very fact that each city constituted a State, cities saw in one another
only rivals or enemies. They could not rise above the sphere of their
own interests. They were self-centered, and the feeling which they bore
for their neighbors resembles very closely, within narrower limits, the
nationalism of our day. The civic spirit which animated them was
singularly egoistic. They jealously reserved to themselves the liberties
they enjoyed within their walls. The peasants who dwelt round about them
did not seem to them to be compatriots at all. They thought only of
profitably exploiting them. With all their might they stood on guard to
prevent the peasants from freeing themselves from the industrial system
of which the cities had a monopoly. The task of provisioning these
cities was likewise imposed upon the peasants, who were subjected to a
tyrannical protectorate whenever it was possible to do so, as in
Tuscany, for example, where Florence subjected to its yoke all the
surrounding countryside.
We are, however, touching here upon events which were not manifest with
all their consequences until the beginning of the thirteenth century. It
will suffice to have briefly sketched a tendency which, in the period of
origins, was hardly more than a suggestion of what was to come. Our
intention has been merely to define the city of the Middle Ages after
having depicted its origin. Furthermore, it has been possible to note
only its principal traits. The physiognomy which has been outlined
resembles those countenances obtained by photographing portraits
superimposed one on the other. The contours of it give a countenance
common to all and belonging to none of them.
If we wished, in ending this too-long chapter, to sum up its essential
points in one phrase, perhaps it would be possible to say that the city
of the Middle Ages, as it existed in the twelfth century, was a
commercial and industrial commune living in the shelter of a fortified
enceinte and enjoying a law, an administration and a jurisprudence of
exception which made of it a collective, privileged personality.
_Chapter VIII_
Cities and European Civilization
The birth of cities marked the beginning of a new era in the internal
history of Western Europe. Until then, society had recognized only two
active orders: the clergy and the nobility. In taking its place beside
them, the middle class rounded the social order out or, rather, gave the
finishing touch thereto. Thenceforth its composition was not to change;
it had all its constituent elements, and the modifications which it was
to undergo in the course of centuries were, strictly speaking, nothing
more than different combinations in the alloy.
Like the clergy and like the nobility, the middle class was itself a
privileged order. It formed a distinct legal group and the special law
it enjoyed isolated it from the mass of the rural inhabitants which
continued to make up the immense majority of the population. Indeed, as
has already been seen, it was obliged to preserve intact its exceptional
status and to reserve to itself the benefits arising therefrom. Freedom,
as the middle class conceived it, was a monopoly. Nothing was less
liberal than the caste idea which was the cause of its strength until
it became, at the end of the Middle Ages, a cause of weakness.
Nevertheless to that middle class was reserved the mission of spreading
the idea of liberty far and wide and of becoming, without having
consciously desired to be, the means of the gradual enfranchisement of
the rural classes. The sole fact of its existence was due, indeed, to
have an immediate effect upon these latter and, little by little, to
attenuate the contrast which at the start separated them from it. In
vain it strove to keep them under its influence, to refuse them a share
in its privileges, to exclude them from engaging in trade and industry.
It had not the power to arrest an evolution of which it was the cause
and which it could not suppress save by itself vanishing.
For the formation of the city groups disturbed at once the economic
organization of the country districts. Production, as it was there
carried on, had served until then merely to support the life of the
peasant and supply the prestations due to his seigneur. Upon the
suspension of commerce, nothing impelled him to ask of the soil a
surplus which it would have been impossible for him to get rid of, since
he no longer had outside markets to call upon. He was content to provide
for his daily bread, certain of the morrow and longing for no
amelioration of his lot, since he could not conceive the possibility of
it. The small markets of the towns and the burgs were too insignificant
and their demand was too regular to rouse him enough to get out of his
rut and intensify his labor. But suddenly these markets sprang into new
life. The number of buyers was multiplied, and all at once he had the
assurance of being able to sell the produce he brought to them. It was
only natural for him to have profited from an opportunity as favorable
as this. It depended on himself alone to sell, if he produced enough,
and forthwith he began to till the lands which hitherto he had let lie
fallow. His work took on a new significance; it brought him profits, the
chance of thrift and of an existence which became more comfortable as it
became more active. The situation was still more favorable in that the
surplus revenues from the soil belonged to him in his own right. The
claims of the seigneur were fixed by demesnial custom at an immutable
rate, so that the increase in the income from the land benefited only
the tenant.
But the seigneur himself had a chance to profit from the new situation
wherein the development of the cities placed the country districts. He
had enormous reserves of uncultivated land, woods, heaths, marshes and
fens. Nothing could be simpler than to put them under cultivation and
through them to profit from these new outlets which were becoming more
and more exigent and remunerative as the towns grew in size and
multiplied in number. The increase in population would furnish the
necessary hands for the work of clearing and draining. It was enough to
call for men; they would not fail to show up.
By the end of the eleventh century the movement was already manifest in
its full force. Monasteries and local princes thenceforth were busy
transforming the sterile parts of their demesnes into revenue-producing
land. The area of cultivated land which, since the end of the Roman
Empire, had not been increased, kept growing continually greater.
Forests were cleared. The Cistercian Order, founded in 1098, followed
this new path from its very origin. Instead of adopting for its lands
the old demesnial organization, it intelligently adapted itself to the
new order of things. It adopted the principle of farming on a big scale
and, depending upon the region, gave itself over to the most
remunerative form of production. In Flanders, where the needs of the
towns were greater since they themselves were richer, it engaged in
raising cattle. In England, it devoted itself particularly to the sale
of wool, which the same cities of Flanders consumed in greater and
greater quantity.
Meanwhile, on all sides, the seigneurs, both lay and ecclesiastic, were
founding “new” towns. So was called a village established on virgin
soil, the occupants of which received plots of land in return for an
annual rental. But these new towns, the number of which continued to
grow in the course of the twelfth century, were at the same time _free_
towns. For in order to attract the farmers the seigneur promised them
exemption from the taxes which bore down upon the serfs. In general, he
reserved to himself only jurisdiction over them; he abolished in their
favor the old claims which still existed in the demesnial organization.
The charter of Lorris (1155) in the Gatinais, that of Beaumont in
Champagne (1182), that of Priches in the Hainault (1158) present
particularly interesting types of charters of the new towns, which were
also to be found everywhere in neighboring countries. That of Breteuil
in Normandy, which was taken over in the course of the twelfth century
by a number of localities in England, Wales, and even Ireland, was of
the same nature.
Thus a new type of peasant appeared, quite different from the old. The
latter had serfdom as a characteristic; the former enjoyed freedom. And
this freedom, the cause of which was the economic disturbance
communicated by the towns to the organization of the country districts,
was itself copied after that of the cities. The inhabitants of the new
towns were, strictly speaking, rural burghers. They even bore, in a good
number of charters, the name of _burgenses_. They received a legal
constitution and a local autonomy which was manifestly borrowed from
city institutions, so much so that it may be said that the latter went
beyond the circumference of their walls in order to reach the country
districts and acquaint them with liberty.
And this new freedom, as it progressed, was not long in making headway
even in the old demesnes, whose archaic constitution could not be
maintained in the midst of a reorganized social order. Either by
voluntary emancipation, or by prescription or usurpation, the seigneurs
permitted it to be gradually substituted for the serfdom which had so
long been the normal condition of their tenants. The form of government
of the people was there changed at the same time as the form of
government of the land, since both were consequences of an economic
situation on the way to disappear. Commerce now supplied all the
necessaries which the demesnes had hitherto been obliged to obtain by
their own efforts. It was no longer essential for each of them to
produce all the commodities for which it had use. It sufficed to go get
them at some nearby city. The abbeys of the Netherlands, which had been
endowed by their benefactors with vineyards situated either in France or
on the banks of the Rhine and the Moselle where they produced the wine
needed for their consumption, began, at about the start of the
thirteenth century, to sell these properties which had now become
useless and whose working and upkeep henceforth cost more than they
brought in.[149]
No example better illustrates the inevitable disappearance of the old
demesnial system in an era transformed by commerce and the new city
economy. Trade, which was becoming more and more active, necessarily
favored agricultural production, broke down the limits which had
hitherto bounded it, drew it towards the towns, modernised it, and at
the same time set it free. Man was therefore detached from the soil to
which he had so long been enthralled, and free labor was substituted
more and more generally for serf labor. It was only in regions remote
from commercial highways that there was still perpetuated in its
primitive rigor the old personal serfdom and therewith the old forms of
demesnial property. Everywhere else it disappeared, the more rapidly
especially where towns were more numerous. In Flanders, for example, it
hardly existed at all after the beginning of the thirteenth century,
although, to be sure, a few traces were still preserved. Up to the end
of the old order there were still to be found, here and there, men bound
by the right of mortemain or subject to forced labor, and lands
encumbered by various seigniorial rights. But these survivals of the
past were almost always simple taxes and he who paid them had, for all
of that, full personal liberty.
The emancipation of the rural classes was only one of the consequences
provoked by the economic revival of which the towns were both the result
and the instrument. It coincided with the increasing importance of
liquid capital. During the demesnial era of the Middle Ages, there was
no other form of wealth than that which lay in real estate. It ensured
to the holder both personal liberty and social prestige. It was the
guaranty of the privileged status of the clergy and the nobility.
Exclusive holders of the land, they lived by the labor of their tenants
whom they protected and whom they ruled. The serfdom of the masses was
the necessary consequence of such a social organization. There was no
alternative save to own the land and be a lord, or to till it for
another and be a serf.
But with the origin of the middle class there took its place in the sun
a class of men whose existence was in flagrant contradiction to this
traditional order of things. The land upon which they settled they not
only did not cultivate but did not even own. They demonstrated and made
increasingly clear the possibility of living and growing rich by the
sole act of selling, or producing exchange values.
Landed capital had been everything, and now by the side of it was made
plain the power of liquid capital. Heretofore money had been sterile.
The great lay or ecclesiastic proprietors in whose hands was
concentrated the very scant stock of currency in circulation, by means
of either the land taxes which they levied upon their tenants or the
alms which the congregations brought to the churches, normally had no
way of making it bear fruit. To be sure, it was often the case that
monasteries, in time of famine, would agree to usurious loans to nobles
in distress who would offer their lands as security. But these
transactions, forbidden otherwise by canonical law, were only temporary
expedients.[150] As a general rule cash was hoarded by its possessors
and most often changed into vessels or ornaments for the Church, which
might be melted down in case of need. Trade, naturally, released this
captive money and restored its proper function. Thanks to this, it
became again the instrument of exchange and the measure of values, and
since the towns were the centers of trade it necessarily flowed towards
them. In circulating, its power was multiplied by the number of
transactions in which it served. Its use, at the same time, became more
general; payments in kind gave way more and more to payments in money.
A new motion of wealth made its appearance: that of mercantile wealth,
consisting no longer in land but in money or commodities of trade
measurable in money. During the course of the eleventh century, true
capitalists already existed in a number of cities; several examples have
been cited above, to which it is unnecessary to refer again here. These
city capitalists soon formed the habit of putting a part of their
profits into land.[151] The best means of consolidating their fortune
and their credit was, in fact, the buying up of land. They devoted a
part of their gains to the purchase of real estate, first of all in the
same town where they dwelt and later in the country. But they changed
themselves, especially, into money-lenders. The economic crisis provoked
by the irruption of trade into the life of society had caused the ruin
of, or at least trouble to, the landed proprietors who had not been able
to adapt themselves to it. For in speeding up the circulation of money a
natural result was the decreasing of its value and by that very fact the
raising of all prices. The period contemporary with the formation of the
cities was a period of high cost of living, as favorable to the business
men and artisans of the middle class as it was painful to the holders of
the land who did not succeed in increasing their revenues. By the end of
the eleventh century many of them were obliged to have recourse to the
capital of the merchants in order to keep going. In 1127 the charter of
St. Omer mentioned, as a current practice, the loans contracted among
the burghers of the town by the knights of the neighborhood.
But more important operations were already current at this era. There
was no lack of merchants rich enough to agree to loans of considerable
amount. About 1082 some merchants of Liège lent money to the abbot of
St. Hubert to permit him to buy the territory of Chavigny, and a few
years later advanced to the bishop Otbert the sums necessary to acquire
from Duke Godfrey, on the point of departing for the Crusades, his
château of Bouillon.[152] The kings themselves had recourse, in the
course of the twelfth century, to the good services of the city
financiers. William Cade was the money-lender to the King of
England.[153] In Flanders, at the beginning of the reign of Philip
Augustus, Arras had become preeminently a city of bankers. William the
Breton describes it as full of riches, avid of lucre and glutted with
usurers:
_Ahrabatum ... potens urbs ... plena_
_Divitiis, inhians lucris et foenore gaudens._[154]
The cities of Lombardy and, following their example, those of Tuscany
and Provence, went much further in carrying on that commerce which the
Church vainly sought to oppose. By the beginning of the thirteenth
century, Italian bankers had already extended their operations north of
the Alps and their progress there was so rapid that a half century
later, thanks to the abundance of their capital and the more advanced
technique of their procedure, they had everywhere taken the place of the
local lenders.
The power of liquid capital, concentrated in the cities, not only gave
them an economic ascendancy but contributed also towards making them
take part in political life. For as long as society had known no other
power than that which derived from the possession of the land, the
clergy and the nobility alone had had a share in the government. The
feudal hierarchy was made up entirely on the basis of landed property.
The fief, in reality, was only a tenure and the relations which it
created between the vassal and his liege lord were only a particular
modality of the relations which existed between a proprietor and a
tenant. The only difference was that the services due from the first to
the second, in place of being of an economic nature, were of a military
and political nature. Just as each local prince required the help and
counsel of his vassals so, being himself a vassal of the King, was he
held on his part to similar obligations. Thus only those who held land
entered into the direction of public affairs. They entered into them,
moreover, only in paying through their own person; that is to say, using
the appropriate expression: _consilio et auxilio_--by their counsel and
help. Of a pecuniary contribution towards the needs of their sovereign
there could be no question at an epoch when capital, in the form of real
estate alone, served merely for the maintenance of its possessors.
Perhaps the most striking character of the feudal State was its almost
absolute lack of finances. In it, money played no rôle. The demesnial
revenues of the prince replenished only his privy purse. It was
impossible for him to increase his resources by taxes, and his financial
indigence prevented him from taking into his service revocable and
salaried agents. Instead of functionaries, he had only hereditary
vassals, and his authority over them was limited to the oath of fidelity
they gave him.
But as soon as the economic revival enabled him to augment his revenues,
and cash, thanks to it, began to flow to his coffers, he took immediate
advantage of circumstances. The appearance of bailiffs, in the course of
the thirteenth century, was the first symptom of the political progress
which was going to make it possible for a prince to develop a true
public administration and to change his suzerainty little by little into
sovereignty. For the bailiff was, in every sense of the term, a
functionary. With these revocable office-holders, remunerated not by
grants of land but by stewardships, there was evinced a new type of
government. The bailiff, indeed, had a place outside the feudal
hierarchy. His nature was quite different from that of the old justices,
mayors, or castellans who carried on their functions under an hereditary
title. Between them and him there was the same difference that there was
between the old serfholds and the new freeholds. Identical economic
causes had changed simultaneously the organization of the land and the
governing of the people. Just as they enabled the peasants to free
themselves, and the proprietors to substitute the quit-rent for the
demesnial _mansus_, so they enabled the princes, thanks to their
salaried agents, to lay hold of the direct government of their
territories. This political innovation, like the social innovations with
which it was contemporary, implied the diffusion of ready cash and the
circulation of money. This is quite clearly shown to be the case by the
fact that Flanders, where commercial life and city life were developed
sooner than in the other regions of the Netherlands, knew considerably
in advance of these latter the institution of bailiffs.
The connections which were necessarily established between the princes
and the burghers also had political consequences of the greatest import.
It was necessary to take heed of those cities whose increasing wealth
gave them a steadily increasing importance, and which could put on the
field, in case of need, thousands of well equipped men. The feudal
conservatives had at first only contempt for the presumption of the city
militia. Otto of Freisingen was indignant when he saw the communes of
Lombardy wearing the helmet and cuirass and permitting themselves to
cope with the noble knights of Frederick Barbarossa. But the outstanding
victory won by these clodhoppers at Legnano (1176) over the troops of
the Emperor soon demonstrated what they were capable of. In France, the
kings did not neglect to have recourse to their services and to ally
them to their own interests. They set themselves up as the protectors of
the communes, as the guardians of their liberties, and made the cause of
the Crown seem to them to be solidary with the city franchises. Philip
Augustus must have garnered the fruits of such a skilful policy. The
Battle of Bouvines (1214), which definitely established the sway of the
Monarchy in the interior of France and caused its prestige to radiate
over all Europe, was due in great part to military contingents from the
cities.
The influence of the cities was not less important in England at the
same era, although it was manifest in a quite different way. Here,
instead of supporting the monarchy, they rose against it by the side of
the barons. They helped, likewise, in the creation of parliamentary
government, the distant origins of which may be dated back to the Magna
Charta (1215).
It was not only in England, furthermore, that the cities claimed and
obtained a more or less large share in the government. Their natural
tendency led them to become municipal republics. There is but little
doubt but that, if they had had the power, they would have everywhere
become States within the State. But they did not succeed in realizing
this ideal save where the power of the State was impotent to
counterbalance their efforts.
This was the case with Italy, in the twelfth century, and later, after
the definite decline of the imperial power, with Germany. Everywhere
else they had not succeeded in throwing off the superior authority of
the princes, whether, as in Germany and France, the Monarchy was too
powerful to have to capitulate before them, or whether, as in the
Netherlands, their particularism kept them from combining their efforts
in order to attain an independence which immediately put them at grips
with one another. They remained as a general rule, then, subject to the
territorial government.