The Economic Revolution (1066–1300)

The Economic Revolution (1066–1300)

I – The Revival of Commerce

Wherever the tree of culture grows luxuriantly, its roots usually draw nourishment and strength from the development of industry and commerce. Muslim control over commerce and the ports of the eastern and southern Mediterranean, the invasions of Muslim peoples, Vikings, and Magyars, and finally the political chaos of the period of Charlemagne’s successors had dragged Europe’s intellectual and economic life to the depths of degradation in the ninth and tenth centuries. The revival of agricultural organization and the support of feudal lords, the taming of Norse sea-raiders who turned into Norman farmers and merchants, the repelling of Hun invasions and their encouragement to accept Christianity, the Italian merchants’ recovery of the Mediterranean, the Crusaders’ reopening of the Levant, and the West’s awakening through contact with more advanced civilizations such as Islam and Byzantium in the course of the twelfth century provided opportunity and incentive for the improvement of Europe’s condition and prepared the material means necessary for the cultural flourishing of the twelfth century and the high medieval peak of the thirteenth. For society and for individuals alike, according to a Latin proverb, “Before engaging in philosophy, one must satisfy hunger,” and man first turns to thoughts of wealth and then to art.

The first step on the road to economic revival was the removal of restrictions on international trade. Governments, lacking foresight, had imposed all kinds of tolls on transport, sales, and goods—including port entry fees, bridge crossings, use of roads or rivers or canals, and offering goods for sale in markets and fairs. Feudal barons felt they deserved tolls and dues for goods passing through their lands—just as is customary among nations today—and some of them also, by providing armed groups to protect merchants and their caravans and by entertaining such traders, actually cared for and attended to them.

But the result of government and feudal lords’ interference was that sixty-two different toll stations appeared on the Rhine, seventy-four on the Loire, thirty-five on the Elbe, seventy-seven on the Danube... A merchant had to deliver sixty percent of his goods as toll to various authorities just to pass along the Rhine.

Feudal wars, and the presence of undisciplined soldiers, robber barons, and pirates on rivers and seas, had made travel for merchants and travelers along roads, rivers, and canals a dangerous business. According to the Truce of God and the Peace of God, when travel on certain days was declared relatively safe, it helped the movement of merchandise and commerce. The growing power of kings reduced the danger of theft, created uniform weights and measures, limited and regulated tolls and dues, and abolished toll collection at the establishment of great fairs on certain roads and markets.

The formation of fairs was the main pillar of medieval trade. Of course, peddlers took their small goods to people’s doors. Artisans sold the fruits of their labor in their shops, and markets named after different days gathered buyers and sellers in the cities. Barons allowed such markets to be held near their palaces; churches placed their courtyards at the disposal of organizers; and kings dedicated halls or warehouses in the capital for this purpose. But international and wholesale trade was concentrated in regional fairs held at fixed intervals: London and Stourbridge in England; Paris, Lyon, Reims, and Champagne in France; Lille, Ypres, Douai, and Bruges in Flanders; Cologne, Frankfurt, Leipzig, and Lübeck in Germany; Geneva in Switzerland; and Novgorod in Russia...

The most famous and common of these six fairs were held in Lagny, in the province of Champagne, in January; in Bar-sur-Aube during “Lent”; in Provins in May and September; and in Troyes in September and November.

Each of these six fairs lasted six to seven weeks, so that one following another ensured an international market was open throughout the year. Their geographical position was chosen so that trade and exchange between merchants of France, the Low Countries, and the Rhine region with those of Provence, Spain, Italy, Africa, and the East could take place without difficulty. Altogether, these centers formed the greater part of France’s wealth and power in the twelfth century. These fairs, which had existed even since the fifth century in Troyes, gradually lost importance under Philip IV, because he took Champagne from its enlightened counts and imposed such harsh taxes and laws on the fairs that their organizers became distressed and impoverished. In the thirteenth century, maritime commerce and ports replaced these fairs.

Shipbuilding and navigation had gradually improved since Roman times. Hundreds of coastal cities had good lighthouses. Many, like Constantinople, Venice, Genoa, Marseilles, and Barcelona, had extensive docks and harbors. Ships of this era were usually small, either without a deck or with only half a deck; each had a capacity not exceeding thirty tons; and because of their limited capacity, they could advance far up rivers. Thus, although cities like Narbonne, Bordeaux, Nantes, Rouen, Bruges, and Bremen were somewhat distant from the sea, travel with ocean-going ships to these centers was possible without difficulty and they gradually turned into prosperous and flourishing ports. Some ships trading in the Mediterranean were larger, capable of carrying six hundred tons of cargo and fifteen hundred passengers. One was also gifted to Louis IX, thirty-three meters long, with a crew of 110 men. The old warship or merchant vessel still retained its ordinary shape; for decoration, it had a raised stern; one or two masts and sails, and a short hull; and two or three rows of oarsmen totaling up to 200 men. Most oarsmen were volunteers who willingly took up the work. In the Middle Ages, there was no trace of slave oarsmen. The art of sailing against the wind, known since the sixth century, slowly developed until the twelfth century, when most Italian shipbuilders added fore and aft ropes to the old square sails, but the main motive power of the ship was still the oars.

The compass, whose origin is unknown, came into use by Christian captains around the year 1200. Sicilian sailors, to navigate very rough seas, made its use possible by placing a magnetic needle on a movable axis. Nevertheless, another century passed before sailors (except the Norse) dared to leave the coast completely behind and choose a direct course in open sea. From November 11 to February 22, ocean travel was exceptional. During this period, the movement of ships belonging to the Hanseatic League was prohibited at sea, and most shipping in the Mediterranean or Black Sea was idle. Sea travel was as slow as in ancient times, so that it took fifteen days from Marseilles to Acre. Sea travel was usually not recommended for health. Ships often fell into the hands of pirates or were wrecked at sea, and seasickness afflicted even the strongest men. Froissart, the French chronicler, describes how Sir Hervé de Léon was seized by seasickness for fifteen days on the voyage between Southampton and Harfleur and “became so exhausted that he never again saw the face of health.” Cheap fares did not compensate for these discomforts. In the fourteenth century, the fare across the English Channel was six pence. The cost of carrying cargo and long sea voyages was so cheap and profitable compared to land routes that in the thirteenth century it completely changed the political map of Europe. The Christian reconquest of Sardinia (1022), Sicily (1090), and Crete (1091), and the shortening of Muslim control over these islands, opened the Strait of Messina and the central Mediterranean to European ships; and as a result of the First Crusade’s conquests, almost all the southern ports of that sea were reconquered. Now that these obstacles had been removed from the merchants’ path, an ever-growing web of European trade routes connected them and not only linked Europe with the Christians of Asia, but also connected Europe with Islamic Asia and Africa, even India and the Far East. Goods from China or India either headed toward the ports of Palestine and Syria via Turkestan, Iran, and Syria; or reached the Caspian Sea and the Volga via Mongolia; or by ship to the Persian Gulf and, via the Tigris and Euphrates, deserts and mountains, to the Black Sea, Caspian Sea, or Mediterranean; or via the Red Sea, and later by canals and caravans, to Cairo and Alexandria. From the Islamic ports of the African continent, commercial goods—mostly belonging to Christian merchants in the thirteenth century—flowed in every direction: to Asia Minor and the Byzantine Empire; to Cyprus, Rhodes, and Crete; to Thessalonica, Piraeus, Corinth, and Patras; to Sicily, Italy, France, and Spain. Constantinople added its luxury manufactures to this flood of goods and regularly sent ships via the Danube and Dnieper routes to Central Europe, Russia, and the Baltic states. Venice, Pisa, and Genoa seized Byzantine trade with the West and, for Christian dominance of the sea, entered the struggle like a pack of savages. Since Italy lay in the middle of the Mediterranean, enjoyed an important strategic position between East and West, and its surrounding ports faced the sea on three sides while its northern cities dominated the Alpine passes, such a country, by its geographical situation, naturally benefited more than others from Europe’s trade with the Byzantine Empire, Palestine, and Islam. On the Adriatic coast: Venice, Ravenna, Rimini, Ancona, Bari, Brindisi, and Taranto; in the south, Crotone; and on the western coast of that country, Reggio, Salerno, Amalfi, Naples, Ostia, Pisa, and Lucca—all had highly flourishing trade markets, and Florence, which acted as banker to these centers, managed their financial affairs. Through the two rivers Arno and Po, some merchandise was carried to inland Italian cities such as Padua, Ferrara, Cremona, Piacenza, and Pavia. Rome attracted the tithes and alms of Europe’s pious people to its holy places. Siena and Bologna lay at a blessed crossroads where internal highways intersected. Milan, Como, Brescia, Verona, and Venice benefited from the trade in goods that crossed the Alps to the Danube and Rhine and vice versa toward Italy. Just as Venice ruled the Adriatic, Genoa dominated the Tyrrhenian Sea. Genoa’s trading fleet numbered two hundred vessels with a total crew of twenty thousand, and its trading ports extended from Corsica to Trebizond. Genoa, like Venice and Pisa, traded freely with the Islamic world. Venice dealt with Egypt, Pisa with Tunis, and Genoa with Muslim Morocco and Spain. Many of these Italian ports sold arms to the Muslims during the Crusades. Powerful popes like Innocent III condemned all trade with Muslims, but the lure of gold was stronger than racial ties or religious beliefs, and “infidel trade” continued.

II – The Progress of Industry

Industrial development advanced side by side with the growth of commerce; wider markets, the incentive to increase production, and rising output stimulated the trade market. Transport improved less than other activities. Most medieval highways were passages full of filth, dust, and mud; no drains had yet been built for rainwater to flow through the roads. Potholes and holes were numerous, twists and turns many, and bridges few. Usually loads were carried by mules or horses rather than carts, because with wagons and carts it was not easy to avoid potholes. Carriages of this era were large and roughly made, with iron wheels, and without springs. Since these carriages, no matter how decorated, were not comfortable for travel, most people, men and women, preferred to travel on horseback, both putting their feet in the stirrups and riding. Until the twelfth century, the maintenance and repair of roads was the responsibility of the owner of the adjacent land, and usually such a person complained why he should spend money repairing a road mostly used by a crowd of passersby. In the thirteenth century Frederick II, inspired by the usual method in the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic world, ordered the repair of roads in Sicily and southern Italy; and it was around this time that, by placing cube-shaped stones in a bed of sand and soft soil, they began building the first “royal roads.” In the same century, cities began paving their central streets. Florence, Paris, London, and the cities of Flanders each undertook the construction of beautiful bridges. In the twelfth century the Church formed religious brotherhoods to repair or build bridges, and declared that it would forgive the sins of all who participated in such work. The construction of the Avignon bridge, four of whose main arches remain preserved today, was carried out by these “religious brothers.” Some monastic orders, especially the Cistercians, devoted great effort to preserving and repairing roads and bridges. From 1176 to 1209 the king, clergy, and subjects of England all helped, with contributions of money and by rolling up their sleeves, to build London Bridge. This great bridge, built over the Thames beside London’s anchorage, had twenty stone arches, and on it were built many houses and a chapel. In the early thirteenth century, above the gates at the St. Gotthard Pass in the Alps, a suspension bridge was built which apparently was the first of its kind in the world. Since travel on roads was laborious, people became eager for travel by rivers and canals, and these ship-navigable passages played a huge role in transporting goods. One ship could carry five hundred head of livestock and could perform this operation far more cheaply than by land. From the Tagus River in Spain to the Volga, everywhere in Europe, rivers and canals became ship passages; their courses and mouths determined the expansion of population, the growth of cities, and most of the military policy of every state. Canals were extremely numerous, but there were no locks to transfer ships from one water level to another.

Travel, whether by land or water, was difficult and slow. The journey of one bishop from Canterbury in England to Rome took twenty-nine days. Couriers who had fresh horses at way stations could cover one hundred and sixty kilometers in one day; but sending a private courier from one place to another was expensive, and the post or mail (which was established in Italy in the twelfth century) was usually reserved for government affairs. In some places, for example between London and Oxford or Winchester, stagecoaches ran regularly. News also traveled as slowly as individuals, so that the news of Barbarossa’s death in Cilicia reached Germany after four months. A medieval person could, without worry about hearing horrifying news of various disasters from around the world, eat breakfast, and the news that reached his ears was fortunately so old that thinking of a remedy was like giving medicine after Sohrab’s death. Man had made some progress in using natural forces. In the Domesday Book it is recorded that in 1086 there were altogether 5,000 mills in England; and a map dated 1169 shows a water wheel whose slow movement was doubled by a gear. At such speed, the water wheel became a basic tool in industry; in 1245 a water-powered saw was built in Germany; and in 1313 in Douai a mill was used for making cutting and sharp-edged tools.

The windmill, first seen in Western Europe in 1105, after Christians observed its prevalence in the Islamic world, quickly came into use throughout Europe. In the thirteenth century the city of Ypres alone had 120 of these mills. More complete tools and growing needs encouraged people to dig mines. Since trade required reliable gold coins and artisans’ skill to satisfy their fellows’ desires for gold and jewelry was increasing, this work again led to washing gold particles from river sediments, and extracting gold mines in Italy, France, England, Hungary, and above all in Germany. Around 1175 rich veins of copper, silver, and gold were found in the Erzgebirge or mining mountains. Freiberg, Goslar, and Annaberg became centers for the “gold rush” in the Middle Ages; and from the name of the small town Joachimsthal (Joachimsthal) the German word Joachimsthaler meaning “the place where they minted gold coins” was derived—and gradually this shortened word became thaler in German, and dollar in English. Germany became Europe’s most important center for extracting and preparing precious metals, and its mines laid the foundation, and its trade the sphere of Germany’s political power. Iron was extracted in the Harz Mountains, in Westphalia, in the lowlands of northern Europe, England, France, Spain, and Sicily, and on the ancient island of Elba. In Derbyshire in England lead, in Devon Cornwall and Bohemia tin, in Spain mercury and silver, and in Italy sulfur and white alum were obtained. The name Salzburg comes from the vast quantities of salt extracted from that region. Coal mining, common in Roman Britain and apparently abandoned in the Saxon period, began again in the twelfth century. In 1237 Queen Eleanor left Nottingham Palace because the smoke rising from the city from burning coal bothered her; in 1301 London banned the use of coal because coal smoke polluted the city’s air—these are two medieval examples of a plague that apparently afflicted modern man. Nevertheless, until the end of the thirteenth century coal mining was seriously underway in Newcastle and Durham, and other areas in England, Belgium, and France.

Mineral ownership created chaos in existing laws. When feudal possession was firmly based, all rights to mines belonged to the lord, and he extracted them with the help of his serfs. In ecclesiastical estates, clerical authorities also claimed ownership of such mineral reserves and used their serfs for extraction, or hired miners for the work. Frederick Barbarossa, by issuing a decree, declared all mineral reserves of the realm the sovereign’s personal property and strictly ordered that such mines should only be extracted by institutions under government supervision. This reacquisition of “royal rights,” which was normal in the era of Roman emperors, became medieval German law. In England all gold and silver mineral reserves belonged to the king of the realm, but the extraction of baser metals by the landowner was permitted in exchange for paying a “royalty” to the king.

For smelting and refining metals, charcoal was used; in the furnaces of this era, which were still primitive, a very large amount of wood was consumed. Nevertheless, the coppersmiths of Dinant made very delicate brass goods; the blacksmiths of Liège, Nuremberg, Milan, Barcelona, and Toledo produced extraordinarily fine weapons and tools; and Seville (Ishbiliya) was famous for its steel. Near the end of the thirteenth century, cast iron (which melts at 1535 degrees Celsius) gradually replaced wrought iron (which softens at 800 degrees Celsius). Before this date, all kinds of tools and implements were made with iron and shaped by hammering. Bell casting was an important industry, since the bells of cities and cathedrals competed in weight, tone, and type of sound. Coppersmiths made lids for stoves, because it was customary that when the night watchman rang the last bell in the city as a sign to stop movement, people put lids on their fires. Saxony was famous for bronze casting, and England for making a metal from a combination of copper, bismuth, antimony, and tin. Wrought iron was used in decorating delicate networks for windows, large bars for the choir stalls of churches, and huge pipes installed in various shapes for decoration and strengthening on doors.

Goldsmiths and silversmiths were numerous, because gold and silver plates were not only used for ostentation or hiding individuals’ real value, but also as a guarantee against the depreciation of currency and, in necessity, a kind of wealth that could be exchanged for food or needed goods. In the thirteenth century the textile industry in Flanders and Italy took the form of a vast semi-capitalist organization in which thousands of workers were engaged in producing goods for the general market, and in earning profits for investors whom they never saw. In Florence the wool merchants’ guild owned huge factories where fullers, shearers, sorters, spinners, weavers, inspectors, and clerks all worked under one roof with raw materials, tools, and weaving machines, yet had no supervision or ownership. Cloth merchants, whose business was wholesaling textiles, organized factories, provided tools and equipment, supplied labor and capital, set wages and prices, arranged distribution and sales, accepted all the risks of such an organization, bore losses from failure, and took the profits if successful. Other employers preferred to distribute raw materials among individual workers or families. In this case, each individual or family, with their own tools, in the home, turned these raw materials into needed products, and delivered the manufactured goods to the merchant at a set rate or wage. In this way, thousands of men and women in Italy, Flanders, and France entered industrial occupations. Amiens, Beauvais, Lille, Laon, Saint-Quentin, Provins, Reims, Troyes, Cambrai, Tournai, and above all these cities Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, and Douai became centers of such domestic industries, whose workers became famous for their taste, skill, and the revolts they staged. The word lawn, a type of linen fabric, was taken from the place of its weaving, the city of Laon. Fabric made in Cambrai (Cambrai), which resembled silk, became known as cambric. The term diaper, which in some European languages refers to patterned fabrics, comes from the name of the city of Ypres. In the city of Ghent 2,300 weavers were employed in cloth-weaving workshops, and the number of weavers in Provins in the thirteenth century reached 3,200. Ten or twelve Italian cities had textile industries of their own. The wool merchants’ guild of Florence in the twelfth century specialized in producing various dyed woolen cloths. In the early thirteenth century, the drapers’ guild of that city established a vast organization for wool imports and the export of manufactured textiles. By 1306 Florence had three hundred cloth factories, and by 1336 it had 30,000 weavers. Genoa gained fame for producing gold-embroidered silks and delicate velvets. Near the end of the thirteenth century Vienna hired Flemish weavers, and before long it acquired a flourishing textile industry of its own.

The monopoly of wool production in northern Europe was almost entirely England’s, and since most English wool was exported to Flanders, there were close political and military relations between the two countries. The city of Worstead, in Norfolk, was one of the important centers of cloth weaving, and for this reason many famous fabrics were named “worsted.” Spain also specialized in producing fine wool, and its Merino sheep were considered an important national wealth source. The Arabs brought the art and industry of silk weaving to Spain in the eighth century and to Sicily in the ninth, and the cities of Valencia, Cartagena, Seville, Lisbon, and Palermo, after being taken from the Muslims, continued to preserve Islamic arts and industries. Roger II in 1417 brought a group of Jewish and Greek silk weavers from Corinth and Thebes to Palermo and housed them in a palace; it was thanks to these men and their children that silkworm breeding became common in Italy. Lucca organized silk production in a capitalist manner and progressed so much that it rivaled Florence, Milan, Genoa, Modena, Bologna, and Venice. The art of silk weaving crossed the Alps, and in Zurich, Paris, and Cologne worthy artists engaged in this industry.

In the circle of medieval industries there were also a hundred other crafts. Potters glazed their earthenware jars by sprinkling a soft layer of lead on the moist surface of the pottery, and firing it at a mild heat, and if yellow glaze was desired instead of green, they obtained the desired color by adding copper or bronze to the lead. The more houses and fires in the expanding cities of the thirteenth century became expensive and destructive, the more pottery took the place of thatch and straw in roofing houses. In 1212 London made this change of house roofs mandatory. The architects of this era were certainly masters in their work, since some of the largest and strongest buildings existing in Europe belong to this period. Industrial glass was used in making mirrors, windows, and vessels, but its use was relatively limited. Cathedrals possessed the most delicate glass ever made by human hands, but glass was not used in the construction of many buildings. Glassmaking was at least common in Western Europe from the eleventh century; but in Italy this industry probably had never been abandoned since its flourishing in the Roman Empire. Paper was imported from the Islamic world to Spain until the twelfth century, but in 1190 a paper mill was established in Ravensburg in Germany, and in the course of the thirteenth century Europe began making paper from linen. Leather was an important item of international trade, and tanning was common everywhere; glovemakers, saddlers, pouchmakers, shoemakers, and cobblers were all prominent craftsmen whose importance aroused the envy of others. Skins were usually imported from northern and eastern regions and used for decorating the garments of kings, nobles, and bourgeois.

Wine and beer served as central heating for people, and many cities derived profits from the monopoly of wine and beer production. Germans in this ancient industry were leaders long before other nations, and Hamburg in the fifteenth century, with five hundred breweries, owed most of its development and prosperity to this art. Apart from textiles, industry was only manual. Workers employed for a local market—like bakers, cobblers, blacksmiths, carpenters, and the like—supervised their own tools and products and remained individually free. Most industry still took place in workers’ homes or shops attached to their houses, and most families of that era performed many tasks themselves that today are assigned to shops or factories—they baked their own bread, wove their own needed fabrics, and repaired their own shoes. In this domestic industry progress was slow, tools simple, and machines few; incentives of competition and profit did not drive people to invention or to replace human skill with machine power. Nevertheless, perhaps domestic industry was the healthiest type of industrial organization in history. Its power and output were low, but the degree of individual satisfaction and contentment was probably and relatively high. The worker did not have to be away from his wife and children; he himself determined working hours and (to some extent) the value of his work; and his pride in his craft provided assurance and self-respect. Such a person was both craftsman and artist; and just like an artist, he was pleased to see that under his hands the result of his art took shape without any flaw.

III – Money

The development of industry and commerce caused a revolution in financial affairs. Commerce could not advance on the principle of barter or exchange of goods, but required a fixed standard for pricing, a trouble-free means of exchange, and access to funds for investment. In European feudalism, great lords and especially clergy benefited from the right to mint coins, and the economy of continental Europe, in terms of circulating coins, suffered chaos far more confusing than today’s conditions. Some also increased this disorder by making counterfeit money and clipping the edges of coins. By royal command, usually the limbs of such persons were cut off or they were castrated, or boiled alive in pots; but the kings themselves often devalued the currency in their realms. After the barbarian invasions gold became scarce, and after the Muslim conquest of the East no trace remained of Western European gold coins. During the eighth to thirteenth centuries all such coins were of silver or baser metals. Gold and civilization rose and fell together gradually. Nevertheless, the Byzantine Empire minted gold coins throughout the Middle Ages. As East-West European relations increased, Byzantine gold coins, known in Western Europe as bezants, gained wider circulation throughout Europe and became the most reputable money of the Christian world. In 1228, after Frederick II saw with his own eyes the beneficial effect of a fixed gold coin as currency in the Near East, he began minting the first gold coins of Western Europe in Italy. Frederick, in competition with the fame and coins of Emperor Augustus of Rome, named his coins augustales; his coins deserved such a name too, for although imitative, they had a magnificent design, and immediately attained the highest ranks in medieval numismatic art. In 1252 both Genoa and Florence issued gold coins, because the florin of Florence, worth one pound of silver in price, was far more beautiful and durable and was accepted throughout Europe. By 1284 all the major European kingdoms except England had reliable circulating gold coins; this was a success lost in the turbulent twentieth century.

By the end of the thirteenth century the kings of France had purchased or confiscated almost all feudal rights to mint coins. Until 1789 in the French monetary system—although the value of coins had not remained in their original form—the terms established by Charlemagne were still used; that is, the word “livre” or one pound of silver, the word “sou” or one twentieth of a livre, and “denier” or one twelfth of a sou were still common. This system came to England through the Norman invasion and there the “pound sterling” was divided into twenty shillings, and each shilling into 12 pence. The English took the words pound, shilling, and penny from the German equivalents pfund, schilling, and pfennig, but adopted their symbols from Latin: L from libra, S from solidus, and D from denarius. In England until 1343 minting gold coins was not common, but the silver coins of that country, which became current in the time of Henry II, remained extraordinarily stable and enduring in Europe. In Germany the silver mark, worth half the price of the English or French pound, was minted in the tenth century.

Despite these developments, medieval coins were subject to rising and falling value, disproportion in the ratio of silver to gold, and the power of city kings—and sometimes nobles and clergy—who whenever they saw fit collected all coins, took a fee for reminting, and minted new coins with baser alloy. Due to the mints’ lack of honesty, the faster increase of gold relative to goods, and the ease of paying national debts with depreciated money during the Middle Ages and modern eras, all European currencies declined in value irregularly. By 1789 the livre in France had only 2.1 percent of its value from Charlemagne’s reign. Currency depreciation can be understood from sample prices of certain goods, for example in Ravenna in 1268 the price of twelve eggs was one penny; in 1328 in London one pig was worth four shillings, and one bull fifteen shillings; and in thirteenth-century France one sheep was sold for three francs and one pig for six francs. History itself tells the story of monetary inflation.

But where did the money necessary for investment and the development of commerce and industry come from? The greatest single source of capital was the Church. The Church, for collecting funds, had an unparalleled organization and always had mobile capital ready for any purpose. In the Christian world the Church organization was the greatest financial power. Moreover, many individuals, to have a safe place for storage, deposited sums of their private funds in churches and monasteries. Churches lent money from their assets to individuals or institutions in financial difficulty. Generally loans were given to peasants trying to develop their farms. Churches performed the function of rural banks and played a useful role in supporting the freedom of farmers. Even from 1070 onward, churches lent money to neighboring lords in exchange for a share of the revenues of their estates. It was through these mortgages and loans that monasteries became the first banking institutions of the Middle Ages. The banking business of the monastery of Saint-André in France flourished so much that it was forced to employ a number of Jewish moneylenders to manage its financial operations. The Knights Hospitaller lent money, in exchange for interest, to kings and princes, lords and knights, churches, and especially prelates, and probably in the thirteenth century these transactions of theirs were the largest of their kind in the world.

But these loans that clerical authorities gave to individuals were usually for private or political use and rarely served to provide capital for industry or commerce. Commercial credit began when an individual or a house, usually on the basis of trust in a merchant, provided or delivered money for a particular business or commercial journey (an operation known in the Latin Christian world as commenda) and in return received a share of the profits. These companies, or in other words transactions in which the merchant partner performed no operation and expressed no opinion, was a brilliant idea inherited from ancient Roman times and perhaps the Christian West reacquired it from the Byzantine world. Such a useful method that allowed a person to share in profits without violating the Church’s prohibitions on usury naturally had to become widespread, and for this reason “company” (derived from two words com meaning “sharing” and panis meaning “bread”) or family investments became a corporate form in which several people, not necessarily related, shared and invested capital for a series of different transactions instead of one. These financial institutions appeared in Genoa and Venice near the end of the tenth century, and their existence was an important factor in the rapid expansion of Italian trade. These investment companies often participated simultaneously in several ships or multiple transactions and thus reduced the risks involved in a single transaction. In the fourteenth century, when in Genoa these shares (parts) became transferable to others, the idea of a joint-stock company first took shape in the world. The greatest single source of capital for transactions (or in other words preparing funds to cover transaction expenses before drawing principal and profit) was the individual who, by virtue of his profession, placed money at the disposal of merchants. In ancient times such a person usually engaged in money-changing, and by this date these money-changers had long become moneylenders who devoted their own and others’ money to carrying out large transactions or lent to churches, monasteries, nobles, or kings. There has been much exaggeration about the role Jews played in lending money. Jewish moneylenders had great power in Spain. For some time their position was consolidated in England, they were weak in Germany, and in Italy and France they did not match Christian capitalists. The greatest individual who lent to the kings of England was William Cade; in thirteenth-century France and Flanders the most important moneylenders were two families, the Louchards and the Crépins from Arras. William of Breton, one of the celebrities of this era, described Arras as a place “full of usurers.” Another center of northern Europe’s financial affairs was the bourse (derived from the word bursa, which in English purse means “money bag” and today means “money purse”) or money market of Bruges.

Stronger than the moneylenders of Arras and Bruges was a group of Christian Cahorsins, that is, inhabitants of a city in southern France. Matthew Paris writes about this group as follows:

In these days (1235) the horrible plague of the Cahorsins had spread so widely that in all the land of England, especially among the prelates, there was scarcely anyone who had not fallen into their trap. The king of that country owed them immense sums. The Cahorsins took advantage of the poor’s poverty, deceived them by meeting their urgent needs, and made commerce a pretext for their usury.

The papal administration for some time delegated its financial affairs in England to Cahorsin bankers. But their lack of mercy so angered the English that one of the Cahorsins was killed in Oxford; Roger, bishop of London, cursed them, and Henry III exiled them from England. Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, on his deathbed lamented “the merchants and moneychangers of our Lord the Pope” who were “more miserly than the Jews.”

It was through the efforts of the Italians that banking methods in the thirteenth century developed in an unprecedented way. Famous families of moneychangers strengthened Italian commerce on a large scale, including the Buonsignori and Gallerani in Siena; the Frescobaldi, Bardi, and Peruzzi in Florence; and the Pisan and Tiepolo in Venice... This group extended their operations beyond the Alps and lent vast sums to the perpetually needy kings of England and France, to barons, bishops, abbots, and cities. Popes and kings employed them to collect revenues, manage mints, state finances, and guide policy. These same people bought wool, spices, jewels, and silk wholesale and owned ships and inns throughout Europe. By the mid-thirteenth century these Italian bankers, or as northern Europeans called them “Lombards,” had become the most active and powerful capitalists in the world. Inside and outside Italy this group was hated for the pressure they exerted in collecting their claims, and for the wealth they had accumulated they aroused envy in all. This was not unique to thirteenth-century Italy, for every generation borrows and naturally disapproves of the moneylenders’ action. The rise of this group dealt a heavy blow to international Jewish banking, and in competition, Lombard moneychangers did not hesitate to recommend the exile of Jewish moneylenders to their rulers. The most powerful “Lombards” were the banking houses of Florence, of which eighty have been named between 1260 and 1347. It was this group that paid the military and political expenses of the papal administration, and from this path gained immense profits, having as papal bankers a good excuse for transactions that in no way agreed with the Church’s views on usury. The profits from their transactions were so abundant that they were little less than the huge returns of modern eras, so that in 1308 the profit share from the Peruzzi operations was forty percent. But what compensated for the greed of these Italian institutions were the immensely valuable services they performed for the industry and commerce of the country. When their star of fortune and power declined, they left some of their terms in almost all European languages, including: banco (bank), credito (creditor), debito (debtor), cassa (cash box and cash), conto (account), disconto (discount), corrente conto (current account), netto (net), bilanza (balance sheet), rotta banca (bankruptcy), and the like.

As these words show, the great financial institutions of Venice, Florence, and Genoa in the thirteenth century or even before performed almost all the functions of a modern bank. These institutions accepted deposits from people and opened current accounts for parties in transactions where money constantly changed hands. Even from 1171 the Bank of Venice handled the settlement of its clients’ accounts solely through a series of accounting operations. Financial institutions lent money to people, and accepted jewels, valuable armor, government bonds, the right to collect taxes, or the right to administer public revenues as collateral. They accepted commercial goods on trust for transport to other countries. These, because of having agents and acquaintances throughout the world, were able to issue credit documents by which when one person deposited a sum in one country, the same sum was payable in another country to the depositor or his representative. This transfer of credit was the same means that, long before this era, Jews, Muslims, and the Knights Templar knew about. On the other hand, these same financial institutions issued bills of exchange, meaning that a merchant, in return for goods or loans received, gave the creditor a draft by which he undertook to pay his debt at a specified time in one of the great fairs or international banks. These drafts were compared and settled in one of the fairs or numerous banks and only the final balance or difference was paid in cash. With the spread of this method, hundreds of commercial transactions became possible, without the parties to the transactions being troubled by carrying large quantities of coins or delivering and accepting huge sums of cash. As banking centers became institutions for exchanging bills and settling accounts. Bankers avoided the hardship of long journeys to fairs. Merchants throughout Europe and the Levant could, relying on their accounts in Italian banks, issue bills and leave final settlement to the accounting operations common among banks. With this method, in effect the benefit and flow of money increased tenfold. This “credit system,” made possible by mutual trust, was one of the most important aspects of the economic revolution in terms of importance and respectability.

IV – Interest

The greatest obstacle blocking the path of banking was the Church’s principles on interest. These views stemmed from three sources: first Aristotelian philosophy, which disapproved of interest because it believed that through it money unnaturally produces money; second the condemnation of interest by Jesus; and third the reaction of the Church Fathers against the dominance of merchants and usury in Rome. Roman law considered taking interest a legal act, and “distinguished men” like Brutus took huge interest with utmost cruelty. Saint Ambrose, in condemning the hypothesis that a person could do whatever he pleased with his property, said:

You say “it is my own”—what is your own when you came from your mother’s womb what did you bring with you? Apart from what suffices for your needs, whatever you have acquired you have taken by force. Is God unjust that He does not divide the necessities of life equally among us so that you have the wealth of nations and others are in need of a grain? Is it not that the Almighty wanted to include you in His favors while granting the virtue of patience to your fellow men? So you, who have received the divine gift, beware lest you keep for yourself what is the means of livelihood for many and thus commit injustice. That bread is the hungry’s which you hold firmly in your grasp, and that clothing is the naked’s which you store in the chest. The money you hide in the earth is the ransom of the poor.

The views of other Church Fathers were close to the communal creed. For example, Clement of Alexandria said: The enjoyment of all things that exist in the world should be common among all people. But, because of injustice, one has called one thing his own and another has called another thing his own, and thus division has fallen among people.

Saint Jerome believed that any kind of profit was improper. Every kind of “transaction” was vile in Augustine’s view, because in his opinion “it distracts individuals from seeking the true comfort that is closeness to the divine essence.” Pope Leo I had rejected these extreme principles, but the Church’s reaction remained in the form of opposition to commerce, suspicion of any kind of hoarding and profit, and hostility to any kind of “monopolizing” and “forward buying” and “usury.” In the Middle Ages the meaning of usury was gaining any kind of profit or interest from transactions. Ambrose said: “Usury is anything added to the capital”; and Gratian also entered this straightforward definition into canon law. The councils of Nicaea (325), Orléans (538), Mâcon (585), and Clichy (626) forbade clerical authorities from giving loans with the intention of gaining profit. Charlemagne’s decrees for the year 789, and church councils of the ninth century, extended this prohibition to include laypeople as well. The revival of Roman law in the twelfth century prompted Irnerius and other commentators of Bologna to defend interest, and this group in their arguments cited Justinian’s code. But the Third Lateran Council (1179) again forbade gaining profit, and ruled that “those who openly make usury their profession will not have the right to participate in the Eucharist, and if the sinner dies, permission to bury them in Christian cemeteries will not be granted. Moreover, no priest will accept their alms.” Certainly Innocent III’s view on this was more tolerant, because in 1206 he recommended in some cases that a dowry “should be placed at the disposal of a merchant” so that an income “may be provided for its owner through legitimate means.” Nevertheless, Gregory IX again defined usury as any kind of profit gained from lending; and this remained canon law of the Catholic Church until 1917.

The Church’s wealth came from land not from commercial transactions; and the Church despised merchants to the same degree that the feudal lord abhorred them. In the Church’s view the only factors producing wealth and value were land and labor (including good management), the Church opposed the growing power and wealth of the merchant class that had so little inclination toward feudal landlords or the Church. For centuries the Church had associated the name of moneylenders with Jews and considered itself entitled to rebuke such people for the harsh conditions they imposed on needy religious institutions. In general, the Church’s effort to prevent the incentive of profit-seeking was a brave defense of Christian moral principles, and the Church’s beneficial action in this matter was completely different from the imprisonment and enslavement of debtors that disgraced the rights and lives of Greeks, Romans, and barbarian peoples. It cannot be certain that if the Church had ruled, individuals would not have been far happier than they are today. For a long time the laws enacted by governments supported the Church’s theory, and secular courts actually prevented usury. But commercial necessity overcame fear of prison or the torment of hell. The development of trade and industry required putting idle money to work in effective transactions. For countries that found themselves entangled in war or other difficulties, borrowing was far easier than collecting taxes; guilds both lent and borrowed, and in both acts of taking or giving, interest was the main pillar of the transaction. Landowners engaged in developing their estates or setting out on Crusades welcomed the moneylender. Churches and monasteries also, to counter the ever-increasing rise in prices or to escape the consequences of their financial crises, extended a begging hand to the Lombards, Cahorsins, or Jews.

To escape the clutches of the law individuals resorted to many tricks. For example, the borrower sold his property to the lender at a low price, and transferred enjoyment of the property to him as interest and then repurchased the property from the lender. Or the owner sold a quantity or all of the annual revenues or rents to the lender. For example, if Zayd transferred a piece of land that yielded ten dollars a year to Amr for one hundred dollars, in reality Amr had lent Zayd one hundred dollars at ten percent interest. Many monasteries invested their funds in this way, by purchasing such “rents.” This practice was most common in Germany and it was there that the word zins (interest) was derived from the medieval Latin word census (rent). Cities usually transferred part of their revenues to the lender in exchange for a loan. Individuals and institutions, including monasteries, to make a legal hat for usury, lent money in exchange for a secret gift or fictitious transactions. Pope Alexander III in 1163 complained about many clergy “most monks” and said: “While these people express disgust at the common usury that is openly condemned, they lend to those in need, take their property as collateral, and enjoy far more from the resulting fruits than the principal loan.” Some borrowers undertook that if they did not pay their debt at the specified time, they would pay a sum as (penalty) for each day or month of delay, and the payment date was set so early that the borrower had no choice but to pay such hidden interest. On this basis, the interest on loans that the Cahorsins gave to some monasteries was around sixty percent annually. Many banking institutions openly took interest on the loans they gave and, citing the hypothesis that the law only applies to individuals not institutions, claimed immunity. Italian cities accepted no excuse for paying interest on their government bonds. In 1208, Innocent III said that if according to religious law all usurers are to be expelled from the Church, it would be better to close all churches.

The Church reluctantly adapted itself to realities. Saint Thomas Aquinas around 1250 with full courage established new principles on interest, meaning that he said anyone who invests capital in a large transaction, provided he himself actually shares in the risks or incurred losses, can legitimately share in the resulting fruits, and he expanded the literal meaning of loss to include any delay in payment after the loan’s due date. Saint Bonaventure and Pope Innocent IV both accepted this principle and by expanding its meaning ruled that a payment by the borrower, in exchange for temporarily depriving the lender of using his capital, is a legitimate act. Some fifteenth-century theologians admitted that governments have the right to issue government bonds and give interest. Pope Martin V in 1425 legalized the sale of rents.

After 1400, most European countries repealed their laws against taking interest. From then on the Church’s rulings on interest became a obsolete document that the public unanimously ignored. Another solution the Church found from 1251 onward was encouraging Saint Bernardino of Feltre and other church authorities to establish centers known as “Mounts of Piety.” In these centers needy trustworthy persons left something as collateral and received interest-free loans. But these pioneers of modern pawnshops only met the needs of a particular group. The needs of commerce and industry remained, and it was in meeting them that capital emerged. If people who earned their living by lending took huge interest from borrowers, it was because of the great risks to life and property they bore, otherwise these people were not conscienceless giants. It was not always possible for lenders to resort to courts to enforce their contracts; as soon as they accumulated wealth, there was always the danger that it would be confiscated by kings or emperors; at any moment they might be exiled, and always in any case they were considered among the damned. Many debts were never paid; some insolvent borrowers left the world; some set out on Crusades and were excused from paying interest and never returned to their homeland. When a group of borrowers defaulted, lenders had no choice but to compensate for incurred losses by increasing the interest rate on other loans. Just as the purchase price of goods offered in the market includes the cost of goods lost before sale, in the same way the reliable and trustworthy borrower had to bear the burden of bad payers and those fallen into difficulty. In twelfth-century France and England the interest rate ranged from 33 1/3 percent to 44 4/9 percent and sometimes rose to about 86 percent. In Italy, which was a prosperous country, the interest rate had fallen considerably to 12 1/2 to 20 percent. Around 1240 Frederick II attempted to reduce the interest rate to 10 percent, but shortly after this beginning he himself borrowed sums from Christian moneylenders at a higher rate. Even until 1409 the government of Naples had set the maximum official and legal interest rate at 40 percent.

The more security for debt repayment increased and competition among lenders grew, the interest rate fell; gradually, through a thousand kinds of experience and error, humanity learned how to apply new financial tools of a progressive economy, and the age of money began in the midst of the age of faith.

V – Guilds

In ancient Rome there were numerous associations such as collegia and sodalitates and artes, that is, gatherings of craftsmen, merchants, contractors, political clubs, brotherhood lodges, and religious brotherly circles and the like. Did any of these formations survive to create the medieval guilds? Two letters from Gregory I remain, one referring to a soapmakers’ association in Naples and the other mentioning bakers of Otranto. In the law code of King Rothari, Lombard king, there is mention of magistri Comacini or apparently master stonecutters of Como who called each other collegantes or colleagues belonging to one guild and craft. Associations of vehicle workers are mentioned in seventh-century Roman writings and tenth-century Worms. Old guilds remained in the Byzantine Empire. In Ravenna we encounter several economic or sodalitas associations: for example in the sixth century bakers had an association in this city, in the ninth century notaries and merchants, in the tenth century fishermen, and in the eleventh century provisioners had special associations, in the ninth century Venetian craftsmen had an organization called ministeria, and in eleventh-century Rome gardeners had their own special association or sodalitas. Undoubtedly most of the old guilds of Western Europe disappeared in the face of the flood of barbarian invasions, as a result of the renewed dispersal of people into the countryside, and finally because of the poverty resulting from these attacks, but apparently some of these formations survived in Lombardy. When commerce and industry improved in the eleventh century, the conditions that in ancient times had caused the emergence of collegia or associations of fellow craftsmen created guilds. As a result, these formations became extremely powerful in Italy, because it was there that the old Roman foundations had been best preserved. In Florence, in the course of the twelfth century we encounter guilds of various crafts (known as arti) such as notaries, cloth merchants, wool merchants, bankers, physicians, apothecaries, silk merchants, furriers, tanners, armorers, innkeepers, and the like... These guilds apparently came into existence imitating the ranks existing in Constantinople. North of the Alps, apparently the destruction of old craft associations was more complete than in Italy. Nevertheless, in the laws of Dagobert I (630), in Charlemagne’s decrees (789, 779), and in the instructions of Hincmar, archbishop of Reims (852), we encounter names of such craft associations. In the eleventh century craft guilds reappear in France and Flanders and rapidly increase under various titles like “charity,” “fraternity” or “company.” In Germany, guilds (Hanse) derived from local unions or associations called Markgenossenschaften; and each of these formations was in fact a circle for mutual aid, observance of religious customs and rites, and finally the holding of religious festivals. By the twelfth century many of these circles had become unions for merchants or craftsmen; and by the thirteenth century these formations had become so powerful that they competed with city councils not only in economic affairs but also in political matters.

The Hanseatic League itself was one of these craft associations. In English history the name of craft guilds first appears in the laws of King Ine, who refers to these formations as gegildan. These associations were a type of craft formation where when one of its members was forced to pay a cash fine instead of punishment, others voluntarily came to his aid. The purpose of the word gild in Anglo-Saxon (that is the same word geld in German and two words gold “meaning gold” and yield “meaning to surrender” in English) was the sum that each individual paid to a common fund, and later this word was applied to the association that oversaw the collection and expenditure of that fund. The oldest mention of guilds or craft unions in England is from 1093. By the thirteenth century almost every important city in England had one or more guilds, and a kind of “craft socialism” had influenced urban England and Germany.

Almost all eleventh-century craft associations belonged to merchants, meaning that these associations consisted only of independent masters and traders, and did not admit anyone dependent on others into these formations. These associations were clearly formed to prevent trade. Usually wherever a merchants’ guild existed it pressured city authorities to prevent the entry of any type of goods that might glut the local market by approving high customs tariffs, or in some other way. If such goods were allowed entry into the city, they were usually sold at a price set by the relevant guild. In many cases, one merchants’ guild acquired from the local or regional government, or from the king of the realm, the exclusive right to its specific goods for the entire sovereign’s realm or that particular region. The Paris company for the transit of goods by water almost owned the Seine River. The guild, according to city government decree or economic pressure, usually forced craftsmen to work only for that guild and if they wished to work for someone else, not to do so without the guild’s permission, and to sell their products only to the guild or through the guild’s channel. Larger guilds became powerful organizations; these institutions dealt with all kinds of goods, bought raw materials wholesale, insured goods against possible damage, took charge of sewage disposal and supplying food to their cities, paved streets; undertook the construction of roads and docks, deepening anchorages, placing guards on communication routes, and supervising markets; and set wages, working hours and conditions, apprenticeship periods, methods of production and sales, and the price of raw materials and sold goods. Every year four or five times they set a “fair price” for goods that in their view was a fair reward and incentive for all interested partners. These guilds weighed, tested, and numbered all products bought and sold in their field of activity and craft, and made every effort to prevent the entry of inferior and substandard goods into the market.

To resist thieves, tolls and feudal lords, rebellious workers, and tax-collecting governments they joined hands in union. These craft associations played an important role in politics; they dominated many city councils; and in their struggles against lords, bishops, and kings they effectively supported local communities, and they themselves gradually emerged as an oligarchy of oppressive traders and capitalists. Naturally each guild had its own social hall which in the late Middle Ages these buildings were notable for their ornate standards. Each guild hall had a complex organization composed of various officials at whose head was a group of mayors, and the rest were archivists, treasurers, supervisors or stewards, heads of police officers, and so on... Each hall had a court for settling disputes among its members, and guild members were required to present their disputes in the guild court before referring them to state courts. Members of each guild were obliged to rush to the aid of their fellow guild members in times of illness or distress, and if one of them was subjected to oppression or imprisoned, to strive to help or free him.

The guild supervised the moral principles, customs, and dress of its members, and fined anyone who appeared without reply at the guild meeting. When two members of the Leicester merchants’ guild turned their market dispute into a fistfight, the other guild members, as a fine, forced them to buy a barrel of beer so that all guild members could share in drinking it. Each guild held an annual festival to honor the name of its patron saint. At such gatherings it was customary to first recite short prayers and then spend the whole day in drinking. The guild participated in paying the costs and decorating churches or the cathedral, and in preparing and performing morality-play-like shows that were the prelude to the emergence of modern drama; during the magnificent parades organized by local governments, the notables of the guilds, dressed in guild uniforms, while carrying the banner or standard of their profession, marched. Guilds insured their members against dangers arising from fire, flood, theft, imprisonment, paralysis, and poverty in old age. The prosperous successors of these guilds less often failed to mention them in their wills. Since naturally craftsmen of every industry did not have access to these merchants’ craft associations, and at the same time followed their economic systems and political power, in the course of the twelfth century each formed a separate guild in every city. In 1099, in London, Lincoln, and Oxford there were weavers’ guilds, and shortly after this we encounter guilds of butchers, tanners, slaughterers, goldsmiths, and the like. These formations under various names—arti, tsunfte, metiers, compagnies, misteries—spread throughout Europe in the course of the thirteenth century.

Venice had fifty-eight, Genoa thirty-three, Florence twenty-one, Cologne twenty-six, and Paris one hundred guilds. Around 1254 Étienne Boileau, who during the reign of Louis IX was “superintendent of merchants’ affairs” or in modern terms minister of commerce, published a collection called the Book of Crafts containing principles and regulations for one hundred and one guilds of Paris. According to this list, the division of labor is astonishing. For example in the leather industry there were separate unions for skinners, tanners, cobblers, harness makers, saddlers, and makers of delicate leather goods; in carpentry box makers, cabinet makers, boat builders, wheelwrights, coopers, and sugar-thread makers each had a separate guild. Each guild guarded the secrets of its craft to the utmost degree, did not admit outsiders to its field of operations, and engaged in sensitive legal disputes.

In accordance with the ideas and opinions of the era, each guild took on a religious aspect, had a patron saint, and cherished the desire to monopolize its particular craft. Naturally no one could engage in a profession unless he belonged to his own guild. Guild masters were elected every year in the presence of all guild members, but most of these positions belonged to the senior and wealthy members of the guild. As far as merchants’ guilds, city authorities’ decrees, and economic law allowed, the working conditions, wages, and prices of each guild’s manufactured goods were determined by the regulations of that guild. According to these regulations, the number of masters in each area, and the number of apprentices who had to be trained under one master, were set and limited. Guild regulations prohibited the employment of women, except the master’s wife, or male workers working after six in the evening, and punished guild officials for making false accusations, dishonest dealings, and producing substandard goods; in many cases the guild engraved a special trademark on its products as a certificate of the goods’ quality. The cloth merchants’ guild of Bruges expelled one of its members who had stamped the Bruges trademark on substandard goods. They disapproved of competition among masters in the quantity or price of goods, lest the work of the cleverest or hardest-working masters harm others, and they become excessively wealthy, but competition in the quality of products among masters and cities was encouraged. Craft guilds like merchants’ guilds built hospitals and schools, provided various insurances, helped needy members and prepared dowries for their daughters, buried the dead, cared for widows, made donations, and also provided workers to build ordinary and cathedral churches and to paint the operations and craft symbols on the cathedral’s stained-glass windows. The spirit of brotherhood among masters did not prevent precise classification for membership and scope of authority in craft guilds. In the lowest class was the apprentice, who was a ten- to twelve-year-old child; such a child was placed by his guardians with a master craftsman to live with him and serve the master bound in house and shop for three to twelve years. In return, the apprentice received food, clothing, housing, and instruction in the desired craft free, and after several years of work, also received tools and wages. When his apprenticeship period ended, the master gave him a sum as a gift to start his work. If the child ran away during apprenticeship, he was returned to his master and punished. If the apprentice was naturally a runaway, he was permanently deprived of learning the secrets of that craft.

When the apprentice completed his training period, he reached the rank of journeyman (such a person was called “journeyman” or “itinerant worker” in English, and “serviteur,” “garçon,” and “compagnon” in French, which can be translated into Persian as “assistant”) and like a day laborer (in French, “journée”) moved from one master’s service to another. After two or three years, the journeyman, provided he had sufficient capital, went before a selection board composed of members of his own guild to open a shop for himself; and if that board gained confidence and satisfaction in his technical competence, then they recognized him as a master. Sometimes (and this especially became customary in the late Middle Ages) the candidate was required to submit a masterpiece as a convincing sample of his hand’s art to the guild’s board. A craftsman who had gone through the stages of apprenticeship and in other words become a master had tools of his own and usually prepared goods directly according to the consumer’s order. The orderer in some cases provided the initial goods himself to the master, and whenever he wished could go to the shop and watch the work’s progress. In this system there was still no broker or intermediary between maker and consumer. The craftsman’s scope of operations was limited to the market for which he prepared that good, and this market was naturally the city where the craftsman resided; but he was not subject to the rises and falls of a general market, nor dependent on the desires of unknown investors or buyers living far from him. He had no inkling of the economic misfortunes of modern eras, and did not know that the market might successively suffer strange booms and terrible slumps.

His working hours were long, meaning that each day lasted from 8 to 13 hours. But he had freedom in choosing working hours, worked wisely and deliberately, and enjoyed many religious holidays. He ate nourishing food, bought sturdy furniture. He wore simple but durable clothes, and the scope of his cultural life was, at least as much as a modern master craftsman, wide. He did not read many books, and for this reason his time was not wasted studying a bunch of nonsense; but he participated with full effort in singing, dancing, dramatic performances, and performing the rites related to his community. In the course of the thirteenth century craft guilds increased in number and power and created a democratic obstacle against the influential merchants’ guilds. But these craft guilds themselves in turn became a labor aristocracy; meaning that they made mastery exclusive to the sons of masters and did not pay sufficient wages to journeymen; this very matter in the course of the fourteenth century caused successive revolts of journeymen and as a result weakened the guilds, and finally made the obstacles and restrictions that existed for entry into their ranks or cities harsher and more severe. In an industrial age where transport difficulties mostly limited the market to local buyers and capital accumulation was not yet so large and mobile as to provide means for creating large and extensive production institutions, these guilds were very useful organizations. When huge capitals appeared, the supervision of guilds whether of merchants or craftsmen over the market disappeared, and thus from then on the authority of these organizations in determining working conditions was also revoked. The Industrial Revolution, in England, with slow economic transformation, abolished the guilds, and the French Revolution suddenly dissolved them, considering the guilds harmful to the freedom and dignity of the worker, the same freedom and dignity that these guilds for a few shining moments had risen to support and elevate.

VI – The Communes

The economic revolution of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, like the revolutions of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, gave rise to a revolution in society and government. New classes gained economic and political power and gave the medieval city that manly and warlike independence whose result was the emergence of the Renaissance. The question of the relative importance of the factor of heredity, versus the factor of environment, applies to cities as well as to the guilds of European countries. The question that arises is whether cities were hereditary descendants of the same primitive formations of ancient Rome, or new sediments left by the river of economic transformation? Many Roman cities, during centuries full of chaos, poverty, and decay, preserved their historical past; but only in a few of these cities located in Italy and southeastern France did the ancient Roman foundations—and in fewer cities Roman law—remain safe from the ravages of time. North of the Alps, the laws of barbarian peoples replaced the Roman heritage; and to some extent the political customs of German tribes or villages influenced ancient local governments. Most cities beyond the Alps were in the domain of feudal lords and were administered according to their will, and under the supervision of their chosen agents. In the view of Teutonic conquerors, urban foundations were something unfamiliar, and feudal foundations were natural formations. Outside Italy, the medieval city grew as a result of the emergence of class powers and new commercial centers. In the era of feudalism the city was usually built on heights at the intersection of roads, or beside rivers, or on borders. Around the walls of a feudal castle or fortified monasteries, commerce and a little industry gradually sprouted that was specific to city dwellers or local people. When the invasions of Norse and Magyar peoples subsided, this extra-urban activity developed, the number of shops increased, and merchants and craftsmen—who once were homeless people—settled in the city. But during war the era of insecurity was renewed, so the people who had settled outside the city took action to build a secondary wall, whose perimeter was far wider than the feudal era’s moat, to protect their shops and lives and property from plunderers. This developed city was still considered part of the bishop’s or feudal lord’s domain, but by this date its growing population, most of whom were commercial and non-religious people, were constantly annoyed by the feudal restrictions and tolls and were busy plotting to gain urban freedom. From among old political traditions and new administrative needs, an assembly composed of city dwellers and a board consisting of city officials came into existence; the supervision and intervention of this “commune” or political apparatus in city affairs gradually increased. Near the end of the eleventh century merchant leaders demanded charters from feudal lords to confirm the freedom of their cities. This group, with their special cunning, pitted different lords against each other; they set the lord against the bishop, the knight against the lord, and the king himself in conflict with all of them. City people resorted to various measures for urban freedom, for example they took special oaths to refuse to pay the lord’s and bishops’ taxes or dues, paid a lump sum to the lord or king in exchange for a charter, or undertook to pay him a fixed annuity for life. Wherever the city was in one king’s domain, they gained such a right by giving sums as gifts or through service in his war. Sometimes citizens without compromise declared their independence and rose in a bloody revolution. The city of Tours fought twelve times before achieving independence. Indebted or needy lords, especially those preparing to go on Crusade, sold charters of autonomy to cities in their fief. In this way many English cities obtained their independence charter from Richard I. Some lords, and most of all in Flanders, granted limited freedom charters to cities whose development aided their revenues. Abbey heads and bishops resisted more than others, because according to church tradition each had sworn not to commit any act to diminish or reduce the revenues of their diocese; moreover, these revenues were spent on many of their religious services. Thus, the struggle between cities and their clerical owners was the longest and most intense of the struggles for freedom. Spanish kings showed agreement with creating communes, because they saw the freedom of cities as the best means to thwart the conspiracy of the wicked noble class. For this reason, in Spain royal charters were numerous and generous. León in 1020 achieved its freedom charter from the king of Castile; Burgos in 1073, Nájera in 1076, and Toledo in 1085 gained internal independence. And shortly after, the turn came to the cities of Compostela, Cádiz, Valencia, and Barcelona. The wars between the German emperors and the papal administration over the right to appoint and dismiss clergy—which exhausted the power of both—and also other struggles between government and church in Germany benefited feudalism, and in Italy benefited the cities. In northern Italy cities gained so much political power that until that time, or until today, there had never been a precedent. Just as the streams of the Alpine region joined the great rivers of Lombardy and Tuscany—and these two rivers were means of transporting commercial goods and causes of the fertility of the plains—commerce of European countries beyond the Alps and western Asia also converged in northern Italy and there created a commercial “bourgeoisie” whose wealth repaired old cities, founded new ones, encouraged literature and art, and with pride broke the chains of feudalism. Nobles from their palaces in the heart of the countryside waged a hopeless war against the freedom-loving movement of city dwellers; when they surrendered, they settled in the city and swore an oath of loyalty to the commune. Bishops, who for several centuries had been the true and capable governors of Lombard cities and for a long time ignored the pope’s command, with the help of those same popes, bowed their heads before urban government. In 1080, we encounter consuls who governed Lucca; their counterparts in 1084 governed the city of Pisa, in 1098 the city of Arezzo, in 1099 the city of Genoa, in 1105 the city of Pavia, and in 1138 the city of Florence. The cities of northern Italy until the fifteenth century continued to accept the official sovereignty of the empire and when disclosing their state documents mentioned the name of the empire, but in reality and in practice they were free and the ancient city-state regime with all its chaos and incentive was revived again. In France gaining independence and freedom of action for cities involved long and mostly bloody struggles. In Le Mans (1069), Cambrai (1076), and Reims (1139) bishops who held the reins of power, with the weapon of excommunication or force, succeeded in trampling communes that city inhabitants had created. But in Noyon the local bishop willingly granted a charter to the city (1108). Saint-Quentin in 1080, Beauvais in 1099, Marseilles in 1100, and Amiens in 1113 gained internal independence. In Laon the city inhabitants in 1115 took advantage of the absence of their corrupt bishop and took action to establish a commune. When the bishop returned, they forced him with bribery to swear that he would support the city’s government. One year later he urged Louis VI, king of France, nicknamed the Fat, to dissolve it. The details that Guibert de Nogent the monk wrote about this event is an example of the intensity of the city people’s revolution:

On the fifth day of Easter week ... a clamor arose in the whole city; people shouted: “Commune!” ... A great crowd of city people with drawn swords, axes, bows, axes, clubs and spears entered the bishop’s courtyard. ... The nobles rushed from all sides to aid the bishop. ... He, with the help of some companions, fought the people with stones and arrows. ...

He hid himself in a barrel. ... and with supplication and entreaty begged them and promised that he would no longer be their bishop, would bestow immense wealth on them, and would leave that land. At the time when they were mockingly ridiculing him with hard-heartedness, a person named Bernard the Ax raised himself and with utmost cruelty shattered the brain of that holy and at the same time sinful man; he fell from the hands of the people who were holding him before he hit the ground. From another blow that struck under the eye sockets and on the nose, he had died. Now that the lifeless bishop had fallen to the ground, the people cut off his legs and inflicted many other wounds on his body. Thibaut, who had seen a ring on the bishop’s finger and could not remove it, cut off his finger.

The cathedral was set on fire and razed to the ground. The plunderers, who sought to kill two birds with one stone, began to loot and burn the nobles’ palaces. The army sent by the king made a night raid on the city and with the help of nobles and clergy set about massacring the people, and the commune was trampled. Fourteen years later it was again allowed to be formed, and the city inhabitants with religious zeal rolled up their sleeves and set about repairing the cathedral that they themselves or their fathers had destroyed.

This effort continued for a century. The inhabitants of Vézelay (1106) killed Arnau, the abbot, and established a commune. The inhabitants of Orléans rose in 1137, but their attempt was fruitless. Louis VII in 1146 granted a charter to Sens, but three years later, at the request of the abbot whose domain included that city, revoked it. The city people killed the abbot and his nephew, but could not re-establish the commune. The bishop of Tournai for six years (1190–1196) was engaged in war with the people to dissolve the commune of that city. The pope excommunicated all the inhabitants of Tournai. On Easter Sunday 1194 the people of Rouen looted the houses of the cathedral’s archpriests. In 1207, by a special decree from the pope, immunity was granted to that city. In 1235 the inhabitants of Reims seized the stones brought to the city for rebuilding the cathedral to use them in their revolt against the highest clerical authorities. The archbishop of Reims fled with his priests and never returned; until two years later Louis VII, king of France, at the pope’s request, dissolved the commune of Reims. Until the Great Revolution, many French cities did not succeed in achieving their freedom. But in northern France, most cities between 1080 and 1200 were freed from the bonds of feudalism and with the incentive of freedom stepped into their most brilliant eras. The construction of Gothic cathedrals was made possible through the zeal of the communes.

In England kings, by granting charters that gave limited internal independence to cities, enjoyed their support against the noble class. William the Conqueror granted such a charter to the city of London. Henry II with similar decrees granted freedom to Lincoln, Durham, Carlisle, Bristol, Oxford, Salisbury, and Southampton. In 1201, Cambridge purchased the right of freedom in its internal affairs from John, king of England. In Flanders the counts who ruled the kingdom granted considerable privileges to the cities of Ghent, Bruges, Douai, Tournai, Lille, and others, but opposed all efforts of the people to achieve complete urban independence. Leiden, Haarlem, Rotterdam, Dordrecht, Delft, and other Dutch cities in the thirteenth century achieved internal independence charters. In Germany gaining freedom took a long time. And it was often peaceful. Bishops, who for several centuries administered cities as fiefs of the emperor himself, finally granted independence to Cologne, Trier, Metz, Mainz, Speyer, Strasbourg, and Worms and left other cities free in choosing judges and enacting their laws.

By the end of the twelfth century the revolution of communities in Western Europe had succeeded. Although by this date cities had not become completely independent, the bonds of feudal lords had been broken, feudal era tolls had been completely abolished or reduced, and the powers of clerical authorities had been severely limited. Flemish cities prohibited the establishment of new monasteries and granting lands to the Church, limited the scope of ecclesiastical courts that had the right to try priests, and opposed the supervision of priests over the kingdom’s schools.

Now the commercial bourgeoisie dominated the economic life and administration of cities. In almost all communes merchants’ guilds were recognized as self-governing organizations. In some cases the commune and merchants’ guild were identical formations. Usually these two were considered distinct and separate organizations. But the commune rarely opposed the interests of the guilds. The mayor of London was elected by the city’s guilds. Now for the first time after a thousand years money ownership again became a power greater than land ownership; a plutocracy or government of the wealthy rose against nobles and clergy. This commercial bourgeoisie put its wealth, power, and skill at stake for political superiority far more than in ancient eras. In most cities it shortened the hand of the propertyless people from assemblies and positions. It oppressed manual workers and peasants, monopolized commercial interests, imposed heavy taxes on society, and spent most of the obtained revenues on internal hostilities or external wars to seize markets and destroy its rivals. It also sought to trample craftsmen’s associations and, by prescribing the punishment of exile or death, deprived them of the right to strike. Its main goal in setting prices and wages was nothing but personal profit and severe harm to the working class. Just as happened in the French Great Revolution, the defeat of feudal nobles was a victory more for the merchant class.

With all this, the communes were a magnificent example of proving human freedom. As soon as the sound of the bell rang from the city tower, all city inhabitants turned to the assembly hall and elected their city officials. Cities themselves chose the police officers of their society and with utmost courage rose to defend themselves, so that in Legnano they defeated the skilled soldiers of the German emperor (1176) and fought each other so much that their forces mutually exhausted. Although city administrative councils soon limited their membership to the merchant oligarchy, these types of assemblies were the first people-elected government that had appeared since the reign of Tiberius. The development of modern democracy owes more to these urban formations than to Magna Carta—the first constitutional charter of England. New judicial regulations, such as legitimate interrogation of witnesses, replaced some of the long-standing signs of feudal or tribal law—like proving the innocence of the accused by the oath of others, making innocence dependent on the result of hand-to-hand combats and ordeals. Paying cash fines instead of imposing punishment, or in other words blood money, was abolished and in its place in each case, according to the severity or weakness of the crime, corporal punishments, imprisonment, and payment of fines became common.

Delays that accompanied legal disputes were reduced; contracts replaced feudal oaths and legal conditions, and as a result of the emergence of a series of new commercial laws, a new order came into European life.

The new democracy, without wasting time, became a semi-socialist economy administered under government supervision. The commune or city political organization minted its own coins, took charge of supervising and implementing public works, built roads, bridges and waterways, paved some city streets, organized food supply, prohibited forward buying and hoarding. In markets and fairs it provided the means of direct contact between seller and buyer; and paid attention to testing weights and measures, supervising goods, punishing cheaters, inspecting imports and exports, storing grain for famine years, selling grain at fair prices in necessary times, and finally adjusting the price of beer and basic foodstuffs. When the commune saw that the price of a good was set lower than it should be, so that producers became discouraged from preparing those particular goods, it left the wholesale price of some goods to itself so that, through competition, it would reach the desired level; but it had established special courts or tribunals whose job was to constantly adjust the retail price of bread and beer—two necessities of life—with the price of wheat and barley.

The commune, regularly, every so often, published a list of fair prices for goods. The view of these city organizations was that every good should have a “fair price” composed of the total cost of raw materials plus the worker’s wage. This hypothesis ignored the subject of supply and demand as well as the rise and fall in the value of currency. Some communes like the commune of Basel or Genoa had a monopoly on the salt trade. Some others like Nuremberg brewed their own beer, or stored grains in city silos. With tariffs set by the city organization, the entry of foreign goods was prevented. In some cases it was stipulated that itinerant merchants, before passing through the city, should put their goods up for sale. Just like our own era, most rebellious elements, by trickery, found a way to violate these laws, and the “black market” was abundant.

Many of these restrictions involved harm rather than benefit, and for this reason their implementation was soon stopped.

But on the whole, the work of medieval communes was a proud witness to the skill and courage of merchants who administered these organizations. During the administration of these communes, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Europe achieved such prosperity as had not been seen since the overturning of the Roman Empire’s order. Despite widespread diseases, famines, and wars, Europe’s population under the shadow of creating communes increased so much that its like had never been seen a thousand years before. Europe’s population, which had gradually declined in the second century AD and probably reached its lowest level in the ninth century, from the eleventh century until the outbreak of the Black Death (1349), with the revival of commerce and industry, again began to increase. In the region between the Moselle and Rhine rivers, this population probably increased tenfold, and in France it probably reached twenty million people, a figure less than the population of that country in the eighteenth century. The economic revolution involved migration from the countryside to the city, and this migration, almost similar to what is seen in recent eras, was characteristic. Constantinople with eight hundred thousand inhabitants and Córdoba and Palermo each with half a million inhabitants for a long time were counted among Europe’s most populous cities, but before 1100 only a few cities located in the Alps had more than three thousand inhabitants. By 1200 Paris’s population reached about one hundred thousand, and the inhabitants of Douai, Lille, Ypres, Ghent, and Bruges each almost reached fifty thousand. By 1300 Paris had 150,000, Venice, Milan, and Florence 100,000, Siena and Modena 30,000, Lübeck, Nuremberg, and Cologne 20,000, and Frankfurt, Basel, Hamburg, Norwich, and York each 10,000 population. Of course all these figures are approximate estimates that are not one hundred percent reliable.

Population growth was both a result of economic transformation and one of its causes. In other words, the population of cities increased because the security of individuals’ lives and property increased, the method of using natural resources in industry became more complete, and the circulation of food and goods, thanks to the increase in wealth and trade, became wider; on the other hand this matter placed a growing market at the disposal of commerce and industry, literature, drama, music, and art. The competitive pride of communes turned the wealth of cities into cathedrals, city halls, bell towers, fountains, schools, and universities. Civilization followed commerce, crossing seas and mountains; Islam and the Byzantine world traversed Italy and Spain, passed the Alps, and set foot in Germany, France, Flanders, and Britain. Nothing remained from the dark centuries but a memory, and Europe regained its youthful vigor.

From what we said about the medieval city, the reader should not get the illusion that such a city was the ultimate ideal of man. Of course (in the view of modern man) the medieval city, with its castle on the hill and strong walls built around it, with huts and houses roofed with thatch and straw or tiles, and with rows of shops located around the cathedral, citadel, or public square, created a very picturesque view.

But the passages of these cities were mostly narrow and difficult alleys (very suitable for defense and escaping the heat) where the clatter of horses’ hooves and the conversation and sound of wooden shoes of passersby filled the space and was full of the amusement of an era in which no machine relieved the fatigue of muscles or exhausted human nerves. Around many urban houses there were gardens, chicken coops, pigsties, cattle pastures, and piles of manure. The city of London was strict about pig grazing, and for this reason had stipulated that “whoever raises a pig must keep that animal in his house.” In other cities, pigs freely grazed among piles of garbage. Although occasionally, due to heavy rains, the river flooded and submerged fields and cities, so that people had to board boats to reach Westminster Palace. After the rain stopped, for several days the passages were full of mud. In those days men wore boots and distinguished ladies were moved by carriage or litter, and whenever these means reached a pothole or hole in the passage, both rider and mount shook hard. In the thirteenth century the main streets of some cities were paved with cobblestones, but in most cities the passages were not paved and were dangerous for the feet and noses of passersby. Monasteries and castles were equipped with special sewage facilities; huts usually did not have such facilities. In some places, there were squares covered with grass or sand, with a pump for people’s drinking water, and a trough full of water to quench the thirst of four-legged animals passing through that place. Houses, in the north of the Alps, were almost entirely built of wood; only the houses of the wealthiest nobles and merchants were of brick or stone. Fires were frequent, and most spread unchecked throughout a city. In 1188 Rouen, Beauvais, Arras, Troyes, Provins, Poitiers, and Moissac were all destroyed by fire. During the years 1200 and 1225, Rouen burned six times. The use of tiles in roofing only became common in the fourteenth century. The firefighting method was to call for buckets of water, that is, a brave but ineffective operation.

Since all individuals lived close to the city castle for safety, city buildings had multiple floors that sometimes reached six and the upper floors were placed in a strange but terrifying way above the passages.

In these days cities limited the height of buildings by issuing decrees.

Despite these problems—which because they were common, almost no one felt them—life in the medieval city could be interesting. Markets were full of crowds, conversation abundant, and clothes and goods colorful.

Peddlers loudly announced their goods, and craftsmen piled samples of their hand’s art on top of each other for display. Sometimes in the city square actors were busy performing a “morality” play, or a religious group moved in the passages, and along with it proud merchants and strong workers marched and entertained passersby with ornate carts, magnificent clothes, and stirring songs. Sometimes they were busy building a magnificent church, a beautiful doll leaned from the balcony watching below, or the sound of the bell called city inhabitants to the city hall or to take up arms. At sunset another bell rang which was a sign of the end of movement and hurried people in returning home, because there was no lighting in the passages except candles burning in house windows and a lamp that here and there flickered in front of a shrine. In those days police were few, and at night the watchman or night guard moved following his armed servants, who carried torches or lanterns. Wise citizens went to bed at the beginning of the night; they avoided the monotony of long nights lacking any intellectual incentive; and they knew that when dawn of the next day arrived, roosters would crow again at dawn and again a series of successive tasks must be performed.

VII – The Agricultural Revolution

The development of industry and commerce, the economic expansion whose basis was money, and the ever-increasing demand for workers in cities transformed the agricultural regime. Municipalities, eager to find new workers, declared that whoever resides in a city for 366 days without anyone else recognizing him as a serf or bringing him under his control, such a person is automatically recognized as a free man, and can, relying on the laws and power of the commune, remain safe from any aggression. In 1106, Florence invited all farmers living in the villages and towns around the city to come to the city and reside as free men. Bologna and other cities paid sums to feudal lords to grant permission to their serfs to reside in cities. Large numbers of serfs fled to the western regions of the Elbe, or were invited to cultivate new lands there and automatically be counted among free men.

Those who remained in the lord’s village began to oppose the dues and tolls that had been approved over the passage of time. Many serfs, in competition with urban guilds, formed rural associations (under various titles such as: religious associations of charity and alms and associations of conspiracy and intrigue against the government and king) and by oath bound themselves to unite in refusing to pay feudal tolls. These same groups stole or destroyed the lords’ charters, which were documents of their serfdom or obligations. They burned the castles of stubborn lords, and threatened that if their demands were not met, they would completely abandon the lord’s domain. In 1100, the serfs of Saint-Michel-de-Beauvais declared that from then on they would marry any woman they wished and would give their daughters in marriage as they pleased without anyone’s permission. In 1102 the serfs of Saint-Arnoul-de-Crepy refused to pay inheritance tax on the deceased or give a fine for marrying their daughters to men outside the abbot’s domain, who was the local lord. In ten or twelve different cities, from Flanders to Spain, similar revolts broke out. For feudal lords extracting profit from the serfs’ labor became increasingly difficult day by day, and the serfs’ ever-increasing resistance at every stage required supervision of their actions that was expensive for the lords. The products of shops located in the lord’s village became more expensive and inferior compared to similar products prepared by free workers in cities. The lord, to keep farmers on the land, and to make their labor beneficial to himself, agreed to waive old feudal dues and debts in exchange for accepting cash sums. He freed serfs who were able to pay such sums from their savings, increasingly transferred adjacent lands of his estate to free farmers in exchange for cash rent, and hired free workers to work in shops located on his estate. From the eleventh to the thirteenth century, in Western Europe, year by year, following the Islamic world and Byzantium, debts and rents that were mostly in kind became cash. Feudal landowners, in search of manufactured goods that commerce displayed before their eyes, were eager to find cash to buy desired items. To set out on Crusades, landowners needed more cash than food and goods. Governments demanded their taxes in cash not in kind. Landowners, facing the flow of events, bowed their heads, and instead of the laborious act of moving from one palace to another to consume products, sold everything for a sum of cash. The tendency toward an economy whose basis was money exchange was expensive for feudal landowners. The base of these monetary exchanges and rents belonging to the landowner was the fixed and unchanging customs of the Middle Ages, and naturally could not rise and fall at the same speed as the value of money. Many members of the aristocracy were forced to sell their lands, and usually in most cases the buyer belonged to the progressive bourgeoisie. By 1250 it had reached the point that some nobles upon death were landless or completely destitute. In the early fourteenth century the king of France, Philip the Fair, freed all the serfs of the royal lands and, in 1315, his son Louis X ordered that “under appropriate and fair conditions,” all the serfs of the kingdom be freed. Gradually from the twelfth to the sixteenth century in various countries located west of the Elbe, at different times, the foundation of serfdom turned into farmers’ ownership. The feudal lord’s village became several small estates and the farmer class in the thirteenth century rose in terms of freedom and ownership to such a degree that no one had seen its like in a thousand years. Manorial courts lost the jurisdiction to hear farmers’ disputes, and the village community chose agents to manage its affairs who no longer swore allegiance to the local lord, but were only obedient to the king of the realm. The freedom of farmers in Western Europe did not reach perfection until 1789. Many feudal lords still legally considered themselves claimants of old rights and in the fourteenth century officially attempted to restore them; but as long as commerce and industry were developing, preventing the tendency toward mobile and free labor was an impossible task.

The new incentive of freedom, with the vast development of the agricultural market, cooperated in improving roads, tools, and agricultural products. The growing population of cities, the increase in wealth, and new facilities of finance and commerce developed and enriched rural economy. New industries created demand for industrial products such as sugar cane, anise seeds, cumin, hemp, flax, vegetable oils, and dyes. The proximity of populous cities increased livestock farming and the production of dairy and vegetables. From thousands of vineyards in the valleys of the Tiber, Arno, Po, Guadalquivir, Tagus, Ebro, Rhône, Gironde, Garonne, Loire, Seine, Moselle, Rhine, and Danube, wine flowed through rivers, land, and sea to soothe the hearts of European laborers working in fields, shops, and accounting offices. Even in England from the eleventh to the sixteenth century drinking wine became common. To feed hungry cities where fasting days were many and meat expensive, huge fleets set out for the Baltic and North Seas to engage in fishing for herring and other types. Yarmouth owed its life to herring fishing, Lübeck merchants acknowledged this debt by chopping herring on their counters, and the honest Dutch admitted that they had built the proud city of Amsterdam “on herring.”

Agricultural technical principles gradually developed. Christians learned these secrets from the Arabs in Spain, Sicily, and the East, and Benedictine and Cistercian monks, and new Italian techniques on agriculture, livestock farming, and soil conservation, along with ancient Roman methods, spread them in the countries north of the Alps. The old feudal method of fragmenting agricultural lands, fallowing, and a type of communal farming was abandoned in the new system, and in new farms each farmer was left to himself to use the land with the help of his initiative and skill. In the drained marshes of Flanders, thirteenth-century farmers divided each farm into three parts for cultivation, and used the land every year, but to strengthen each piece of land, every three years they planted clover or legumes. With the help of teams of strong oxen equipped with more complete plows, they plowed the land much deeper than previous eras. But most plows were still (1300 AD) wooden; only a few areas knew the benefit of manure and rarely covered the bottom of cart wheels with iron. Livestock farming was difficult due to long droughts, but in the thirteenth century the first experiments in crossbreeding different types of livestock and moving breeds from one climate to another took place. In the dairy industry not much progress had been made; an ordinary cow in the thirteenth century gave very little milk, and the butter obtained from that milk per week was less than half a kilogram. (In these years from one purebred cow they take five to fifteen kilograms of butter per week.) While the lords of European farmers had fallen upon each other, the farmers themselves were engaged in a greater battle. This battle, braver and quieter, was the struggle of man against nature. During the eleventh and thirteenth centuries sea waves passed over the dikes thirty-five times, submerged the lowlands of northern Europe, and in the same areas that were once dry created gulfs, and in the course of one century drowned one hundred thousand people. From the eleventh to the fourteenth century farmers of these regions under the leadership of their kings and abbey heads imported large pieces of stone from Scandinavia and Germany and built the “golden wall” behind which the Dutch and Belgians have created two of the most civilized countries in history. Thousands of acres of land were saved from the sea waves, and by the thirteenth century these low and low-altitude lands were equipped with a network of canals. From 1179 to 1257 the Italians dug the great canal between Lake Maggiore and the Po River, as a result of which 485,86 acres of fertile land became available.

Between the Elbe and the Oder patient immigrants from Flanders, Frisia, Saxony, and the Rhine region turned the marshy lands of that area into fertile farmlands. The very dense forests of France were gradually cleared and turned into farms that, during several centuries of political turmoil, kept France fed. If we evaluate this process well, we will conclude that perhaps this collective courage in cutting down forest trees, draining marshes, and irrigating and cultivating lands was what laid the foundation of all the victories of European civilization in the last seven hundred years, not the successes gained in wars or commerce.

VIII – Class War

In the late Middle Ages there were only two classes of people in Western Europe, one the Germanic conquerors and the other the natives of the lands conquered by the Germans. In general, the noble classes of England, France, Germany, and northern Italy were all descendants of the conquerors and even in the heat of their struggles were aware of this kinship and affinity. In the eleventh century society consisted of three classes of people: nobles who fought, clergy who prayed, and farmers who worked. This class division took root so deeply by tradition that most people considered it divine destiny and most farmers, like most nobles, took it for granted that man must remain with complete patience in whatever class he was born into and not step out of that circle. The revolution of the twelfth century created a new class that consisted of city dwellers or bourgeoisie, such as bakers, merchants, and craft masters. At that date the new class did not yet include craftsmen. In France classes were called états and “bourgeoisie” was considered the third estate or tiers état. Individuals of this class held the reins of urban affairs and succeeded in joining the English Parliament, the German Diet, the Spanish Cortes, and the French Estates-General which was the French National Assembly and only met occasionally, but the bourgeoisie before the eighteenth century had little influence on national policy. Although the nobles now formed a small force, nevertheless they continued to administer the kingdom and manage government affairs. Individuals of this class (except in Italy) lived in the countryside; they looked with contempt upon city dwellers and commerce; they completely cut relations with any member of their class who married a bourgeois; and they were confident that aristocratic government was the only inherited form against plutocracy or legend-spinning clergy or the oppressive government of strong-armed people. With all this, the wealth gained from commerce and industry gradually rivaled the wealth from land ownership and in the eighteenth century surpassed it. Wealthy merchants were annoyed by aristocratic ostentations, but they themselves looked with contempt upon the artisan class and exploited it. This group lived in magnificent palaces, bought very fine furniture, ate foreign foods, and wore expensive clothes. Their ladies covered their fat bodies with furs and silk fabrics, velvet, and jewels. Joan of Navarre, queen of France, upon entering the city of Bruges, became angry at seeing six hundred bourgeois ladies who had adorned themselves exactly like her in luxurious clothes and come to welcome her. The nobles opened their mouths in complaint, demanding sumptuary laws to prevent these insolent ostentations. Such laws were regularly passed every so often, but since kings needed the support and financial aid of the bourgeoisie, they were only occasionally, and sporadically, enforced. The rapid increase in the urban population supported submission to bourgeois city owners, and because overcrowding was accompanied by unemployment, this made it easier to control the manual workers of the craft industries. The proletarian class of servants, apprentices, and journeymen had little share in education, but was deprived of political power and lived in such poverty and destitution that sometimes it was more depressing than the poverty of serfs. The daily wage of an English laborer in the thirteenth century was about 2 pence, that is, in terms of purchasing power, almost equivalent to 2 dollars at 1948 rates in the United States; a carpenter had a daily income of 4 1/8 pence (equivalent to 4 dollars and 12 cents); the wage of a stonemason was three pence and one eighth, and the wage of an architect was twelve pence plus travel expenses and occasional gifts given to him.

Prices were relatively low, for example in England in 1300 one pound of beef was one farthing (equivalent to 21 cents in American money), a chicken or rooster one penny (84 cents), and one quarter of wheat five shillings and 9 1/2 pence (57 dollars and 90 cents). Daily work began at dawn and ended at sunset, but usually on holidays or Saturdays workers stopped work earlier. The number of feast and celebration days in the year was about thirty, but in England only six of these days were people exempt from work. The daily working hours of that era were somewhat more than in eighteenth- or nineteenth-century England, and real wages of workers were no less (some believe they were more).

Near the end of the thirteenth century class conflict turned into class war. In every generation, especially in France, a revolt by farmers broke out. In 1251, oppressed farmers of France and Flanders raised the banner of opposition against their clerical and secular landlords. The rebel crowd, who called themselves shepherds, under the leadership of an unlicensed preacher known as the “Master of the Hungry” formed a kind of revolutionary Crusader army and set out from Flanders and headed toward Paris via Amiens. Along the way, dissatisfied farmers and the “proletarian” group joined them, until their number reached one hundred thousand. This group carried religious banners and standards and called themselves devotees of the king of France, Louis IX, who at that time was a prisoner of the Muslims in Egypt; but all were sinisterly armed with clubs, daggers, axes, spears, and swords. The rebels condemned the corruption of the government apparatus, the oppression of the rich over the poor, and the greedy hypocrisy of priests and monks; and the people also praised their action. This group considered the rights of the clerical class, such as preaching, forgiving sins, and performing marriage contracts, as their obvious duties and killed some priests who opposed them. From Paris they headed toward Orléans and there massacred many clergy and university students. But in Orléans and in Bordeaux the security forces overcame them; the leaders of this group were captured and killed; and the defenseless group that had survived this fruitless adventure were pursued like a pack of dogs and each fled in some direction toward their own laborious life. Some of these rebels took refuge in England and there staged a small riot that was also trampled in turn.

In the industrial cities of France craft guilds several times took strike or armed revolt against the coercive power and exclusive economic and political authorities of the merchant class. In Beauvais one thousand five hundred strikers beat the mayor and some bankers (1233); in Rouen textile workers revolted against cloth merchants and killed the mayor who intervened in this dispute (1281); and in Paris the king of France, Philip the Fair, dissolved workers’ unions for conspiring to stage a revolution (1295 and 1307). With all this, members of craft guilds in Marseilles (1213), Avignon and Arles (1225), Amiens, Montpellier, Nîmes, and the like gained entry to city associations and disciplinary courts. Sometimes one member of the clerical class joined the rebels and taught them slogans. One thirteenth-century bishop in this regard said: “The wealth of the rich has been accumulated through theft, and every wealthy person is either a thief himself or the heir of a thief.” Similar riots threw the cities of Flanders into chaos. Despite the death penalty or exile prescribed for strike leaders, the coppersmiths in 1255, the weavers of Tournai in 1281, all the cloth weavers of Ghent in 1274, and members of this guild in 1292 in Hainaut raised the banner of revolt. Workers of Ypres, Douai, Ghent, Lille, and Bruges in 1302 united with the rebels, defeated a French army at Courtrai, established the right of their representatives’ membership in municipal administrations and councils, and abolished the oppressive laws by which the merchants’ oligarchy had distressed the craft guilds. The weavers, who for some time had gained power, attempted to change and even reduce the fullers’ wages, because at this date the fullers’ class supported the wealthy merchants.

In 1191, merchants’ guilds took control of London, and before long they suggested to John, king of England, that if he dissolved the weavers’ guild, they would annually deliver a certain sum to his treasury. John accepted this proposal (1200). In 1194 a person named William FitzOsbert (Longbeard) preached among the poor class of London about the necessity of a revolution. Thousands eagerly listened to his words. Two city inhabitants attempted to assassinate William. He took refuge in a church, but due to smoke accumulation inside the building was forced to leave the church, and committed suicide in a way not unlike Japanese hara-kiri. His supporters prayed to William as one of the martyrs, and preserved the soil on which his blood had been shed as holy earth. The popularity of Robin Hood, the same brave man who stole the property of great lords and patriarchs and was kind to the poor, indicates the class conflict of England in the twelfth century. The most intense struggles took place on Italian soil. At first, workers joined hands with merchants’ guilds and engaged in a series of bloody uprisings against the nobles, and by the end of the thirteenth century this struggle led to victory. For some time the artisan population shared in the administration of the city of Florence. But soon the great merchants and bank founders gained superiority in the city association, and imposed such harsh and tyrannical regulations on their employees that in the fourteenth century the struggle entered its second stage—meaning it became a scattered and intermittent war between wealthy factory owners and factory workers. It was amid such scenes of civil war that Saint Francis taught people the lesson of poverty and reminded the “nouveau riche class” that Jesus Christ never owned any private property.

The communes, like the guilds in the course of the fourteenth century, declined due to the expansion and transformation of the urban market and economy into a national market and economy. The cause of this decline was more that the powers and monopolies of the communes (and guilds) blocked the development of inventions, industries, and commerce. Moreover, the communes, due to their chaotic internal struggles, ruthless exploitation of surrounding villages, the dry and merciless fanaticism they expressed in their interest in the city, their contradictory policies and currencies, the insignificant wars they had with each other in Flanders and Italy, and their incompetence in organizing themselves into a self-governing confederation that could withstand the development of royal power—due to all these factors, they were damaged. After 1300 AD several French communes petitioned the king of the realm to undertake the administration of their affairs. With all this, the economic revolution of the thirteenth century was the foundation and basis of modern Europe. This revolution finally destroyed feudalism which had perfected the task of supporting agriculture and organization, and itself blocked the development of commercial and industrial activities. This revolution turned the stagnant wealth of feudalism into the mobile resources of a comprehensive world economy; prepared the means of work for the development of progressive commerce and industry, and this very matter greatly increased the power, comfort, and knowledge of the European individual; and created a prosperity that with its help, in the course of two centuries, the construction of one hundred cathedrals became possible, and each of these buildings undoubtedly had abundant wealth and all kinds of astonishing skills. The production that resulted from this revolution for an expanding market made possible the emergence of national economic systems, which themselves were the foundation of the progress of modern nations. Even class war, which spread everywhere as a result of this revolution, was probably an additional incentive that stimulated the thoughts and forces of individuals.

When the storm of transformation subsided, Europe’s political and economic formations had changed. A roaring wave of industry and commerce swept away the many solid obstacles that existed in the path of human development and carried them away, and drove individuals from the scattered splendor of cathedrals toward the general madness of the Renaissance.