Causes of the emergence and development of cities in Europe. Formation of medieval cities
In the X-XI centuries. there is a revival of old and the emergence of new urban centers. This was predetermined by important economic processes, primarily the development Agriculture. During this period, the two-field system spread, the production of grain and industrial crops, horticulture, viticulture, horticulture, and animal husbandry developed. Peasants began to exchange surplus agricultural products for handicrafts. Thus, the prerequisites for the separation of craft from agriculture arose.
 |
| Venice. Engraving. 15th century |
At the same time, rural artisans improved their skills - potters, blacksmiths, carpenters, weavers, coopers, shoemakers. Skillful craftsmen, they were engaged in agriculture less and less time, doing work to order, exchanging their own products, trying to find ways to sell it. That is why artisans were looking for places where they could both sell their products and purchase the raw materials necessary for work. It was from rural artisans that the original population of medieval cities consisted, where the craft acquired independent development. Both merchants and runaway peasants settled in the cities.
New cities arose on the ruins of ancient settlements or on their outskirts, near castles and fortresses, monasteries and episcopal residences, at crossroads, near passes, river crossings and bridges, on banks convenient for mooring ships. Cities grew rapidly, but very unevenly. First they appeared in Italy (Venice, Genoa, Naples, Florence) and France (Arles, Marseille, Toulouse). Gradually, cities began to emerge in England (Cambridge, Oxford), Germany (Waldorf, Mühlhausen, Tübingen), the Netherlands (Arras, Bruges, Ghent). And later, in the XII-XIII centuries, cities appeared in the Scandinavian countries, Ireland, Hungary, on the territory of the Danubian principalities.
Most cities were in Italy and Flanders. Many urban settlements arose along the banks of the Rhine and Danube.
Therefore, at the end of the XV century. in all Western European countries there were many cities in which an active commodity exchange was carried out.
9th century From the "Flanders Chronicle" on the origin of the city of Bruges material from the site
Count of Flanders Baudouin Iron Hand built a fortified namok with a drawbridge. Subsequently, to meet the needs of its inhabitants, merchants or sellers of valuables, shopkeepers, owners of inns began to converge on the bridge in front of the castle gates to feed and give shelter to those who conducted business in the presence of the owner, who also often visited there; they began to build houses and equip hotels, where they settled those who could not live inside the castle. There was a custom to say: "Let's go to the bridge." This settlement grew so much that it soon turned into a big city, which is still popularly called the “bridge”, because in the local dialect Bruges means “bridge”.
Didn't find what you were looking for? Use the search
THE LOOK OF CITY STREETS
Pavements in Paris appeared in the 12th century - every citizen had to make sure that the street in front of his house was paved. This measure was then extended by the 14th century by royal order to other French cities. But, for example, in Augsburg there were no pavements until almost the 15th century, as well as sidewalks. Drainage ditches appeared only in the XIV-XV centuries, and then only in large cities.
Garbage and sewage in cities was usually dumped into rivers or into nearby ditches. Only in the XIV century. urban scavengers appeared in Paris.
FThe eudal city bears little resemblance to the modern one. It is usually surrounded by walls, which it needed to protect itself from enemy attacks, to give shelter to the rural population in case of invasions.
The inhabitants of the city, as already mentioned, had their gardens, their fields, their pastures. Every morning, at the sound of a horn, all the gates of the city were opened, through which the cattle were driven out to the communal pastures, and in the evening these cattle were again driven into the city. In the cities they kept mainly small livestock - goats, sheep, pigs. The pigs were not driven out of the city, they found plenty of food in the city itself, since all the garbage, all the remnants of food were thrown right there into the street. Therefore, there was an impossible dirt and stench in the city - it was impossible to walk along the streets of a medieval city without getting dirty in the mud. During the rains, the streets of the city were a swamp in which carts got stuck and sometimes a rider with a horse could drown. In the absence of rain, it was impossible to breathe in the city because of the caustic and fetid dust. Under such conditions, epidemic diseases in the cities were not transmitted, and during the great epidemics that flared up from time to time in the Middle Ages, the cities suffered the most. Mortality in the cities was unusually high. The population of cities would decrease continuously if it were not replenished with new people from the villages.
the essence of the enemy. The population of the city carried out guard and garrison service. All the inhabitants of the city - merchants and artisans - were able to wield weapons. City militias often inflicted defeat on the knights. The ring of walls behind which the city was located did not allow it to grow in breadth. 
Gradually, suburbs arose around these walls, which in turn also strengthened. The city thus developed in the form of concentric circles. The medieval city was small and cramped. In the Middle Ages, only a small part of the country's population lived in cities. In 1086, a general land census was carried out in England. Judging by this census, in the second half of the XI century. in England, no more than 5% of the total population lived in cities. But even these townspeople were not yet quite what we understand by urban population. Some of them were still engaged in agriculture and had land outside the city. At the end of the XIV century. in England a new census was made for tax purposes. It shows that already about 12% of the population at that time lived in cities. If we move from these relative figures to the question of the absolute number of urban population, we will see that even in the XIV century. cities with 20 thousand people were considered large. On average, there were 4-5 thousand inhabitants in cities. London, in which in the XIV century. there were 40 thousand people, was considered a very large city. At the same time, as we have already said, most cities are characterized by a semi-agrarian character. There were many "cities" and purely agrarian type. They also had crafts, but rural crafts prevailed. Such cities differed from villages mainly only in that they were walled and presented some features in management.
Since the walls prevented cities from expanding in breadth, the streets were narrowed to the last degree to accommodate the possible pain. better order ny, the houses hung over each other, the upper floors protruded above the lower ones, and the roofs of the houses located on opposite sides of the street almost touched each other. Each house had many outbuildings, galleries, balconies. The city was cramped and crowded with residents, despite the insignificance of the urban population. The city usually had a square - the only more or less spacious place in the city. On market days, it was filled with stalls and peasant carts with all kinds of goods brought from the surrounding villages.
Sometimes there were several squares in the city, each of which had its own special purpose: there was a square where grain trade took place, on another one they traded hay, etc.
CULTURE (HOLIDAYS AND CARNIVALS)
Among the definitions that scientists give to a person - "reasonable person", "social being", "working person" - there is also this: "playing person". "Indeed, the game is an integral feature of a person, and not just a child. People of the medieval era loved games and entertainment just as much as people at all times.
Harsh living conditions, heavy piles, systematic malnutrition were combined with holidays - folk, which dated back to the Pagan past, and church, partly based on the same Pagan tradition, but transformed and adapted to the requirements of the church. However, the attitude of the church towards folk, primarily peasant, festivities was ambivalent and contradictory.
On the one hand, she was powerless to simply ban them - the people stubbornly held on to them.
It was easier to get closer folk holiday with the church. On the other hand, throughout the Middle Ages, clergy and monks, referring to the fact that "Christ never laughed", condemned unbridled fun, folk songs and dances. dances, the preachers asserted, the devil invisibly rules, and he carries away the merry people straight to hell.
Nevertheless, fun and celebration were ineradicable, and the church had to reckon with this. jousting tournaments, no matter how askance the clergy looked at them, remained a favorite pastime of the noble class. By the end of the Middle Ages, a carnival took shape in the cities - a holiday associated with seeing off winter and welcoming spring. Instead of unsuccessfully condemning or forbidding the carnival, the clergy preferred to take part in it.
During the days of the carnival, all prohibitions on fun were canceled and even religious rites were ridiculed. At the same time, the participants in the carnival buffoonery understood that such permissiveness was permissible only during the days of the carnival, after which the unbridled fun and all the outrages that accompanied it would stop and life would return to its usual course.
However, it happened more than once that, having begun as a fun holiday, the carnival turned into a bloody battle between groups of wealthy merchants, on the one hand, and artisans and urban lower classes, on the other.
The contradictions between them, caused by the desire to take over the city government and shift the burden of taxes on opponents, led to the fact that the carnival participants forgot about the holiday and tried to deal with those whom they had long hated.
LIFE (SANITARY CONDITION OF THE CITY)
Due to the overcrowding of the urban population, the many beggars and other homeless and homeless people, the absence of hospitals and any regular sanitary supervision medieval cities were constantly breeding grounds for all sorts of epidemics.
The medieval city was characterized by a very unsanitary condition. The narrow streets were quite stuffy. They were mostly unpaved. Therefore, in hot and dry weather in the city it was very dusty, in inclement weather, on the contrary, it was dirty, and carts could hardly pass through the streets and passers-by made their way.
In settlements there is no sewerage for dumping sewage. Water is obtained from wells and stagnant springs, which often get infected. Disinfectants are not yet known.
Due to the lack of sanitation, women in labor often do not survive difficult births, and many babies die in their first year of life.
For the treatment of simple diseases, they use grandmother's recipes, usually based on medicinal herbs.
In severe cases, the sick decide on bloodletting, which is done by a barber, or they buy drugs from a pharmacist. The poor go to the hospital for help, but the tightness, inconvenience, and dirt leave the seriously ill with almost no chance of surviving.
URBAN POPULATION
The main population of medieval cities were artisans. They became peasants who fled from their masters or went to the cities on the terms of payment of dues to the master. Becoming townspeople, they gradually freed themselves from excellent dependence on the feudal lord. If a peasant who fled to the city lived in it for a certain period, usually one year and one day, then he became free. A medieval proverb said: "City air makes you free." Only later did merchants appear in the cities. Although the bulk of the townspeople were engaged in crafts and trade, many residents of the city had their fields, pastures and gardens outside the city walls, and partly within the city. Small livestock (goats, sheep and pigs) often grazed right in the city, and the pigs ate garbage, leftover food and sewage, which were usually thrown directly into the street.
Craftsmen of a certain profession united within each city into special unions - workshops. In Italy, workshops arose already from the 10th century, in France, England, Germany and the Czech Republic - from the 11th-12th centuries, although the final registration of workshops (obtaining special charters from kings, writing workshop charters, etc.) took place, as a rule , later. In most cities, belonging to a guild was a prerequisite for doing a craft. The workshop strictly regulated production and, through specially elected officials, ensured that each master - a member of the workshop - produced products of a certain quality. For example, the weaver's workshop prescribed what width and color the fabric should be, how many threads should be in the warp, what tool and material should be used, etc. The workshop charters strictly limited the number of apprentices and apprentices that one master could have, they forbade work at night and on holidays, limited the number of machines for one artisan, and regulated the stocks of raw materials. In addition, the guild was also a mutual aid organization for artisans, providing assistance to its needy members and their families at the expense of an entrance fee to the guild, fines and other payments in case of illness or death of a member of the guild. The workshop also acted as a separate combat unit of the city militia in case of war.
Almost all cities medieval Europe in the 13th-15th centuries, there was a struggle between the craft workshops and a narrow, closed group of the urban rich (the patriciate). The results of this struggle varied. In some cities, primarily those where craft prevailed over trade, workshops won (Cologne, Augsburg, Florence). In other cities where merchants played a leading role, handicraft workshops were defeated (Hamburg, Lübeck, Rostock).
Jewish communities have existed in many of the old cities of Western Europe since the Roman era. Jews lived in special quarters (ghettos), more or less clearly separated from the rest of the city. They were usually subject to a number of restrictions.
THE STRUGGLE OF CITIES FOR INDEPENDENCE
Medieval cities always arose on the land of the feudal lord, who was interested in the emergence of a city on his own land, since crafts and trade brought him additional income. But the desire of the feudal lords to get as much income from the city as possible inevitably led to a struggle between the city and its lord. Often, cities managed to obtain the rights of self-government by paying a large sum of money to the lord. In Italy, cities achieved great independence already in the 11th-12th centuries. Many cities of Northern and Central Italy subjugated significant surrounding areas and became city-states (Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Milan, etc.)
In the Holy Roman Empire, there were so-called imperial cities, which were actually independent city republics since the 12th century. They had the right to independently declare war, make peace, mint their own coin. Such cities were Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Frankfurt am Main and others. The symbol of the freedom of the cities of the Holy Roman Empire was the statue of Roland.
Sometimes large cities, especially those located on royal land, did not receive the rights of self-government, but enjoyed a number of privileges and liberties, including the right to have elected city government bodies. However, such bodies acted jointly with the representative of the seigneur. Paris and many other French cities had such incomplete rights of self-government, for example, Orleans, Bourges, Lorris, Lyon, Nantes, Chartres, and in England - Lincoln, Ipswich, Oxford, Cambridge, Gloucester. But some cities, especially small ones, remained entirely under the control of the seigneurial administration.
CITY SELF-GOVERNMENT
Self-governing cities (communes) had their own court, military militia, and the right to levy taxes. In France and England, the head of the city council was called the mayor, and in Germany, the burgomaster. The obligations of commune cities towards their feudal lord were usually limited only to the annual payment of a certain, relatively low amount of money and sending a small military detachment to help the lord in case of war.
municipal government The urban communes of Italy consisted of three main elements: the power of the popular assembly, the power of the council and the power of the consuls (later - the podestas).
Civil rights in the cities of northern Italy were enjoyed by adult male homeowners with property subject to taxation. According to the historian Lauro Martinez, only 2% to 12% of the inhabitants of the northern Italian communes had the right to vote. According to other estimates, such as those given in Robert Putnam's book Democracy in Action, 20% of the city's population had civil rights in Florence.
After an attempt to subjugate Milan (1158) and some other cities of Lombardy, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa introduced a new position of podest-mayor in the cities. Being a representative of the imperial power (regardless of whether he was appointed or approved by the monarch), the podesta received the power that previously belonged to the consuls. He was usually from another city so that local interests would not influence him. In March 1167, an alliance of Lombard cities arose against the emperor, known as the Lombard League. As a result, the political control of the emperor over the Italian cities was effectively eliminated and the podestas were now elected by the citizens.
Usually, a special electoral college, formed from members of the Grand Council, was created to elect the podest. She had to nominate three people who are worthy to govern the Council and the city. The final decision on this issue was taken by the members of the Council, who elected the podestas for a period of one year. After the end of the term of office of the podest, he could not apply for a seat on the Council for three years.
The countries in which medieval cities began to form the earliest were Italy and France, the reason for this was the fact that it was here that feudal relations first began to emerge. It was this that served to separate agriculture from handicrafts, which contributed to increased productivity, and hence the growth of trade.
Prerequisites for the emergence of medieval cities
Trade relations were the advantage that contributed not only to the emergence, but also to the prosperity of medieval cities. Therefore, cities with access to the sea - Venice, Naples, Marseille, Montpalier very soon became the leading centers of trade in medieval Europe.
Prague was the largest center of the craft. It was here that the workshops of the most skilled jewelers and blacksmiths were concentrated. Therefore, it is natural that the population of cities was represented mainly by artisans and peasants who managed to pay off feudal obligations.
In cities where there was no opportunity to engage in navigation, artisans themselves acted as merchants. Over time, a new class of society appeared - merchants, who were not direct producers of goods, but only intermediaries in trade. This was the reason for the emergence of the first markets in cities.
Appearance of cities
Medieval cities were fundamentally different from the cities of the New and even more so the Newest Age. In the construction of cities, the traditions of antiquity are still preserved. They were surrounded by stone or wooden walls and deep ditches, which were supposed to protect the population from a possible invasion of enemies.
The inhabitants of the city united in the people's militia and took turns serving as guards. Medieval cities were not large, as a rule, they accommodated themselves from five to twenty thousand inhabitants. Since the population of the cities was mostly represented by people from the countryside, the residents were not particularly worried about the cleanliness in the city and threw garbage directly into the streets.
As a result, terrible unsanitary conditions reigned in the cities, it gave rise to masses infectious diseases. The houses of the inhabitants were wooden, they were located on narrow and crooked streets and often came into contact with each other. The city center was represented by a market square. Cathedrals were built nearby.
Rise of medieval cities
The heyday of medieval cities is primarily associated with the introduction of various innovations into production that increased labor productivity. Artisans began to unite in workshops. In light industry, private forms of ownership appear for the first time. Market relations go beyond the boundaries of the city and the state.
The increase in the flow of funds contributes to the transformation of the city: cathedrals are being created that amaze with their architecture, the appearance of streets and residential areas is significantly improved. Significant changes also affected cultural life in the Middle Ages: the first theaters, exhibitions were opened, various festivals and competitions were organized.
The transition from the early feudal period to the period of developed feudalism was due to the emergence and growth of cities that quickly became centers of crafts and exchange, as well as the widespread development commodity production. These were qualitatively new phenomena in feudal society, which had a significant impact on its economy, political system and spiritual life. Therefore, the 11th century, the time when most of the countries of Western Europe had already developed cities, was the chronological boundary between the early Middle Ages (5th-11th centuries) and the period of the most complete development of feudalism (11th-15th centuries).
The dominance of subsistence farming in the period early medieval
The first centuries of the Middle Ages in Western Europe were characterized by the almost undivided dominance of subsistence farming. The peasant family itself produced all agricultural products and handicrafts, tools and clothing, not only for their own needs, but also to pay the dues to the feudal lord. Combining rural labor with handicraft characteristic natural economy. Only a small number of specialist artisans, usually as householders, lived on the estates of large feudal lords. A few rural artisans - blacksmiths, potters, leather workers - along with the craft were also engaged in agriculture.
The exchange of products was very small. They traded mainly goods mined in a few places, but important in the economy: iron, tin, copper, salt, etc., as well as luxury goods that were not then produced in Europe and brought from the East: silk fabrics, expensive jewelry, well crafted weapons, spices, etc. The main role in this trade was played by itinerant, most often foreign merchants (Byzantines, Arabs, Syrians, Jews, etc.). The production of agricultural products and handicrafts specially designed for sale, i.e., commodity production, was hardly developed in most of Western Europe. The old Roman cities fell into decay, the agrarianization of the economy took place.
During the early Middle Ages, urban-type settlements were preserved mainly on the site of deserted and dilapidated Roman cities (Milan, Florence, Bologna, Naples, Amalfi, Paris, Lyon, Arles, Cologne, Mainz, Strasbourg, Trier, Augsburg, Vienna, London, York, Chester , Gloucester, etc.) But for the most part they were either administrative centers, or fortified points (fortresses - “burghs”), or church centers (residences of archbishops, bishops, etc.). But cities have not yet become the center of craft and trade during this period. Their small population usually differed little from the inhabitants of the villages. In many cities, squares and wastelands were used for arable land and pastures. The few artisans and merchants who lived in the early medieval city served mainly only its inhabitants, without having a noticeable impact on the surrounding villages. Most of the urban-type settlements survived in the most Romanized areas of Europe: in Italy, Southern Gaul, Visigothic and then Arab Spain, and also in Byzantium. Although in these areas of the city in the V-VI centuries. fell into decay, some of them were still relatively crowded, they continued to have a specialized craft, permanent markets. Individual cities, especially in Italy and Byzantium, were major centers of intermediary trade with the East. But even in these areas, the cities did not have a decisive influence on the genesis of feudalism. In the greater part of the European continent, however, urban-type settlements were rare, sparsely populated, and had no noticeable economic significance.
In general, Western Europe lagged behind the East and even Byzantium in its development, where numerous cities flourished with highly developed handicraft production and lively trade.
The growth of productive forces. Separation of craft from agriculture
By the X-XI centuries. important changes took place in the economic life of Western Europe. The growth of productive forces, which took place in connection with the establishment of the feudal mode of production, in the early Middle Ages was most rapid in the craft and was expressed in the gradual change and development of the technique and skills of handicraft work, expansion and differentiation social production. Individual types of handicraft have been significantly improved: smelting and metal processing - primarily blacksmithing and weapons; dressing of fabrics - linen and cloth; skin treatment; production of more advanced clay products using a potter's wheel; mill and construction business. Crafts also developed: mining of metals, salt, logging, fish, furs, sea animals. The production of handicraft products increasingly turned into a special sphere of labor activity, different from agriculture, which required further specialization of the artisan, no longer compatible with the labor of the peasant.
The moment has come when the transformation of handicraft into an independent branch of production has become inevitable.
Another prerequisite for the separation of handicrafts from agriculture was the progress in the development of the latter. With the improvement of tools and methods of tillage, especially with the ubiquity of an iron plow with a team of several pairs of oxen, as well as two-field and three-field, labor productivity in agriculture increased, the area of cultivated land increased, to a greater extent through internal colonization and the economic development of new lands. The sowing of grain and industrial crops expanded: flax, hemp, woad (a plant from which a substance for dyeing fabrics was extracted), oilseeds, etc.; horticulture, horticulture, viticulture and such trades closely related to agriculture as winemaking and butter-making developed and improved. The number and breed of livestock has increased and improved, in particular horses, which are increasingly being used not only in military affairs, but also as vehicle; in some areas, horses began to be used instead of oxen in agriculture, which significantly accelerated the process of tillage.
As a result of all these changes in agriculture, yields have increased, the time for the production of agricultural products has decreased, and, consequently, the quantity of the latter has increased. Despite the growth of feudal rent, a certain surplus of products began to remain in the hands of the peasant over what was produced for consumption needs. This made it possible to exchange part of the agricultural products for the products of craftsmen-specialists, which freed the peasant from the need to produce all handicraft products on his farm.
In addition to the above economic prerequisites, at the turn of the 1st and 2nd millennia, the most important social prerequisites for the formation of medieval cities were created; the process of feudalization ended, which immediately revealed the deep class contradictions of the new system. On the one hand, a ruling class stood out, whose need for luxury contributed to an increase in the layer of professional artisans. On the other hand, the peasantry, subjected to ever greater oppression, increasingly began to flee to the cities. Fugitive peasants formed the basis of the population of the first cities.
Separation of the city from the countryside
Thus, by the X-XI centuries. in Europe, all the necessary conditions appeared for the separation of crafts from agriculture. In the process of separation from agriculture, handicraft—small industrial production based on manual labor—passed through a number of stages in its development. At first, the handicraft acted mainly in the form of the production of products by order of the consumer, sometimes from his material, and first of all - in the countryside as an integral part of the subsistence economy, and then in the cities. At the same time, commodity production was still in its infancy, because the product of labor did not appear on the market.
The next stage in the development of the craft is characterized mainly by the work of the craftsman not for a specific customer, but for the market, without which the craftsman could no longer exist in this case. The craftsman becomes a commodity producer. Thus, the appearance of a handicraft, separate from agriculture, meant the emergence of commodity production and commodity relations, the emergence of exchange between town and country. “With the division of production into two large main branches, agriculture and handicraft,” F. Engels wrote, “production arises directly for exchange, commodity production, and with it trade ...”, Exchange between individual producers becomes a vital necessity for society.
But in the countryside, where the market for the sale of handicrafts was narrow, and the power of the feudal lord deprived the producer of the independence he needed, the opportunities for the development of commercial crafts were very limited. Therefore, artisans fled the village and settled where they found the most favorable conditions for conducting an independent economy, marketing their products, and obtaining the necessary raw materials. The resettlement of artisans to market centers and cities was part of the general movement of rural residents there.
The flight of peasants, including those who knew any craft, from the countryside was at that time one of the expressions of their resistance to feudal oppression.
In the X-XIII centuries. (in Italy since the 9th century) everywhere in Western Europe cities of a new, feudal type, which stood out from the rural district in terms of population composition, its main occupations and social structure, rapidly grew.
Thus, as a result of the separation of craft from agriculture, medieval cities arose. Their appearance marked a new stage in the history of feudalism.
Bourgeois theories of the origin of medieval cities and their criticism
The question of the causes of the emergence of medieval cities is of great interest. Bourgeois scientists, trying to answer it, put forward in the 19th and 20th centuries. various theories. Most of these theories are characterized by a formal legal approach to the problem. The greatest attention is paid to the origin and development of specific urban institutions, urban law, and not social economic conditions that led to the emergence of medieval cities. Therefore, bourgeois historical science cannot explain the root causes of their origin.
Bourgeois scholars were mainly concerned with the question of what form of settlement the medieval city originated from and how the institutions of this previous form were transformed into the institutions of the medieval city? The "romanistic" theory (Savigny, Thierry, Guizot, Renoir), which was based mainly on the material of the Romanized regions of Europe, considered medieval cities and their institutions to be a direct continuation of the cities of the late Roman Empire. Historians who relied mainly on the material of the Northwestern and Central Europe(primarily German and English), saw the origins of medieval cities in the legal phenomena of the new, feudal society. According to the "patrimonial" theory (Eichhorn, Nitsch), the city developed from the feudal estate, and city institutions - from the patrimonial administration and patrimonial law. The "Markov" theory (Maurer, Girke, later G. von Below) put the city institutions and the law out of action of the free rural community-mark. Representatives of the "burg" theory (Keitgen, Matland) believed that the fortress ("burg") and burg law were the grain from which the city was created. The “market” theory (R. Zohm, Schroeder, Schulte) derived city law from the “market law” that was in force in places where trade was carried out.
In addition to their formal legal orientation, all these theories suffered from extreme one-sidedness, each putting forward one, supposedly the only way for the emergence of cities. In addition, they did not explain why most of the estates, communities, castles, and even market places did not turn into cities.
German historian Ritschel at the end of the 19th century. tried to combine the "burg" and "market" theories, seeing in the cities settlements of merchants around a fortified point ("burg"), ignoring the handicraft basis of the origin of medieval cities. A concept close to this theory was developed by the Belgian historian A. Pirenne, who, however, unlike most of his predecessors, assigned the decisive role in the emergence of cities to the economic factor - intercontinental and interregional transit trade and its carrier - the merchant class. However, this "commercial" theory, according to which cities in Western Europe initially arose around "merchant trading posts", ignored the role of the separation of crafts from agriculture in the emergence of cities. Therefore, A. Pirenne also could not scientifically explain the origins and specifics of the feudal city. This theory is now being criticized by many foreign medievalists (R. Butrush, E. Dupont, F. Vercauteren, D. Luzzatto, C. Cipolla, and others), who refute A. Pirenne's thesis about the purely commercial origin of cities.
In modern bourgeois historiography, great importance is attached to archaeological data, topography, and plans of medieval cities (F. Hanshof, Planitz, E. Ennen, F. Verkoteren, and others). But these data, without considering the socio-economic conditions that gave rise to the city, do not answer the question of the causes of the emergence of the medieval city and its character. In some cases, these data are incorrectly used to revive the theory of the Roman continuity of medieval cities, which rejects the connection of their emergence with the laws of the evolution of feudal society. Bourgeois science, although it has accumulated a large amount of factual material on the history of cities, due to its idealistic methodology, was not able to develop a scientific understanding of the city of that era as a center of crafts and trade, and the process of its emergence - as a result of the development of the social division of labor - the separation of craft from agriculture. economy.
The emergence of cities - centers of crafts and trade
The specific historical paths of the emergence of cities are very diverse. The peasant artisans who left and fled the villages settled in various places depending on the availability of favorable conditions for crafts. Sometimes, especially in Italy and Southern France, these were the administrative, military and ecclesiastical centers of the early Middle Ages, often located in old Roman cities. Now these old cities were reborn to a new life, but already as cities of a different, feudal type. Many of these points were fortified, which provided the artisans with the necessary security.
The concentration of a significant population in these centers - feudal lords with their servants and numerous retinue, clergy, representatives of the royal and local administration, etc. - created favorable conditions for the sale of their products to artisans. But more often, especially in Northwestern and Central Europe, artisans settled near large feudal estates, estates, estates, castles, near the walls of monasteries, the inhabitants of which, as well as pilgrims and pilgrims who visited monasteries, could be consumers of their goods. Craftsmen also settled in settlements located at the intersection of important roads, at river crossings and bridges, at river mouths, on the banks of bays, bays, etc., convenient for parking ships, which have long been places of traditional markets. Such “market places” (in some countries they were called “ports”), with a significant concentration of population and handicraft production there, also turned into cities.
The growth of cities in different areas of Western Europe occurred at different rates. First of all - in the IX century. - cities as centers of craft and trade appeared in Italy (Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Bari, Naples, Amalfi); in the X century. - in the south of France (Marseille, Arles, Narbonne, Montpellier, Toulouse, etc.). In these areas, which already knew a developed class society (the Roman Empire), earlier than in others, the growth of productive forces based on the development of feudal relations led to the separation of handicrafts from agriculture, as well as to an intensification of the class struggle in the countryside and mass flight of serfs.
One of the factors that contributed to the early emergence and growth of Italian and southern French cities was the trade relations of Italy and Southern France with Byzantium and the more developed countries of the East at that time. Finally, a certain role was played here by the preservation of the remains of numerous Roman cities and fortresses, where fugitive peasants could find shelter, protection, traditional markets, and the rudiments of Roman municipal law more easily than in uninhabited places.
In the X-XI centuries. cities began to spring up in northern France, in the Netherlands, in England, and in Germany along the Rhine and the upper Danube. The Flanders cities - Bruges, Ypres, Ghent, Lille, Douai, Arras, etc. - were famous for the production of fine cloth, which they supplied to many European countries. In these areas, only a few cities arose on the sites of the old (Roman), most were founded anew. Later - in the XII-XIII centuries - feudal cities began to grow on the northern outskirts and in the interior regions of Zareinskaya Germany, in: the Scandinavian countries, as well as in Ireland, Hungary and the Danube principalities, i.e., where the development of feudal relations took place more slowly. Here all the cities were neoplasms, growing, as a rule, from "market places" and "ports".
The network of cities in Western and Central Europe was uneven. It reached a special density in Northern and Central Italy, as well as in Flanders and Brabant. But in other countries and regions, the number of cities, including small towns, was such that a peasant could get to any of them within one day.
With all the difference in place, time and specific conditions for the emergence of a particular city, it was always the result of an economic process common to all medieval Europe - the social division of labor between handicraft and agriculture and the development of commodity production and exchange on this basis.
This process was of a lengthy nature and was not completed within the framework of the feudal social formation. However, in the X-XIII centuries. it proceeded especially intensively and led to an important qualitative shift in the development of feudal society.
Simple commodity economy under feudalism
Commodity production and the exchange connected with it, concentrated in the cities, began to play an enormous role in the development of the productive forces not only in the cities themselves, but also in the countryside. The subsistence economy of the direct producers—the peasants—was gradually drawn into commodity relations, and conditions were created for the development of the internal market based on the further social division of labor and the specialization of individual regions and sectors of the economy (agriculture, cattle breeding, mining, various types of handicrafts).
The commodity production of the Middle Ages should not be identified with capitalist production or seen as the direct sources of the latter, as many bourgeois historians (A. Pirenne, A. Dopsch and many others) do. It was a simple (non-capitalist) commodity production and economy based on the own labor of small isolated commodity producers - artisans and peasants, who were increasingly involved in commodity exchange, but did not exploit on a large scale the labor of others. Such production, in contrast to capitalist production, was of a petty nature, involved only a small part of the social product in market relations, served a relatively narrow market and did not know expanded reproduction.
Simple commodity production arose and existed long before capitalism and before feudalism, adapting to the conditions of various social formations and obeying them. In the form in which it was inherent in feudal society, commodity production grew on its soil and depended on the conditions prevailing in it, developed along with it, obeying the general laws of its evolution. Only at a certain stage in the existence of feudal society, under the conditions of the separation of small independent producers from the means of production and the transformation of labor power into commodities on a mass scale, did simple commodity production begin to grow into capitalist production. Until that time, it remained an organic and inalienable element of the economy and social structure of feudal society, just as the medieval city remained the main center of commodity production and exchange in feudal society.
Population and appearance of medieval cities
The main population of the cities was made up of people employed in the sphere of production and circulation of goods: artisans of various specialties, at first they were also small traders. Significant groups of people were employed in the service sector: sailors of merchant ships, carters and porters, innkeepers, barbers, innkeepers.
The townspeople, whose ancestors usually came from the village, kept their fields, pastures and gardens both outside and inside the city for a long time, kept cattle. This was partly due to the insufficient marketability of agriculture in the 11th-13th centuries.
Gradually, professional merchants appeared in the cities - merchants from local residents. It was a new social stratum, the sphere of activity of which was only the exchange of goods. Unlike the wandering merchants of the early Middle Ages, they were mainly engaged in domestic trade, exchanging goods between the city and the countryside. The separation of merchant activity from handicraft activity was a new step in the social division of labor. In large cities, especially in political and administrative centers, feudal lords often lived with their entourage (servants, military detachments), representatives of the royal and senior administration, as well as the clergy. Already in the XII-XIII centuries. in big cities a significant part of the population were poor people who lived by odd jobs (day laborers, temporary hired workers), as well as begging and theft.
The sizes of Western European medieval cities were very small. Usually their population was 1 or 3-5 thousand inhabitants. Even in the XIV-XV centuries. cities with 20-30 thousand inhabitants were considered large. Only a few cities had a population exceeding 80-100 thousand people (Paris, Milan, Venice, Florence, Cordoba, Seville).
Medieval cities differed from the surrounding villages in their appearance and in the degree of population concentration. They were usually surrounded by high stone, sometimes wooden walls with towers and massive gates, as well as deep moats to protect against attacks by feudal lords and enemy invasion. Craftsmen and merchants carried out guard duty and made up the city military militia. The city gates were closed at night. The walls that surrounded the medieval city became cramped over time and could not accommodate all the city buildings. Around the walls that formed the original center of the city (burg, siete), urban suburbs gradually arose - settlements, settlements, inhabited mainly by artisans. Craftsmen of the same profession usually lived on the same street. The suburbs, in turn, were surrounded by a new ring of walls and fortifications. The central place in the city was the market square, not far from which the city cathedral was located, and in cities where there was self-government of the townspeople, there was also the city hall (city council).
Beyond the city walls, and sometimes within their borders, lay fields, pastures, vegetable gardens that belonged to the townspeople. Small livestock (goats, sheep and pigs) often grazed right in the city. The walls prevented the city from growing in breadth, so the streets became extremely narrow, the houses (often wooden) closely adjoined each other, their upper floors often protruded in the form of ledges above the lower ones, and the roofs of the houses located on opposite sides of the street almost touched each other . The rays of the sun often did not penetrate into the narrow and crooked city streets. There was no street lighting. Garbage, leftover food and sewage were usually thrown directly into the street. Due to the unsanitary condition in the cities, epidemics broke out, there were devastating fires.
The struggle of cities with feudal lords and the folding of urban self-government
Medieval cities arose on the land of the feudal lord and therefore inevitably had to obey him. Most of the townspeople at first were peasants who had lived in this place for a long time, who fled from their former masters or were released by them for quitrent. Often at first they found themselves in personal dependence on the new master - the seigneur of the city. All power in the city was initially concentrated in the hands of the lord. The feudal lord was interested in the emergence of cities on his land, since urban crafts and trade brought him additional income.
Former peasants who settled in the emerging cities brought with them from the countryside the customs and skills of the communal structure that existed there, which had a noticeable influence on the organization of urban self-government in the Middle Ages. Over time, however, it increasingly took on forms that corresponded to the characteristics and needs of the urban society itself.
The desire of the feudal lords to extract as much income from the city as possible inevitably led to the struggle between cities and lords, which took place throughout Western Europe in the 10th-13th centuries. The townspeople fought first for liberation from the most severe forms of feudal oppression, for a reduction in the lord's requisitions, and for trade privileges. Later, it developed into a political struggle for city self-government, which in the literature is usually called the “communal movement”. The outcome of this struggle determined the degree of independence of the city in relation to the feudal lord, its economic prosperity and political system. However, the struggle of cities with seniors was not against the feudal system as a whole, but to ensure the existence and development of cities within the framework of this system.
Sometimes cities managed to get certain liberties and privileges from the feudal lord for money, fixed in city charters; in other cases, these privileges, especially the rights of self-government, were achieved as a result of a long, sometimes armed struggle.
Communal movements proceeded in various countries Europe in different ways, depending on the conditions of their historical development, and led to different results. In Northern and Central Italy, as well as in Southern France, where in the IX-XII centuries. there was no strong central authority, the townspeople achieved independence already in these centuries. Many cities of Northern and Central Italy—Venice, Genoa, Florence, Siena, Lucca, Ravenna, Bologna, Milan, and others—became city-states at that time. In fact, the Slavic city of Dubrovnik on the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic was an independent city republic, although nominally it recognized supreme power first Byzantium, then Venice, and from the end of the XIV century. — Hungary.
A similar position in Germany was occupied in the XII-XIII centuries. the most significant of the so-called imperial cities are the "free cities". Formally, they were subordinate to the emperor, but in reality they were independent city republics (Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Frankfurt am Main, etc.). They were governed by the city council headed by the burgomaster, had the right to independently declare war, conclude peace, mint coins, etc.
Many cities of northern France - Amiens, Saint-Quentin, Noy-on, Beauvais, Soissons, Laon, etc., as well as Flanders - Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, Lille, Douai, Saint-Omer, Arras - as a result of stubborn, often armed struggle with their feudal lords became self-governing commune cities. They could choose from among themselves the city council, its head - the mayor - and other city officials, they had their own city court and city military militia, their own finances and the right to self-taxation. Communal cities were exempted from performing corvée and dues in favor of the seignior and from other seigniorial payments. In return for all these duties and payments, the townspeople annually paid the lord a certain, relatively low monetary rent, and in case of war they sent a small military detachment to help him. Communal cities themselves often acted as a collective lord in relation to the peasants who lived in the territory surrounding the city. On the other hand, in relation to their lord, the cities that retained a certain dependence on him were formally in the position of his collective vassal.
But some even very significant and rich cities, especially those standing on royal land, in countries with a relatively strong central government could not achieve full self-government. They enjoyed a number of privileges and liberties, including the right to have their own elected bodies of city self-government. But these bodies acted in conjunction with an official appointed by the king or other lord (for example, Paris, Orleans, Bourges, Lorris, Nantes, Chartres and many others - in France; London, Lincoln, Ipswich, Oxford, Cambridge, Gloucester, Norwich, York - in England). This form of urban self-government was also characteristic of Ireland, the Scandinavian countries, many cities in Germany and Hungary. The privileges and liberties received by medieval cities were in many respects similar to immunity privileges and were of a feudal nature. These cities themselves were closed corporations that for a long time put local city interests above all else.
Many, especially small, cities that did not have the necessary forces and funds to fight their lords, remained entirely under the control of the lord administration. This, in particular, is characteristic of cities that belonged to spiritual lords, who oppressed their citizens especially hard.
With all the differences in the results of the struggle of cities with their lords, they coincided in one thing. All citizens achieved personal liberation from serfdom. In medieval Europe, a rule was established according to which a serf who fled to the city, having lived there certain period(in Germany and England usually one year and one day), also became free. "City air makes you free" - said a medieval proverb.
City craft. Workshops
The production basis of the medieval city was craft. The craftsman, like the peasant, was a small producer who owned the tools of production and ran his own private economy based on personal labor. "An existence worthy of his position - and not exchange value as such, not enrichment as such ..." was the goal of the artisan's work. But unlike the peasant, the specialist-artisan, firstly, from the very beginning was a commodity producer, led a commodity economy; secondly, he did not need land as a means of production, therefore, in urban craft, non-economic coercion in the form of personal dependence of the direct producer on the feudal lord was not necessary and quickly disappeared in the process of city growth. Here, however, other types of non-economic coercion took place, connected with the guild organization of the craft and the corporate-class, basically feudal, nature of the urban system (guild coercion, guild and trade regulation, etc.). But this coercion did not come from the feudal lord, but from the townspeople themselves.
A characteristic feature of the medieval craft in Western Europe was its guild organization - the association of artisans of a certain profession within a given city into special unions - workshops, craft guilds. Workshops appeared almost simultaneously with the cities themselves: in Italy - already from the 10th century, in France, England and Germany - from the 11th - early 12th centuries, although the final design of the workshops (obtaining special charters from kings and other lords, compiling and recording shop charters) occurred, as a rule, later.
The guilds arose as organizations of independent small commodity producers—urban artisans who needed to unite in order to fight against the feudal lords and to protect their production and income from competition from the people from the countryside who constantly arrived in the city. Among the reasons that necessitated the formation of workshops, Marx and Engels also noted the need for artisans in common market premises for the sale of goods and the need to protect the common property of artisans; The main function of the workshops is to establish control over the production and sale of handicrafts. The unification of artisans into workshops was due to the level of development of productive forces achieved at that time and the entire feudal-class structure of society. The model for the guild organization was partly also the structure of the rural commune-brand.
Artisans united in guilds were direct producers and owners of the means of production. Each of them worked in his own separate workshop, with his own tools and raw materials. He "merged with his means of production", in the words of Marx, "as closely as a snail with a shell"". The craft, as a rule, was inherited. Many generations of artisans worked with the same tools and in the same ways as their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. Inside the craft workshop, there was almost no division of labor. It was carried out by highlighting new craft specialties, which took shape in the form of separate workshops, the number of which increased with the growth of the division of labor. In many cities, there were dozens of workshops, and in the largest - even hundreds .
The craftsman was usually assisted in his work by his family. One or two apprentices and one or more apprentices often worked with him. But only the master, the owner of the craft workshop, was a member of the guild. One of the important functions of the workshop was to regulate the relationship of masters with apprentices and apprentices. Master, apprentice and apprentice stood at different levels of the shop hierarchy. The preliminary passage of the two lower steps was obligatory for anyone who wished to join the guild and become its member. In the first period of the development of workshops, each student could become an apprentice in a few years, and an apprentice could become a master. In most cities, belonging to a guild was a prerequisite for practicing a craft, that is, a guild monopoly was established for this type of craft. In Germany, it was called Zunftzwang - guild coercion. This eliminated the possibility of competition from artisans who were not part of the workshop, which, in the conditions of a very narrow market at that time and relatively insignificant demand, was dangerous for many manufacturers.
The members of each workshop were interested in ensuring that their products were sold without hindrance. Therefore, the workshop strictly regulated production and, through specially elected shop officials, ensured that each master member of the workshop produced products of a certain type and quality. The workshop prescribed, for example, what width and color the fabric should be, how many threads should be in the warp, what tools and materials should be used, etc. The regulation of production also served other purposes: being an association of independent small commodity producers, the workshop zealously followed so that the production of all its members retains a small character, so that none of them would force other craftsmen out of the market by releasing more products. To this end, shop charters strictly limited the number of apprentices and apprentices that one master could have, forbade work at night and on holidays, limited the number of machines on which an artisan could work, regulated stocks of raw materials, prices for handicrafts, etc. . P.
The guild organization of handicrafts in cities was one of the manifestations of their feudal nature: "... the feudal structure of land ownership in cities corresponded to corporate ownership, the feudal organization of handicrafts." Such an organization created in medieval society the most favorable conditions for the development of productive forces, commodity production in cities up to a certain time. Within the framework of guild production, it was possible to further develop and deepen the social division of labor in the form of the allocation of more and more new craft workshops. The guild system contributed to the expansion of the range and improvement of the quality of manufactured goods. During this first period of their existence, the guilds contributed to a gradual, albeit slow, improvement in handicraft tools and handicraft skills.
Therefore, until about the end of the XIV - beginning of the XV century. the guilds in Western Europe played a progressive role. They protected the artisans from excessive exploitation by the feudal lords, with the extremely narrow market of that time, they ensured the existence of urban small producers, softening the competition between them and protecting them from the competition of the rural artisans who arrived in the cities.
Thus, during the heyday of the feudal mode of production, as K. Marx noted, “privileges, the establishment of workshops and corporations, the entire regime of medieval regulation were social relations that only corresponded to the acquired productive forces and the pre-existing social system from which these institutions emerged.”
The guild organization was not limited to the implementation of its most important socio-economic functions, but covered all aspects of the life of an urban artisan. The guilds played an important role in uniting the townspeople to fight against the feudal lords, and then against the rule of the patriciate. The workshop was a military organization that participated in the protection of the city and acted as a separate combat unit in case of war. The workshop had its own “saint”, whose day it celebrated, its churches or chapels, being a kind of religious organization. The guild was also an artisans' mutual aid organization that provided assistance to its needy members and their families in case of illness or death of a guild member.
The guild system in medieval Europe was still not universal. In a number of countries it was relatively uncommon and did not reach its final form everywhere. Along with it, in some countries there was a so-called "free craft" (for example, in the south of France and in some other areas). But even in those cities where "free craft" dominated, there was a regulation of production and protection of the monopoly of urban artisans, carried out by local governments.
The struggle of the shops with the urban patriciate
The struggle of the cities with the feudal lords led in the overwhelming majority of cases to the transfer, to one degree or another, of urban administration into the hands of the townspeople. But in the cities by this time there was already a noticeable social stratification. Therefore, although the struggle against the feudal lords was carried out by the forces of all the townspeople, it was usually the top of the urban population that used its results - house owners, landowners, including those of the feudal type, usurers, rich wholesale merchants engaged in transit trade.
This upper, privileged stratum was a narrow, closed group - a hereditary urban aristocracy (patriciate), which hardly allowed new members into its environment. The city council, the head of the city, as well as the city judicial board (scheffens, eshevens, scabins) were selected only from among the persons belonging to the patriciate. The entire city administration, courts and finances, including taxation, were in the hands of the city elite, used in their interests and to the detriment of the interests of the broad masses of the city's trade and craft population.
But as the craft developed and the significance of the workshops grew stronger, artisans, small merchants, and the urban poor entered into a struggle with the urban patriciate for power in the city. In the XIII-XV centuries. this struggle unfolded in almost all countries of medieval Europe and often took on a very acute character, up to armed uprisings. In some cities where handicraft production was greatly developed, the guilds won (for example, in Cologne, Augsburg, and Florence). In others, where trade on a large scale and the merchants played the leading role, the urban elite emerged victorious from the struggle (this was the case, for example, in Hamburg, Lübeck, Rostock and other cities of the Hanseatic League). But even where the guilds won, the management of the city did not become truly democratic, since the wealthy top of the most influential guilds united after their victory with part of the patriciate and established a new oligarchic administration that acted in the interests of the richest citizens.
The beginning of the decomposition of the guild system
In the XIV-XV centuries. the role of workshops has changed in many ways. Their conservatism and routine, the desire to preserve and perpetuate small-scale production, traditional methods and tools, to prevent technical improvements for fear of competition turned the workshops into a brake on technical progress and further growth of production.
However, with the growth of productive forces and the expansion of the domestic and foreign markets, competition between individual artisans within the workshop grew more and more. Individual artisans, contrary to the guild charters, expanded their production, property and social inequality developed in the guilds. The owners of larger workshops began to practice handing over work to poorer craftsmen, supplying them with raw materials or semi-finished products and receiving finished goods. From the environment of the previously unified mass of small artisans and merchants, a wealthy guild elite gradually emerged, exploiting small craftsmen - direct producers.
The stratification within the guild craft found expression in the division of the guilds into more prosperous and wealthy ("senior" or "large" guilds) and poorer ("junior" or "small" guilds). Such a division took place, first of all, in the largest cities: in Florence, Perugia, London, Bristol, Paris, Basel, etc. The "senior", economically stronger workshops established their dominance over the "younger ones", exposing them to exploitation. This sometimes led to the loss of economic independence by the members of the junior guilds and their actual position turning into hired workers.
The position of apprentices and apprentices; their fight with the masters
Over time, apprentices and apprentices also fell into the position of the exploited. This was due to the fact that the medieval craft, based on manual labor, required a very long time to learn. In different crafts and workshops, this period varied from 2 to 7 years, and in some workshops it reached 10-12 years. Under such conditions, the master could use the free labor of his already sufficiently qualified student with great profit for a very long time.
The guild masters also exploited the apprentices. The duration of their working day was usually very long - 14-16, and sometimes 18 hours. The apprentices were judged by the guild court, in which the masters again sat. The workshops controlled the life of apprentices and students, their pastime, spending, acquaintances. In the 14th-15th centuries, when the decline and decay of the guild craft began, the exploitation of apprentices and apprentices noticeably intensified and, most importantly, acquired a virtually permanent character. In the initial period of the existence of the guild system, an apprentice, having passed the apprenticeship and becoming an apprentice, and then having worked for a master for some time and having accumulated a small amount of money, could expect to become a master. Now, however, access to the position of a master for apprentices and apprentices was actually closed. In an effort to defend their privileges in the face of growing competition, the masters began to put up all sorts of obstacles for them on this path.
The so-called closure of workshops began, the title of master became practically accessible to apprentices and apprentices only if they were close relatives of the masters. Others, in order to receive the title of master, had to pay a very large entrance fee to the shop's cash desk, perform exemplary work - a "masterpiece" - from expensive material, arrange an expensive treat for members of the workshop, etc. Apprentices thus turned into "eternal apprentices", i.e. in fact, hired workers.
To protect their interests, they create special organizations - "brotherhoods", "companions", which are mutual aid unions and organizations to fight the guild masters. In the struggle against them, apprentices put forward economic demands, seek higher wages and a shorter working day. To achieve their goal, they resort to such acute forms of class struggle as strikes and boycotts against the most hated masters.
Apprentices and apprentices made up the most organized and advanced part of a fairly wide in the cities of the XIV-XV centuries. layer of employees. It also included non-guild day laborers, various kinds of unorganized workers, whose ranks were constantly replenished by peasants who came to the cities who had lost their land, as well as impoverished members of the guilds - small artisans. The latter, becoming dependent on the rich masters, differed from apprentices only in that they worked at home. Not being a working class in the modern sense of the word, this stratum was already an element of the pre-proletariat, fully formed later, during the period of widespread and widespread development of manufacture.
With the development and aggravation of social contradictions within the medieval city, the exploited sections of the urban population began to openly oppose the urban elite that was in power, which now in many cities included, along with the patriciate, the guild aristocracy. This struggle also included the lowest stratum of the urban population without rights: people deprived of certain occupations and permanent residence, declassed elements who were outside the feudal estate structure - they constituted the urban plebeian.
In the XIV-XV centuries. the lower strata of the urban population raise uprisings against the urban oligarchy and the guild elite in a number of cities in Western Europe - in Florence, Perugia, Siena, Cologne, etc. In these uprisings, which were the most acute manifestations of social contradictions within the medieval city, hired workers workers.
Thus, in the social struggle that unfolded in the medieval cities of Western Europe, three main stages can be distinguished. At first, the entire mass of the townspeople fought against the feudal lords for the liberation of the cities from their power. Then the guilds waged a struggle with the urban patriciate. Later, the struggle of the urban plebeians against the rich craftsmen and merchants who exploited and oppressed them, as well as against the urban oligarchy, unfolded.
The formation and growth of the urban class
In the process of urban development, the growth of handicraft and merchant corporations, the struggle of the townspeople against the feudal lords and internal social conflicts among them in feudal Europe, a special medieval class of townspeople took shape.
In economic terms, the new estate was connected to some extent with handicraft and trading activities, with property, in contrast to other types of property under feudalism, "based only on labor and exchange." In political and legal terms, all members of this class enjoyed a number of specific privileges and liberties (personal freedom, jurisdiction of the city court, participation in the city militia), which constituted the status of a full-fledged citizen. Initially, the urban estate was identified with the concept of "burghers", when the word "burgher" in a number of European countries denoted all urban residents (from the German "burg" - the city from which the medieval Latin "bur-gensis" came from, and from the French term "burgeoisie", coming from the Middle Ages and at first meaning "citizen"). In terms of their property and social status, the urban estate of the Middle Ages was not unified. Inside it existed, on the one hand, the urban patriciate, on the other, a layer of wealthy merchants and artisans, and, finally, the urban plebeians. As this stratification developed in the cities, the term "burgher" gradually changed its meaning. Already in the XII-XIII centuries. it began to be used only to designate "full-fledged", the most prosperous citizens, among whom representatives of the plebeians, excluded from city government, could not fall. In the XIV - XV centuries. this term usually denoted only the rich and prosperous trade and craft strata of the city, from which the first elements of the bourgeoisie later grew.
The population of cities occupied a special place in the socio-political life of feudal society. Often it acted as a single force in the fight against the feudal lords (sometimes in alliance with the king). Later, the urban estate began to play a prominent role in estate-representative assemblies.
Thus, the inhabitants of medieval cities did not constitute a single class or socially monolithic stratum, but were constituted as an estate. Their disunity was reinforced by the dominance of the corporate system within the cities. The predominance in each city of local interests, which were sometimes intensified by trade rivalry between cities, also prevented their joint actions as an estate on the scale of the whole country.
Development of trade and credit in Western Europe
The growth of cities in Western Europe contributed in the XI-XV centuries. significant development of domestic and foreign trade. Cities, including small ones, first of all formed the local market, where exchange with the rural district was carried out, the foundations were laid for the formation of a single internal market.
But in the period of developed feudalism, long-distance, transit trade continued to play a larger role in terms of the volume and value of products sold, carried out mainly by merchants not connected with production.
In the XIII-XV centuries. such inter-regional trade in Europe was concentrated mainly in two areas. One of them was the Mediterranean, which served as a link in the trade of Western European countries - Spain, South and Central France, Italy - among themselves, as well as with Byzantium and the countries of the East. From the 12th-13th centuries, especially in connection with the Crusades, the primacy in this trade passed from the Byzantines and Arabs to the merchants of Genoa and Venice, Marseilles and Barcelona. The main objects of trade here were luxury items exported from the East, spices, and, to some extent, wine; In addition to other goods, slaves were also exported to the East.
Another area of European trade covered the Baltic and North Seas. The northwestern regions of Russia took part in it (especially Novgorod, Pskov and Polotsk), the Baltic states (Riga), Northern Germany, Scandinavian countries, Flanders, Brabant and Northern Netherlands, Northern France and England. In this area, consumer goods were traded: mainly fish, salt, furs, wool, cloth, flax, hemp, wax, resin, timber (especially ship timber), and from the 15th century. - bread.
The connections between these two areas of international trade were carried out along the trade route, which went through the Alpine passes, and then along the Rhine, where there were many major cities involved in this transit trade. A major role in trade, including international trade, was played by fairs, which received wide use in France, Italy, Germany, England already in the XI-XII centuries. Wholesale trade in high-demand goods was carried out here: wool, leather, cloth, linen fabrics, metals and products from them, grain. At fairs in the French county of Champagne in the XII-XIII centuries, which lasted almost all year round met merchants from many European countries. Venetians and Genoese delivered expensive oriental goods there. Flemish merchants and merchants from Florence brought well-dressed cloth, merchants from Germany - linen, Czech merchants - cloth, leather and metal products, wool, tin, lead and iron were delivered from England. In the XIV-XV centuries. Bruges (Flanders) became the main center of European fair trade.
The scale of the then trade should not be exaggerated: it was hampered by the dominance of subsistence farming in the countryside, as well as by the lawlessness of the feudal lords and feudal fragmentation. Duties and all kinds of requisitions were collected from merchants when moving from the possessions of one lord to the lands of another, when crossing bridges and even river fords, when traveling along a river that flowed in the possessions of one or another lord.
The noblest knights and even kings did not stop before robber attacks on merchant caravans. Nevertheless, the gradual growth of commodity-money relations and exchange made it possible to accumulate money capital in the hands of individuals- especially merchants and usurers. The accumulation of money was also facilitated by money exchange operations, which were necessary in the Middle Ages due to the endless variety of coin systems and monetary units, since money was minted not only by emperors and kings, but also by all more or less prominent lords and bishops, as well as large cities.
To exchange one money for another and establish the value of a particular coin, a special profession of changers emerged. Money changers were engaged not only in exchange transactions, but also in money transfers, from which credit transactions arose. Usury was usually associated with this. Exchange transactions and credit transactions led to the creation of special banking offices. The first such banking offices arose in the cities of Northern Italy - in Lombardy. Therefore, the word "Lombard" in the Middle Ages became synonymous with a banker and usurer and was later preserved in the name of pawnshops.
The largest usurer in the Middle Ages was the Catholic Church. The largest credit and usury operations were carried out by the Roman curia, into which huge cash from all European countries.
The beginnings of capitalist exploitation in urban handicraft production
Successes in the development of domestic and foreign trade by the end of the XIV-XV centuries. contributed to the accumulation in the hands of the merchant elite of the cities of significant funds and the formation of commercial capital. Trade, or merchant's (as well as usurer's) capital is older than the capitalist mode of production and represents the oldest free form of capital. Op operates in the sphere of circulation, servicing the exchange of goods in slave-owning, feudal, and capitalist societies. But at a certain level of development of commodity production under feudalism, under the conditions of the beginning disintegration of guild craft, commercial capital began to gradually penetrate into the sphere of production. Usually this was expressed in the fact that the merchant bought raw materials in bulk and resold them to artisans, and then bought finished products from them for further sale. As a result, a low-income artisan fell into a position dependent on the merchant, and he had no choice but to continue working for the merchant-buyer, but not as an independent commodity producer, but as a de facto hired worker (although sometimes he continued to work as before in his workshop). This penetration into the production of commercial and usurious capital served as one of the sources of the capitalist manufactory that was emerging during the period of the disintegration of medieval handicraft production.
Another germ of capitalist production in the cities was the above-noted transformation of a mass of apprentices and apprentices into permanent wage-workers with no prospect of breaking out into masters. However, the emergence of elements of capitalist relations in cities in the XIV-XV centuries. it should not be exaggerated: it occurred only sporadically, in a few of the largest centers (mainly in Italy) and in the most developed branches of production, mainly in the cloth industry. The development of these new phenomena took place earlier and faster in those countries and those branches of crafts where there was a wide external market, prompting the expansion of production, its improvement, and the investment of new, significant capital in it. It did not yet mean the existence of an established capitalist structure. It is characteristic that even in the large cities of Western Europe, including in Italy, a significant part of the capital accumulated in trade and usury was invested not in the expansion of industrial production, but in the acquisition of land; the owners of these capitals sought in this way to become part of the ruling class of feudal lords.
The development of commodity-money relations and changes in the socio-economic life of feudal society
The cities, as the main centers of commodity production and exchange, exerted an ever-increasing and many-sided influence on the feudal countryside. In it, consumer goods made by urban artisans began to find more and more sales: shoes, clothing, metal products, etc. There was an increase, albeit slowly, in the involvement of agricultural products in the trade turnover - bread, wine, wool, livestock, etc. the exchange involved also products of rural crafts and crafts (especially homespun coarse cloth, linen, wooden products, etc.). Their production more and more turned into ancillary commodity branches of the rural economy. All this led to the emergence and development a large number local markets, which later formed the basis for the formation of a wider internal market, linking various regions of the country with more or less strong economic relations. All expanding retraction peasant economy in market relations increased the growth of property inequality and social stratification among the peasantry. From the mass of peasants, on the one hand, the prosperous peasant elite stands out, and on the other, numerous rural poor, sometimes completely landless, living in some kind of craft or work for hire as farm laborers for the feudal lord or rich peasants. Some of these poor peasants, who were exploited not only by the feudal lords, but also by their more prosperous fellow villagers, constantly went to the cities in the hope of finding more tolerable conditions. There they poured into the masses of the urban plebeians. Sometimes wealthy peasants also moved to the cities, seeking to use the funds accumulated in the countryside in the commercial and industrial sphere.
Commodity-money relations involved not only the peasant but also the master's domain economy, which led to significant changes in the relationship between them. The most typical and characteristic for most countries of Western Europe - Italy, France, West Germany and partly England - was the path in which in the XII-XV centuries. the process of commutation of rent was developing - the replacement of labor and product rent with cash payments. The feudal lords, therefore, shifted to the peasants all the concerns for the production and marketing of agricultural products in the market, usually near, local. This path of development gradually led in the 13th-15th centuries. to the liquidation of the domain and the distribution of all the land of the feudal lord to the peasants in holdings or for rent of a semi-feudal type. With the liquidation of the domain and the commutation of rent, the liberation of the bulk of the peasants from personal dependence was also connected, which was completed in most countries of Western Europe in the 15th century. However, despite some advantages of such development for the peasantry as a whole, its economic exploitation often increased; the commutation of rent and the personal emancipation of the peasants were often paid for by a significant increase in their payments to the feudal lords.
In some areas where a broad external market for agricultural products was developing, with which only the feudal lords could connect (Southeast England, Central and East Germany), development went the other way: here the feudal lords, on the contrary, expanded the domain economy, which led to an increase in the corvée of the peasants and attempts to strengthen oh personal dependence.
The consequence of the general intensification of the exploitation of the peasants under these different paths of development was an increase in the resistance of the peasants to feudal oppression and an intensification of the class struggle in all spheres of the life of feudal society. In the XIV-XV centuries. in a number of countries, the largest peasant uprisings in the history of the Western European Middle Ages are taking place, which are reflected in the entire socio-economic and political development of these countries. By the beginning of the 15th century, not without the influence of these large peasant movements, the first, more progressive path of agrarian evolution triumphed in the countries of Western Europe. The consequence of this was the decline, the crisis of the classical patrimonial system and the complete shift of the center of agricultural production and its links with the market from the economy of the feudal lord to the small peasant economy, which became more and more marketable.
The crisis of the patrimonial economy, however, did not mean a general crisis of the feudal system. He expressed, on the contrary, its generally successful adaptation to changed economic conditions, when relatively high level commodity-money relations began to undermine the subsistence economy. Such a restructuring of the agrarian economy of feudal society was associated with a number of temporary difficulties, especially for the economy of the feudal lords - a lack of labor (including holders), the desolation of part of the plowed land, and a drop in the profitability of many feudal estates.
However, one cannot agree with those foreign historians who saw in these phenomena a general “agrarian crisis” (V. Abel), “economic depression” (M. Postan) or even a “crisis of feudalism” (R. Hilton), considering main reason of these "crises" the demographic factor is the population decline after the plague epidemic that swept across Europe in the middle of the 14th century. Firstly, the listed phenomena of "decline" were not universal: they were not in the Netherlands, in the countries of the Iberian Peninsula; in a number of other regions of Europe they were weakly expressed. Secondly, these phenomena coexisted with noticeable success in many countries of peasant economy and urban production, especially in the 15th century. As for the "loss" of the rural population, it began several decades before the epidemic of the mid-14th century. and during the fifteenth century. basically replenished. The theory of "crises" put forward by bourgeois scholars cannot be recognized as sound, since it gives a very superficial explanation of the economic development of Western Europe in the 14th-15th centuries and ignores the social foundations of the feudal system and the general laws of its development.
The real crisis of feudalism as a social phenomenon, even in the most advanced countries of Europe, came much later (in the 16th or even 17th centuries). The changes that took place in the feudal countryside of Western Europe in the 14th-15th centuries represented a further stage in the evolution of the feudal system under conditions of the increased role of the commodity economy.
Cities and their trade and handicraft population everywhere had a great, although very different in different countries, influence both on the agrarian system and the position of peasants and feudal lords, and on the development of the feudal state (see chapters on the history of individual countries in the 11th-15th centuries) . Great was the role of cities and the urban class in the development of medieval culture, the progress of which in the XII-XV centuries. they helped a lot.
City of the XXI century - what is it? This is a corporation endowed with the status of a legal person, with rights and freedoms, it is political education, usually governed by a mayor or city manager and an elected council, it is a self-sufficient economic unit that controls trade, it is an institution for social welfare. Of course, all this was not formed on empty place. And just the medieval city became the foundation for the emergence of the democratic foundations of life, and it was he who was an indicator of the level of development achieved by society in that period.
Theories on the origin of cities
Between the 1st c. BC. according to IV-V centuries. AD, that is, before the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it included thousands of cities. Why was there a need for their “reformation”? As Berman emphasized, the cities that existed in Europe before the 11th century were deprived of two main features of the western city of the new time: there was no middle class and no municipal organization. Indeed, the cities of the Roman Empire were a kind of administrative posts of the central government, and, for example, the cities of Ancient Greece, on the contrary, were self-sufficient independent republics. In relation to the new European cities, one cannot say either one or the other, they were a new phenomenon of the time. Of course, not all cities quickly fell into decay after the fall of the Empire. In southern Italy, where Byzantine influence was strong, cities such as Syracuse, Naples, Palermo survived; seaports outside Southern Italy - Venice, cities of the Mediterranean coast of future Spain and France, as well as large cities of London, Cologne, Milan, Rome.
So, at the end of the 11th and in the 12th century, thousands of new cities appeared in various parts Europe - in Northern Italy, France, Normandy, England, German principalities, Castile and other territories. Of course, before that time there were various cities, but among them there was nothing exactly like the new ones, which differed not only in large size and large quantity inhabitants, but also a distinct social and economic character and a relatively distinct political and legal character.
Various factors contributed to the rise of new cities: economic, social, political, religious, legal. Let's consider them in more detail.
Economic forces. The English researcher Harold J. Berman notes that the emergence of a European city of modern times in Europe in the 11th-12th centuries. associated primarily with the revival of trade. He emphasized the fact that in the XI century. the market, usually located on the outskirts of the castle, or episcopal palace, began to absorb the main territory, which became the core of the new city. In addition, it should be taken into account that another necessary prerequisite for supplying cities with raw materials and food was the growth of the well-being of the rural population, and, consequently, the growth of the class of craftsmen and artisans. The importance of economic factors was also emphasized by Jacques Le Goff: “One function prevailed, reviving old cities and creating new ones, the economic function ... The city became the focus of what was so hated by feudal lords: shameful economic activity.”
social factors. This period of time was accompanied by active social movements both horizontally and vertically. To return to Berman's words, "opportunities were constantly being created ... to climb from one class to another ... journeymen became masters, successful artisans became entrepreneurs, new people made fortunes in trading and lending." You can also note the fact that from the XI-XII centuries. slavery was almost non-existent in the cities of Northern Europe.
political factors. A distinctive phenomenon was that in new cities, citizens usually received the right and duty to bear arms and were subject to conscription for military service to protect the city, that is, these cities were militarily much more effective than castles. In addition to military support, the inhabitants of the cities paid duties, market taxes and rents to the rulers and supplied manufactured goods. Which soon led to the need for minting coins, both in the interests of the ruling persons and in the interests of the new industrial estates. It should be noted that these political incentives for the founding of cities existed before, but by the 11th-12th centuries, the political conditions for their implementation became more favorable.
In order to most fully and accurately indicate the causes of the emergence of new cities, in order to explain the process of their development, it is necessary to take into account religious and legal factors. The new cities were religious associations in the sense that each of them was based on religious rites, oaths and values. But don't be confused new town with a church association. On the contrary, they can be considered the first secular cities completely separated from the church. In addition, the new European cities were based on a common legal consciousness, on certain legal principles.
In practice, the founding of the city mainly took place by granting him a charter, that is, as a result of a legal act, the legal content of which still included religious motives (oaths to observe city laws). Of course, it is impossible to imagine the emergence of European cities without a system of urban law, urban legal consciousness, which provided the basis, the foundation for corporate unity and organic development.
Consider the main theories of the emergence of medieval cities.
In the XIX and in the first half of the XX century. most researchers focused on institutional and legal solutions to the problem, i.e. engaged in the study of urban law, various city institutions. These theories are called institutional and legal.
Romanistic theory. The creators of this theory were the French scientists Guizot and Thierry. They believed that the medieval city was not a product or phenomenon of feudalization processes and considered it as the successor of the ancient city, the city of the Roman Empire. Hence the name of the theory - Romanized.
German and English scientists on the material of North-Western and Central Europe, i.e. Europe, not Romanized, sought the genesis of the medieval city in the processes of feudal society itself, and above all in the institutional and legal areas.
The patrimonial theory of the origin of the medieval city. It connects the genesis of the city with the patrimony. Its prominent representative in German historical science was K. Lamprecht. He explained the emergence of cities as a result of the growth of production and the division of labor in the patrimonial economy, on the basis of which surpluses were created, which made possible the exchange that gave rise to cities.
Markov theory was also created by the German scientist - G.L. Maurer, according to which the genesis of the city was associated with the concept of a "free rural community - a brand" inherent in German feudalism, and the medieval city itself was only a further development of the village organization.
Burg theory (from the word burg - fortress). Its creators (Keytgen, Matland) explained the emergence of a feudal city around the fortress, life in which was regulated by burgh law.
The creators of the market theory (Schroeder, Zom) took the city out of trading places or towns, in the territories of lively trade - fairs, at the intersection of trade routes, on the river, along the sea coast.
The creators of these theories and concepts took some particular moment or aspect in the history of the city and tried to explain such a complex, contradictory phenomenon as a medieval city through it. All these theories, of course, suffered from one-sidedness, which was felt by the researchers themselves. Therefore, already in the 19th and especially in the first half of the 20th century. scientists who dealt with the history of the western medieval city combined and synthesized different concepts of its origin. For example, the German historian Ritschel tried to combine burgh and market theories. But even in the process of combining these concepts and theories, it was still not possible to eliminate one-sidedness in explaining the genesis of the medieval city.
English researcher Harold Berman talks about an attempt to introduce an economic factor into the concept of the emergence of a city - interregional and intercontinental trade. At the same time, he points to the enormous role of the medieval merchant class. This theory is called the trading concept, or trading theory. But this theory was not accepted by many explorers of the city and historians of the Middle Ages.
Modern urban theories, which will be discussed below, suffer from the same shortcomings that were inherent in the theories of the 19th and first half of the 20th century. - none of them can explain the genesis of the city in its entirety. One of these theories is currently widespread archaeological. The researchers who develop this theory (F. Ganshof, Planitz, E. Annen, F. Vercauteren) are engaged in the archeology of medieval cities. Archeology makes it possible to get an idea of the economy of the city, its character, the degree of development of crafts, domestic and foreign trade. So, G. Planitz traces the process of the emergence of the city of Germany from Roman times to the formation of a guild structure here. E. Ennen made a major contribution to the development of medieval urbanism. She studied a wide range of issues: the social structure of the city, its law, topography, economic life, the relationship between cities and the state, citizens and seigneurs. The European city, in her opinion, is a constantly changing phenomenon, a dynamic element in a rather static society of the Middle Ages. But this research method is also one-sided.
Thus, in the study of the genesis of a medieval city, foreign historiography enhances the importance of economic factors. With all the numerous theories of the emergence of the city, none of them, taken separately, is able to fully explain this phenomenon. Apparently, one should take into account the totality of social, economic, political, religious, socio-cultural factors in the emergence of a medieval city. Just as the theories of the genesis of the city are numerous, the concrete historical ways of its origin were numerous and complex.
Of course, all these cities that appeared on the map of Europe arose and developed at different times and under the influence of various factors. But it is still possible to identify general models, taking into account which the following groups can be distinguished:
Episcopal cities: Cambrai, Beauvais, Laon, Lorry, Montauban (Picardy / France /) received freedom as a result of the struggle against the power of the emperor and his bishops, which led to the founding of an urban community, a “commune”. For example, the city of Beauvais received a charter in the 12th century that provided for great powers of self-government and wide privileges for citizens (bourgeois) after four decades of acute conflict between bourgeois and bishops.
Norman cities: Verneuil and others (Normandy) in respect of freedoms, laws, administration were very similar to the cities of France. A classic example is the city of Verneuil, which received a charter from 1100-1135. Duke of Normandy Henry I and King of England.
Anglo-Saxon cities: London, Ipswich (England) received their status in the last third of the 11th century, after the Norman conquest. Almost immediately after this, William granted London a charter (Charter of Henry I of 1129), which served as an example, a model for such cities as Norwich, Lincoln, Northampton, etc. In general, English cities did not achieve such independence from the king and princes as others areas of Europe.
Italian cities: Milan, Pisa, Bologna (Italy) were originally formed as independent, self-governing communities, communes, communities, corporations. The tenth century is characterized by the rapid growth of the Italian cities, but the same cannot be said of their own organic development. Them new story began in 1057 with the struggle of a popular movement, led by supporters of the papal reform, against the aristocracy in the person of the higher clergy, headed by the imperial bishop, and ended with the expulsion of the latter. Cities received charters, a system of urban self-government began to take shape.
Flemish cities: Saint-Omer, Bruges, Ghent (Flanders) were the advanced industrial regions of Europe ( textile industry), for the most part achieved communal status peacefully, having received charters as an encouragement from the count. The model for later charters was the Charter of Saint-Omer, granted by William in 1127.
"Burg" cities: Cologne, Freiburg, Lübeck, Magdeburg (Germany). Let's consider them in more detail. In the 10th - early 11th centuries, Cologne made its transition from a "Roman" city to a city in a new European sense. First, a suburb was attached to its territory, then markets, duties, and a mint were established there. In addition, after the uprising of 1106, Cologne received independent city government, a system of city rights was established, that is, political and governmental power was severely limited, however, the Archbishop of Cologne remained an important figure in the life of the city. Municipal government of Cologne in the XII century. was completely patrician. In practice, the power of the aristocracy and personally of the archbishop himself was subordinated to the power of the guilds of assessors, burgomasters and parish magistrates.
The history of the formation of other German cities is unusual. For example, in 1120, the city of Freiburg was founded by Duke Konrad of Zähringen on a wasteland adjacent to one of his castles. Initially, its population consisted of merchants, then artisans, aristocracy, bishops and other estates appeared. In 1143, Count Adolf of Holstein invited the inhabitants of Westphalia, Flanders and Frisia to settle in the Baltic, and the city of Lübeck was founded there. Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, having captured Lübeck in 1181, granted him a charter. And by the middle of the XIV century. Lübeck became the richest city in the north.
A special place in the history of the formation of medieval European cities belongs to the city of Magdeburg. By the early 1100s. Magdeburg created its own administrative and legal institutions and developed its own civic consciousness. Already seven years later, the first written legislation of Magdeburg was published and, improved and partly corrected, spread to more than eight dozen new cities. This group of cities in Germany will be the basis for characterizing medieval city law.
We also recommend
Smartphone xperia z5 premium black
Download toilet paper business plan
Description Nokia X2 dual sim on the Android platform, powerful processor and support for two sim cards
Is it possible to open a hostel in an apartment?
Services to the public: the most promising business ideas
How to start farming?
Loading...