Week 5: Tuesday

COMMERCE AND TOWNS

Music by Thibaut, count of Champagne and lord of Troyes (1201-53):

Seigneurs, sachiez qui or ne s’en ira (3:46 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-gTUUgZCQo&feature=related

Dame, ensinc est qu’il m’en covient aler (5:02 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPT6TAe2Z7E

Chanson mariale (6:01 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlGIetd0c2U

Music from the Carmina burana (S. German, 12th cent.?):

Ich was ein chint so wolgetan (Maledicantur tilie, 2:50 min.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJaiIG5xPqg

 

Growth of towns in the 11th century and later:

• At or near major seaports (e.g., Lübeck, Bruges, Genoa, Venice, Naples)
• On major rivers (e.g., London, Paris, Toledo, Cologne, Rome) or roads (e.g., Milan)
• Site of major commercial fairs (especially in county of Champagne, e.g., Troyes)

Typical features of medieval towns and cities (but not of villages) included:

• Large population
• Wide range of occupations and incomes
• Densely-packed housing
• Fortifications or other defenses
• More than one church
• One or more courts
• One or more prisons
• One or more markets and fairs
• Monetized economy
• Commercial entertainment (drinking houses, brothels, professional entertainers)
• Problems with sanitation, rubbish-disposal, and traffic

Major medieval urban export industries included:

• Woolen cloth production (spinning and weaving)
• Woolen cloth finishing (fulling, shearing, dyeing)
• Linen cloth production
• Luxury cloth production (silks, velvets, etc.)
• Arms and armor manufacture
• Brewing
• Metalworking (including goldsmithing and minting)
• Wholesale trading in major commodities for export (e.g., grain, timber, minerals, furs, wine, wool, spices)

Beginning in the 12th century, many towns formed communes (sworn self-governance associations) that struggled to obtain a charter granting self-government rights from their lords (king, queen, prince, bishop, etc.). Chartered towns paid a fee-farm (a fixed annual fee) to their lords in return for the right to collect their own taxes and tolls. Other benefits of a charter might include the right for a town to:

• elect its own government
• make and enforce its own laws
• run its own courts

Many towns also established guilds to regulate crafts and trades. Membership in a guild made one a citizen of the town. Only guild masters could keep shops and supervise apprentices (trainees) and journeymen (wage-workers who had completed an apprenticeship but could not afford to open their own shop). Guilds enjoyed commercial monopolies in return for undertaking responsibility for self-regulation.

REMINDER — LEARN THE MONEY DENOMINATIONS!

Main money denominations:

Penny (d.): in Latin, denarius; in French, denier; in Italian, denaro; in German, Pfennig
Shilling (s.): in Latin, solidus; in French, sou or sol; in Italian, soldo (denomination) or grosso (coin); in German, Schilling
Pound (£): In Latin, libra; in French, livre; in Italian, lira; in German, Pfund

12d. = 1s.
20s. = £1
£1 = 20s. = 240d.

The penny could be divided into:

2 halfpennies or ha’pence (each worth 1/2d.), in Latin, 2 oboli (abbreviated ob.)
4 farthings (each worth 1/4d.); in Latin, 4 quadrantes (abbreviated q. or qua.)

Standard fractions of the pound:

Two-thirds of a pound, known as a mark (Latin, marca; abbreviated m.): 13s. 4d. (=160d.)
One-third of a pound, or half a mark: 6s. 8d. (=80d.)

Click for images of an Italian grosso (1s. = 12d.), and English pennies (1d.), halfpennies, (1/2d.), and farthings (1/4d.)

Online readings:

Charter of the shearers of Arras, 1236
[Note on text: the muid of Flanders was a measure of capacity containing 1011 liters]
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1236Weavers5.asp

Two apprenticeship contracts for weavers in Arras and Marseilles, c. 1250
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1250weaversapp.asp

A purchase on credit in Marseille, 1248
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1248roubauds-credit.asp

Regulations of the London Cordwainers’ (shoemakers’) guild, 1375
http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/shoe/RESEARCH/DOCS/CHAR1375.HTM

Photograph of two 15th-cent. shops with dwelling above, from Horsham, Sussex
http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/image651506-.html
and
http://www.wealddown.co.uk/buildings/medieval-shop/

 

Music by Thibaut, comte de Champagne (1201-53):

Dame, merci (4:42 min.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns6bM31eu44&feature=related

Jews in medieval towns were excluded from citizenship and from trade and craft guilds; many thus entered unregulated occupations, such as moneylending, medicine, schoolteaching (in Jewish schools), and wholesale trading

Steps in woolen and linen textile production:

• Sort and wash raw wool or flax
• Comb (flax or long-stapled wool) or card (short-stapled wool)
• Spin combed or carded fibers into yarn or thread with distaff and spindle or a hand-turned spinning wheel (usually done by women).
• Wind spun yarn or thread into a skein.
• Weave yarn or thread into cloth on a horizontal loom
• Finishing processes for woolen cloth: fulling, tentering, teaseling, dyeing, shearing, pressing

Click here for a reconstruction of the medieval marketplace in Norwich

Town government:

Generally headed by a mayor and council drawn from the wealthiest families, sometimes elected by the masters of the guilds, sometimes by the “better sort” of the citizens, sometimes self-perpetuating, sometimes chosen by the lord

Courts might be held by several authorities:

• by the lord of the town (especially for capital offenses)
• by the municipal government (especially for lesser offenses)
• by the bishop (for matters relating to the church)

In the 12th century, the re-discovery in Western Europe of Justinian’s codification of Roman law (mid 500s) stimulated the development of secular and ecclesiastical (canon) law. (Click here to see a manuscript of Gratian’s Decretum, c. 1170)