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The secret of this seeming anomaly lies in the fact that a
medieval city was not a centralized State. During the first
centuries of its existence, the city hardly could be named a
State as regards its interior organization, because the middle
ages knew no more of the present centralization of functions than
of the present territorial centralization. Each group had its
share of sovereignty. The city was usually divided into four
quarters, or into five to seven sections radiating from a centre,
each quarter or section roughly corresponding to a certain trade
or profession which prevailed in it, but nevertheless containing
inhabitants of different social positions and occupations--
nobles, merchants, artisans, or even half-serfs; and each section
or quarter constituted a quite independent agglomeration. In
Venice, each island was an independent political community. It
had its own organized trades, its own commerce in salt, its own
jurisdiction and administration, its own forum; and the
nomination of a doge by the city changed nothing in the inner
independence of the units.(42) In Cologne, we see the
inhabitants divided into Geburschaften and Heimschaften
(viciniae), i.e. neighbour guilds, which dated from the
Franconian period. Each of them had its judge (Burrichter) and
the usual twelve elected sentence-finders (Schoffen), its Vogt,
and its greve or commander of the local militia.(43) The story
of early London before the Conquest--Mr. Green says--is that
"of a number of little groups scattered here and there over the
area within the walls, each growing up with its own life and
institutions, guilds, sokes, religious houses and the like, and
only slowly drawing together into a municipal union."(44) And if
we refer to the annals of the Russian cities, Novgorod and Pskov,
both of which are relatively rich in local details, we find the
section (konets) consisting of independent streets (ulitsa), each
of which, though chiefly peopled with artisans of a certain
craft, had also merchants and landowners among its inhabitants,
and was a separate community. It had the communal responsibility
of all members in case of crime, its own jurisdiction and
administration by street aldermen (ulichanskiye starosty), its
own seal and, in case of need, its own forum; its own militia, as
also its self-elected priests and its, own collective life and
collective enterprise.(45)

The medieval city thus appears as a double federation: of all
householders united into small territorial unions--the street,
the parish, the section--and of individuals united by oath into
guilds according to their professions; the former being a produce
of the village-community origin of the city, while the second is
a subsequent growth called to life by new conditions.

To guarantee liberty, self-administration, and peace was the
chief aim of the medieval city. and labour, as we shall presently
see when speaking of the craft guilds, was its chief foundation.
But "production" did not absorb the whole attention of the
medieval economist. With his practical mind, he understood that
"consumption" must be guaranteed in order to obtain production;
and therefore, to provide for "the common first food and lodging
of poor and rich alike" (gemeine notdurft und gemach armer und
richer(46)) was the fundamental principle in each city. The
purchase of food supplies and other first necessaries (coal,
wood, etc.) before they had reached the market, or altogether in
especially favourable conditions from which others would be
excluded--the preempcio, in a word--was entirely prohibited.
Everything had to go to the market and be offered there for every
one's purchase, till the ringing of the bell had closed the
market. Then only could the retailer buy the remainder, and even
then his profit should be an "honest profit" only.(47) Moreover,
when corn was bought by a baker wholesale after the close of the
market, every citizen had the right to claim part of the corn
(about half-a-quarter) for his own use, at wholesale price, if he
did so before the final conclusion of the bargain; and
reciprocally, every baker could claim the same if the citizen
purchased corn for re-selling it. In the first case, the corn had
only to be brought to the town mill to be ground in its proper
turn for a settled price, and the bread could be baked in the
four banal, or communal oven.(48) In short, if a scarcity
visited the city, all had to suffer from it more or less; but
apart from the calamities, so long as the free cities existed no
one could die in their midst from starvation, as is unhappily too
often the case in our own times.

However, all such regulations belong to later periods of the
cities' life, while at an earlier period it was the city itself
which used to buy all food supplies for the use of the citizens.
The documents recently published by Mr. Gross are quite positive
on this point and fully support his conclusion to the effect that
the cargoes of subsistences "were purchased by certain civic
officials in the name of the town, and then distributed in shares
among the merchant burgesses, no one being allowed to buy wares
landed in the port unless the municipal authorities refused to
purchase them. This seem--she adds--to have been quite a
common practice in England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland."(49)
Even in the sixteenth century we find that common purchases of
corn were made for the "comoditie and profitt in all things of
this.... Citie and Chamber of London, and of all the Citizens and
Inhabitants of the same as moche as in us lieth"--as the Mayor
wrote in 1565.(50) In Venice, the whole of the trade in corn is
well known to have been in the hands of the city; the "quarters,"
on receiving the cereals from the board which administrated the
imports, being bound to send to every citizen's house the
quantity allotted to him.(51) In France, the city of Amiens used
to purchase salt and to distribute it to all citizens at cost
price;(52) and even now one sees in many French towns the halles
which formerly were municipal depots for corn and salt.(53) In
Russia it was a regular custom in Novgorod and Pskov.

The whole matter relative to the communal purchases for the
use of the citizens, and the manner in which they used to be
made, seems not to have yet received proper attention from the
historians of the period; but there are here and there some very
interesting facts which throw a new light upon it. Thus there is,
among Mr. Gross's documents, a Kilkenny ordinance of the year
1367, from which we learn how the prices of the goods were
established. "The merchants and the sailors," Mr. Gross writes,
"were to state on oath the first cost of the goods and the
expenses of transportation. Then the mayor of the town and two
discreet men were to name the price at which the wares were to be
sold." The same rule held good in Thurso for merchandise coming
"by sea or land." This way of "naming the price" so well answers
to the very conceptions of trade which were current in medieval
times that it must have been all but universal. To have the price
established by a third person was a very old custom; and for all
interchange within the city it certainly was a widely-spread
habit to leave the establishment of prices to "discreet men"--
to a third party--and not to the vendor or the buyer. But this
order of things takes us still further back in the history of
trade--namely, to a time when trade in staple produce was
carried on by the whole city, and the merchants were only the
commissioners, the trustees, of the city for selling the goods
which it exported. A Waterford ordinance, published also by Mr.
Gross, says "that all manere of marchandis what so ever kynde
thei be of... shal be bought by the Maire and balives which bene
commene biers [common buyers, for the town] for the time being,
and to distribute the same on freemen of the citie (the propre
goods of free citisains and inhabitants only excepted)." This
ordinance can Hardly be explained otherwise than by admitting
that all the exterior trade of the town was carried on by its
agents. Moreover, we have direct evidence of such having been the
case for Novgorod and Pskov. It was the Sovereign Novgorod and
the Sovereign Pskov who sent their caravans of merchants to
distant lands.

We know also that in nearly all medieval cities of Middle and
Western Europe, the craft guilds used to buy, as a body, all
necessary raw produce, and to sell the produce of their work
through their officials, and it is hardly possible that the same
should not have been done for exterior trade--the more so as it
is well known that up to the thirteenth century, not only all
merchants of a given city were considered abroad as responsible
in a body for debts contracted by any one of them, but the whole
city as well was responsible for the debts of each one of its
merchants. Only in the twelfth and thirteenth century the towns
on the Rhine entered into special treaties abolishing this
responsibility.(54) And finally we have the remarkable Ipswich
document published by Mr. Gross, from which document we learn
that the merchant guild of this town was constituted by all who
had the freedom of the city, and who wished to pay their
contribution ("their hanse") to the guild, the whole community
discussing all together how better to maintain the merchant
guild, and giving it certain privileges. The merchant guild of
Ipswich thus appears rather as a body of trustees of the town
than as a common private guild.

In short, the more we begin to know the mediaeval city the
more we see that it was not simply a political organization for
the protection of certain political liberties. It was an attempt
at organizing, on a much grander scale than in a village
community, a close union for mutual aid and support, for
consumption and production, and for social life altogether,
without imposing upon men the fetters of the State, but giving
full liberty of expression to the creative genius of each
separate group of individuals in art, crafts, science, commerce,
and political organization. How far this attempt has been
successful will be best seen when we have analyzed in the next
chapter the organization of labour in the medieval city and the
relations of the cities with the surrounding peasant population.

NOTES:

1. W. Arnold, in his Wanderungen und Ansiedelungen der deutschen
Stamme, p. 431, even maintains that one-half of the now arable
area in middle Germany must have been reclaimed from the sixth to
the ninth century. Nitzsch (Geschichte des deutschen Volkes,
Leipzig, 1883, vol. i.) shares the same opinion.

2. Leo and Botta, Histoire d'Italie, French edition, 1844, t. i.,
p. 37.

3. The composition for the stealing of a simple knife was 15
solidii and of the iron parts of a mill, 45 solidii (See on this
subject Lamprecht's Wirthschaft und Recht der Franken in Raumer's
Historisches Taschenbuch, 1883, p. 52.) According to the Riparian
law, the sword, the spear, and the iron armour of a warrior
attained the value of at least twenty-five cows, or two years of
a freeman's labour. A cuirass alone was valued in the Salic law
(Desmichels, quoted by Michelet) at as much as thirty-six bushels
of wheat.

4. The chief wealth of the chieftains, for a long time, was in
their personal domains peopled partly with prisoner slaves, but
chiefly in the above way. On the origin of property see Inama
Sternegg's Die Ausbildung der grossen Grundherrschaften in
Deutschland, in Schmoller's Forschungen, Bd. I., 1878; F. Dahn's
Urgeschichte der germanischen und romanischen Volker, Berlin,
1881; Maurer's Dorfverfassung; Guizot's Essais sur l'histoire de
France; Maine's Village Community; Botta's Histoire d'Italie;
Seebohm, Vinogradov, J. R. Green, etc.

5. See Sir Henry Maine's International Law, London, 1888.

6. Ancient Laws of Ireland, Introduction; E. Nys, Etudes de droit
international, t. i., 1896, pp. 86 seq. Among the Ossetes the
arbiters from three oldest villages enjoy a special reputation
(M. Kovalevsky's Modern Custom and Old Law, Moscow, 1886, ii.
217, Russian).

7. It is permissible to think that this conception (related to
the conception of tanistry) played an important part in the life
of the period; but research has not yet been directed that way.

1. It was distinctly stated in the charter of St. Quentin of the
year 1002 that the ransom for houses which had to be demolished
for crimes went for the city walls. The same destination was
given to the Ungeld in German cities. At Pskov the cathedral was
the bank for the fines, and from this fund money was taken for
the wails.

2. Sohm, Frankische Rechtsund Gerichtsverfassung, p. 23; also
Nitzsch, Geschechte des deutschen Volkes, i. 78.

10. See the excellent remarks on this subject in Augustin
Thierry's Lettres sur l'histoire de France. 7th Letter. The
barbarian translations of parts of the Bible are extremely
instructive on this point.

11. Thirty-six times more than a noble, according to the
Anglo-Saxon law. In the code of Rothari the slaying of a king is,
however, punished by death; but (apart from Roman influence) this
new disposition was introduced (in 646) in the Lombardian law--
as remarked by Leo and Botta--to cover the king from blood
revenge. The king being at that time the executioner of his own
sentences (as the tribe formerly was of its own sentences), he
had to be protected by a special disposition, the more so as
several Lombardian kings before Rothari had been slain in
succession (Leo and Botta, l.c., i. 66-90).

12. Kaufmann, Deutsche Geschichte, Bd. I. "Die Germanen der
Urzeit," p. 133.

13. Dr. F. Dahn, Urgeschichte der germanischen und romanischen
Volker, Berlin, 1881, Bd. I. 96.

14. If I thus follow the views long since advocated by Maurer
(Geschichte der Stadteverfassung in Deutschland, Erlangen, 1869),
it is because he has fully proved the uninterrupted evolution
from the village community to the mediaeval city, and that his
views alone can explain the universality of the communal
movement. Savigny and Eichhorn and their followers have certainly
proved that the traditions of the Roman municipia had never
totally disappeared. But they took no account of the village
community period which the barbarians lived through before they
had any cities. The fact is, that whenever mankind made a new
start in civilization, in Greece, Rome, or middle Europe, it
passed through the same stages--the tribe, the village
community, the free city, the state--each one naturally
evolving out of the preceding stage. Of course, the experience of
each preceding civilization was never lost. Greece (itself
influenced by Eastern civilizations) influenced Rome, and Rome
influenced our civilization; but each of them begin from the same
beginning--the tribe. And just as we cannot say that our states
are continuations of the Roman state, so also can we not say that
the mediaeval cities of Europe (including Scandinavia and Russia)
were a continuation of the Roman cities. They were a continuation
of the barbarian village community, influenced to a certain
extent by the traditions of the Roman towns.

15. M. Kovalevsky, Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia
(Ilchester Lectures, London, 1891, Lecture 4).

16. A considerable amount of research had to be done before this
character of the so-called udyelnyi period was properly
established by the works of Byelaeff (Tales from Russian
History), Kostomaroff (The Beginnings of Autocracy in Russia),
and especially Professor Sergievich (The Vyeche and the Prince).
The English reader may find some information about this period in
the just-named work of M. Kovalevsky, in Rambaud's History of
Russia, and, in a short summary, in the article "Russia" of the
last edition of Chambers's Encyclopaedia.

17. Ferrari, Histoire des revolutions d'Italie, i. 257; Kallsen,
Die deutschen Stadte im Mittelalter, Bd. I. (Halle, 1891).

18. See the excellent remarks of Mr. G.L. Gomme as regards the
folkmote of London (The Literature of Local Institutions, London,
1886, p. 76). It must, however, be remarked that in royal cities
the folkmote never attained the independence which it assumed
elsewhere. It is even certain that Moscow and Paris were chosen
by the kings and the Church as the cradles of the future royal
authority in the State, because they did not possess the
tradition of folkmotes accustomed to act as sovereign in all
matters.

19. A. Luchaire, Les Communes francaises; also Kluckohn,
Geschichte des Gottesfrieden, 1857. L. Semichon (La paix et la
treve de Dieu, 2 vols., Paris, 1869) has tried to represent the
communal movement as issued from that institution. In reality,
the treuga Dei, like the league started under Louis le Gros for
the defence against both the robberies of the nobles and the
Norman invasions, was a thoroughly popular movement. The only
historian who mentions this last league--that is, Vitalis--
describes it as a "popular community" ("Considerations sur
l'histoire de France," in vol. iv. of Aug. Thierry's OEuvres,
Paris, 1868, p. 191 and note).

20. Ferrari, i. 152, 263, etc.

21. Perrens, Histoire de Florence, i. 188; Ferrari, l.c., i. 283.

22. Aug. Thierry, Essai sur l'histoire du Tiers Etat, Paris,
1875, p. 414, note.

23. F. Rocquain, "La Renaissance au XIIe siecle," in Etudes sur
l'histoire de France, Paris, 1875, pp. 55-117.

24. N. Kostomaroff, "The Rationalists of the Twelfth Century," in
his Monographies and Researches (Russian).

25. Very interesting facts relative to the universality of guilds
will be found in "Two Thousand Years of Guild Life," by Rev. J.
M. Lambert, Hull, 1891. On the Georgian amkari, see S.
Eghiazarov, Gorodskiye Tsekhi ("Organization of Transcaucasian
Amkari"), in Memoirs of the Caucasian Geographical Society, xiv.
2, 1891.

26. J.D. Wunderer's "Reisebericht" in Fichard's Frankfurter
Archiv, ii. 245; quoted by Janssen, Geschichte des deutschen
Volkes, i. 355.

27. Dr. Leonard Ennen, Der Dom zu Koln, Historische Einleitung,
Koln, 1871, pp. 46, 50.

28. See previous chapter.

29. Kofod Ancher, Om gamle Danske Gilder og deres Undergang,
Copenhagen, 1785. Statutes of a Knu guild.

30. Upon the position of women in guilds, see Miss Toulmin
Smith's introductory remarks to the English Guilds of her father.
One of the Cambridge statutes (p. 281) of the year 1503 is quite
positive in the following sentence: "Thys statute is made by the
comyne assent of all the bretherne and sisterne of alhallowe
yelde."

31. In medieval times, only secret aggression was treated as a
murder. Blood-revenge in broad daylight was justice; and slaying
in a quarrel was not murder, once the aggressor showed his
willingness to repent and to repair the wrong he had done. Deep
traces of this distinction still exist in modern criminal law,
especially in Russia.

32. Kofod Ancher, l.c. This old booklet contains much that has
been lost sight of by later explorers.

33. They played an important part in the revolts of the serfs,
and were therefore prohibited several times in succession in the
second half of the ninth century. Of course, the king's
prohibitions remained a dead letter.

34. The medieval Italian painters were also organized in guilds,
which became at a later epoch Academies of art. If the Italian
art of those times is impressed with so much individuality that
we distinguish, even now, between the different schools of Padua,
Bassano, Treviso, Verona, and so on, although all these cities
were under the sway of Venice, this was due--J. Paul Richter
remarks--to the fact that the painters of each city belonged to
a separate guild, friendly with the guilds of other towns, but
leading a separate existence. The oldest guild-statute known is
that of Verona, dating from 1303, but evidently copied from some
much older statute. "Fraternal assistance in necessity of
whatever kind," "hospitality towards strangers, when passing
through the town, as thus information may be obtained about
matters which one may like to learn," and "obligation of offering
comfort in case of debility" are among the obligations of the
members (Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1890, and Aug. 1892).

35. The chief works on the artels are named in the article
"Russia" of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition, p. 84.

36. See, for instance, the texts of the Cambridge guilds given by
Toulmin Smith (English Guilds, London, 1870, pp. 274-276), from
which it appears that the "generall and principall day" was the
"eleccioun day;" or, Ch. M. Clode's The Early History of the
Guild of the Merchant Taylors, London, 1888, i. 45; and so on.
For the renewal of allegiance, see the Jomsviking saga, mentioned
in Pappenheim's Altdanische Schutzgilden, Breslau, 1885, p. 67.
It appears very probable that when the guilds began to be
prosecuted, many of them inscribed in their statutes the meal day
only, or their pious duties, and only alluded to the judicial
function of the guild in vague words; but this function did not
disappear till a very much later time. The question, "Who will be
my judge?" has no meaning now, since the State has appropriated
for its bureaucracy the organization of justice; but it was of
primordial importance in medieval times, the more so as
self-jurisdiction meant self-administration. It must also be
remarked that the translation of the Saxon and Danish
"guild-bretheren," or "brodre," by the Latin convivii must also
have contributed to the above confusion.

37. See the excellent remarks upon the frith guild by J.R. Green
and Mrs. Green in The Conquest of England, London, 1883, pp.
229-230.

38. None

39. Recueil des ordonnances des rois de France, t. xii. 562;
quoted by Aug. Thierry in Considerations sur l'histoire de
France, p. 196, ed. 12mo.

40. A. Luchaire, Les Communes francaises, pp, 45-46.

41. Guilbert de Nogent, De vita sua, quoted by Luchaire, l.c., p.
14.

42. Lebret, Histoire de Venise, i. 393; also Marin, quoted by Leo
and Botta in Histoire de l'Italie, French edition, 1844, t. i
500.

43. Dr. W. Arnold, Verfassungsgeschichte der deutschen
Freistadte, 1854, Bd. ii. 227 seq.; Ennen, Geschichte der Stadt
Koeln, Bd. i. 228-229; also the documents published by Ennen and
Eckert.

44. Conquest of England, 1883, p. 453.

45. Byelaeff, Russian History, vols. ii. and iii.

46. W. Gramich, Verfassungsund Verwaltungsgeschichte der Stadt
Wurzburg im 13. bis zum 15. Jahrhundert, Wurzburg, 1882, p. 34.

47. When a boat brought a cargo of coal to Wurzburg, coal could
only be sold in retail during the first eight days, each family
being entitled to no more than fifty basketfuls. The remaining
cargo could be sold wholesale, but the retailer was allowed to
raise a zittlicher profit only, the unzittlicher, or dishonest
profit, being strictly forbidden (Gramich, l.c.). Same in London
(Liber albus, quoted by Ochenkowski, p. 161), and, in fact,
everywhere.

48. See Fagniez, Etudes sur l'industrie et la classe industrielle
a Paris au XIIIme et XIVme siecle, Paris, 1877, pp. 155 seq. It
hardly need be added that the tax on bread, and on beer as well,
was settled after careful experiments as to the quantity of bread
and beer which could be obtained from a given amount of corn. The
Amiens archives contain the minutes of such experiences (A. de
Calonne, l.c. pp. 77, 93). Also those of London (Ochenkowski,
England's wirthschaftliche Entwickelung, etc., Jena, 1879, p.
165).

49. Ch. Gross, The Guild Merchant, Oxford, 1890, i. 135. His
documents prove that this practice existed in Liverpool (ii.
148-150), Waterford in Ireland, Neath in Wales, and Linlithgow
and Thurso in Scotland. Mr. Gross's texts also show that the
purchases were made for distribution, not only among the merchant
burgesses, but "upon all citsains and commynalte" (p. 136, note),
or, as the Thurso ordinance of the seventeenth century runs, to
"make offer to the merchants, craftsmen, and inhabitants of the
said burgh, that they may have their proportion of the same,
according to their necessitys and ability."

50. The Early History of the Guild of Merchant Taylors, by
Charles M. Clode, London, 1888, i. 361, appendix 10; also the
following appendix which shows that the same purchases were made
in 1546.

51. Cibrario, Les conditions economiques de l'Italie au temps de
Dante, Paris, 1865, p. 44.

52. A. de Calonne, La vie municipale au XVme siecle dans le Nord
de la France, Paris, 1880, pp. 12-16. In 1485 the city permitted
the export to Antwerp of a certain quantity of corn, "the
inhabitants of Antwerp being always ready to be agreeable to the
merchants and burgesses of Amiens" (ibid., pp. 75-77 and texts).

53. A. Babeau, La ville sous l'ancien regime, Paris, 1880.

54. Ennen, Geschichte der Stadt Koln, i. 491, 492, also texts.






CHAPTER VI

MUTUAL AID IN THE MEDIAEVAL CITY (continued)

Likeness and diversity among the medieval cities. The
craftguilds: State-attributes in each of them. Attitude of the
city towards the peasants; attempts to free them. The lords.
Results achieved by the medieval city: in arts, in learning.
Causes of decay.