An Introduction to the History of Western Europe Part 24

There was little town life in western Europe before the twelfth century.

The Roman towns were decreasing in population before the German inroads.

The confusion which followed the invasions hastened their decline, and a great number of them disappeared altogether. Those which survived and such new towns as sprang up were, to judge from the chronicles, of very little importance during the early Middle Ages. We may a.s.sume, therefore, that during the long period from Theodoric to Frederick Barbarossa by far the greater part of the population of England, Germany, and northern and central France were living in the country, on the great estates belonging to the feudal lords, abbots, and bishops.[155]

[Sidenote: The manor, or vill.]

These mediaeval estates were called _vills_, or _manors_, and closely resembled the Roman villas described in an earlier chapter. A portion of the estate was reserved by the lord for his own use; the rest of it was divided up among the peasants,[156] usually in long strips, of which each peasant had several scattered about the manor. The peasants were generally serfs who did not own their fields, but could not, on the other hand, be deprived of them so long as they worked for the lord and paid him certain dues. They were attached to the land and went with it when it changed hands. The serfs were required to till those fields which the lord reserved for himself and to gather in his crops. They might not marry without their lord's permission. Their wives and children rendered such a.s.sistance as was necessary in the manor house.

In the women's buildings the daughters of the serfs engaged in spinning, weaving, sewing, baking, and brewing, thus producing clothes, food, and drink to be used by the whole community.

[Ill.u.s.tration: An English Manor House, Thirteenth Century]

[Sidenote: The obligations of the serfs.]

We get our clearest ideas of the position of the serfs from the ancient descriptions of manors, which give an exact account of what each member of a particular community owed to the lord. For example, we find that the abbot of Peterborough held a manor upon which Hugh Miller and seventeen other serfs, mentioned by name, were required to work for him three days in each week during the whole year, except one week at Christmas, one at Easter, and one at Whitsuntide. Each serf was to give the lord abbot one bushel of wheat and eighteen sheaves of oats, three hens and one c.o.c.k yearly, and five eggs at Easter. If he sold his horse for more than ten s.h.i.+llings, he was to give the said abbot four pence.

Five other serfs, mentioned by name, held but half as much land as Hugh and his companions, by paying and doing in all things half as much service.

There were sometimes a few people on the manor who did not belong to the great body of cultivators. The limits of the manor and those of the parish often coincided; in that case there would be a priest who had some scattered acres and whose standing was naturally somewhat superior to that of the people about him. Then the miller, who ground the flour and paid a substantial rent to the lord, was generally somewhat better off than his neighbors, and the same may be said of the blacksmith.

[Sidenote: The manor independent of the outside world.]

One of the most remarkable characteristics of the manor was its independence of the rest of the world. It produced nearly everything that its members needed and might almost have continued to exist indefinitely without communication with those who lived beyond its bounds. Little or no money was necessary, for the peasants paid what was due to the lord in the form of labor and farm products. They also rendered the needful help to one another and found little occasion for buying and selling.

[Sidenote: The monotony and misery of the peasants' lives.]

There was almost no opportunity to better one's condition, and life, in the greater part of the hamlets, must have gone on for generation after generation in a weary routine. The life was not merely monotonous, it was miserable. The food was coa.r.s.e and there was little variety, as the peasants did not even take pains to raise fresh vegetables. The houses usually had but one room. This was ill-lighted by a single little window and had no chimney.

[Sidenote: The manor court.]

Yet the very dependence upon one another can hardly have failed to produce a certain spirit of brotherhood and mutual a.s.sistance in the community. It was not only separated from the outside world, but its members were brought together constantly by their intermingled fields, their attendance at one church, and their responsibility to one proprietor. The men were all expected to be present at the "court" which was held in each manor, where the business of the manor was transacted under the supervision of a representative of the lord. Here, for instance, disputes were settled, fines imposed for the violation of the customs of the manor, and redistributions of the strips of land took place.

[Sidenote: The serf an inferior farmer who could only exist when there was plenty of land.]

The serf was ordinarily a bad farmer and workman. He cultivated the soil in a very crude manner, and his crops were accordingly scanty and inferior. Obviously serfdom could exist only as long as land was plentiful. But in the twelfth and thirteenth century western Europe appears to have been gaining steadily in population. Serfdom would, therefore, naturally tend to disappear when the population so increased that the carelessly cultivated fields no longer supplied the food necessary for the growing numbers.

[Sidenote: Barter replaced by money transactions.]

The increased use of money in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which came with the awakening trade and industry, also tended to break up the manor. The old habit of bartering one thing for another without the intervention of money began to disappear. As time went on, neither the lord nor the serf was satisfied with the ancient primitive arrangements, which had answered well enough in the time of Charlemagne.

The serfs, on the one hand, began to obtain money by the sale of their products in the markets of neighboring towns. They soon found it more profitable to pay the lord a certain sum instead of working for him, for they could then turn their whole attention to their own farms. The proprietors, on the other hand, found it to their advantage to accept money in place of the services of their tenants. With this money the landlord could hire laborers to cultivate his fields and could buy the luxuries which were brought to his notice as commerce increased. So it came about that the lords gradually renounced their control over the peasants, and the serf was no longer easily distinguishable from the freeman who paid a regular rent for his land.[157] A serf might also gain his liberty by fleeing to a town. If he remained undiscovered, or was unclaimed by his lord, for a year and a day, he became a freeman.

[Sidenote: Disappearance of serfdom.]

The slow extinction of serfdom in western Europe appears to have begun as early as the twelfth century. A very general emanc.i.p.ation had taken place in France by the end of the thirteenth century (and in England somewhat later), though there were still some serfs in France when the revolution came in 1789. Germany was far more backward in this respect.

We find the peasants revolting against their hard lot in Luther's time, and it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that the serfs were freed in Prussia.

[Sidenote: Importance of town life.]

93. It is hardly necessary to point out that the gradual reappearance of town life in western Europe is of the greatest interest to the student of history. The cities had been the centers of Greek and Roman civilization, and in our own time they dominate the life, culture, and business enterprise of the world. Were they to disappear, our whole life, even in the country, would necessarily undergo a profound change and tend to become primitive again like that of the age of Charlemagne.

[Sidenote: Origin of the mediaeval towns.]

[Sidenote: Compactness of a mediaeval town.]

A great part of the mediaeval towns, of which we begin to have some scanty records about the year 1000, appear to have originated on the manors of feudal lords or about a monastery or castle. The French name for town, _ville_, is derived from vill, the name of the manor. The need of protection was probably the usual reason for establis.h.i.+ng a town with a wall about it, so that the neighboring country people might find safety in it when attacked. The way in which a mediaeval town was built seems to justify this conclusion. It was generally crowded and compact compared with its more luxurious Roman predecessors. Aside from the market place there were few or no open s.p.a.ces. There were no amphitheaters or public baths as in the Roman cities. The streets were often mere alleys over which the jutting stories of the high houses almost met. The high, thick wall that surrounded it prevented its extending easily and rapidly as our cities do nowadays.

[Sidenote: Townsmen originally serfs.]

All towns outside of Italy were evidently small in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and, like the manors on which they had grown up, they had little commerce as yet with the outside world. They produced almost all that their inhabitants needed except the farm products which came from the neighboring country. There was likely to be little expansion so long as the town remained under the absolute control of the lord or monastery upon whose land it was situated. The townspeople were scarcely more than serfs, in spite of the fact that they lived within a wall and engaged in industry instead of farming. They had to pay irritating dues to their lord, just as if they had still formed a farming community. The emanc.i.p.ation of the townsmen from their lords and the establishment of a suitable form of government for their town were necessary preliminaries to the free development of town life.

[Sidenote: Increase of trade promotes the growth of the towns.]

With the increase of trade came the longing for this freedom. For when new and attractive commodities began to be brought from the East and the South, the people of the towns were encouraged to produce goods with the idea of exchanging them at some neighboring fair for the products of distant lands. But no sooner did the townsmen begin to engage in manufacturing and to enter into relations with the outside world, than they became conscious that they were greatly hampered by their half-servile condition and were subject to exactions and restrictions which would render progress impossible. Consequently during the twelfth century there were many insurrections of the towns against their lords and a general demand that the lords should grant the townsmen _charters_ in which the rights of both parties should be definitely stated.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Castle on the Rhine with a Village below it]

[Sidenote: The communes.]

In France the citizens organized themselves into what were called _communes_, or unions for the purpose of gaining their independence.

This word _commune_ appeared a new and detestable one to the lords, for, to their minds, it was merely another name for a company of serfs leagued against their masters. The n.o.bles sometimes put down the insurrections of their townsmen with great cruelty. On the other hand, the lords often realized that they would increase the prosperity of their towns by granting them freedom from arbitrary taxation and the right to govern themselves. In England the towns gained their privileges more gradually by purchasing them from the lords.

[Sidenote: Town charters.]

The town charters were written contracts between the lord and the commune or the guild of merchants of a town. The charter served at once as the certificate of birth of the town and as its const.i.tution. It contained a promise on the part of the lord or king to recognize the existence of the guild of merchants. It limited the rights of the lord in calling the townsmen before his court and fining them, and enumerated the taxes which he might exact from the townspeople. The old dues and services were either abolished or changed into money payments.

King Henry II of England promised the inhabitants of Wallingford that "wheresoever they shall go on their journeys as merchants through my whole land of England and Normandy, Aquitaine and Anjou, 'by water and by strand, by wood and by land,' they shall be free from toll and pa.s.sage fees and from all customs and exactions; nor are they to be troubled in this respect by anyone under penalty of ten pounds." In the case of the town of Southampton he concedes "that my men of Hampton shall have and hold their guild and all their liberties and customs, by land and by sea, in as good, peaceable, just, free, quiet, and honorable a manner as they had the same most freely and quietly in the time of King Henry, my grandfather; and let no one upon this do them any injury or insult."

[Sidenote: Customs revealed in the charters.]

The customs of the times, as revealed in the charters, seem to us very primitive. We find in the charter of the French town of St. Omer, in 1168, provisions like the following: He who shall commit a murder in the town shall not find an asylum anywhere within the walls. If he shall seek to escape punishment by flight, his buildings shall be torn down and his goods confiscated; nor may he come back into the town unless he be first reconciled with the relations of his victim and pay ten pounds, of which a half shall go to the lord's representatives and the other half to the commune, to be spent on its fortifications. He who strikes another one in the town shall pay one hundred sous; he who pulls out the hair of another shall pay forty sous, etc.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Mediaeval Town, Siegen]

Many of the towns had, as a visible sign of their freedom, a belfry, a high building with a watchtower, where a guard was kept day and night in order that the bell might be rung in case of approaching danger. It contained an a.s.sembly hall, where the commune held its meetings, and a prison. In the fourteenth century the wonderful townhalls began to be erected, which, with the exception of the cathedrals and other churches, are usually the most remarkable buildings which the traveler sees to-day in the old commercial cities of Europe.

[Sidenote: Craft guilds.]

The tradesmen in the mediaeval towns were at once artisans and merchants; they not only made, but offered for sale, the articles which they produced in their shops. In addition to the original guild of merchants which helped the towns to gain and preserve their privileges, many new corporations of tradesmen grew up, the so-called _craft guilds_. The oldest statutes of a guild in Paris are those of the candle makers, which go back to 1061. The number of trades differed greatly in different towns, but the guilds all had the same object,--to prevent every one from practicing a trade who had not been duly admitted to the corporation.

[Ill.u.s.tation: LINES OF TRADE AND MEDIaeVAL TOWNS]

[Sidenote: The guild system.]

A young man had to spend several years in learning his trade. He lived in the house of a master workman, but received no remuneration. He then became a "journeyman" and could earn wages, although he could still work only for master workmen and not directly for the public. A simple trade might be learned in three years, but to become a goldsmith one must be an apprentice for ten years. The number of apprentices that a master workman might employ was strictly limited, in order that the journeymen might not become too numerous. The way in which each trade was to be practiced was carefully regulated, as well as the time that should be spent in work each day. The system of guilds discouraged enterprise but maintained a uniform efficiency everywhere. Had it not been for these unions, the defenseless, isolated workmen, serfs as they had formerly been, would have found it impossible to secure freedom and munic.i.p.al independence from the feudal lords who had formerly been their masters.

[Sidenote: Practical disappearance of commerce in the early Middle Ages.]

94. The chief reason for the growth of the towns and their increasing prosperity was a great development of trade throughout western Europe.

Commerce had pretty much disappeared with the decline of the Roman roads and the general disorganization produced by the barbarian invasions.

There was no one in the Middle Ages to mend the ancient Roman roads. The great network of highways from Persia to Britain fell apart when independent n.o.bles or poor local communities took the place of a world empire. All trade languished, for there was little demand for those articles of luxury which the Roman communities in the North had been accustomed to obtain from the South. There was little money and scarcely any notion of luxury, for the n.o.bility lived a simple life in their dreary and rudely furnished castles.

[Sidenote: Italian cities trade with the Orient.]