interest to stimulate among them. The spirit of enterprise developed
in one place after another.
It was not only products of the soil which kept the commercial relations
with Venice flourishing. Industry was already commencing to appear.
Early in the eleventh century, for example, Lucca turned to the
manufacture of cloths and kept at it until much later. Probably a great
many more details would be known about the beginnings of this economic
revival in Lombardy if our sources of information were not so deplorably
meagre.[66]
Preponderant as the Venetian influence had been in Italy, it did not
make itself felt there exclusively. The South of the Peninsula beyond
Spoleto and Benevento was still, and so remained until the arrival of
the Normans in the eleventh century, under the power of the Byzantine
Empire. Bari, Tarentum, Naples and above all Amalfi, kept up relations
with Constantinople similar to those of Venice. They were very active
centers of trade and, no more than Venice, did not hesitate to traffic
with Moslem ports.[67]
Their shipping was, naturally, fated to find competitors sooner or later
among the inhabitants of the coastal towns situated further to the
north. And, in fact, after the beginning of the eleventh century we see
first Genoa, then Pisa soon after, turning their attention to the sea.
In 935 the Saracen pirates had again pillaged Genoa. But the moment was
approaching when she was in her turn to take the offensive. There could
be no question of her concluding commercial arrangements, as had Venice
or Amalfi, with the enemies of her Faith. The mystic, excessive
scrupulousness of the West in religious matters did not permit it, and
too many hates had accumulated in the course of the centuries. The sea
could be opened up only by force of arms.
In 1015-16 an expedition was undertaken by Genoa, in cooperation with
Pisa, against Sardinia. Twenty years later, in 1034, they got possession
for a time of Bona on the coast of Africa; the Pisans, on their part,
victoriously entered the port of Palermo in 1062 and destroyed its
arsenal.
In 1087 the fleets of the two cities, encouraged by Pope Victor III,
attacked Mehdia.[68] All these expeditions were due as much to religious
enthusiasm as to the spirit of adventure. With a quite different
viewpoint from that of the Venetians, the Genoese and the Pisans
considered themselves soldiers of Christ and of the Church, opponents of
Islam. They believed they saw the Archangel Gabriel and St. Peter
leading them into battle with the Infidels, and it was only after having
massacred the “priests of Mahomet” and pillaged the mosque of Mehdia
that they signed an advantageous treaty of commerce. The Cathedral of
Pisa, built after this triumph, admirably symbolized both the mysticism
of the conquerors and the wealth which their shipping was beginning to
bring to them. Pillars and precious marble brought from Africa served to
decorate it--it seems as if they had wished to attest by its splendor
the revenge of Christianity upon the Saracens whose opulence was a thing
of scandal and of envy. Those, at least, are the sentiments which an
enthusiastic contemporary poem expresses:[69]
_Unde tua in aeternum splendebit ecclesia_
_Auro, gemnis, margaritis et palliis splendida_[A]
[A]“Thy church will be resplendent for eternity,
Dazzling with gold, with gems, with pearls and precious cloths.”
Before the counterattack of Christianity, Islam thus gave way little by
little. The launching of the first Crusade (1096) marked its definite
recoil. In 1097 a Genoese fleet sailed towards Antioch, bringing to the
Crusaders reinforcements and supplies. Two years later Pisa sent out
vessels “under the orders of the Pope” to deliver Jerusalem. From that
time on the whole Mediterranean was opened, or rather reopened, to
western shipping. As in the Roman era, communications were
re-established from one end to the other of that essentially European
sea.
The Empire of Islam, insofar as the sea was concerned, came to an end.
To be sure, the political and religious results of the Crusade were
ephemeral. The kingdom of Jerusalem and the principalities of Edessa and
Antioch were reconquered by the Moslems in the twelfth century. But the
sea remained in the hands of the Christians. They were the ones who held
undisputed economic mastery over it. All the shipping in the ports of
the Levant came gradually under their control. Their commercial
establishments multiplied with surprising rapidity in the ports of
Syria, Egypt and the isles of the Ionian Sea. The conquest of Corsica
(1091), of Sardinia (1022) and of Sicily (1058-1090) took away from the
Saracens the bases of operations which, since the ninth century, had
enabled them to keep the West in a state of blockade. The ships of Genoa
and Pisa kept the sea routes open. They patronized the markets of the
East, whither came the products of Asia, both by caravan and by the
ships of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and frequented in their turn
the great port of Byzantium. The capture of Amalfi by the Normans
(1073), in putting an end to the commerce of that city, freed them from
her rivalry.
But their progress immediately aroused the jealousy of Venice. She could
not bear to share with these newcomers a trade in which she laid claim
to a monopoly. It was of no moment that she professed the same Faith,
belonged to the same people and spoke the same language; since they had
become rivals she saw in them only enemies. In the spring of the year
1100 a Venetian squadron, lying in wait before Rhodes for the return of
the fleet which Pisa had sent to Jerusalem, fell upon it unawares and
sank without pity a large number of vessels.[70] So began between the
maritime cities a conflict which was to last as long as their
prosperity. The Mediterranean was no more to know that Roman peace which
the Empire of the Caesars had once enjoined upon her. The divergence of
interests was hereafter to sustain on the sea a hostility, sometimes
secret and sometimes openly declared, between the rivals who contested
for supremacy. The quarrels of the Italian republics of the Middle Ages
are still duplicated in modern times by the continued wrangling of the
States whose coasts the Mediterranean washes.
In developing, maritime commerce must naturally have become more
generalized. By the beginning of the twelfth century it had reached the
shores of France and Spain. After the long stagnation into which the
city had fallen at the end of the Merovingian period, the old port of
Marseilles took on new life. In Catalonia, Barcelona, out of which the
kings of Aragon had driven the Moslems, profited in turn by the opening
up of the sea. However, Italy undoubtedly kept the upper hand in that
first economic revival. Lombardy, where from Venice on the east and Pisa
and Genoa on the west, all the commercial movements of the Mediterranean
flowed and were blended into one, flourished with an extraordinary
exuberance. On that wonderful plain cities bloomed with the same vigor
as the harvests. The fertility of the soil made possible for them an
unlimited expansion, and at the same time the ease of obtaining markets
favored both the importation of raw materials and the exportation of
manufactured products. There, commerce gave rise to industry, and as it
developed, Bergamo, Cremona, Lodi, Verona, and all the old towns, all
the old Roman _municipia_, took on new life, far more vigorous than that
which had animated them in antiquity. Soon their surplus production and
their fresh energy were seeking to expand abroad. In the south Tuscany
was won. In the north new routes were laid out across the Alps. By the
passes of the Splügen, St. Bernard and the Brenner, their merchants were
to bring to the continent of Europe that same healthy stimulus which had
come to them from the sea.[71] They followed those natural routes marked
by river courses--the Danube to the east, the Rhine to the north, and
the Rhône to the west. In 1074 Italian merchants, undoubtedly Lombards,
are made mention of at Paris;[72] and at the beginning of the twelfth
century the fairs of Flanders were already drawing a considerable
number of their compatriots.[73]
Nothing could be more natural than this appearance of southerners on the
Flemish coast. It was a consequence of the attraction which trade
spontaneously exerts upon trade.
It has already been shown that, during the Carolingian era, the
Netherlands had given evidence of a commercial activity not to be found
anywhere else.[74] This is easily explained by the great number of
rivers which flow through that country and which there unite their
waters before emptying into the sea: the Rhine, the Meuse and the
Scheldt. England and the Scandinavian countries were so near that land
of large and deep estuaries that their mariners naturally frequented it
at an early date. It was to them, as we have seen above, that the ports
of Duurstede and Quentovic owed their importance. But this importance
was ephemeral. It could not survive the period of the Norseman
invasions. The easier access was to a country, the more it lured the
invaders and the more it had to suffer from their devastations. The
geographical situation which, at Venice, had safeguarded commercial
prosperity was, here, naturally due to contribute to its destruction.
The invasions of the Norsemen had been only the first manifestation of
the need of expansion felt by the Scandinavian peoples. Their
overflowing energy had driven them forth, towards Western Europe and
Russia simultaneously, upon adventures of pillage and conquest. They
were not mere pirates. They aspired, as had the Germanic tribes before
them with regard to the Roman Empire, to settle in countries more rich
and fertile than was their homeland, and there to create colonies for
the surplus population which their own country could no longer support.
In this undertaking they eventually succeeded. To the east, the Swedes
set foot along those natural routes which led from the Baltic to the
Black Sea by way of the Neva, Lake Ladoga, the Lovat, the Volchof, the
Dvina and the Dnieper. To the west, the Danes and the Norwegians
colonized the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms north of the Humber. In France, they
had ceded to them by Charles the Simple the country on the Channel which
took from them the name of Normandy.
These successes had for their result the orientation in a new direction
of the activity of the Scandinavians. Starting at the beginning of the
tenth century, they turned away from war to devote themselves to
trade.[75] Their ships plowed all the seas of the North and they had
nothing to fear from rivals since they alone, among the peoples whose
shores those seas bathed, were navigators. It is enough to peruse the
delightful tales of the _Sagas_ to get an idea of the hardihood and the
skill of the barbarian mariners whose adventures and exploits they
recount.
Each spring, once the water was open, they put out to sea. They were to
be met in Iceland, in Ireland, in England, in Flanders, at the mouths of
the Elbe, the Weser, and the Vistula, on the islands of the Baltic Sea,
at the foot of the Gulf of Bothnia and the Gulf of Finland. They had
settlements at Dublin, at Hamburg, at Schwerin, on the island of
Gotland; thanks to them, the current of trade, which starting from
Byzantium and Bagdad crossed Russia by way of Kiev and Novgorod, was
extended up to the shores of the North Sea and there made felt its
beneficent influence. In all history there is hardly a more curious
phenomenon than that effect wrought on Northern Europe by the superior
civilizations of the Greek and Arab Empires, and of which the
Scandinavians were the intermediaries. In this respect their rôle,
despite the differences of climate, society and culture, seems quite
analogous to that which Venice played in the South of Europe. Like her,
they renewed the contact between the East and the West. And just as the
commercial activity of Venice did not long delay in involving Lombardy
in the movement, so likewise Scandinavian shipping brought about the
economic awakening of the coast of Flanders.
The geographical situation of Flanders, indeed, put her in a splendid
position to become the western focus for the commerce of the seas of the
north. It formed the natural terminus of the voyage for ships arriving
from Northern England or which, having crossed the Sound after coming
out of the Baltic, were on their way to the south. As has already been
stated, the ports of Quentovic and Duurstede had been frequented by the
Norsemen before the period of the invasions. First one and then the
other disappeared before the storm. Quentovic did not rise again from
her ruins and it was Bruges, whose situation at the head of the Gulf of
Zwin was the better one, that became her heritor. As for Duurstede,
Scandinavian mariners reappeared there at the beginning of the tenth
century. Yet her prosperity did not last very long. As commerce
flourished it was concentrated more and more about Bruges, nearer to
France and kept in a more stable condition of peace by the Counts of
Flanders, whereas the neighborhood of Duurstede was too exposed to the
incursions of the still half-barbaric Friesians to enjoy security. Be
that as it may, it is certain that Bruges attracted to her port, more
and more, the trade of the North, and that the disappearance of
Duurstede, in the course of the eleventh century, definitely assured her
future. The fact that coins of the Counts of Flanders, Arnold II and
Baldwin IV (956-1035), have been discovered in considerable numbers in
Denmark, in Prussia, and even in Russia, would attest, in the lack of
written information, to the relations with those countries which
Flanders kept up after this date with the help of Scandinavian
mariners.[76]