have believed, that these first agglomerations were due to the markets
established in such great number beginning with the ninth century.
Inviting as it seems at first glance, this opinion does not bear
scrutiny. The markets of the Carolingian era were simple local markets,
frequented by peasants from roundabout, and by a few pedlers. They had
as their sole aim the provisioning of the towns and burgs. They were not
held more than once a week and their operations were limited by the
household needs of the inhabitants, very few in number, for whose
benefit they had been instituted. Markets of this sort have always
existed and still exist in our own day in thousands of little towns and
villages. Their attraction was not strong enough nor widespread enough
to draw and hold a mercantile population. We know, moreover, of any
number of places which, although equipped with markets of this sort,
never rose to the rank of cities. Such, for example, was the case with
those which the Bishop of Cambrai and the Abbot of Reichenau
established, the one in 1001 at Cateau-Cambrésis and the other in 1100
at Radolfzell. Yet Cateau and Radolfzell never were anything but
insignificant localities from an economic viewpoint, and the failure of
the attempts of which they were the object clearly shows that these
markets were wanting in that influence which one is sometimes minded to
accord them.[103]
As much might be said of the fairs (_fora_), and yet the fairs in
contrast to the markets do not show a strictly local character; they
were instituted to serve as a periodic meeting place for the
professional merchants, to put them in touch with each other, and to get
them to gather there at fixed seasons. In fact, the importance of many
of these fairs was very great. In Flanders those of Thourout and
Messines and in France those of Bar-sur-Aube and Lagny figured among the
principal centers of medieval trade up to near the end of the twelfth
century. It may therefore seem strange that none of these localities
became a city worthy of the name. This is because whatever activity
they showed was lacking in that permanent character which is necessary
for the fixation of trade. Merchants directed their steps toward them
because they were situated on the great route of travel running from the
North Sea to Lombardy, and because they enjoyed special franchises and
privileges there. They were points of assembly and places of exchange
where buyers and sellers from the north and south were to be
encountered. After a few weeks their exotic clientèle dispersed, not to
return before the following year.
It probably happened--and it very often did happen, as a matter of
fact--that a fair was located at the spot where already existed a
mercantile group. The one may have assisted the development of the
other. But it is impossible to hold that this was the real cause of its
existence. Several great cities can be named, which never had a
privileged market or which did not have one until very late. Worms,
Speyer, or Mainz never was the seat of a fair; Tournai had one only in
1284, Leyden in 1304, and Ghent in the fifteenth century only.[104] The
fact therefore remains that geographical location joined to the presence
of a town or a fortified burg seems the essential and necessary
condition for a colony of merchants.
Nothing is less artificial than the development of a colony of this
sort. The fundamental needs of commerce--ease of communication and
security--account for it in the most natural way. In a more advanced
era, when better methods would permit man to conquer Nature and to force
his presence upon her despite handicaps of climate or of soil, it would
doubtless have been possible to build towns anywhere the spirit of
enterprise and the quest of gain might chose a site. But it was quite
another matter in a period when society had not yet acquired enough
vigor to rise above the physical conditions in the midst of which it
developed. It naturally adapted itself to them and in accordance with
them its life was regulated. In short, the towns of the Middle Ages were
a phenomenon determined as much by physical surroundings as the course
of rivers is determined by the conformation of the mountains and the
direction of the valleys.
As the commercial revival in Europe gained headway after the tenth
century, the merchant colonies established in the towns or at the foot
of the burgs enjoyed an uninterrupted growth. Their population increased
through the action of economic vitality. Up to the end of the thirteenth
century, the progress which had been manifest from the start continued
steadily. No other course was open. Each of the focal points of
international traffic naturally shared in this activity, and the
multiplication of merchants naturally resulted in an increase of their
number in all the spots where they had first settled, for these spots
were exactly the ones most favorable to commercial life. If they had
attracted the traders sooner than others did, it is because they, better
than the others, satisfied their professional requirements. Here,
therefore, is a thoroughly satisfactory explanation of the fact that, as
a general rule, the greatest commercial cities in a region were also the
oldest.
There is by no means enough information to satisfy our curiosity
concerning these primitive mercantile groups. The historiography of the
tenth and eleventh centuries is completely unconcerned with social and
economic phenomena. Written exclusively by clerics or by monks, it
naturally measured the importance and the value of events according to
how they affected the Church. Lay society did not claim their attention
save insofar as it related to religious society. They could not neglect
the recital of the wars and political conflicts which reacted on the
Church, but there was no reason for them to have taken pains to note the
beginnings of city life, for which they were lacking in comprehension
no less than in sympathy.[105] A few allusions made incidentally, a few
fragmentary annotations upon the occasion of a disorder or an
uprising--this is what the historian is obliged to content himself with.
We must go to the twelfth century to get, here and there from some rare
layman dabbling in writing, a little more substantial prize. Maps and
records supplement this poverty to a certain extent. Yet they are rare
indeed for the period of origins. It is only by the end of the eleventh
century that they begin to throw a little more abundant illumination. As
for first-hand sources--that is to say, written and compiled by
townsmen--there are none in existence earlier than the end of the
twelfth century. It is therefore necessary, although there are a few, to
ignore them and to have recourse, too often, to inference and hypothesis
in this study of origins.
Details are lacking concerning the gradual peopling of the towns. It is
not known how the first traders, who came to locate there, settled in
the midst of the pre-existing population. The towns, whose precincts
frequently included empty spaces occupied by fields and gardens, must
have furnished them at the start with a place which soon became too
restricted. It is certain that in many of them, from the tenth century
on, they were forced to locate outside the walls. At Verdun they built a
fortified enclosure (_negotiatorum claustrum_), joined to the city by
two bridges.[106] At Ratisbonne the “city of merchants” (_urbs
mercatorum_) arose beside the episcopal city, and the same thing is to
be seen at Strasbourg and elsewhere.[107] At Cambrai the newcomers
surrounded themselves with a palisade of wood which a little later was
replaced by a stone rampart.[108] At Marseilles the circuit of the city
must have been enlarged at the beginning of the eleventh century.[109]
It would be easy to multiply these examples. They establish beyond
question the rapid extensions undergone by the old cities which had not
hitherto witnessed any growth since the Roman era.
The peopling of the burgs was due to the same causes as that of the
towns, but it worked out under quite different conditions. Here, in
fact, available space was not to be had by the new arrivals. The burgs
were merely fortresses whose walls enclosed a strictly limited area. The
result was that, at the start, the merchants were driven to settle
outside this area because there was no other place for them. They built
beside the burgs an “outside burg”--that is to say, a “faubourg”
(_forisburgus_, _suburbium_). This suburb was called, by contemporary
texts, the “new burg” (_novus burgus_), in contrast to the feudal burg
or “old burg” (_vetus burgus_) to which it was joined. In the
Netherlands and in England there was a word used to designate it which
corresponded admirably to its nature--_portus_.
In the administrative terminology of the Roman Empire, not a sea port,
but an enclosed place serving as storehouse or transfer point for
merchandise was called a _portus_.[110] The expression was passed on,
with hardly any change, to the Merovingian and Carolingian eras. It is
obvious that all the places to which it was applied were situated on
watercourses and that market-tolls were collected in them. They were,
therefore, landing places where was accumulated in the natural course of
trading operations merchandise destined to be shipped further.[111]
Between a _portus_ and a market or a fair the distinction is very clear.
While the latter were periodic meeting places of buyers and sellers, the
former was a permanent place of trade, a center of uninterrupted
traffic. After the seventh century Dinant, Huy, Valenciennes and Cambrai
were places with a _portus_, and in consequence transfer points.[112]
The economic slump of the eighth century and the Norseman invasions
naturally ruined their business. It was not until the tenth century that
the old _porti_ took on new life or new ones were established, as at
Bruges, Ghent, Ypres, St. Omer, and elsewhere. At the same date there
appears in Anglo-Saxon texts the word “port,” employed as a synonym for
the Latin words _urbs_ and _civitas_, and even at the present day the
term “port” is commonly met with in the names of cities of every land of
English speech.[113]
Nothing shows more clearly the close connection that existed between the
economic revival of the Middle Ages and the beginnings of city life.
They were so intimately related that the same word which designated a
commercial settlement served in one of the great idioms of Europe to
designate the town itself. Old Dutch supplies a similar instance. In it
the word _poort_ and the word _poorter_ are both employed, the first
with the meaning of “town” and the second with that of “townsman.”
It can be definitely assumed that the _porti_, so frequently spoken of
during the tenth and eleventh centuries, at the foot of the burgs of
Flanders and nearby regions, were made up of merchant groups. Several
passages in the chronicles or lives of the saints which deal with the
subject, though in scant detail, leave no room for doubt on this point.
It will be enough to cite here the curious narrative of the _Miracula
St. Womari_, written about 1060 by a monk who was an eye-witness of the
events he reported. Here we have to do with a troop of friars arriving
in procession at Ghent. The inhabitants go out to meet them, “like a
swarm of bees.” They conduct their pious visitors first to the Church of
St. Pharaïlde, situated within the limits of the burg. The next day they
leave the latter to repair to the Church of St. John the Baptist,
recently erected in the _portus_.[114] It therefore seems that here is
a case of the juxtaposition of two residential centers of different
origin and nature. The one, the older, is a fortress and the other, the
more recent, is a place of trade. And it is from the gradual fusion of
these two elements, of which the first is absorbed little by little by
the second, that the city is born.[115]
It will be well to take note, before going further, of the fate of those
towns and burgs whose location did not favor their becoming commercial
centers. Typical examples, without going outside the Netherlands, were
Térouanne or the burgs built about the monasteries of Stavelot, Malmédy,
Lobbes, etc. In the agricultural and demesnial civilization of the
Middle Ages, all these places were notable for their wealth and their
influence. But, situated too far from the great highways of
communication, they were not affected by the economic revival nor, so to
speak, fecondated thereby. In the midst of the flowering which it
inspired, they remained sterile, like seed fallen upon stony ground.
None of them rose above the rank of mere half-rural market-towns[116].
And it is not to the point, furthermore, to show that in the evolution
of the city, the towns and the burgs had on the whole only an auxiliary
function. Adapted to a social order very different from that which
witnessed the birth of cities, they could not have been able to give
birth to the latter by their own force. They were, so to speak, the
crystallization points of commercial activity. It did not arise from
them--it came to them from without, when favorable conditions of site
brought it their way. Their rôle was essentially a passive rôle. In the
history of the development of cities, the commercial suburb was
considerably more important than the feudal burg. It was the suburb that
was the active element, and, as will be seen later, therein lies the
explanation of that renewal of municipal life which was merely the
consequence of the economic revival.[117]
A striking characteristic of the merchant groups was their uninterrupted
growth, beginning with the tenth century. Therein they show the most
violent contrast to the immobility in which the towns and the burgs, at
the feet of which they were located, persisted. They continually drew to
themselves new inhabitants. They expanded steadily, covering a larger
and larger area, so much so that in many places they had, by the start
of the twelfth century, already surrounded on all sides the original
fortresses about which their houses pressed. After the beginning of the
twelfth century, it became necessary to create new parishes for them. At
Ghent, at Bruges, at St. Omer, and in many other places, contemporary
texts remark the construction of these churches, due often to the
initiative of wealthy merchants.[118]
Only a general idea can be formed of the arrangement and disposition of
the suburb, for exact details are lacking. The original type, however,
was universally very simple. There was, of course, a market, always
established on the bank of the stream which passed by the locality. This
was the junction point of the streets (_plateae_) leading from it
towards the gates giving access to the open country. For the merchant
suburb was surrounded by defence works, one of its most important
features.[119]
These defence works were, of course, absolutely necessary in a society
where, despite the efforts of the princes and the Church, violence and
japine continued to be in universal evidence. Before the dissolution of
the Carolingian Empire and the Norseman invasions, the Monarchy had
succeeded fairly well in guaranteeing public security, and as a result
the _porti_ of that time, or at least the greater number of them,
remained unfortified. But by the second half of the ninth century there
no longer existed any guarantee for the safety of personal property,
other than the protection of ramparts. A capitulary of 845-856 clearly
indicates that the rich men and the few merchants who still were left
sought refuge in the towns.[120] The new prosperity of trade attracted
the attention of highwaymen of all sorts to such an extent that
mercantile centers felt a pressing need for adequate protection against
them. Just as merchants did not venture on the highways unless armed, so
also they made of their collective residences a sort of stronghold. The
settlements which they founded at the foot of the towns or burgs bring
to mind the close parallel existing in the forts and the blockhouses
built by the European immigrants in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries in the colonies of America and Canada. Like the latter, they
were customarily defended merely by a solid palisade of wood pierced
with gates and surrounded by a moat. An interesting souvenir of these
first urban fortifications survives in the custom, long preserved in
heraldry, of symbolising a city by a sort of circular hedge.
It is certain that this rude enclosure of timber had no other purpose
than the parrying of unexpected attacks. It constituted a security
against bandits; it would not have been able to withstand a regular
siege.[121] In case of war it had to be abandoned and put to the torch
in order to prevent the enemy from turning it to his own ends, while
refuge was sought in the stronger citadel of a town or burg. It was not
until about the beginning of the twelfth century that the growing
prosperity of the merchant colonies enabled them to make their security
somewhat more certain by building solid ramparts of stone, flanked by
towers, and capable of facing a serious attack. Thereafter they became
fortresses in themselves. The old feudal or episcopal enceinte which
continued to stand in their center thus lost all reason for existence.
Little by little their useless walls were allowed to fall in ruin.
Houses leaned up against them, and they were broken open to make way for
new streets. Very often it happened that the towns bought them back from
the count or the bishop, for whom they no longer represented anything
but idle capital, demolished them and transferred the ground they had
covered into building lots.
In the need of security which the merchants felt there lies, therefore,
the explanation of the fundamental characteristic of the towns of the
Middle Ages. They were strongholds. It is impossible to imagine a town
existing at that era without walls. It was an attribute by which towns
were distinguished from villages. It was a right, or to use the
expression of that time, it was a _privilege_ which none of them lacked.
Here again heraldry conforms very exactly to reality, in surmounting the
crests of cities by a walled crown.
But the rampart was not only the symbol of the city; it was from it also
that came the name which served and which still serves to designate the
population. Because of the very fact that it was a fortified place, the
town became a burg. The mercantile center, as has been shown above, was
designated by the name of “new burg” to distinguish it from the original
“old burg.” And hence its inhabitants, at the beginning of the eleventh
century at the latest, received the name of “burghers” (_burgenses_).
The first known mention of this word occurs in France in 1007. It
appears again in Flanders, at St. Omer, in 1056; then it passes into the
Empire by the intermediary of the region of the Moselle, where it crops
up at Huy in 1066. It was therefore the inhabitants of the “new burg,”
that is to say of the merchant burg, who received, or more probably who
created it to describe themselves, the appellation of “burghers.” It is
curious to see that it was never applied to those of the “old burg.”
These latter were known as _castellani_ or _castrenses_. And this is
further, and particularly significant, proof that the origins of city
populations should be sought not in the older population of the early
fortresses but in the immigrant population which trade brought to them
and which, in the eleventh century, began to absorb them.
The appellation of “burgher” did not immediately come into universal
use. Along with it, that of _cives_ (citizen) was still employed, in
conformity with the ancient tradition. In England and Flanders there
are also found the words _poortmanni_ and _poorters_, both of which fell
into disuse about the end of the Middle Ages but confirm in the happiest
manner the identity, which has elsewhere been established, between the
_portus_ and the “new burg.” Strictly speaking, they were really one and
the same thing, and the synonymity which language shows between the
_poortmannus_ and the _burgensis_ would be enough to attest to it even
if sufficient proof had not been already adduced.
It is somewhat difficult to define this original middle class of the
commercial centers. Evidently it was not composed exclusively of those
wide-travelled merchants spoken of in the preceding chapter. It must
have comprised, besides them, a more or less important number of men
engaged in the unloading and the transporting of merchandise, in the
rigging and the equipping of the boats, in the manufacture of carts,
casks, chests or, in a word, of all the necessary accessories for
carrying on business. As a result, men from the whole neighboring
territory were drawn to the nascent city in search of a profession. A
definite and positive attraction by the urban population for the rural
population is clearly manifest by the beginning of the eleventh century.
The greater the concentration of population, the greater the effect it
had roundabout. It needed, for its daily existence, not only a quantity
but also an increasing variety of skilled workmen. The few artisans who
heretofore had sufficed for the limited needs of the towns and the burgs
evidently could not satisfy the multiplied exigencies of the newcomers.
Members of the most indispensable profession therefore had to come from
outside--bakers, brewers, butchers, smiths, and so on.
But trade itself stimulated industry. In every region where industry was
carried on in the country, trade made a successful effort first to lure
it to the city and then to concentrate it there.
Flanders supplies one of the most instructive examples in this respect.
It has already been shown that ever since the Celtic era the trade of
cloth-making was widely carried on in the country. The peasants, thanks
to the preservation of processes and of Roman methods, there
manufactured cloth capable of supplying the basis of a regular and
profitable export trade. The merchants of the towns did not fail to take
advantage thereof. By the end of the tenth century they were shipping
cloth to England.[122] They soon learned to know the excellent quality
of the native wool and sought to introduce it into Flanders, where they
could have it worked up under their supervision. Thus they made
themselves givers of work and naturally attracted to the cities the
weavers of the country.[123] These weavers thereafter lost their rural
character and became simple employees in the service of the merchants.
The increase of the population naturally favored industrial
concentration. Numbers of the poor poured into the towns where
cloth-making, the activity of which trade grew proportionately with the
development of commerce, guaranteed them their daily bread. Their
condition there, however, seems to have been very miserable. The
competition which they maintained with each other in the labor market
allowed the merchants to pay them a very low wage. Existing information,
of which the earliest dates back to the eleventh century, shows them to
have been a brutish lower class, uneducated and discontented.[124] The
social conflicts which industrial life must have fomented, and which
were so terrible in the Flanders of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, were already in embryo in the very period of city evolution.
The antagonism between capital and labor is thereby revealed to be as
old as the middle class.
The old rural industry very quickly disappeared. It could not compete
with that of the town, abundantly supplied with the raw material of
commerce, operating at lower prices, and enjoying more advanced methods.
For the merchants, with an eye to selling, did not fail to improve the
quality of the cloths they exported. They organized and themselves
directed the workshops where they were milled and dyed. In the twelfth
century they had come to be without rivals, in the markets of Europe,
for the fineness of their weaves and the beauty of their colors. They
increased the dimensions also. The old square “cloaks” (_pallia_) which
the weavers of the country districts had formerly made, were replaced by
pieces of cloth thirty to sixty ells in length, more economical to make
and easier to ship.