Money, Markets and Trade in Late Medieval Europe

Money, Markets and Trade in Late Medieval Europe

Later Medieval Europe Managing Editor

Douglas Biggs Waldorf College

Editorial Board Members

Kelly DeVries Loyola College

William Chester Jordan Princeton Iniversity

Cynthia J. Neville Dalhousie University

Kathryn L. Reyerson University of Minnesota

VOLUME 1

Money, Markets and Trade in Late Medieval Europe Essays in Honour of John H.A. Munro

Edited by

Lawrin Armstrong Ivana Elbl Martin M. Elbl

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007

On the cover: Seal of the port of Portsmouth, 13th c. (Actual wax seal impression: private collection (M.M. Elbl). © Photograph: M.M. Elbl.) Brill has done its best to establish rights to use of the materials printed herein. Should any other party feel that its rights have been infringed we would be glad to take up contact with them. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISSN 1872–7875 ISBN-13: 978-90-04-15633-3 ISBN-10: 90-04-15633-X Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

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BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS

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vain, Belgium) on 12 March 1971 (and published by this institute in mimeographed form as Report No. 7103 of the Centrum voor Economische Studiën). This paper was subsequently delivered also to the Seminarie voor Streeks- en Agrarische Geschiedenis of the Rijksuniversiteit Gent (Ghent, Belgium), on 25 March 1971. “La lutte bullioniste anglo-bourguignonne: sa contribution à la chute de l’industrie drapière de luxe et à l’essor des nouvelles draperies en Flandre et en Brabant, 1430-1480.” Paper delivered to the Seminarie voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis of the Vrije Universiteit te Brussel (Brussels, Belgium) on 19 April 1971. “Depression and Culture in Fifteenth-Century Flanders and Brabant.” Paper delivered to the American Musicological Society, 32nd Annual Meeting, at Duke University (Durham, North Carolina) on 18 November 1971. A précis of this paper has been published in Abstracts of Papers Delivered to the Thirty-Second Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society (Chapel Hill and Durham, N.C., 1971), 40-1. “The Coming of Spanish Wools to the Low Countries: An Industrial Transformation of the Fifteenth Century.” Paper delivered to the Midwest Medieval Conference, 11th Annual Meeting, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, on 6 October 1973. Also delivered to the Economic History Workshop, University of Toronto, in November 1973. “Scarlets and the High Cost of Dyeing in the Middle Ages.” Paper delivered to the Colloquium on Medieval Textiles in the Mediterranean Basin, in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, at the Royal Ontario Museum of Toronto, on 11 May 1977. “Mint Outputs, Monetary Change, and Economic Contraction in LateMedieval England and the Low Countries.” Paper delivered to the Comparative World History Workshop: Conference on Pre-Modern Monetary History, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 30 August-3 September 1977. “Bullionism and the Bill of Exchange in England, 1272-1663: A Study in Monetary Management and Popular Prejudice.” Paper presented to the Conference on “The Dawn of Banking”, at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, 23-26 September 1977. “Scarlets and the Economics of Sartorial Splendour in the Middle Ages.” A revised version of “Scarlet and the High Cost of Dyeing in the Middle Ages,” delivered to the “Five Colleges Medieval Seminar” at the University of Massachusetts, at Amherst, Mass. on 5 December 1977; and again to the Social History Group of Ontario (Toronto) on 5 February 1978. “Bullion Movements and Monetary Contraction in Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries. 1235-1500 A.D.” A revised version of “Mint Out-

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puts, Monetary Change, and Economic Contraction in Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries,” delivered to the University of Toronto Economic History Workshop, on 16 January 1978. “Monetary Contraction, Depression, and Industrial Change in the Late Medieval Low Countries, 1335-1500.” Paper delivered to the “Third Oxford Symposium on Coinage and Monetary History: Coinage and Economic Development in the Low Countries,” on 10 September 1978. “The Medieval Scarlet and the Economics of Sartorial Splendour.” A very considerably revised and expanded version of “Scarlets and the Economics of Sartorial Splendour in the Middle Ages,” delivered to the University of Toronto Economic History Workshop, on 20 October 1980. “Economic Depression and Culture in the Fifteenth-Century Low Countries.” A much revised version of “Depression and Culture in FifteenthCentury Flanders and Brabant,” delivered to University College Symposium Four, “The Renaissance: Rediscovery and Exploration,” at the University of Toronto, on 21 January 1982. “Mint Outputs, Money, and Prices in Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries.” Paper delivered to the Theme C-7 section, on “Minting and Monetary Circulation,” of the 8th International Economic History Congress, Budapest, 18 August 1982. “The Late-Medieval Bullion Famine and Deflation in North-West Europe: A Critique of the Postan Thesis.” Paper delivered to the Workshop on “Medieval Monetary Problems: Bimetallism and Bullionism,” at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association, 23 September 1982, Baltimore, Maryland. “The Luxury Trades of the Silk Road: How Much Did Silks and Spices Really Cost?” Paper delivered to the Royal Ontario Museum Continuing Education Symposium “Silk Roads—China Ships,” 12 October 1983, University of Toronto. “The Fullers’ Guild and Industrial Strife in the Low Countries, 13401500.” Paper delivered to the Thirteenth Medieval Workshop, University of British Columbia, “Late Medieval Urban Institutions,” 19 November 1983. “Minting, Moneys-of-Account, and Monetary Change in Late-Medieval Brabant.” Paper delivered to the Economic History Workshop, University of Toronto, 5 December 1983. “Inflation, Deflation, and the Big Problem of Petty Coinage in LateMedieval Flanders, 1334-1484.” Paper delivered to the Nineteenth International Congress of Medieval Studies, at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, on 13 May 1984. “Flemish Textile Production and the Changing Structure of Market De-

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mand, 1270-1500.” Paper presented to the 44th Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association, 21-23 September 1984, at Chicago, Illinois. “Industrial Change in Textile Manufacturing in the Late Medieval Low Countries: Responses to Market Adversities.” Invited lecture given at Rutgers University, Department of History and Center for Medieval Studies (New Brunswick, New Jersey), 16 April 1985. “The Nature of Price Changes in the Late-Medieval Economy: A Critique of the Postan Thesis.” Lecture-seminar given at Rutgers University, Department of History and Center for Medieval Studies (New Brunswick, New Jersey), 17 April 1985. “Environment, Land Management, and the Changing Qualities of English Wools in the Later Middle Ages.” Paper presented to the 20th International Congress on Medieval Studies, 10 May 1985, at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan. “The Role of Petty Coinage in Monetary and Price Fluctuations in the Low Countries, 1334-1484.” Public lecture sponsored by the Department of History, University of Trier, Federal Republic of Germany, 7 June 1985. “Petty Coinage in the Economy of Late-Medieval Flanders: Some Social Considerations of Public Minting.” Paper presented to The Stockton Colloquium of 1985: “Production and Transfer of Precious Metals and Changes in the Monetary Structures of Latin America and Europe, 15001800,” at the University of the Pacific, Stockton, California, on 3 October 1985. “The Behaviour of Wages During Deflation in Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries.” Paper presented to the Ninth International Economic History Congress, 26 August 1986, in Bern, Switzerland. “Structural Changes in Late-Medieval Textile Manufacturing: The Flemish Responses to Market Adversities, 1300-1500.” Public lecture delivered at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Louvain, Belgium) on 5 November 1986. “Wage Movements and Deflation in Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries.” Public lecture delivered to the Universitaire Faculteiten SintIgnatius, Universiteit Antwerpen (Antwerp, Belgium) on 13 November 1986. “The Central European Silver Mining Boom, Mint Outputs, and Prices in the Low Countries and England, 1450-1550.” Paper delivered to the Second International Conference on “The Production and Transfer of Precious Metals and Monetary Structures in Asia, America, and Europe, 15th to 19th Centuries,” at Keio University, Tokyo, Japan, on 9 June 1987.

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“Textiles, Towns, and Trade: Industrial Urbanization in the Low Countries, 1200-1600.” Paper presented to the conference “An Urban Context: Medieval and Modern Cities,” organized by the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Arizona State College of Business, at Phoenix, Arizona, on 26 March 1988. “The Flemish ‘New Draperies’: The Death and Resurrection of an Old Industry, 13th to 16th Centuries.” Paper presented to the Anglo-Low Countries Conference on the New Draperies, sponsored by the Pasold Research Fund, London, and the Workshop on Quantitative Economic History, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, at Leuven, Belgium, on 14 April 1988. “The New Draperies: The Death and Resurrection of an Old Flemish Industry, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries.” Paper presented to the Economic History Workshop, University of Toronto, on 24 October 1988. [Revised and extended version of “The Flemish ‘New Draperies’: The Death and Resurrection of an Old Industry, 13th to 16th Centuries”]. “Oriental Spices and Their Costs in Medieval Cuisine: Luxuries or Necessities?” Lecture delivered to the Canadian Perspectives Committee, Senior Alumni Association, University of Toronto, at University College, 8 November 1988. “International and Local Banking in Medieval and Renaissance England.” Paper delivered to the International School on the History of Banking and Finance (University of Siena-C.N.R.), at the Certosa di Pontignano, Siena, Italy, on 20 June 1989. “Industrial Transformations in the Northern Textile Trades, ca. 1290-ca. 1350: Economic Progress or Economic Crisis?” Paper delivered to the Historical Geography Research Group, Third Anglo-American Seminar on the Medieval Economy and Society, held at Chester College, Chester, England, on 15 July 1989. “On the Origins of Negotiability: Some Credit Innovations in AngloFlemish Trade, c. 1360–c. 1540.” Paper delivered to the Second SalzauKolloquium, “Kredit im Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit,” sponsored by Die Ministerin für Bildung, Wissenschaft, Jugend und Kultur des Landes Schleswig-Holstein und die Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, held at the Herrenhaus Salzau, Schleswig-Holstein, 23 April 1990. “Monetary, Price, and Wage Fluctuations during the Late-Medieval ‘Great Depression’: Did Money Matter?” Paper delivered to the Tenth International Economic History Congress, Session C.16: “The Economic Depression of the Renaissance Revisited,” at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in Leuven, Belgium, 21 August 1990. “Urban Regulation and Monopolistic Competition in the Textile Industries of the Late-Medieval Low Countries.” Paper delivered to the Tenth Inter-

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national Economic History Congress, Session B-15: “Textiles of the Low Countries in European Economic History,” at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in Leuven, Belgium, on 23 August 1990. “The International Law Merchant and the Origins of Negotiable Credit in Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries.” Paper presented to the Convegno internazionale: “Banchi pubblici, banchi privati e monti di pietà nell’Europa preindustriale: amministrazione, tecniche operative, e ruoli economici,” held at the Università di Genova, Genoa, Italy, on 2 October 1990. “On the Origins of Negotiability: Credit Instruments and the Law Merchant in Anglo-Flemish Commerce, 1353-1507.” Paper presented to the Economic History Workshop, University of Toronto, on 5 November 1990. “The Belgian Archives.” Lecture delivered to the Centre for Medieval Studies, Sources and Resources Committee, at the Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, on 22 March 1991. “Coinage Debasement as a Fiscal Policy: The Economics and Mechanics of Medieval Mint Manipulations.” Paper delivered to the 38th Annual Convention of The Canadian Numismatic Association, 1991 Educational Forum, at the Westbury Hotel, Toronto, Ontario, on 26 July 1991. “Textiles, Towns, and Trade: Urban Institutions in the Decline of the Medieval Flemish Woollens Industry, ca. 1350-1500.” Paper delivered to the 27th International Congress on Medieval Studies, at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, on 7 May 1992. “Bimetallic Ratios, Exchange Rates, and Labour Strife in the LateMedieval Flemish Cloth Industry.” Paper delivered to the Annual meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, on 2 April 1993; Labour Economics Workshop, Department of Economics, University of Toronto, on 8 April 1993; Economic History Workshop, Northwestern University, at Evanston, Illinois, on 22 April 1993; Economic History Workshop, University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana, on 23 April 1993. “Monetary Fluctuations, Entrepreneurship, and Labor Strife in the Flemish Textile Industry, 1390-1435.” Paper delivered to the 28th International Congress on Medieval Studies, at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, on 6 May 1993. “Monetary Policies, Wage Fluctuations, and Labour Strife in the LateMedieval Flemish Cloth Industry, 1390-1435.” Paper delivered to the Economic History Workshop, University of Western Ontario (London, Ontario), on 23 November 1993. “Maritime and Overland Trade in Textiles between the Low Countries and Italy, 1200-1600: Which was the More Cost Effective?” Paper delivered to the 29th International Congress on Medieval Studies, at Western

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Michigan University (Kalamazoo, Michigan), Session 201 (“Trade and Transit Markets in Northwestern Europe, 1350-1550"), on 6 May 1994. “The True Weights of the Marcs de Troyes in Late-Medieval France and Flanders: Evidence from Flemish Counterfeiting and Monetary Ordinances, 1388-1469.” Paper delivered to the First International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, Session 419: Medieval Arithmetic and Calculation, on 5 July 1994. “Urban Wage Structures in Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries: Work-Time and Seasonal Wages.” Paper delivered to the 11th International Economic History Congress, Session B-3a, “Labour and Leisure in Historical Perspective, Thirteenth to Twentieth Centuries,” at the Università Bocconi, Milan, on 13 September 1994. “Anglo-Flemish Competition in the International Cloth Trade, ca. 1340-1520: Endogenous and Exogenous Factors in the English ‘Victory’.” Paper delivered to the Colloque d’Oxford, of the Centre Européen des Études Bourguignonnes, at St. John’s College, Oxford, on 24 September 1994. Revised version delivered to the Economic History Workshop, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 14 April 1995. “Flemish Woollens and Hanseatic Commerce during the Later Middle Ages: Changing Trends in Markets and Cloth Prices, 1290-1550. [38 pp.]. Paper presented to the Hanseatic conference, at the Burgkloster zu Lübeck, 10-12 March 1997, “Wirtschaftliche Wechsellagen im hansischen Wirtschaftsraum, 1300-1800: Vergleichende konjunkturstatistische und wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur Wirtschafts- und Handelsgeschichte im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit.” Lecture presented to the Department of History, Universiteit Antwerpen—Universiteit Faculteiten Sint-Ignatius te Antwerpen, 11 December 1997. “Real Wage Determination and the Problem of Nominal Wage- Stickiness in the Late-Medieval European Economy.” Seminar paper delivered to the Graduate Students Workshop, ECO 4060Y, Economics Department, University of Toronto, on 27 March 1997. “The ‘Industrial Crisis’ of the English Textile Towns, c. 1290-c. 1330.” [64 pp.] Paper presented to the Seventh Annual Conference on ThirteenthCentury England, at St. Aidan’s College, University of Durham, 1-4 September 1997. “English ‘Backwardness’ and Financial Innovations in Commerce with the Low Countries, 14th to 16th centuries.” [58 pp.] Paper presented to the Colloque Universiteit Gent—Universiteit Antwerpen (IUAP—Stedelijke Samenlevingen in de Laatmiddeleeuwse Nederlanden): “Internationale Handel in de Nederlanden (14de-16de eeuw: Kooplieden, Organisatie en Infrastructure/International Trade in the Low Countries (14th-16th centuries): Merchants, Organisation, and Infrastructure),”at the Universiteit Antwerpen, 13 December 1997.

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“Disputes About Mint Metrology in Late-Medieval Flanders, France and England: Determining the Weight of the Marc de Troyes and the Tower Pound from the Economics of Counterfeiting, 1388-1469.” [29 pp.] Paper presented to the annual meeting of the Classical and Medieval Numismatics Society, at the Primrose Hotel, Toronto, on 21 February 1998. “The ‘Industrial Crisis’ of the English Textile Towns, c. 1290-c. 1330.” [64 pp.] A revised version of “The ‘Industrial Crisis’ of the English Textile Towns, c. 1290-c. 1330” above. Delivered to the Center for Early Modern History, at the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis), on 6 March 1998. “Precious Metals and the Origins of the Price Revolution Reconsidered: The Conjuncture of Monetary and Real Forces in the European Inflation of the Early to Mid-Sixteenth Century.” [56 pp.] Paper presented to Session B.6, “Monetary History in Global Perspective, 1500-1808,” at the Twelfth International Economic History Congress in Madrid, 25 August 1998. “The Low Countries (Export Trade in Textiles with the Mediterranean Basin, 1200-1600: A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Comparative Advantages in Overland and Maritime Trade Routes.” [32 pp.] Paper presented to Session C.2: “Means of Communication, Spread of Information and European and Mediterranean Commerce, 10th-17th Centuries,” at the Twelfth International Economic History Congress, in Madrid, 26 August 1998. “Determinanten der Entwicklung von Preisen, Löhnen unde des Geldes, 1135-1820/The Chief Determinants of Price, Wage, and Monetary Movements in Western Europe, 1135-1820: A New View of ‘Long-Waves’.” [39 pp.] A paper presented to the conference “Wirtschaftliche Wechsellagen im hansischen Wirtschaftsraum 1300-1800: Verleichende konjunkturstatistische und wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur Wirtschafts- und Handelsgeschichte im Spätmittelater und in der frühen Neuzeit,” at Lübeck, Germany, on 30 July 1999. “Wage-Stickiness, Monetary Changes, and Real Incomes in Late- Medieval England and the Low Countries, 1300-1450.” [49 pp.] Paper presented to the international conference on “New Trends in Late Medieval Studies,” at The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 24 August 1999. Commentator on three papers in 19th-century German Demography: Stephan Klasen (Munich), “Gender Bias in Mortality in a Comparative Perspective: Excess Female Mortality in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries;” Terence McIntosh (North Carolina at Chapel Hill), “Urban Demographic Stagnation in Early Modern Southwest Germany: A Computer Simulation;” Simone Wegge, “Self-Selection of NineteenthCentury German Emigrants: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Hesse-

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Cassel.” Papers presented at the First Conference on German Cliometrics, at the Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, 23-26 September 1999. “The ‘New Institutional Economics’ and the Changing Fortunes of Fairs in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Transaction Costs, Warfare, and Textiles( [54 pp.] Paper presented to the Annual Conference, the 32nd Settimana di Studio, of the Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica “Francesco Datini,” on “Fiere e mercati nella integrazione delle economie europee, secoli XIII-XVIII,” in Prato, Italy, 10 May 2000; Revised version of the paper presented to the Economic History Workshop, Department of Economics, University of Waterloo, on 13 October 2000. “Wage Stickiness, Monetary Changes, and Real Incomes in Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries, 1300-1470: Did Money Really Matter?” [93 pp.] Paper presented to the Economic History and Labour Workshops, Department of Economics, University of Toronto, on 23 February 2001; Paper presented to the Workshop in Money, History, and Finance, Department of Economics, Rutgers University (New Brunswick, New Jersey): on 26 March 2001. Commentary on and Agenda for “Symposium: New Approaches to International Trade, c. 1000-1500.” For the Seventh Anglo-American Seminar on the Medieval Economy and Society, held at Trinity College Dublin and the Royal Irish Academy, in Dublin, 13-16 July 2001. “The Late Medieval Origins of the Modern Financial Revolution: Responses to Impediments from Church and State in Western Europe.” Paper presented to the 61st Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association, on Finance and Economic Modernization, at Loew’s Philadelphia Hotel, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 26 October 2001. “Industrial Energy from Water-Mills in the European Economy, Fifth to Eighteenth Centuries: the Limitations of Power.” Paper presented to the 34th annual meeting of the Settimana di Studio, Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica “Francesco Datini da Prato,” on the theme “Economia ed energia, secoli XIII-XVIII,” in Prato, Italy, on 16 April 2002. “Prices, Wages, and Prospects for ‘Profit Inflation’ in England, Brabant, and Spain, 1501-1670: A Comparative Analysis.” Paper presented to Session 15: “Global Monies and Price Histories, XVIth-XVIIIth Centuries,” of the XIIIth International Economic History Congress, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 22 July 2002. “Industrial Change in the Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Low Countries: The Arrival of Spanish Merino Wools and the Expansion of the ‘Nouvelles Draperies’.” Paper presented to Session 16: “Wool: Products and Markets (XIIIth-XXth Centuries),” of the XIIIth International Economic History Congress, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 26 July 2002.

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“Postan, Population, and Prices in Late-Medieval England and Flanders.” Paper presented to the Colloque de Montréal: Postan-Duby: Destin d’un paradigme. Peut-on comprendre les crises économiques de la fin du moyen âge sans le modèle malthusien? Montréal: Université de Québec à Montréal, 10 October 2002. “The Late-Medieval Origins of the Modern Financial Revolution: Overcoming Impediments from Church and State.” Paper presented to the Economic History Workshop, Department of Economics, University of Toronto; in the Coach House Conference Room, on 17 April 2003. “‘Builders’ Wages in Southern England and the Southern Low Countries, 1346-1500: A Comparative Study of Trends in and Levels of Real Incomes.” Paper presented to the the 36th annual meeting of the Settimana di Studio, Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica “Francesco Datini da Prato,” on the theme “Economia ed energia, secoli XIII-XVIII;” in Prato, Italy, on 30 April 2004, on the theme: “L’Edilizia prima della Rivoluzione Industriale, Secoli XIII-XVIII,” Prato, 26-30 aprile 2004. “Changing Patterns of Colours and Values of Woollen Textiles in the Southern Low Countries, 1300-1550: The Anti-Red Shift—to the Dark Side.” Paper presented to the 12th International Medieval Congress, at Leeds, England, on 12 July 2005 (to session 804: “Transforming Textiles”). Commentary on the paper of Maristella Botticini, “Social Norms, Demographic Shocks, and Dowries in Florence, 1250-1450.” Presented to the 68th Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association, on “War and Economic Growth,” Session 4A, “Bombs, Germs, and Invaders,” Westin Harbour Castle Hotel, Toronto, Ontario, 17 September 2005. “Flemish Woollens and Hanseatic German Commerce During the Later Middle Ages: Changing Trends in Cloth Markets and Textile Values, 1290-1570.” Paper presented to the conference on “Medieval Global Economies,” The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, 11 November 2005. “Real Wages and the ‘Malhusian Problem’ in Anwerp and South-Eastern England, 1400-1700: A Regional Comparison of Levels and Trends in Real Wages for Building Craftsmen.” Paper presented to the Second Dutch-Flemish conference on “The Economy and Society of the Low Countries in the Pre-Industrial Period,” Universiteit Antwerp, 20 April 2006. “South-German Silver, European Textiles, and Venetian Trade with the Levant and Ottoman Empire, c. 1370 to c. 1720: A Non-mercantilist Approach to the Balance of Payments Problem.” Presented to the XXXXVIII (38th) Settimana di Studio, Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica “Francesco Datini,” “Relazioni economiche tra Europa e mondo islamico, Secoli XIII-XVIII,” 5 May 2006.

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Research Projects in Progress (for more detailed information see http://www.economics.utoronto/munro5/) “Wage Structures and Wage Movements in Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries: 1260-1530.” “Recasting the Phelps Brown-Hopkins Price-Index for the ‘Basket of Consumables’, 1264-1700.” “The Mint Outputs and Monetary Statistics of the Low Countries, 13341789.” “Cloth Prices in the Low Countries (1300-1570) for: Forschungsprojekt “Wirtschaftliche Wechsellagen im hansischen Wirtschaftsraum, 1300-1800.”

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LAW, ETHICS AND ECONOMY: GERARD OF SIENA AND GIOVANNI D’ANDREA ON USURY1 Lawrin Armstrong

In the Threepenny Opera, Brecht, in the character of Mackie Messer, asks, “what’s robbing a bank compared to founding a bank?”2 He was expressing an ethical critique of usury that he probably knew via Marx’s Capital, but which had originated as early as the fourth century B.C., when Aristotle, in the Politics and the Ethics, condemned profit on loans as an unnatural and asocial use of money, which is a measure of value and medium of exchange, not a source of value in itself.3 Medieval ethicists and jurists were in agreement 1

This paper is offered to John Munro, mentor and colleague, on the occasion of his retirement. The usury prohibition has long been of interest to Munro, and my own research on the topic was inspired by his 1987-1988 graduate seminar on the “Dynamics of the European Economy, 1350-1750.” An earlier version of the paper was presented at the panel on “Ethics and the Higher Learning” at the Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting in Cambridge, April 2005, and I am grateful for the critical comments I received from colleagues there. The following legal abbreviations have been used in the notes: Inst. (Institutiones Iustiniani); Dig. (Digesta Iustiniani); Decretum Grat. (Decretum Gratiani); X (Decretales Gregorii IX); VI (Liber Sextus Decretalium Bonifacii VIII); and Clem. (Constitutiones clementinae). Reference is to the critical editions: Theodor Mommsen et al., eds., Corpus iuris civilis, 3 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1872-1895); and Emil Friedberg, ed., Corpus iuris canonici, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1879; repr. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1959). Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own. 2 “Was ist ein Einbruch in eine Bank gegen die Gründung einer Bank?” Bertolt Brecht, Die Dreigroschenoper, Act 9, in Ausgewählte Werke, vol. 1: Stücke 1 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), 267. A similar remark is commonly attributed to Brecht: “Bank robbery is the business of amateurs: the real professionals found a bank” (“Bankraub ist eine Unternehmung von Dilettanten. Wahre Profis gründen eine Bank”). 3 “There are two sorts of wealth-getting, as I have said; one is a part of household management, the other is retail trade: the former necessary and honourable, while that which consists in exchange is justly censured; for it is unnatural, and a mode by which men gain from one another. The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest [tokos, lit. parturition, offspring], which means the birth of money from money, is

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with Aristotle and Marx: to profit from a money loan was a violation of the function of money and an offence against justice. The objective of this paper is to consider the relationship between medieval ethics and law with regard to the problem of usury, which medieval and early modern theorists—including, it should be noted, Protestant reformers such as Luther and Melancthon—regarded as any profit on a loan of money or fungible goods.4 I shall do so by applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural,” Aristotle, Politics 1.10.1258a-b, trans. Benjamin Jowett in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), 1141. Aristotle touches on usury in the Ethics in a discussion of liberality, where he includes the usurer in the species of the miserly who “exceed in respect of taking by taking anything and from any source, e.g. those who ply sordid trades, pimps and all such people, and those who lend small sums and at high rates. For all those take more than they ought and from the wrong sources,” Nichomachean Ethics, 4.1.1121b, trans. W. D. Ross in Basic Works of Aristotle, 988. Marx cites the Politics passage in his discussion of merchant’s and usurer’s capital in Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Volume 1 (Berlin: Dietz, 1974), 2.4.2, p. 179. For a review of the controversy over the ethical content of Marx’s concept of justice, see Norman Geras, “The Controversy about Marx and Justice,” New Left Review 1/150 (March-April, 1985): 47-85; and Norman Geras, “Bringing Marx to Justice: An Addendum and Rejoinder,” New Left Review 1/195 (September-October 1992): 37-69. On the influence of the Aristotelian concept of justice on Marx, see most recently James Daly, “Marx and Justice,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 8 (2000): 351-70. Brecht began studying Marx in 1926 and was familiar with Capital, Vol. 1, by the time he was working on the Threepenny Opera in 1928; Ronald Hayman, Brecht: A Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983), 120. 4 There is an extensive literature on the usury prohibition. The only comprehensive survey is John T. Noonan, Jr., The Scholastic Analysis of Usury (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957). For brief overviews, see John Gilchrist, The Church and Economic Activity in the Middle Ages (London and Toronto: Macmillan, 1969), 62-76, with documents in translation, 155-225; and Lawrin Armstrong, “Usury,” in Joel Mokyr, ed., Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 5: 183-5. The fundamental study of the canonical usury doctrine is T. P. McLaughlin, “The Teachings of the Canonists on Usury (XII, XIII and XIV Centuries),” Mediaeval Studies 1 (1939): 81-147 and 2 (1940): 1-22. Important recent studies of usury include Amleto Spicciani, Capitale e interesse tra mercatura e povertà nei teologi e canonisti dei secoli XIII-XV (Rome: Jouvence, 1990); Odd Langholm, The Aristotelian Analysis of Usury (Bergen: Universitetsforlaget,1984); and Odd Langholm, Value, Money and Usury According to the Paris Theological Tradition, 1200-1350, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 29 (Leiden: Brill, 1992). On the Protestant reformers, see most recently Eric Kerridge, Usury, Interest and the Reformation (Aldershot: Variorum, 2002). For discussions of usury in the wider context of scholastic ideas about economic ethics, see Odd Langholm, “The Medieval Schoolmen (1200-1400),” in Ancient

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a review of two texts: the Question on Usury (Questio de usura) of the Augustinian friar and theologian Gerard of Siena († c. 1336), which historians of economic thought now consider the most influential formulation of the natural law argument against usury in late medieval Europe; and the report and critique of Gerard’s quaestio by the influential fourteenth-century canonist Giovanni d’Andrea (c. 12701348) in his Quaestiones mercuriales. Before turning to the texts themselves, however, some preliminary observations on the relationship between law and ethics—or, more precisely, between law and theology—in medieval Europe are in order.5 The development of canon law as a system of positive law distinct, on the one hand, from theology and, on the other, from secular legal systems was peculiar to the medieval west.6 In the early church, ecclesiastical norms were deduced from scripture or articulated by councils of bishops; there was no autonomous discipline of canon law. In the Byzantine empire, church law was subsumed to imperial law, reflecting the union of secular and ecclesiastical authority in the emperor. In the west, however, the expansive jurisdictional claims of the popes, the rise of universities and the recovery and systematic study of Justinian’s Roman law compilations created the conditions for the birth of systematic canon law.7 With the publication of the first version of Gratian’s and Medieval Economic Ideas and Concepts of Social Justice, ed. S. Todd Lowry and Barry Gordon (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 439-501; and Diana Wood, Medieval Economic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 5 Ethical and moral questions as they related to revelation were a branch of theology. “Moral theology” as the name of this discipline is an early modern usage; see Johann Theiner, Die Entwicklung der Moraltheologie zur eigenständigen Disziplin (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1970); on the medieval period, see esp. pp. 37-55. The boundaries between law and theology were not always entirely clear with respect to ethical problems; see, for example, Joseph Goering’s discussion of the post-Gratianic penitential literature in “The Internal Forum and the Literature of Penance and Confession,” Traditio 59 (2004): 175-227. 6 For a recent introduction to medieval canon law, see James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law (London and New York: Longman, 1995). My comments in this paragraph are also inspired by the observations of Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1983), 85-269; and Manlio Bellomo, The Common Legal Past of Europe, 1000-1800, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane, Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Canon Law 4 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1995). 7 A recent overview of the recovery and assimilation of Roman law in medi-

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magisterial textbook, the Decretum, around 1140, canon law quickly defined itself as a discipline and a body of norms distinct from theology. The latter found its authoritative statement in Peter Lombard’s almost contemporary handbook, the Sentences, which soon became the central text of the theology curriculum.8 Canon law exercised a profound influence on the character and development of western Christianity, but the fact that the subject matter of the canons was often identical to that of theology also created certain tensions of which intellectuals were acutely conscious. Theology had little to say, for example, on the procedures for papal elections or the rules concerning benefices, but on the behavioral norms—for example, the norms governing marriage, penance or usury—moral theologians claimed a competence equal or superior to that of canonists. One example will suffice to illustrate the tension between law and theology with regard to economic questions. Henry of Susa (c. 1200-1271), best known by his sobriquet “Hostiensis,” was the most influential and creative canonist of the thirteenth century.9 In his monumental Summa on the Decretals of Gregory IX, published around 1253, Hostiensis privileged Roman eval Europe can be found in Peter Stein, Roman Law in European History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 38-103. Anders Winroth, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) is the most important recent study of the emergence of canon law in twelfth-century Bologna and its relationship both to the revived Roman law and to theology. 8 On the successive recensions of the Decretum and dating, see Winroth, The Making, 122-45. 9 He was appointed cardinal bishop of Ostia in 1262 by Urban IV. For biographical information, see Thomas Diplovatatius, Liber de claris iuris consultis, pars posterior, ed. Fritz Schulz, Hermann Kantorowicz and Giuseppe Rabotti, Studia Gratiana 10 (1968): 141-5; Johann Friedrich von Schulte, Die Geschichte der Quellen und Literatur des canonischen Rechts, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Enke, 18751880; repr. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1956), 2: 123-9; Charles Lefebvre, “Hostiensis,” in Raoul Naz, ed., Dictionnaire de Droit Canonique (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1953), 5: cols. 1211-28; and Kenneth Pennington, “Henricus de Segusio (Hostiensis),” in Kenneth Pennington, Popes, Canonists and Texts, 1150-1550 (Aldershot: Variorum, 1993), XVI: 1-12. On the relationship between theology, Roman law and canon law in Hostiensis’ thought, see Gabriel Le Bras, “Théologie et Droit romain dans l’oeuvre d’Henri de Suse,” in Études historiques à la mémoire de Noël Didier, ed. Faculté de Droit et Sciences Économiques de Grénoble (Paris: Éditions Montchrestien, 1960), 195-204. I am grateful to Dr. Susanne Lepsius for providing me with a copy of this article.

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law concepts over ideas derived from theology in the analysis of canonical problems. He devoted extensive portions of most titles of the Summa to Roman law definitions and distinctions, noting (but generally minimizing) dissonances between Roman law on the one hand and canon law or theology on the other, and attempting to reconcile Roman law with ecclesiastical authority on points where the two were clearly at variance.10 Hostiensis’ discussion of usury, for instance, contains a veritable digest of the Roman law of usury: how it was contracted, for what reasons and at what rates of interest.11 Acknowledging that such contracts were now disallowed by virtue of the canonical prohibition, he nevertheless defended the (Christian) emperor Justinian’s approval of usury on the grounds of social necessity: “thus with respect to human law; for on account of worldly need the emperor could not entirely annul the burden of usury, although he diminished it.”12 Similarly, the Hostiensis routinely chided theologians for applying rigid and abstract standards to economic problems. Prescription was a mode of acquiring ownership through an extended period of uncontested possession. Theology and law, however, differed over the necessity of “good faith,” the prescriber’s honest belief, even if mistaken, that he was not in violation of another’s right. “But what,” Hostiensis asked, if, after prescription, [the prescriber] becomes aware that he possesses the property of another, say he learned for certain that the utensils he prescribed belonged to Martin: should he return them to Martin? The theologians say that he should ... while the masters of the canons commonly say the opposite, because according to both laws [canon and Roman] once prescription is complete he who prescribed is secure ... It seems to me that on this question the conscience of the theologians is too angelic ... Therefore, if somebody who has legitimately prescribed thinks that he sins mortally by retaining the thing prescribed, I do not consider him a theologian so much as a fraud, 10 Le Bras, “Théologie et Droit romain,” 202-3; Charles Lefebvre, “Hostiensis,” cols. 1219-20. 11 Summa aurea, X 5.19 de usuris, nn.5-7 (Venice, 1574; repr. Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1963), cols. 1615-19. 12 “Hoc de iure humano. Nam propter mundi necessitatem non potuit imperator ex toto cassare obligationem usurarum, sed tamen minuit,” Summa, X 5.19 de usuris, n.7 (ed. cit., col. 1619). For a detailed discussion of juridical opinion on this point, see McLaughlin, “Teachings,” 1: 84-95.

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for he fears what is above suspicion. ... Nevertheless, if he cannot compose his conscience, he should obey it and return the thing, for otherwise he places himself at risk.13

Restitution of usury was another point on which theologians and canonists differed. Moral theology insisted that usurers make complete restitution of the sums extorted from their debtors. By contrast, Hostiensis (and most other canonists), urged discretion in exacting restitution, maintaining that if a debtor freely remitted part of the amount due to him by way of restitution, the usurer was thereby absolved. “I do not,” he insisted, write this in favour of usurers, for I owe them nothing. But neither do I want to be so unfair as to comfort the theologians and drive people to desperation and lay snares for their souls ... Therefore it should be said and maintained that, provided there was no [prior] agreement between the parties, a usurer may ask or a court order that part of the amount owed in restitution be forgiven, and I say that a usurer so forgiven is thereby absolved.14

A similar tension may be observed in Giovanni d’Andrea’s adoption and critique of Gerard of Siena’s natural law case against usury. Of

13 12 “Sed quid si iam completa praescriptione conscientiam rei alienae incipiat habere, puta audivit et pro certo quod haeres quas praescripsit erant Martini: numquid ipsas debet reddere Martino? Theologi dicunt quod sic ... Magistri canonum communiter contradicunt, quia completa praescriptione tutus est qui praescripsit secundum utrumque ius ... Mihi videtur quod in hac quaestione conscientia theologorum est nimis angelica ... igitur si quis credit peccare mortaliter retinendo rem praescriptam legitime, ipsum non theologum iudico sed fraudulosum, cum id timeat quod nulla suspicione est dignum. ... Si tamen eius conscientia ratificari non potest, reddat rem and sequatur conscientiam, nam aliter ... periculum non evadet,” Summa, X 2.26 de praescriptionibus, rubricella de praescriptione rerum immobilium, n.3 (ed. cit., col. 726). On Hostiensis’ privileging of conscience, see Le Bras, “Théologie et Droit romain,” 201; and Charles Lefebvre, “Aequitas canonica et Periculum animae dans la doctrine de l’Hostiensis,” Ephemerides iuris canonici 13 (1952): 319. 14 “Non scribo hoc in favorem usurariorum, quia nec eis astrictus sum; sed nolo a rationabili recedere ut theologis faveam et in desperatiam inducam homines, ac parem laqueum animarum ... Dicendum est igitur et tenendum quod precibus possit vel iussu iudicis sine pactione partium remissio fieri, et sic dicam talem usurarium absolutum,” Summa, X 5.19 de usuris, n.12 (ed. cit., col. 1634).

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Gerard himself we know almost nothing.15 He was, as his sobriquet suggests, a Sienese, possibly patrician by birth, who joined the Augustinian friars, probably in the first decade of the fourteenth century. After studies in Italy, perhaps in the canon law faculty of Bologna, he went to Paris, where he was admitted bachelor of the Sentences in 1325 and master of theology in 1329. His commentary on the Sentences enjoyed great authority in the fifteenth century, but for historians of economic thought it is his disputed question on usury that is of greatest interest.16 The Questio is a redaction of a public disputation Gerard presided over as a master of theology, most likely in Paris in 1329 or 1330, though possibly somewhere in Italy, where he appears to have taught in the early to mid1330s.17 The basic question Gerard posed in his disputation was this: is usury illicit because it is forbidden—that is, simply because of positive law, which is mutable, and the evidence of this is that usury is permitted in Roman but not in canon law—or is it forbidden because it is illicit by nature.18 As Gerard himself put it, is usury “by the nature of the thing itself wicked and bound up with malice;” illicit, that is to say, according to some meta-legal standard.19

15 For the scant details, see Schulte, Die Geschichte, 2: 204-5; P. Glorieux, La littérature quodlibétique, La Bibliothèque Thomiste 21, 2 vols. (Paris: Vrin, 1925-1935), 2:97; and Adolar Zumkeller, “Die Augustinerschule des Mittelalters: Vertreter und Philosophisch-Theologische Lehre,” Analecta Augustiniana 27 (1964): 208-9. For additional references, see Langholm, Medieval Schools, 549. 16 Gerard’s status among fifteenth-century theologians of his order is attested by Zumkeller, “Die Augustinerschule,” 209. For an assessment of his place in the history of economic thought, see Langholm, Aristotelian Analysis, esp. 30-1 and 118-28; and Langholm, Medieval Schools, 549-60. 17 According to the cartulary of the University of Paris, Gerard presided there as a regent master in 1330 (Glorieux, La littérature, 2: 97). According to Rome, Biblioteca Angelica, cod. 625, one of the two extant copies of the Questio de usura, Gerard disputed the problem in Paris (fol. 209r). I am currently preparing an edition of the Questio de usura for the Toronto Medieval Latin Texts series based on the other surviving copy, Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, MS 894. Quotations of the Questio are from my forthcoming edition with folio references to the Leipzig manuscript (hereafter referred to as “Leipzig”). For reasons of convenience, I provide parallel references to the more readily accessible edition of Angelo Vancio, Tractatus de usuris et de praescriptionibus (Cesena, 1630), 165-93 (hereafter “Cesena”). 18 Questio de usura, proemium; Leipzig, fols. 65r-66r; Cesena, 165-8. 19 “Talis namque actus ex natura rei contrariatur virtuti et ex natura rei ha-

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In Gerard’s view, “it is not altogether easy to assign a reason” for the latter proposition20 and the most striking feature of the Questio is its demolition or fundamental revision of all of the traditional arguments advanced against usury.21 For example, it was often argued by lawyers and theologians that usury was illicit because it involved the sale of the time that elapses from the granting of a loan until its repayment. Time, however, like air and water, is common to all and therefore non-vendible.22 Gerard considered the argument frivolous (“ista racio ... omnino videtur friuola”) because the passage of time is a factor in many legitimately profitable contracts, such as rental and lease agreements.23 Or again, it was often maintained that a charge was only permitted in loans of things that deteriorate through use, that is, rentable things, such as houses or boats. Since coins do not deteriorate in use, it is illicit to charge for a money loan.24 However, as Gerard astutely observed, bet a Deo auertere et deordinare ac per consequens ex natura rei viciosus et malicia conuolutus,” Questio de usura, proemium; Leipzig, fol. 65r; Cesena, 166. 20 “Assignare autem de hoc causam per quam euidencius demonstretur quod contractus usurarius habet ex natura rei viciositatem et maliciam conuolutam non puto omnino facile,” Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fol. 67v; Cesena, 174. 21 Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fols. 67r-68v; Cesena, 173-6. 22 Decretum Grat. D.88 c.11 palea Eiiciens condemned the usurer for selling “a thing given by God” (“ipse namque rem datam a Deo vendit”), which most theorists interpreted as time. For theological opinion, see William of Auxerre († 1229), Summa aurea, lib. 3, tractatus 48, cap. 3, q. 2, ed. Jean Ribaillier, Spicilegium Bonaventurianum, nos. 16-19, 4 vols. (Paris and Rome: Centre national de la recherche scientifique and Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1980-1986), 2: 831; and Bonaventure († 1274), Collationes de decem praeceptis, collatio 6, cap. 19, in Opera omnia (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1891), 5: 528b. The argument was adopted by Innocent IV in his analysis of credit and discount sales; Commentaria, ad X 5.19.6, n.2 (Frankfurt am Main, 1570; repr. Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1968), fol. 517va. For a discussion of the theological texts, see Langholm, Aristotelian Analysis, 111-8. 23 Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fol. 68r; Cesena, 176. Gerard took the critique from his fellow Augustinian Giles of Rome († 1316); Langhom, Aristotelian Analysis, 112. For the text, see Giles of Rome, Quolibeta, quodlibet 5, q. 24 (Louvain, 1646, repr. Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1966), 338a. 24 Canonical authority for the argument was provided by Decretum Grat. D.88 c.11 palea Eiiciens, which contrasts usury to rental: “He therefore who lets a field or a house is seen to relinquish his own use of it and to accept money and, so to speak, to exchange one profit for another. ... Thirdly, a field or a house deteriorates through use. But money, when it is lent, is neither diminished nor does it deteriorate” (“Ideo qui locat agrum vel do-

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rental charges are not really compensation for damage, since occupation of a house, for example, often improves its condition.25 A more serious objection to usury, and the one usually adopted by canonists, derived from the Roman law definition of a mutuum, that is, a loan of a fungible, a thing like grain, oil or wine, whose use involved its consumption or destruction.26 Specie—precious metal in a minted state—was considered a fungible because its use necessitated its alienation—its “consumption”—in exchange for other things. According to Roman jurists, in a loan of a fungible, ownership passed to the debtor, who was not required to repay the identical substance of the thing lent, but simply its equivalent in terms of quantity and quality. Because the debtor became the owner of the thing lent, it was unjust to charge him for the use of what had become his own property.27 Classical Roman law circumvented this purely conceptual problem by means of an additional contract termed stipulatio, by which the debtor promised an additional payment called usurae, a term which in Roman law had no negative connotations.28 However, from the eighth century onwards, the church in the west repudiated such agreements on the authority

mum, suum usum dare uidetur, et pecuniam accipere, et quodammodo quasi commutare uidetur cum lucro lucrum. ... Tertio ager vel domus utendo ueterascit. Pecunia autem fuerit mutuata, nec minuitur, nec ueterascit”). See also Bonaventure, Commentaria in quatuor libros sententiarum, lib. 3, distinctio 37, dubium 7, in Opera omnia (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1887), 3: 836a: “Alia vero ratio est, quia pecunia, dum in usum vertitur, non consumitur nec deterioratur; non sic autem est de aliis rebus, quae secundum quod magis et diutius eis utimur, magis tendunt ad defectum.” 25 “Ista racio, si quis bene considerat, est digna derisione, quia videmus quod domus illa de cuius usu accipimus pensionem vel fructum sepe melioratur per habitacionem,” Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fol. 68r; Cesena, 176. For a discussion, see Langholm, Aristotelian Analysis, 125. 26 Inst. 3.14.pr.: “Mutui autem obligatio in his rebus consistit, quae pondere numero mensurave constant, veluti vino oleo frumento pecunia numerata aere argento auro.” See also the parallel definition at Dig. 12.1.2.1. On the restriction of usury to fungibles, see Noonan, Scholastic Analysis, 38-51; and McLaughlin, “Teachings,” 1: 98-102. 27 Inst. 3.14.pr. continues: “... quas res aut numerando aut metiendo aut pendendo in hoc damus, ut accipientium fiant et quandoque nobis non eaedam res, sed aliae eiusdem naturae et qualitatis reddantur. Unde etiam mutuum appellatum sit, quia ita a me tibi datur, ut ex meo tuum fiat.” See also Dig. 12.1.2.2. 28 W. W. Buckland, A Text-Book of Roman Law from Augustus to Justinian, 3rd ed., rev. Peter Stein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 464, n.3.

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of Lc 6.35, where Jesus commanded his followers to “grant a loan without expecting anything in return” (“mutuum date nihil inde sperantes”).29 In Gerard’s view, this argument is “exceedingly elegant and clear” but fundamentally flawed because, although ownership of the substance indeed passes to the debtor, ownership of the lent thing continues to vest in the creditor “with respect to the identity and equivalence of the value,” and it is this monetary value from which the usurer extracts his profit, not the substance of the coin or other fungible.30 The most persuasive theological argument against usury was a variation of the ownership analysis proposed by Thomas Aquinas († 1274) and known to historians of economic thought as the “consumptibility argument.”31 It goes like this: the proper use of a fungible thing is its consumption; in such things it is impossible to separate the thing and its use—as you can in the case of a rentable thing such as a house or a boat—therefore to grant the use of the thing is to grant its ownership. The usurer, however, wants to sell coin and its use separately, and he therefore sells the same thing twice or sells something that does not exist, which is clearly unjust. In Gerard’s view, the analysis is “doubtful” (dubia), or at least in need of correction, since it could be maintained that although the

29 Gilchrist, The Church and Economic Activity, 62-3. Lc 6.35 was cited as an anti-usury tag in the decretal Consuluit (X 5.19.10) of Urban III (1185-87). See Langholm’s observations, Aristotelian Analysis, 75. 30 “Hec autem racio, quamuis videatur valde pulchra et apparens, tamen videtur valde dubia quia licet maior proposicio sit manifesta, minor tamen videtur falsa. Cum enim dicitur quod fenerator exigit lucrum de re non sua, potest dici immediate quod est falsum, quia pecunia quam mutuat, quamuis transseat in dominium debitoris quantum ad ydemptitatem substancie, quia debitor non tenetur restituere eandem pecuniam secundum substanciam, remanet tamen dicta pecunia in dominio feneratoris quantum ad idemptitatem et equalitatem valoris. Et hoc ipsum videtur sufficere, quia ipse fenerator non exigit lucrum de pecunia quam mutuat in quantum talis substancie est, secundum quem modum ad eum non pertinet nec potest eam repetere, sed exigit magis de ea in quantum tanti valoris est, secundum quem modum ad eum pertinet, quia remanet in suo dominio, et semper potest eam licite expetere,” Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fol. 67v; Cesena, 174-5. On this point, see Langholm, Medieval Schools, 558. 31 Summa theologiae, 2a 2ae, q. 78, art. 1, in Opera omnia (Rome: S. C. de Propaganda Fide, 1897), 9: 155. For a detailed discussion, see Langholm, Aristotelian Analysis, 81-9; and Langholm, Medieval Schools, 236-44. Gerard outlines the argument at Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fols. 67v-68r; Cesena, 175-6.

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use and ownership of a fungible are indeed logically separable, in a loan they are necessarily identical, “since in the same way as [the creditor] transfers the thing itself, he also transfers its use, and vice versa, and therefore he does not separate the one from the other as the aforesaid reasoning supposes.”32 Nor, in Gerard’s opinion, does it help to cite Aristotle’s view that it is unnatural that an artificial thing like a coin should give birth to another coin, since natural things such as wine and oil can also be the subject of usurious loans. Furthermore, artificial things such as houses legitimately “give birth” or produce profit in the form of rent.33 Thus it might be said that “a house gives birth to a house” when a landlord uses his profits to buy another house with a view to letting it out.34 Gerard’s correction of both Thomas and the canonists, characterized by Langholm as a theory of the “self-valuation of fungibles,” is very elegant.35 He began with the Roman law definition of a fungible as something that can be “counted, measured or weighed.”36 Fungibles—artificial (for example, specie) as well as natural (for example, wine or oil)—he argues, derive from their measure, weight or number a fixed and determinate value that remains unchanged provided the measure, weight or number remains constant. If such things appear to increase or decrease in value, it is not because of any change in their intrinsic value expressed in 32 “Ista eciam racio videtur dubia quia posset aliquis dicere quod fenerator non vendit usum rei quam mutuat sine ipsa re, immo simul vendit utrumque, quia alienat a se non solum usum rei sed eciam ipsam rem quantum ad substanciam et ideo quantum ad hoc idem iudicium videtur de utroque, quia eo modo quo transfert ipsam rem, transfert et ipsum usum et econverso, quapropter non separat unum a reliquo sicud supposuit dicta racio,” Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fol. 68r; Cesena, 176. Langholm discusses the argument in Aristotelian Analysis, 89-90. 33 For Aristotle, see above, n.3. 34 “Sed nec ista racio videtur valere propter duo. Primo quia usura committitur non solum in artificialibus sed eciam in naturalibus, utpote in vino et oleo et similibus, et per consequens dicta racio non potest applicari tantum ad illa. Secundo quia videmus quod domus est quoddam artificiale et tamen usque ad certum tempus potest quis per unam domum lucrari aliam domum equiualentem, et sic domus pareret domum,” Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fol. 68r; Cesena, 176. 35 The description is at Langholm, Medieval Schools, 557. Gerard’s argument is contained in Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fols. 68r-70r; Cesena, 176-82. For a more complete discussion than that offered here, see Langholm, Aristotelian Analysis, 118-28; and Langholm, Medieval Schools, 555-60. 36 See above, n.26.

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terms of number, weight or measure, but because of a fluctuation in the value of the things for which they may be exchanged.37 Thus, a bushel of wheat is always worth a bushel of wheat of the same quality, but in terms of another substance, say, goats or coin, it may, for example for reasons of scarcity, be worth more in February than in September. Natural and artificial nonfungibles—for example, vineyards, houses or horses—derive their value from external and contingent variables, such as time, condition and place.38 For this reason they are not comparable to one another and cannot be the subject of a loan (mutuum). Contingent variables, by contrast, do not affect the value of fungibles: in terms of number, weight and measure, a fungible is never worth more than itself; a bushel of wheat is always worth a bushel of wheat of the same quality, not a bushel and a half; ten florins are always worth ten florins, not twelve. By demanding more than the amount lent, the usurer therefore violates the intrinsic—the natural—value of a fungible determined and fixed by its nature or art in terms of number, measure or weight. Gerard maintained that this analysis also provides a correction to the canonistic argument from ownership.39 Because fungibles have a naturally determinate value in terms of number, measure and weight, they are necessarily sterile: 37

“Idcirco ab intrinsico sue nature potest certitudinaliter cognosci eorum valor, nec augentur nec minuuntur in suo valore quamdiu non distrahuntur in suo pondere. Et si videantur augeri vel minui, hoc non est propter aliquod augmentum vel minucionem valoris qui sit in eis sed per augmentum et minucionem nostre indigencie siue eciam propter augmentum vel minucionem in alijs rebus in quas commutantur. Et sicud de rebus que consueuerunt ponderari, in suo modo sic dico de alijs rebus que consueuerunt mensurari, sicut vinum, granum, oleum et consimilia,” Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fols. 68r-v; Cesena, 177. 38 “Hoc autem ... non potest dici de rebus alijs naturalibus, quecumque sint ille, nam alie res naturales non se habent in sua natura ad unum aliquod determinate, ex quo possit earum valor pensari et certitudinaliter cognosci; immo est impossibile certitudinaliter cognoscere aliarum valorem, quia earum valor non potest pensari aliquo intrinseco ex necessitate sed ex diuersis causis extrinsecis et contingentibus, ut verbi gratia, valor istius vinee vel valor istius agri quandoque pensatur ex loco, quandoque ex tempore, quandoque ex condicionibus personarum, quandoque ex diuersis alijs circumstantijs que possunt multipliciter variari. Et sicud dico in vinea vel in agro, ita et in quibuscumque alijs rebus naturalibus que non ponderantur vel mensurantur,” Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fol. 68v; Cesena, 177-8. 39 See Langholm, Medieval Schools, 558-9.

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That a usurious contract causes a thing that does not generate fruit to generate a profit is clear because it is assumed in the foregoing argument that lendable things, in which usury is committed, have assigned to them by nature or art a determinate value, and as a result cannot increase in value and for the same reason cannot bear fruit, for a thing that bears fruit always increases in value along with the fruit, for it is of greater value when it is in fruit than when it is not.40

Therefore, although ownership of the value of the sum lent indeed vests in the creditor (only ownership of the substance passes to the debtor), to demand an increment in the form of interest represents a violation of the intrinsically sterile nature of a fungible. Gerard’s quaestio survives in only two manuscript copies, and the reason for this is that his argument was paraphrased by Giovanni d’Andrea in a quaestio disputata of his own linked to a fragment of the title de regulis iuris in the Liber sextus that suggested the topic of usury: “Sin is not forgiven unless the thing stolen is restored.”41 Giovanni redacted the quaestio sometime between 1329-1330 and his death in the first visitation of the Black Death. In contrast to Gerard, we know a great deal about Giovanni.42 Born in Florentine 40

“Quod autem contractus usurarius faciat rem non generantem fructum generare lucrum apparet quia presupponitur in precedenti processu quod res mutuabiles, in quibus usura committitur, habeant a natura vel ab arte sibi prestitutum determinatum valorem et per consequens non possunt in eo crescere et ex hoc ipso non possunt fructum generare, quia res que generat fructum semper excrescit in valore cum fructu, nam maioris valoris est quando est sub fructu quam quando est sine fructu,” Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fol. 69r; Cesena, 179. 41 VI de reg. iur. 4: “Peccatum non dimittitur, nisi restituatur ablatum.” For the text of the quaestio, see Johannes Andreae, In titulum de regulis iuris novella commentaria (Venice, 1581; repr. Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1963), 62ra-66ra. The “commentary” is in fact a collection of questions Giovanni disputed on Wednesday afternoons during term and therefore known as the Quaestiones mercuriales. Giovanni subsequently arranged them according to the chapters of de regulis iuris. On the collection, see Cyprian Rosen, “Notes on an Earlier Version of the Quaestiones Mercuriales,” Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law, n.s. 5 (1975): 103-14; and O. Condorelli, “Dalle Quaestiones Mercuriales alla Novella in titulum de regulis iuris,” Revista internazionale di diritto comune 3 (1992): 125-71. 42 For biographical information, see Diplovatatius, Liber de claris iuris consultis, 229-39; Schulte, Die Geschichte, 2: 205-29; S. Stelling-Michaud, “Jean d’André,” in Naz, Dictionnaire de Droit Canonique, 6: cols. 89-92; Stephan Kuttner, “Johannes Andreae and his Novella on the Decretals of Gregory IX:

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Tuscany around 1270 and educated in Bologna, he was the most celebrated canonist of his day. A counsellor of popes, friend of Petrarch and professor of canon law at Bologna, he left influential commentaries on the entire corpus of canon law and was posthumously dubbed “the fount and trumpet of canon law” by the civilian Baldus degli Ubaldi († 1400).43 Giovanni’s enormous prestige meant that Gerard’s argument came to be associated with the more famous canonist; indeed, as recently as 1957, John T. Noonan described it as the “Andrean argument” against usury.44 It was the distinguished Norwegian economic historian Odd Langholm who corrected the attribution and established the importance of Gerard’s analysis for late medieval economic thought.45 Giovanni endorsed Gerard’s analysis, reproducing the Questio de usura almost verbatim, confining himself on the whole to inserting additional juristic allegations in support of Gerard’s points and to correcting inaccurate formulations of legal concepts.46 Most subseAn Introduction,” The Jurist 24 (1964): 393-408; repr. in Stephan Kuttner, Studies in the History of Medieval Canon Law (Aldershot: Variorum, 1990), xvi. There exists as yet no systematic study of the life and thought of this important jurist. 43 “Iuris canonici fons et tuba”; quoted by Kuttner, “Johannes Andreae,” 399, n.24. 44 Noonan, Scholastic Analysis, 67. 45 Langholm, Aristotelian Analysis, 30-1; Langholm, Medieval Schools, 550, 556-7. The history of Gerard’s economic writings is additionally confused by the fact that the manuscript tradition sometimes also credited him with authorship of Pietro di Giovanni Olivi’s († 1298) treatises on usury and restitution; see Dionisio Pacetti, “Un trattato sulle usure e le restituzioni di Pietro Giovanni Olivi falsamente attribuito a Fr. Gerardo da Siena,” Archivum franciscanum historicum 46 (1953): 448-57. These texts have been edited by Giacomo Todeschini, Un trattato di economia politica francescana: il “De emptionibus et venditionibus, de usuris, de restitutionibus” di Pietro di Giovanni Olivi, Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, Studi storici, fasc. 125-6 (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1980). 46 For example, Giovanni objected to Gerard’s use of the term “owner” (dominus) to describe the creditor: he owns neither the substance nor the value of the principal, but rather has an action for recovery of the sum lent: “Tu dic quod non bene advertit hic disputans, quia si debitor haberet unum scrinium nummorum, non est dare quod creditor unus ex illis sit dominus; habet autem principalem actionem contra debitorem,” Novella, ad VI de reg. iur. 4, Peccatum, n.11 (ed. cit. fol. 63rb). Similarly, Gerard incorrectly characterizes commodatum, the gratuitous loan of a non-fungible thing, as a profitable contract: see Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fol. 68v; Cesena, 175; and Giovanni’s comment, Novella, ad VI de reg. iur. 4, Peccatum, n.11 (ed. cit. fol. 63rb).

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quent canonistic authorities on usury, such as Giovanni Calderini († 1365) and Lorenzo Ridolfi († 1443), followed suit: indeed, the latter described Gerard’s argument as both “useful and elegant.”47 Nevertheless, Giovanni—and later canonists echo him on this point—had an important reservation about the argument as it stood. While agreeing that the valuation of fungibles in terms of number, weight and measure was a convenience, Giovanni declared that he did not understand why Gerard insisted that fungibles have a fixed and determinate value in such terms by nature: I would readily concede that the valuation of fungibles is simpler, especially when concluding a contract, by restricting it to [a fixed and determinate measure], but I do not understand why fungibles should have an inalterable fixed and determinate value beforehand provided the weight, number or measure remains constant.48

Langholm suggests that Giovanni misunderstood or simply rejected the argument.49 But the text of Giovanni’s quaestio indicates that he did not understand Gerard to be arguing that the value of fungibles cannot fluctuate in terms of other commodities; that is, he did not misunderstand the argument.50 Nor, clearly, did he reject the argument in general. Giovanni seems to have objected to the proposition that the categories of number, weight and measure derive from the nature of fungibles; and this appears to be the burden of the qualifying “antea” (“beforehand”) in his comment. As applied

47

“Sed quia hoc [that is, that usury is naturally vicious] utile et pulchrum videre est, paulisper in eo euagemur,” Tractatus de usuris, pars 1, q.7, ed. Lawrin Armstrong, Usury and Public Debt in Early Renaissance Florence: Lorenzo Ridolfi on the ‘Monte Comune,’ Texts and Studies 144 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2003), 144. Giovanni Calderini refers his readers to Giovanni d’Andrea’s quaestio in a repetitio on X 5.19.19 Naviganti; see Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 2652, fols. 283v-284r. 48 “Ego de plano concederem quod facilior est harum aestimatio et maxime tempore quo contrahitur restringendo ad illud, sed quod antea habeant certum et determinatum valorem durante pondere, numero vel mensura, non alternandum in plus vel minus, non capio,” Novella, ad VI de reg. iur. 4, Peccatum, n.13 (ed. cit., fol. 63vb). 49 Langholm, Medieval Schools, 557. 50 See the passage immediately preceding that just quoted, which reproduces Gerard’s observation about the price of fungibles in terms of other things (see above, n.37); Novella, ad VI de reg. iur. 4, Peccatum, n.13 (ed. cit., fol. 63vb).

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to fungibles, number, weight and measure are conventional constructs that have significance only in a contractual context and more specifically in the context of a loan. The value of a fungible is fixed by the contract—not by nature—and once the agreement has been concluded, the value cannot fluctuate with respect to number, measure and weight. With this caveat, the remainder of Gerard’s argument holds good. What does this appropriation and correction of a theologian’s argument by a jurist tell us about the relationship between law and ethics in the later Middle Ages? In a certain sense, Giovanni’s critique went to the heart of Gerard’s question and transformed the terms of the debate. Gerard’s objective was to reformulate the Thomistic consumptibility argument in a form that rendered it unassailable by resolving an inconsistency that derived in part from Thomas’ over-faithful adherence to Aristotle’s remarks about artificial fungibles. He appealed to the supra-conventional and metalegal standard of nature as the ground for distinguishing between fungibles and non-fungibles. Unfortunately, the only definition of a fungible to which he had access was one that itself derived from law and convention. It is precisely this point that Giovanni singled out, insisting on the conventional character of the definition. For Giovanni, there is nothing natural about number, measure and weight: they are conventions agreed upon by human society. In short, they are the product of positive law, which is the realm of canon law, whose function, as Gerard himself asserts, is to direct human society towards the common good “in accordance with faith in God and in expectation of the future life.”51 Gerard of Siena’s sweeping critique of usury was very much in the spirit of the times, which witnessed an intensification of the usury prohibition. In 1317 John XXII promulgated a decree of the Council of Vienne (1311-1312) which increased the penalties for notorious usurers and imposed excommunication on public authorities who tolerated their activities.52 It would be a mistake to con51 “Ius vero canonicum intendit dirigere in bonum commune secundum quod congruit humane societati, que non solum viuit ciuiliter sed eciam regulariter secundum fidem in Deum tendendo et vitam aliam expectando,” Questio de usura, art. 5; Leipzig, fols. 71v-72r; Cesena, 190. 52 The decree Ex gravi (Clem. 5.5.1) condemned the legitimation of usury as quasi-heretical and forbade the public licencing of usurers. For a translation, see John W. Boyer and Julius Kirshner, eds., University of Chicago

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clude from Giovanni d’Andrea’s reservations about Gerard’s argument that lawyers were somehow more accommodating of usury than their theological colleagues. On the contrary, Giovanni d’Andrea was among the most severe critics of the so-called “extrinsic titles” to usury, most notably the title first proposed by Hostiensis according to which a merchant might claim compensation for legitimate opportunities to profit that he renounced by making a loan, namely, lucrum cessans (cessant gain), what modern economists call “opportunity cost”.53 In Giovanni’s view lucrum cessans “furnishes a highway to usury” and should therefore be rejected.54 Late medieval and Renaissance canonists were not, as the literature sometimes suggests, more “business-friendly” than theologians; indeed, most accepted Giovanni’s judgement on cessant gain and his endorsement of Gerard’s natural law argument against usury.55 The relationship between canon law and ethics in late medieval Europe is a subject that merits further study. Although the two disciplines were clearly in accord about behavioral norms, the existing scholarship on medieval economic ethics, particularly on the usury prohibition, and this (admittedly narrow) case study suggest

Readings in Western Civilization, vol. 4, Medieval Europe, ed. and trans. Julius Kirshner and Karl F. Morrison (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 317. Gerard does not cite the decree in his quaestio. On the penalties for usury, see McLaughlin, “Teachings,” 2: 1-22. 53 For discussions, see McLaughlin, “Teachings,” 1: 144-7; Noonan, Scholastic Analysis, 115-28; and Spicciani, Capitale e interesse, 27-48. 54 “Quid si habens pecuniam volebat ad nundinas ire et merces emere, ut alio deferret vel tempore servaret propter lucrum; ego indigens pecunia illam recipio, offerens me illam restituere cum lucro sperato in termino et loco? Dicit hic Innocentius quod licet quidam contrarium teneant, ipse putat hunc contractum usurarium, nec scit illum excusare. Hostiensis ... dicit quod tali mercatori obligatus sum ad interesse illius lucri, quod facturus erat verisimiliter ex pecunia, dummodo nil fiat in fraudem usurarum et dictus mercator dicto modo non consueverit pecuniam tradere ad usuram. Verius videtur dictum Innocentii et quod dicitur de interesse, illud locum habet post moram debitoris, et ex contrario pararetur aperta via ad foenus, staret enim usurarius paratus cum capello, ocreis et calcaribus ad modum Foroiuliensium, dicens se ad nundinas ire velle, si sibi liceret taliter stipulari sub colore lucri speranti aliquid ultra sortem,” Novella, ad X 5.19.19, n.5 (ed. cit., fol. 77vb). 55 For a critique of some of the assumptions underlying the historiography, see Lawrin Armstrong, “Usury, Conscience and Public Debt: Angelo Corbinelli’s Testament of 1419,” in John A. Marino and Thomas Kuehn, eds., A Renaissance of Conflicts: Visions and Revisions of Law and Society in Italy and Spain (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2004), 173-240.

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that a fruitful area of research will prove to be the relationship between—and relative weight assigned by law and theology to— nature and convention.

MAX WEBER AND USURY: IMPLICATIONS FOR HISTORICAL RESEARCH1 Lutz Kaelber

Introduction Scholarly interest in usury varies widely across the disciplines. While medieval historians and economists continue to debate what if any effect the Catholic church’s ban on taking interest on loans had on economic development, sociologists have abandoned the topic. Only Benjamin Nelson has afforded it a detailed analysis.2 Nelson reconstructs the history of religious attitudes toward usury in the Western world using the Weberian theme of a transformation from an ethic of “tribal brotherhood,” or charity among kin, to one of “universal otherhood,” reflective of the dominance of purposive rationality in social relations. Relating his studies to Max Weber, he notes that Weber had analyzed provisions against usury in a variety of settings and contexts, including while being a student of commercial law and history under the auspices of the acclaimed authority in the field, Levin Goldschmidt.3 Yet Nelson provides no substantive discussion of Weber’s more intricate viewpoints, perhaps due to the fact, as he writes in the prologue to the second edition, that his book had been fully formed before he came across Weber’s writings.4 Since then few sociologists have acknowledged that Weber included references to the prohibition of contracting any increment above the principal of a loan in medieval Catholicism and in other

1

An earlier version of this paper was published under the title “Max Weber on Usury and Medieval Capitalism: From The History of Commercial Partnerships to The Protestant Ethic,” in Max Weber Studies 4 (2004): 51-75; reproduced here with permission of the journal. I would like to thank Nick Danigelis, Lawrin Armstrong, John Munro, the anonymous reviewers for Max Weber Studies, and Sam Whimster for their comments and suggestions. 2 Benjamin Nelson, The Idea of Usury: From Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969). 3 Nelson, The Idea, 235. 4 Nelson, The Idea, xi.

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religions, and even fewer describe and analyze what these references entail and what they mean.5 This paper addresses the development of Weber’s views on usury. Fragmented and strewn, in bits and pieces, over a variety of his writings, these views nevertheless provide important insights. Usury was not a peripheral topic in Weber’s writings. The topic emerged in Weber’s dissertation and gradually came to constitute a part of Weber’s inquiries into the salvation economy of medieval Christianity. Moreover, Weber’s writings on the topic contain insights pertinent to recent scholarship. The content of Weber’s thought is discussed in three sections. The first section explores the emergence of Weber’s views in the context of his dissertation and first book, which contains his most extensive discussion of the medieval prohibition of usury and its effects on economic development. It also addresses similarities and differences between Weber’s views and those held by contemporary scholars, many of whom saw the emergence of certain economic institutions such as commercial partnerships as a means of evading the Church’s ban—an argument Weber refuted. The second section addresses usury in the context of Weber’s Protestant Ethic essay published in 1904-1905 and subsequent rebuttals of his critics. Here, Weber drew on his new explorations of the relationship between religion and the economy as well as his earlier studies on the German stock exchange to argue a point that was consistent with, but not identical to, his earlier approach. Drawing parallels between medieval guild members and modern stockbrokers, who found innovative ways to cope with the moral regulation of economic affairs and ultimately render them ineffective, Weber questioned the validity of Werner Sombart’s materialist interpretation of the role of ethics in economic development. Had religion been merely the reflection of material conditions in the transition from a feudal to a capitalist economy, Weber argued, religious

5

See Wolfgang Schluchter, Paradoxes of Modernity, trans. N. Solomon (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 226-7, 343 n.247, who notes that Weber considered the ban on usury a part of the traditionalist ethic of the pre-Reformation church that inhibited the emergence of modernity but does not explore the context of Weber’s argument and why Weber thought this to have been the case, and Richard Swedberg, Max Weber and the Idea of Economic Sociology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 258 n.15, who acknowledges that Weber “discusses usury quite a bit” without further analysis.

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authorities would not have expressed heightened concern regarding usury in times of economic expansion. The third section addresses Weber’s views on usury as they derived from his comparative studies on the world religions and Economy and Society. Weber compared different religions’ usury provisions and demonstrated that their stringency did not correlate with economic development. Rejecting new claims by Sombart and others that the medieval Catholic church’s ban on taking interest on loans was a boon rather than a bane for investing assets, Weber thematized the development of markets and the development of usury prohibitions as countervailing rationalizations of the religious sphere and the sphere of the economy. While a discussion of the merit of Weber’s argument is beyond the purview of this paper, the conclusion endeavors some thoughts on how Weber’s views may inform current scholarly debates concerning the historical role of the religious prohibition of interest on loans in Western history.

The Role of Usury in Economic Development and the Relative Autonomy of Law and the Economy: Weber’s Dissertation Weber discussed usury as early as in his first book. Published in 1889 and based on his dissertation, it contains a legal analysis of medieval partnerships.6 In a little-known and heretofore never discussed section, Weber explores the topic to a greater extent than in any other writing and establishes the framework for later analyses. In The History of Commercial Partnerships, Weber responds to the argument that medieval partnerships were founded to circumvent canon law’s prohibition of usury, which secular statutes adopted as well. He notes: Endemann argued that even loans that represented, from an economic point of view, a loan of capital in return for the payment of 6 Max Weber, Zur Geschichte der Handelsgesellschaften im Mittelalter (Stuttgart: Enke, 1889); Max Weber, The History of Commercial Partnerships in the Middle Ages, trans. L. Kaelber (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003); see also L. Kaelber, “Max Weber’s Dissertation,” History of the Human Sciences 16 (2003): 27-56.

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fixed interest were constructed in the form of a partnership. We know of similar attempts to construct the purchase of perpetual rent as a hidden interest-bearing loan secured by a mortgage, but this view has been abandoned. The analyses by Arnold and others have shown that the purchase of perpetual rent developed gradually out of renting real estate in towns, and that it fulfilled independent economic needs and not at all acted as a stopgap for the missing interest-bearing loan. This holds true even when capital available for investment later employed this institution—but not before it had come to fruition independently—as a substitute for the non-existent interest-bearing mortgage loan ... While we have also seen that the commenda and the societas maris were indeed used as forms of investment, even for the property of wards, according to the statutes of Pisa, at that time these partnerships had already developed into their most advanced form in the Middle Ages. Therefore, it is a vast exaggeration to assume that capital invested in such a way had chosen this form of investment because there was no way for it to be invested in the form of an interest-bearing loan. There is no evidence for that; in fact, there is evidence of the contrary ... In the case in which a maritime venture experienced a catastrophic loss, the repayment of a loan taken out for the purpose of funding the venture had to appear highly questionable. This explains ... why the investment of capital took on the form of a share of the risk in exchange for a share of the profit, the latter of which nascent commerce, in need of capital, supplied willingly ... This institution corresponded to views prevalent in Mediterranean trade, the oldest area of large trade, which could not perceive of the investment of capital for the purpose of an expedition overseas in any other terms than as a participation in it—that is, as sharing its risk as well. Changes in these views reflect the fact that risk became more calculable. This, rather than a subtle attempt to circumvent the prohibition of usury, explains why part of the risk was assumed by capitalists. It also explains why forms of partnerships that economically resembled a loan still appear to have legally been constructed as partnerships with a fixed dividend. When the doctrine of usury—if one can agree that such existed— appeared on the economic scene, the development of the forms of partnership, as Lastig has strongly argued against Endemann, had long been concluded. The role played by the canonical prohibition was therefore not a small one, in Italy as well as in other places. Almost all statutes addressed it ... But one cannot argue that the development of a new institution of law, or merely the further development of an existing institution, happened due to this prohibition. The prohibition led to the end of some institutions such as the dare

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ad proficuum maris; and otherwise, it also served a restrictive, not creative, function. Even the proficuum maris, which corresponds most poorly to the institution of a partnership but seems best suitable as a paradigm of Endemann’s theory, appears to have been fully developed before the doctrine of usury took hold, and it later fell victim to this doctrine once it had fully taken hold. Its demise was not due to the way in which risk was distributed but happened because of the certum lucrum. These facts show clearly that the prohibition of usury did not give rise to the form of partnership.7

Weber makes four important arguments here, some of which are buried in obscure language and references. First, he does not advocate that usury laws were without impact. Weber distinguishes between loans for consumption and loans for investment purposes. For the former the prohibition of interest was indeed a constraining factor, whereas for the latter it led to the decline of the dare ad proficuum maris, which was based on a capitalist’s willingness (literally) “to give for making profit on maritime voyages.” That form of partnership developed in the later Middle Ages, when diminishing risks on commercial voyages to sea ports in the Mediterranean allowed for the calculation of an average profit, a share in which could then be reasonably guaranteed.8 While this arrangement took out the risk for the capitalist, who merely contributed his capital without further involvement and relied on a fixed dividend or rate of return (certum lucrum), it also made the partnership vulnerable to the accusation of usury and led to its ultimate demise, as Weber shows for the city of Pisa. The prohibition of usury was therefore not entirely without teeth. Weber’s second argument relates to the investment of capital in other, more common types of partnerships, both on land and at sea. The usury ban’s effect on those partnerships, he argues, was very limited. Investment loans were more important for economic development than consumption loans, and in the various forms of partnerships capital found ready investment opportunities. Since in 7 In this and other passages taken from English translations of Weber’s writings, I have made corrections or retranslated parts of them. Weber, Zur Geschichte, 111-4; Weber, The History, 137-9. 8 Weber, Zur Geschichte, 109-10; Weber, The History, 136-7. Its equivalent on land was the “dare ad proficuum de terra in bottega vel alio loco,” where an investor invested in a company operating out of a shop. See Weber, Zur Geschichte, 122; Weber, The History, 145.

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most medieval partnerships a partner who provided capital incurred the risk of losing it and sometimes involved himself in carrying on business, he could legitimately reap a profit. Such a profit was seen as entirely different from taking interest on a loan, which, with certain exceptions, was prohibited. Hence, the prohibition of usury simply did not apply to most of the commercial associations Weber explored. The third argument concerns the timing of the emergence of stricter usury laws and the legal development of partnerships in the later Middle Ages. In 1874 and 1883, the legal scholar Wilhelm Endemann had published a massive two-volume study on the economic doctrines in Roman canon law. It was not the first study that addressed usury, but compared to studies by Catholic theologians and authors such as Franz Xaver Funk’s,9 it focused more on usury laws’ legal construction, practical effects, and economic relevance than on their ethical aspects. Endemann’s tome was considered the major study of this sort at the time, but while Weber acknowledges Endemann’s contributions (as well as Funk’s),10 he takes issue with Endemann’s contention that medieval partnerships developed mainly as a means of circumventing increasingly stringent usury laws. In doing so, Weber relies in part on the findings of a certain “Arnold,” whom he mentions in the quoted passage, which is a reference to the scholar of Roman and German history Wilhelm Arnold. Arnold’s major study on the development of real property in German cities included census contracts (an annuity or perpetual rent), which did not emerge as a response to the prohibition of

9 Franz Xaver Funk, Zins und Wucher: Eine moraltheologische Abhandlung mit Berüchsichtigung des gegenwärtigen Standes der Kultur und der Staatswissenschaften (Tübingen: Laupp’sche Buchhandlung, 1868). 10 Weber’s History of Commercial Partnerships and his Grundriss zu den Vorlesungen über Allgemeine (“Theoretische”) Nationalökonomie (Outline to the Lectures on General [“Theoretical”] National Economy) of 1898 mention Endemann on several occasions (Max Weber, Grundriss zu den Vorlesungen über Allgemeine (“Theoretische”) Nationalökonomie (Tübingen: Mohr, 1990), 12, 16, 17). In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism of 1919-1920, Weber refers once more to Funk (whose name he misspells) and to Endemann’s studies that, according to him, “[are] today out of date in regard to detail yet still remain fundamental” (Max Weber, “Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus,” in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie I (Tübingen: Mohr, 1988), 57 n.; M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 3d ed., trans. S. Kalberg (Los Angeles: Roxbury, 2001), 176 n.32).

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usury.11 Yet Weber’s main argument derives to a much larger extent from his own studies, and those of the scholar of law Gustav Lastig, on medieval partnerships. In a pioneering analysis of documents in Italian archives, Lastig12 had launched an attack on Endemann’s thesis for not sufficiently distinguishing between different types of partnerships and misrepresenting how capital was invested in them. Weber supports many of Lastig’s views but he also goes beyond the latter’s studies by showing that changes in the legal arrangements of medieval commercial partnerships made them increasingly less similar to an interest-bearing loan or other such types of investments at the same time as the usury doctrine stiffened. Of the two main forms of commendas he studied, the unilateral and the bilateral commenda, Weber considers the first one to be historically older. In that arrangement, a capitalist provided capital to an enterprise in which a managing partner carried out the business transactions. The managing partner did not partake in the risk and gradually developed into the capitalist’s agent, buying and selling goods in his own name on the account of the principal. Weber argues that the unilateral commenda is therefore the medieval precursor to the modern form of commission agency. In the Constitutum usus, Pisa’s codified commercial customs dating back to as early as c. 1146-1154,13 this form of partnership was known as dare ad portandum in compagniam. It lacks a separate fund, which is a constitutive element of the bilateral partnership, for an investor contributes capital but is not made liable to third parties by his partners’ actions. The risk is thus limited to the investor’s contribution, and his involvement in the partnership is not transparent to third parties.14 In a bilateral partnership, on the other hand, a se11 W. Arnold, Zur Geschichte des Eigentums in den deutschen Städten (Basel: Georg, 1861), 92. For a supportive assessment, see H.-J. Gilomen, “Rente, Rentenkauf, Rentenmarkt,” in Lexikon des Mittelalters (Munich: LexMa, 1995), 7: 736. 12 G. Lastig, “Beiträge zur Geschichte des Handelsrechts, I,” Zeitschrift für das Gesamte Handelsrecht 23 (1878): 138-78; G. Lastig, “Beiträge zur Geschichte des Handelsrechts, II,” Zeitschrift für das Gesamte Handelsrecht 24 (1879): 387-449. 13 P. Classen, “Kodifikation im 12. Jahrhundert: Die Constituta usus et legis von Pisa,” in P. Classen, ed., Recht und Schrift im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1977), 311-7. 14 As Weber points out, the equivalent in modern German commercial law is the “dormant partnership” (Stille Gesellschaft). This institution of European

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dentary investor as well as a traveling partner each contribute capital and share the profits or losses. From a legal perspective the partnership’s capital is separate from the investors’ personal assets, and partnership business is undertaken in a joint name, that of the firm. In the societas maris referred to in the Constitutum usus, the sedentary partner’s legal liability is limited to his capital contribution, whereas the traveling partner’s liability is unlimited; hence, Weber argues, the modern limited partnership had its root in the Pisan societas maris.15 Time is important in this analysis, for the shift away from unilateral partnerships and toward bilateral ones as a preferred form of investment was well underway before elaborations of canonical usury prohibitions began in the late twelfth century. This finding not only undercuts the argument that religious prohibitions affected these economic changes but also explains why Weber holds that, when the doctrine of usury got its teeth, “the development of the forms of partnership ... had long been concluded.” The fourth argument contained in the passage is implicit but nevertheless important. His viewpoint is based on the supposition that both law and the economy in the Middle Ages had sufficient societal autonomy to proceed along their own trajectories and that developments in either sphere could simply be adduced by reference to another social sphere such as religion. While interdependencies are always empirically observable, their existence does not allow for the conclusion that one sphere depends on another or merely mirrors developments in the other. Thus, Weber sees a differentiation of institutional spheres before modernity, and with regard to the concomitant increase in the spheres’ relative autonomy, he follows his academic teacher, the legendary scholar of commercial law Levin Goldschmidt, who stressed such autonomy throughout his writings. Goldschmidt also agreed substantively with

civil law does not have an exact equivalent in common law countries, including those who stand in the Anglo-American legal tradition, where undisclosed or “silent” partners have unlimited personal liability in the absence of a limited partnership agreement. See Weber, Zur Geschichte, 108; Weber, The History, 135. 15 Weber also traces the modern general partnership, which has joint and several liability, to partnerships in Florence, derivative of associations of craftsmen and domestic traders, see L. Kaelber, “Max Weber’s Dissertation in the Context of His Early Life and Career,” in Weber, The History, 22-7.

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Weber’s position. Rejecting Endemann, Goldschmidt stated that the prohibition of usury was not effective in throttling economic development, for even canon law had provisions that permitted the taking of interest, not to mention more lenient secular laws. At most usury laws introduced additional restrictions to the market for credit, thus increasing rather than decreasing interest rates.16 Correspondingly, Weber17 notes in the concluding chapter that the prohibition of usury “was more unsettling to theoreticians than to practitioners.”18 Weber was thus first exposed to the issue of the prohibition of usury and its effects on economic development in his studies of the medieval urban Italian economy, which he approached as a legal scholar. His arguments concerning the limited effect of religious restrictions on interest in Europe’s most advanced economy, based on his own documentary analyses, and law’s and the economy’s relatively high degree of autonomy would affect his views when he revisited the topic as part of his Protestant Ethic studies fifteen years later. Usury and Medieval Religion: The “Protestant Ethic” Essays and Weber’s Rebuttals of Rachfahl After finishing his dissertation, Weber quickly moved on to other topics. He would not address the issue of usury in detail again until his two-part essay “The Protestant Ethic and the ‘Spirit’ of Capital16

L. Goldschmidt, Universalgeschichte des Handelsrechts (Stuttgart: Enke, 1891), 140-1. 17 Weber, Zur Geschichte, 151; Weber, The History, 170. 18 It seems impossible to determine who influenced whom. Presumably relying on Weber’s Italian case studies, Goldschmidt made his first extensive comments on the topic in 1891. However, it is likely that he had long before formed an opinion, which he may have expressed to Weber during the latter’s preparation of his dissertation. The agreement between the two scholars extended beyond usury. Despite Weber’s vociferous remarks toward the Poles in his Freiburg inaugural address (see, e.g., J. M. Barbalet, “Weber’s Inaugural Lecture and Its Place in His Sociology,” Journal of Classical Sociology 1 (2001): 147-70), they had similar views on German politics and economic policy at the time. Both were supportive of national liberalism and favored a limited intervention of the state in the economy. See K. Borchardt, “Max Weber’s Writings on the Bourse: Puzzling Out a Forgotten Corpus,” Max Weber Studies 2 (2002): 139-62; L. Weyhe, Levin Goldschmidt: Ein Gelehrtenleben in Deutschland (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1996).

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ism” in 1904-1905 and replies to his critic Felix Rachfahl in 1910. In his Protestant Ethic essay, Weber’s approach broadens. He is now concerned with the practical aspects of religious ethics, specifically with the ways in which religion inhibited or contributed to the emergence of a modern capitalist ethos represented in modern vocational culture, for which he adopts Werner Sombart’s term: the “spirit” of capitalism. Weber portrays the Middle Ages as a time before the modern notion of a calling (Beruf) broke the Church’s “mold of medieval economic regulation.” This mold he describes as follows: The phrase “Deo placere non potest” was used in relation to the activity of the merchant. But, when compared to widely held antichrematistic views, this represented a considerable accommodation of Catholic doctrine to the interests of the financial powers of the Italian cities ... [G]ain as an activity pursued as an end in itself was basically a “pudendum,” which was tolerated solely because it had become an established institution. A “moral” view like that of Benjamin Franklin would have been simply unthinkable. This was also the position of those directly concerned. Their life’s work was, at best, something morally neutral—tolerated, but on account of the constant danger of clashing with the Church’s ban on usury, spiritually dubious. The sources reveal that upon the death of wealthy people, considerable sums of money flowed into the coffers of the Church institutions as “conscience money,” some of it even going back to former debtors as “usura” wrongfully taken from them. Even skeptical persons not in sympathy with the Church tended to play safe and pay these sums in order to be reconciled with the Church just in case the worst came to the worst. It was an insurance against the uncertainties concerning the afterlife and because, after all (at least this rather lax view was widely held), outward conformity to the laws of the Church was sufficient to salvation. It is here that the amoral and in part immoral character of their actions becomes clear, as those concerned themselves saw it.19

Weber sees heterodox religion in the Middle Ages as accommodating, rather than being hostile to, economic activities in general, and

19 M. Weber, “Die protestantische Ethik und der ‘Geist’ des Kapitalismus, I: Das Problem,” Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 20 (1904): 32-3; M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism and Other Writings, ed. and trans. P. Baehr and G. C. Wells (London: Penguin, 2002), 25.

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mercantile activities in specific. Accommodation consisted of practices that allow remorseful transgressors to return to the bosom of the Church, but no positive endorsement of methodically controlled acquisitive activity existed. Weber chooses the phrase “Homo mercator vix aut nunquam deo potest placere” (the merchant can hardly or never please God) in Gratian’s collection of church laws (c. 1140) as indicative of limitations on enterprise. What is interesting in the passages above, however, is that Weber refers to the prohibition of usury and the related restitution of wrongful gain to illustrate his point. In the accompanying footnote, he notes: We can learn exactly how they used to come to terms with the ban on the taking of interest in, for example, Book I, chapter 65 of the statute of the Arte di Calimala .... : “The consuls must ensure that they make confession to those brethren [confessors] whom they judge most likely to pardon them, and that they do it in the manner most appropriate to the gift, service or reward received, in terms of the interest exacted for the past year, according to custom.” In other words, the guild obtains indulgence for its members through official channels and through submission to the Church. The instructions that follow are also highly typical of the a-moral character of capital gains, as well as, for example, the immediately preceding injunction (chap. 63) to record all interest and profits as “gifts.” Today’s stock exchange blacklisting of those who refuse to honor forward contracts by invoking the margin defense (Differenzeinwand) in court can be compared to the vilifying of those who went before an ecclesiastical court pleading exceptio usurariae pravitatis.20

Weber thus continues to draw on his dissertation to inform his assessment of commercial (and religious) medieval practices. From his analysis of the statutes of the Florentine Arte di Calimala, the prestigious guild of merchants of imported wool, he comes to the same conclusion as he did about fifteen years earlier. International merchants, facing the issue of usury on an almost daily basis, did not simply ignore religious concerns regarding their activities but found ways to adapt to them and assuage lingering doubts. In part this occurred through the aforementioned restitution, which could occur on a merchant’s deathbed, in part through the corporate 20

Weber, “Die protestantische Ethik, I,” 33 n.1; Weber, The Protestant Ethic, trans. Baehr and Wells, 51-2 n.36.

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practice of creative economic procedures that circumvented the prohibition of interest. At the end of the passage, Weber likens the defensive practices of medieval guilds to those of modern stockbrokers. The MWG edition of Weber’s writings on the stock exchange in 1894-189621 has made possible a better understanding of the origin of these words and their meaning, which has escaped all existing English translations of Weber’s Protestant Ethic writings. German civil law had traditionally not allowed forward or arbitrage contracts, which are contractual transactions based solely on the exploitation of the difference between an initially agreed-upon price and the price set later by the market or exchange. Since such contracts constituted gambling or betting, they were not enforceable, and the Differenzeinwand, or “margin defense,” was the legal defense used against claims in court lest such speculative contracts be enforced. However, stock market traders dealing among themselves could not invoke such a defense, and those who tried, in cases Weber encountered during his studies on the stock exchange, were indeed blacklisted and thus faced marginalization.22 As Weber puts it, the defense is analogous to medieval guilds’ strategies to vilify those invoking exceptio usurariae pravitatis, a defense based on the claim that one party’s contractual obligation derived from the other party’s depraved usury, rendering the contract unenforceable and thus the obligation non-binding.23

21

M. Weber, Börsenwesen: Schriften und Reden, 1893-1898, ed. K. Borchardt. MWG I/5 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1999). 22 K. Borchardt, “Einleitung” and “Editorischer Bericht,” in Weber, Börsenwesen, 28-31; Weber, Börsenwesen, 225, 507, 1040. 23 Weber, Börsenwesen, 220-1, 1044. Cf. the existing translations of the passage. For Talcott Parsons, traders who invoked the margin defense were “brokers who hold back the difference between top price and actual selling price” (M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. T. Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), 204 n. 31); for Stephen Kalberg, these traders are those “who criticize orthodox procedures” and the exceptio usurariae pravitatis is a plea “for an exemption to the prohibition of usury” (Weber, The Protestant Ethic, trans. S. Kalberg, 178 n.35); and for Peter Baehr and Gordon Wells, the blacklisted traders are those “who take profits from differential rates” (Weber, The Protestant Ethic, trans. Baehr and Wells, 52, n.36). Economy and Society contains a better translation of a similar passage, see M. Weber, Economy and Society, ed. and trans. G. Roth and C. Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 1189.

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In a different part of the essay, Weber takes issue with those who argued that modern capitalism emerged because nascent capitalist entrepreneurs were finally able to shed the ballast of religious constraints on secular activities. He mainly addresses Sombart’s thesis in Der Moderne Kapitalismus (1902).24 Having written a splendid dissertation on the rural proletariat’s impoverishment and exploitation in the Roman campagna (1888) under the guidance of Gustav Schmoller, a leader of the younger Historical School of political economy, Sombart was attuned to a Marxist-materialist interpretation of economic history early in his career.25 In Der Moderne Kapitalismus, Sombart related to Karl Marx’s26 notion that feudal economic structures—rather than the existence of usury laws in itself—prevented assets generated through usurious practices from turning into industrial capital. Sombart argued that the medieval economy was craft-based and the ban on usury reflected its traditionalist ethic.27 The corollary of this position is that lifting the prohibition of interest signified a boost for the new modern capitalist spirit. Weber is not convinced by Sombart’s thesis. Simply put, because such restraints had not been a decisive factor in the Middle Ages, their relegation to marginal status in the early modern era could not account for the emergence of capitalism. Moreover, Weber argues, not only did Luther remain a traditionalist on usury and other economic matters, but also strands of ascetic Protestantism continued to be concerned about the morality of taking interest. Therefore, an alleged desire on their part to engage freely in what previously would have been considered a usurious transaction is squarely at odds with the historical record.28 He affirms this view a few years later in his rebuttals to Felix Rachfahl’s arguments, referring to Rachfahl’s “peripheral points about church doctrine on ‘usury’ in the Middle Ages,” which for

24 W. Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1902). 25 N. Stehr and R. Grundmann, “Introduction,” in W. Sombart, Economic Life in the Modern Age, ed. N. Stehr and R. Grundmann (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2001), xiii-xv. 26 K. Marx, Capital, trans. B. Fowkes (New York: Vintage, 1977), 1: 915. 27 Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, 1: 184-7. 28 Weber, “Die protestantische Ethik, I,” 9 n.1, and 45; Weber, The Protestant Ethic, trans. Baehr and Wells, 30, 46 n.13.

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economic development “are not at all decisive.”29 He traces the origins of the Church’s usury doctrine to a false reading of the Greek Vulgate translation of the Decretals,30 mentions the Church’s dealings with usury along with confession as examples of the ways in which the Church was willing to accommodate but not approve of moral shortcomings, including those that resulted in ethically questionable economic practices, and alludes to modern Catholicism’s much more lenient dealings with those matters.31 This position not only reflects a shift in Weber’s work toward a sociology of medieval Catholicism32 but also echoes the views of Ernst Troeltsch, with whom Weber formed a “friendship between experts” that led to much cross-fertilization in their work.33 In articles later included in The Economic Teachings of the Christian Churches34 Troeltsch posited that the medieval Church affirmed its claim to “absolute universalism” through the establishment and enforcement of a unitary religious culture that bound all Christians together by a fellowship of love,35 and it rejected usury as a violation of the communitarian ethic of brotherhood.36 Such a process of universalizing ethical notions, Weber realized, necessitated the lowering of some standards (for the laity), including accommodating economic practices to a certain extent while formally drawing sharp distinctions between ethical and unethical activities. By 1910, with

29

M. Weber, Die protestantische Ethik, II: Kritiken und Antikritiken, 5th ed., ed. J. Winkelmann (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1987), 167; M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic Debate: Max Webers’ Replies to His Critics, 1907-1910, ed. D. J. Chalcraft and A. Harrington, trans. A. Harrington and M. Shields (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001), 73. 30 M. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Die Wirtschaft und die gesellschaftlichen Ordnungen und Mächte: Nachlass, Teilband 2: Religiöse Gemeinschaften, ed. H. G. Kippenberg. MWG I/22-5 (Tübingen: Mohr, 2001), 377 n.11. 31 Weber, Die protestanische Ethik, II, 341 n.20; Weber, The Protestant Ethic Debate, 129 n.20. 32 L. Kaelber, Schools of Asceticism: Ideology and Organization in Medieval Religious Communities (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 112. 33 F. W. Graf, “Friendship between Experts: Notes on Weber and Troeltsch,” in W. J. Mommsen and J. Osterhammel, eds., Max Weber and His Contemporaries (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 215-33. 34 E. Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, trans. O. Wyon (New York: Macmillan, [1912] 1956). 35 Troeltsch, Social Teaching, 55-58. 36 Troeltsch, Social Teaching, 128, 319-20.

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Troeltsch’s input, usury had thereby become part of Weber’s reflections on the role of religion for economic development.

Usury in Comparative and Systematic Perspective: Weber’s Later Writings Several influences on Weber’s views are evident in the revised Protestant Ethic, his writings on the economic ethics of the world religions, and the sections on religious communities and secular and religious rulership in Economy and Society. Weber elaborated on Troeltsch’s views but also took on recent arguments by Franz Keller and Sombart. In the revised Protestant Ethic, medieval Catholicism is afforded a more prominent role. Two new insertions concern the prohibition of interest. In one Weber asserts the validity of his earlier remarks to Rachfahl, that for the emergence of modern capitalism’s vocational ethic, and, as he underlines, only in this context, the canonical prohibition of usury played no significant role.37 In the other insertion, which is one of the longest, Weber responds to what can only be described as puzzling claims made by the Catholic theologian Franz Keller and by Sombart. In two separate publications, Keller38 and Sombart39 turned the existing paradigm concerning usury upside down. Keller claimed inter alia that the Church’s ban on usury pertained only to emergency loans made in cases of sudden privation. Such a tightly confined prohibition of the taking of interest helped rather than hindered capitalist development, he40 maintained, because it cut short entrepreneurs’ ability to make a profit through illegitimate means and prevented the loss of capital stock of temporarily impoverished craftsmen and others in need, who would soon again be able to contribute to the economy. Keller 37

M. Weber, “Die protestantische Ethik,” in Gesammelte Aufsätze, 27/The Protestant Ethic, trans. Kalberg, 168 n.23. 38 F. Keller, Unternehmung und Mehrwert: Eine sozial-ethische Studie zur Geschäftsmoral (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1912). 39 W. Sombart, Der Bourgeois: Zur Geistesgeschichte des modernen Wirtschaftsmenschen (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1913); Luxus und Kapitalismus (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1913); and The Quintessence of Capitalism: A Study of the History and Psychology of the Modern Business Man, trans. M. Epstein (New York: Dutton, 1915). 40 Keller, Unternehmung, 24-8.

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made this argument in the space of a few pages and with barely a reference to historical documents. Nevertheless, Sombart expanded on it in Der Bourgeois,41 perhaps influenced by Keller’s favorable treatment of Sombart’s previous work. Seemingly intent on finding the capitalist spirit’s roots in anything but Weber’s Puritans, Sombart advanced an ever-increasing hodgepodge of explanations. He attributed an important role in the genesis of modern capitalism to the Jews,42 trade in luxury goods,43 war,44 and, lastly, the fusion of adventure capitalism (for which he credits in part the European Jewry) with the modern bourgeois’ rational calculability.45 Sombart’s claim was as simple as Keller’s: by forgoing loans, money had to seek more productive purposes and was thus invested in business, since profit, unlike interest, was not affected by religious prohibitions.46 Like Keller, Sombart furnished few references to literature supportive of this view. In his response in the Protestant Ethic, Weber is as defensive as he had been against Rachfahl. Calling Sombart’s publication “a book ‘with a thesis’ in the worst sense of this expression” and the “by far the weakest ... of his larger studies,”47 he affirms his earlier positions: The truth is that [1] the church began to reconsider the prohibition of interest only at a rather late time; [2] at the time when this happened the forms of purely business investment were not loans at a fixed interest rate but the foenus nauticum, commenda, societas maris, and the dare ad proficuum de mari ... yet other than by a few rigorous canonists they were not held to fall under the ban; [3] when investments at a fixed rate of interest and discounting became possible and common, they encountered discernable difficulties stemming from the

41

Sombart, Der Bourgeois; Sombart, The Quintessence of Capitalism. W. Sombart, Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1911); W. Sombart, The Jews and Modern Capitalism, trans. M. Epstein (London: Unwin, 1913). 43 W. Sombart, Luxus und Kapitalismus (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1913); W. Sombart, Luxury and Capitalism, trans. W. R. Dittmar (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1967). 44 W. Sombart, Krieg und Kapitalismus (Munich: Duncker & Humblot, 1913). 45 Sombart, Der Bourgeois. 46 Sombart, Der Bourgeois, 314-22. 47 Weber, “Die protestantische,” in Gesammelte Aufsätze, 27 n.2; 57 n.; Weber, The Protestant Ethic, trans. Kalberg, 168 n.25; 176 n.32. 42

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prohibition of usury, which led merchant guilds to adopt drastic defensive measures (blacklisting!); [4] the canonists’ treatment of usury was purely formal-legalistic, and without any such tendency to “protect capital” as Keller ascribed to them; [5] lastly, the Church’s attitude toward capitalism, in so far as it can be ascertained at all, was determined by, on the on hand, a traditional hostility, mostly diffusely held, toward the growing power of capital, which was impersonal and hence not readily amenable to ethical control ... ; on the other hand, the necessity for accommodation.48

Convoluted in the original German, this passage succinctly depicts Weber’s views on usury shortly before his death. They had not changed significantly since his studies under Goldschmidt. The ban on usury does not rank among the chief reasons capitalism, in its “modern” manifestation in form and spirit, did not develop in the Middle Ages, nor was the Church’s rejection of interest in return for giving loans, while firm,49 responsible for the investment of money in ethically less clouded forms of investments such as partnerships. Rather, as Weber notes in an earlier passage in the same note, “parallels to the prohibition of interest are to be found in almost all religious ethics around the world.”50 These views touch on two larger issues Weber raised in two main projects in the last decade of his life: the importance of external religious guidelines for secular action, and the relationship between religion (as a societal order) and the economy. Weber addressed the former in his comparative studies on the world religions and the latter in Economy and Society. Weber’s statement regarding a prominent existence of usury rules in religious ethics is an implicit reference to, and a result of, his comparative studies of the economic ethics of the world religions, where he transcends the Protestant Ethic’s much more circumscribed theme of religious contributions to modern capitalism. In the con48

Weber, “Die protestantische” in Gesammelte Aufsätze, 57-8 n.; Weber, The Protestant Ethic, trans. Kalberg, 176 n.32. 49 Cf. Weber’s other major critic, Lujo Brentano, who held that the Church had effectively given up on regulating interest rates in the late Middle Ages and accepted a ceiling on interest rates. Weber did not respond. See L. Brentano, Die Anfänge des modernen Kapitalismus (Munich: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1916), 21. 50 Weber, “Die protestantische” in Gesammelte Aufsätze, 56 n.1; Weber, The Protestant Ethic, trans. Kalberg, 176 n.32.

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text of those studies Weber notes that Islam scorned usury,51 as did Indian Brahminism,52 whereas Confucianism and Taoism, due to their rationalism of “world adjustment,”53 did not at all or only to a very limited extent.54 Judaism is more difficult to characterize. Elaborating on remarks made in his studies on agrarian history in 1908, where he briefly touched on the issue of interest in Israel,55 Weber in his study on ancient Judaism traces religious provisions that allowed lending money at interest to strangers to the economic ethics of an oppressed people. Relevant passages in the Torah were interpreted, for both political and religious reasons, to mean that the taking of interest was allowed only from gentiles. Although voices existed which rejected this in-group versus out-group morality, the marginalization of Jews, for which Weber used the controversial concept of a “pariah people,” ensured the continued existence of this morality.56 However, Weber does not go nearly as far as the increasingly anti-Semitic Sombart, who argued that Jews had a special propensity to trade and barter and by extracting profit from money lending contributed to the emergence of the adventure spirit Sombart associated with modern capitalism.57 In terms of prohibiting the 51

Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. Kippenberg, 435; Weber, Economy and Society, 625. 52 M. Weber, Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen: Hinduismus und Buddhismus: 1916-1920, ed. H. Schmidt-Glintzer, MWG I/20 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1996), 118; M. Weber, The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism, ed. and trans. H. H. Gerth and D. Martindale (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1967), 56; M. Weber, Wirtschaftsgeschichte: Abriss der universalen Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, ed. J. Winckelmann, 3rd ed. (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1958), 235; M. Weber, General Economic History, trans. F. Knight (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1981), 268. 53 W. Schluchter, Rationalism, Religion, and Domination, trans. N. Solomon. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 85-116. 54 M. Weber, Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen: Konfuzianismus und Taoismus: Schriften 1915-1920, ed. H. Schmidt-Glintzer, MWG I/19 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1989), 279, 354-5; M. Weber, The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, ed. and trans. H. H. Gerth (New York: Free Press, 1964), 100, 159. 55 M. Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Tübingen: Mohr, 1988), 86, 90; M. Weber, Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations, trans. R. I. Frank. London: Verso, 1998), 137, 142-3. 56 M. Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie III (Tübingen: Mohr, 1988), 357-58; M. Weber, Ancient Judaism, ed. and trans. H. H. Gerth and D. Martindale (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952), 342-3. 57 For discussion, see Stehr and Grundmann, “Introduction,” xxxiii-xxxix.

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taking of interest, Weber makes clear, Judaism is not the most permissive religion, and it is not a crucial issue: The core of the obstacle [to developing modern capitalism] did not lie in such particular difficulties [as bans on interest in money lending], which every one of the great religious systems on its way has placed, or has seemed to place, in the way of the modern economy. The core of the obstruction was in the ‘spirit’ of the whole system.58

The taking of interest in return for a loan is thus only one of many prohibited or negatively stereotyped activities that could interpose obstacles to secular activities. Yet they were externally imposed; hence, unless accompanied by internal changes that redirected people’s motives, ideas, and interests, they do not prevent the economic process from running its course. A system of external religious prohibitions cultivated from the outside but not from the inside: it could not thoroughly penetrate economic actions with an inner value.59 This helps explain why in spite of variations in the prohibition of taking interest—none or little in Confucianism and Taoism, from other Jews in Judaism, from anyone in late medieval Christianity—none of these religions “developed” modern capitalism and introduced economic rationalization. The prohibition was not a decisive factor; if it had been, then areas influenced by Confucianism and Taoism should have been the first to usher in the modern rationalized economy. The role of medieval Catholicism in this process was traditional, for it did not provide psychological incentives for the pursuit of ethically tempered acquisitiveness. At best, it produced a “naïve affirmation of the world,”60 not ascetic Protestantism’s world mastery. Weber addresses this issue on a more general level in the context of the relationship between the economy and other societal orders in Economy and Society. Two chapters, both located in the older part,

58 Weber, Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen: Hinduismus, 194; Weber, The Religion of India, 112. 59 Weber, Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen: Konfuzianismus, 457, 460; Weber, The Religion of China, 232, 235; Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. Kippenberg, 348; Weber, Economy and Society, 562. 60 Weber, Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen: Konfuzianismus, 115; M. Weber, From Max Weber, ed. and trans. H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 291.

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concern usury. One thematizes the relationship between secular and religious rulership, which is part of Weber’s sociology of domination;61 the other, on religious communities, ties his writings on the economy in its relationship to other societal orders to his comparative writings in the sociology of religion.62 Though the chapters’ foci differ, Weber’s references to usury are similar and some passages virtually identical.63 Weber notes that while Christianity from early on rejected ingroup versus out-group morality in its emphasis on what Troeltsch had called “absolute universalism,” it developed its strongest rejection of the countervailing ethics, those of the “market,” in its opposition to interest when confronting the acceleration of economic growth in the twelfth century. This reflects a “principal struggle between an ethical and economic rationalization of the economy.”64 The Church attempted to come to grips with the amoral forces represented by the economy by means of a rationalization of the ethics that governed its hierocratic means, the dispensation of grace. This took the form of elaborate casuistries by Canon scholars. Next to the notion of a “just price” (justum pretium) in economic transactions, usury was one of the foils against which they could construct a moral code of ethical behavior in the secular world vis-à-vis the impersonalization and “a-morality” brought about by the market place. As he did originally in his dissertation, Weber stresses repeatedly that the systematization of religious ethics did not reflect material conditions and the unfolding of usury prohibitions is inconsistent with a materialist conception of history.65 Moreover, he alludes to the same means of evading or circumventing

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E. Hanke, “Max Webers ‘Herrschaftssoziologie’: Eine werkgeschichtliche Studie,” in E. Hanke and W. J. Mommsen, eds., Max Webers Herrschaftssoziologie: Studien zur Entstehung und Wirkung (Tübingen: Mohr, 2001), 19-46. 62 Schluchter, Rationalism, 411-32; H. G. Kippenberg, “Einleitung,” in Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. Kippenberg, 1-83; but see W. J. Mommsen, “Max Weber’s ‘Grand Sociology’: The Origins and Composition of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Soziologie,” History and Theory 39 (2000): 364-83. 63 Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. Kippenberg, 376-83; Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. 5th, rev. ed., ed. J. Winckelmann (Tübingen: Mohr, 1985), 710-12; Weber, Economy and Society, 583-87, 1188-91. 64 Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. Kippenberg, 377-8; Weber, Economy and Society, 584. 65 Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. Kippenberg, 377; Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. Winckelmann, 711; Weber, Economy and Society, 584, 1189.

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the ban on taking interest as in the original Protestant Ethic; i.e., the blacklisting of guild members who go before ecclesiastical courts, the purchase of general indulgences, and merchants’ testamentary gifts of conscience money and charitable endowments as posthumous restitution of usury. The latter together with the elaboration of the system of penance and the establishment of ecclesiastical pawn lending institutions in the montes pietatis signify provisions by which the Church acquiesced to ethical conundrums resulting from economic action.66 In all, the summary judgment is the same as it had been all along: the practical consequences of the Church’s ban on usury, while “difficult to estimate,” was that of being a burden on economic affairs, pushing it along the direction of a “moral declassement and obstacle to a rational business ethic.” Ultimately, it was “nowhere really successful in cultivating the development of capitalism ... and increasingly became a mere impediment of commercial life.”67

Conclusion: Weber, Medieval Catholicism, and Modern Debates on the Role of Usury This analysis has shown that usury was not of marginal importance in Weber’s writings. The fact that Weber considered the religious proscription of usurious practices at most a detriment and at least a nuisance to pre-modern economic development certainly does not imply that a sociological exploration of usury provisions and their impact on actual practices is unwarranted—just as no one, by way of analogy, would want to argue that the analysis of Confucianism or Islam is unimportant merely because these religions, at least according to Weber, did not help bring forth modern capitalism. In fact, Weber considered the Church’s policies toward usury, next to its doctrine of a just price, its practices of penance, and its system of a monastic supererogatory accumulation of merit,68 to be a core element of medieval Christianity’s salvation economy. Had 66 Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. Kippenberg, 382-3; Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. Winckelmann, 711; Weber, Economy and Society, 587, 118990. 67 Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. Kippenberg, 381-3; Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. Winckelmann, 711; Weber, Economy and Society, 587, 1190. 68 Kaelber, Schools of Asceticism, 46-55.

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Weber been able to carry out the remaining studies on the economic ethics of the world religions, he would have addressed the inner workings of this salvation economy in his intended study on Christianity. Usury, one might reasonably argue, would have played an important role in it. Given the time that has passed since Weber’s death, however, do his views have any pertinence to recent scholarship? Current scholarship on medieval religion is less inclined to provide a broad characterization of a period spanning close to a millennium than Weber, whose views were steeped in contemporary presuppositions of Cultural Protestantism with its anti-Catholic and anti-Lutheran elements.69 Even though Weber may have intended his statements to constitute ideal-typical depictions, many of them appear too general, without sufficient contextualization, and badly in need of revision in view of newer findings. For example, medievalists point to twelfth-century developments in the profit economy,70 religious dissent,71 reason,72 and literacy73 as crucial transformations toward more rationalized European societies even before the onset of the Italian Renaissance. Such studies shatter the impression of a relative continuity in medieval culture, and perhaps even backwardness, one might get from Weber’s admittedly fragmented remarks. They do, however, broadly support Weber’s (and Goldschmidt’s) notion of a relatively high degree of autonomy of the economic sphere from religious interference, and relate advances toward a modern type of market economy to developments in spheres other than religion. While usury has not been a topic of interest for sociologists since Nelson,74 it has received ample attention from medievalist econo69

G. Hübinger, Kulturprotestantismus und Politik: Zum Verhältnis von Liberalismus und Protestantismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland (Tübingen: Mohr, 1994). 70 L. K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978). 71 H. Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, trans. S. Rowan (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994). 72 A. Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). 73 B. Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). 74 Nelson, The Idea. An anonymous reviewer for Max Weber Studies took me

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mists and historians. Their studies fall into three categories: (1) neo-classical economists’ attempts at addressing the impact on usury; (2) comparative studies that have begun to expand Weber’s inquiries into other world religions and address Christian usury provisions in the light of other religions’ tenets and practices; and (3) a multifaceted controversy about Weber’s core question of how much the prohibition on taking interest on a loan impeded economic development. Economists have recently begun to address usury in the Middle Ages using neo-classical models. Robert Ekelund et al.75 proposed the following argument: leaders of the medieval Catholic church were no different from entrepreneurs heading economic firms in their attempts to become monopolistic suppliers of goods and services by establishing public policies that give them a comparative advantage over competitors. Such “rent-seeking behavior” can also be found, the authors contend, in the Church’s usury policies, designated to keep interest rates low and allowing the Church to borrow money more cheaply than in a competitive market environment, while at the same time restricting competition under conditions in which the Church was herself a creditor. Yet not only does this approach fit the historical development of the Church’s economic condition and its usury doctrines poorly,76 it is also inferior to task for claiming Nelson all too readily as a sociologist with the argument that Nelson was a trained medievalist and only later turned to social science (Parsons, Freud, and Weber). It is true that Nelson received both his master’s (in 1933) and doctorate (in 1944) in medieval history. However, as a prodigious reader, Nelson undoubtedly explored materials beyond the more specialized range of medieval/Renaissance studies as early as while preparing his dissertation, and with certainty extended his subsequent studies beyond those three scholars. The voluminous collection of Nelson’s papers housed at Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library awaits exploration to shed more light on this topic. I wish to thank Dr. Donald Nielsen, once a doctoral student of Nelson, for kindly supplying me with some of this information. 75 R. B. Ekelund, Jr., R. F. Hébert, and R. D. Tollison, “An Economic Model of the Medieval Church: Usury as a Form of Rent Seeking,” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 5 (1989): 307-31; R. B. Ekelund, Jr., et al., Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). 76 See E. L. Glaeser and J. Scheinkman, “Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be: An Economic Analysis of Interest Restrictions and Usury Laws,” Journal of Law and Economics 41 (1998): 1-36; C. G. Reed and C. T. Bekar, “Religious Prohibitions Against Usury,” Explorations in Economic History 40

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to Weber’s, for it relies on the assumption that the Church’s policies were driven by the intent to bring about economic results rather than moral reform. It is more compelling, Weber showed, to assume that when a hierocratic institution is embedded in a political and economic structure in which it can influence but not dominate public policies, it will respond to a rationalization in politics and the economy that intrudes into its own sphere (as in the twelfth century) by a rationalization of its own, namely in its ethical doctrine toward those spheres. Rather than being a reflection of changing material conditions, as some neo-classical economists want to have it—one might recall Sombart’s position outlined earlier in this paper—usury policies may thus be in sharper conflict with economic practices. Such policies may become more, not less valuerational, as rationalizations in societal spheres develop according to their own logic and quite possibly in different directions, which may lead to sharper conflicts between these spheres.77 Weber’s “political economy” model of usury policies, which affords religion the ability to contribute autochthonous elements to such policies, therefore deserves more recognition in these debates. The neo-classical model, at least as currently applied to medieval ecclesiastical policy, appears to represent a step back from Weber’s studies and might benefit from drawing on some of Weber’s insights. The comparative aspect of Weber’s writings on usury has been taken up by an increasing number of studies that go beyond Christianity. One of the first scholars to engage in this line of work was Nelson, who prefaced his exploration of Christian usury doctrines with a study of usury provisions in Judaism.78 Since then, scholars have studied Jewish vis-à-vis Christian lenders in the Middle Ages,79 and Islamic views toward usury in this and other periods.80 A truly comparative analysis of religious prohibitions against usury that (2003): 347-68. 77 Weber, Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen: Konfuzianismus, 479-522; Weber, From Max Weber, 323-59. 78 Nelson, The Idea, xix-xxii. 79 J. Shatzmiller, Shylock Reconsidered: Jews, Moneylending, and Medieval Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); S. Herman, Medieval Usury and the Commercialization of Feudal Bonds (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1993). 80 N. A. Saleh, Unlawful Gain and Legitimate Profit in Islamic Law: Riba, Gharar, and Islamic Banking (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); R. Lohlker, Das islamische Recht im Wandel: Riba, Zins und Wucher in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Münster: Waxmann, 1999).

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includes doctrines81 as well as their secular impact appears to be still in its infancy, however. Finally, historians have paid much attention to the emergence of the usury doctrine in the Middle Ages and early modern era, and to the ways economic practice reflected them or reacted to it. Their findings defy simple description. In regard to development of doctrine, there exists now a rich literature on how Canon lawyers and Church theologians defined and classified usurious practices. This literature shows their teachings constituted no monolithic set of teachings but a sometimes discordant set of voices on a common theme.82 The variations in their views seem far too great to accord with the impression of a strong consistency one might get from reading Weber and his contemporaries. Yet Weber’s overall argument, that the ecclesiastical teachings did not simply become more “capital friendly” but rather more stringent on usurious loans—as distinguished from other, actually or possibly legitimate forms of taking interest, including delayed repayment, cessant gain, emergent loss or damages, sharing of risk, annuities, and exchange dealing83—is not refuted. Nor is there evidence that disputes over usury simply ceased with the Reformation, as if such disputes were merely a reflection of the advent of modern capitalism on the

81 For example, S. L. Buckley, Teachings on Usury in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 2000). 82 See especially T. P. McLaughlin, “The Teaching of the Canonists on Usury (XII, XIII and XIV Centuries),” Mediaeval Studies 1 (1939): 81-147; T. P. McLaughlin, “The Teaching of the Canonists on Usury (XII, XIII and XIV Centuries),” Mediaeval Studies 2 (1940): 1-22; J. T. Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957); J. W. Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and His Circle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970); O. Langholm, The Aristotelian Analysis of Usury (Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1984); O. Langholm, Economics in the Medieval Schools: Wealth, Exchange, Value, Money, and Usury According to the Paris Theological Tradition, 1200-1350 (Leiden: Brill, 1992). 83 These are discussed in the aforementioned literature. Regarding the Church’s “accommodation” of business lending and public finance, see C. Menning, Charity and State in Late Renaissance Italy: The Monte di Pietà of Florence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993) for the credit lending practices of the montes pietatis, and L. Armstrong, “The Politics of Usury in Trecento Florence: The Questio de Monte of Francesco da Empoli,” Mediaeval Studies 61 (1999): 1-44; L. Armstrong, Usury and Public Debt in Early Renaissance Florence: Lorenzo Ridolfi on the ‘Monte Comune’ (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2003) for the religious accommodation of interest on communal public debt in Florence.

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super-structural plane.84 On the contrary, such disputes were played out with particular intensity in ascetic Protestant groupings.85 Moreover, Weber seems vindicated in rejecting simplistic assumptions about individuals or corporate entities as simply being rational utility-maximizing agents in religious markets86 who operate on the basis of strategic economic interests rather than longstanding normative concerns and ethical principles.87 But the crux of the matter is actual practice. While there is evidence of merchants so bothered by soteriological implications of their usurious activities that they paid considerable restitution on their deathbed,88 which implies that Church doctrine had not deterred them from engaging in these activities in the first place, historians have achieved no consensus on the extent to which usury doctrine influenced business practices and was a detriment to economic development. The still dominant view, that the Church’s condemnation of usurious loans “did nothing to shackle the development of capitalism”89 and was “never a hindrance to the growth

84 N. L. Jones, God and the Moneylenders: Usury and Law in Early Modern England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989); E. Kerridge, Usury, Interest, and the Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). 85 M. Valeri, “Religious Discipline and the Market: Puritans and the Issue of Usury,” William and Mary Quarterly 54 (1997): 747-68. 86 For example, Rodney Stark, “SSSR Presidential Address, 2004: Putting an End to Ancestor Worship,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 43 (2004): 465-74. 87 O. Langholm, The Merchant in the Confessional: Trade and Price in the Pre-Reformation Penitential Handbooks (Leiden: Brill, 2003). 88 B. Nelson, “The Usurer and the Merchant Prince: Italian Businessmen and the Ecclesiastical Law of Restitution,” Journal of Economic History 7 (Supplement) (1947): 104-22; F. Edler de Roover, “Restitution in Renaissance Florence,” in Studi in onore di Armando Sapori (Milan: Instituto Editoriale Cisalpino, 1957), 775-89; F. L. Galassi, “Buying a Passport to Heaven: Usury, Restitution, and the Merchants of Medieval Genoa,” Religion 22 (1992): 313-26; L. Armstrong, “Usury, Conscience, and Public Debt: Angelo Corbinelli’s Testament of 1419,” in J. A. Marino and T. Kuehn, eds., A Renaissance of Conflicts: Visions and Revisions of Law and Society in Italy and Spain (Toronto: Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 2004), 173-240. 89 J. Le Goff, “The Usurer and Purgatory,” in The Dawn of Modern Banking (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979): 25. LeGoff describes the birth of purgatory as a way of allowing usurers to avoid eternal damnation. See J. Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. A. Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); J. Le Goff, Your Money or Your Life, trans. P. Ranum (New York: Zone, 1988).

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of credit institutions,”90 has been tempered by the recognition, associated with the works of Raymond de Roover and others, that the prohibition had a certain steering function in guiding banking away from loans and toward exchange transactions and annuities.91 Since the prohibition applied to all loans but usury concerns could be circumvented much more readily in investment credit transactions, or avoided altogether in investments in most forms of commercial partnerships, such a function could indeed be readily observed in those areas of commerce and finance.92 Moreover, the ecclesiastical teachings were not equitably enforced. If anything, the petty pawnbrokers and small lenders of emergency loans for immediate consumptive needs were marginalized or forced out of the market if not legally protected by a charter or a license, which ironically drove interest rates up instead of down, while larger lenders and companies were less likely to suffer the opprobrium of usury when engaging in credit-bearing transactions.93 The research on evasive practices engendered by the prohibition of usury, together with the exploration of its unintended consequences, will likely continue to fuel debates among historians about religion’s role in the emergence of modern capitalism. Many themes in these debates still resonate with Weber’s exploration. While it is true that Weber relied on a much narrower base of documents than economic historians have access to today, his approach to studying usury provisions as an important example of the ways in which religious ideas might shape and direct secular mate90

R. Lopez, “The Dawn of Modern Banking,” in The Dawn of Modern Banking (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979), 22; see also H.-J. Gilomen, “Wucher und Wirtschaft im Mittelalter,” Historische Zeitschrift 250 (1990): 265-301. 91 J. Kirshner, “Raymond de Roover on Scholastic Economic Thought,” in J. Kirshner, ed., Business, Banking, and Economic Thought in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Selected Studies of Raymond de Roover (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1974), 32-33; J. Munro, “The Medieval Origins of the Financial Revolution: Usury, Rentes, and Negotiablity,” International History Review 25 (2003): 505-62. 92 E. S. Hunt and J. M. Murray, A History of Business in Medieval Europe, 1200-1550 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 70-4; D. Wood, Medieval Economic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 181-205. 93 For example, F. C. Lane and R. C. Mueller, Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 75-8; Gilomen, Wucher, 290-5.

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rial interests can still be considered relevant to these debates.94 Usury, Weber thought, played a significant role in medieval religion’s moral economy and was an integral part of his sociology of religion and writings on the relationship between religion and the economy. Therefore it was an important topic; as an issue, it occupied institutions and sometimes posed stark ethical choices for individuals. Modern historians agree, and so did the fourteenth-century Italian Benvenuto de Rambaldis da Imola: “He who commits usury goes to hell, he who doesn’t, faces penury.”95

94 Cf. K. L. Reyerson, “Der Aufstieg des Bürgertums und die religiöse Vergemeinschaftung im mittelalterlichen Europa,” in W. Schluchter, ed., Max Webers Sicht des okzidentalen Christentums (Tübingen: Mohr, 1988), 410-36. 95 Gilomen, Wucher, 265.

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THE KING’S BUSINESS IN AFRICA: DECISIONS AND STRATEGIES OF THE PORTUGUESE CROWN Ivana Elbl

Introduction In his recent AHA presidential address, Joseph C. Miller called for return to a humanist approach to history and to rigorous historicism.1 There are few areas where this approach can be more useful than in assessing the nature and roots of the early overseas expansion. The entrepreneurial role of the Portuguese Crown in the overseas expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is intricately woven into debates on the origins of modernity and the capitalist economy. The purpose of these debates is to discover the historical moments of change, breaks with the old and the emergence of the new. As Luís Felipe Thomaz has recently pointed out, past historiography has created a double trap for those analysing the early Portuguese overseas expansion: the nineteenth-century tradition, which hailed the overseas expansion for its contribution to scientific discovery and the unfolding of human horizons, and the twentieth-century reaction to this heroizing approach, which stressed a societal and structuralist approach and sought answers in economic and social processes.2 Yet, in different ways, both trends saw the overseas expansion and the role of the Portuguese state as a break with the past and a foretaste of a modern, capitalist future. The role of the Portuguese Crown in the economy of the early overseas expansion is thus deeply entangled in an ideological and 1

Joseph C. Miller, “Presidential Address: History and Africa/Africa and History,” The American Historical Review 104 (1999): 25-32. 2 Luís Felipe Thomaz, “Le Portugal, et l’Afrique au XVe siècle: Les débuts de l’expansion,” Arquivos do Centro Cultural Português 26 (1989): 161-2. The article was reprinted, in Portuguese, in L. F. Thomaz, De Ceuta a Timor (Lisbon: Difel, 1994), under the title “A evolução da política expansionista portuguesa na primeira metade de quatrocentos” (pp. 43-147). The foremost representative of the Braudelian school of economic historians in Portugal was Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, the leading figure in the study of economic aspects of the Portuguese overseas expansion.

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epistemological modelling that is essentially presentist. Rather than following the flow of history from a deeper to a more recent past, it looks back into the past from a contemporary viewpoint. While not without usefulness, this approach invites anachronistic and monist explanations, both of which have made a deep imprint on the historiography of the overseas enterprise of the Portuguese Crown.3 Many modern historians perceived the overseas enterprise of the Portuguese Crown as a substantial innovation in commercial capitalism. Manuel Nunes Dias’ enduring concept of the “capitalismo monárquico português” (Portuguese state capitalism) constitutes only one reflection of the essential place the Portuguese overseas ventures have been assigned in the various theories and historical models of the emergence of capitalism.4 It is easily overlooked, however, that the decisions and strategies that the Portuguese Crown had adopted in connection with its African enterprises were based on continuity with pre-existing practices and administrative methods,5 rather than on innovation and change. 3 For an excellent and extensive summary of the historiography of the early Portuguese expansion and its perceived links to the emergence of capitalism see Luís Felipe Thomaz, “Expansão portuguesa e expansão europeia— Reflexões em torno da génese dos descobrimentos,” in L. F. Thomaz, De Ceuta a Timor (Lisbon: Difel, 1994), 1-41. 4 Manuel Nunes Dias, O capitalismo monárquico português (1415-1549) (Coimbra: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra, 1963-4), 2 vols. See in particular the section “A definição do capitalismo monárquico” (vol. 2, 189216). For the period he covered, the basic precepts of the economic part of Nunes Dias’ interpretation are still generally accepted by contemporary leading scholars. The main criticisms of his theory focus on his neglect of ideological factors. See for example Sanjay Subrahmanyam and Luís Felipe Thomaz, “Evolution of Empire: The Portuguese in the Indian Ocean during the Sixteenth Century,” in Political Economy of Empires, edited by James D. Tracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 301-2. Unlike the ideological aspects, the socio-economic and administrative history of the fifteenth and early sixteenth-century expansion has been somewhat neglected lately. The selection of articles in some of the recent collections, such as Tracy, The Political Economy of Empires, Mark A. Burkholder, ed. Administrators of Empire (Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate) and David Armitage, ed., Theories of Empire (Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1998) illustrates this trend clearly by focussing on the later sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. 5 For a seminal overview of the evolution of Portuguese state finances see Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, “Finanças públicas e estrutura do Estado,”in Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, Ensaios II sobre história de Portugal (Lisbon: Livraria Sá da Costa, 1968), 25-63. The late medieval Portuguese finances followed a pattern similar to those of Castile, explored in great detail by Miguel Angel Ladero Quesada, in particular his Fiscalidad y poder real en Castilla (1252-1389)

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The Crown’s response to overseas economic opportunities were grounded in contemporary needs and attitudes, in other words in the historical context which they were a part of. Like other late medieval noble enterprises, the Crown overseas ventures cannot be fully understood using the modern concepts of private or state enterprise, but require an appreciation of the economics of the noble household, with the royal household as its most complex form. The revenues of a noble household, including that of the king, were crucial but subordinate tools in fulfilling loftier goals, mostly social or political in nature. In other words, wealth was not a final objective, but a means through which the quest for power and honour could be satisfied. There was no strict division between economic and non-economic projects. On the contrary, economic enterprises and ideologically motivated goals tended to be mutually supportive, at least in principle. Late medieval states and other autonomous units, whether feudal or communal, were faced with growing expenditures, especially those associated with war. The problem of growing costs was compounded by a crisis in revenues, reflecting the triple scourge of epidemics, wars and famines, all of which contributed to a sharp demographic decline that did not begin to reverse itself until the second half of the fifteenth century. This decline affected both royal and noble revenues, whether they were generated by income from land holdings and rents, proceeds from regalian rights, or customs and taxes sanctioned by tradition. The resulting dissatisfaction among the noble elites constituted an explosive political issue, which most monarchs of the period had to face. The Portuguese Crown found itself in the unenviable position of not only having to deal with its own fiscal problems but also to alleviate the social and political crises experienced by its most powerful subjects.6 (Madrid: Editorial Complutense, 1993) and La hacienda real de Castilla en el siglo XV (La Laguna: s.n., 1973), For a summary of his findings in English see Miguel Angel Ladero Quesada, “Castile in the Middle Ages,” in Richard Bonney, ed., The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c. 1200-1815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 177-199. 6 For an excellent summary of these developments see the works of Luís Felipe Thomaz referred to above. For an extensive overview, see also A. H. de Oliveira Marques, Portugal na crise dos séculos XIV e XV (Lisbon: Presença, 1987); João José Alves Dias, ed., Portugal do renascimento à crise dinástica (Lisbon: Presença, 1998); José Mattoso, ed., História de Portugal, Vol. 2, A monárquia feudal (1096-1480) and Vol. 3, No alvoroço da modernidade (Lisbon:

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The early overseas expansion represented a windfall for the Crown. It offered a partial solution to a number of severe problems confronting the kingdom. The overseas ventures were a source of socially sanctioned opportunities, new lands, and new sources of income. They also enhanced the Crown’s power and the means to implement its will by significantly enlarging its revenues through enlarging the royal fazenda (direct holdings), and through creating opportunities to implement new taxation, customs fees, and other sources of monetary income. However, neither economic rationality nor revenue as such were the paramount factors in the Crown’s decision-making: the ultimate objectives were prestige and political power at home.

Royal Power and the African Enterprise It is important to realize that the Portuguese Crown became a dominant economic player in the early overseas expansion not necessarily because of its share in the enterprise, but because of the paramount political and legislative power it wielded. The extensive rights the Crown claimed over the early overseas enterprise were derived from the medieval notion of the king's sovereignty over his realm. The king had the right to decide how the kingdom’s resources were to be used for the common good and to divide the available wealth among his followers. The revertibility of fiefs and other holdings back to the Crown was one of the key precepts of feudal law. In principle, all unassigned or newly acquired resources belonged to the Crown, and the King had the right to use them as he saw fit. In the Iberian context, the formative experience and memory of the reconquista provided a vivid reinforcement to this fundamental idea. The Portuguese Crown based its policies concerning access to and trade with Africa and other non-Christian areas on these time-honoured principles, both in theory and in practice. Thus, although the first overseas explorations in Africa were undertaken on the initiative of private persons, such as Infante D. Henrique and Infante D. Pedro, the Portuguese Crown had the paramount claim to any tangible results of such ventures because they Estampa, 1993); and A. H. de Oliveira Marques, ed., A expansão quatrocentista (Lisbon: Estampa, 1998).

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were carried out by sworn vassals of the king, in the name of the king and in the “service of God and the King.” In the international arena, the Crown first justified its title to overseas dominium invoking the rights of first discovery by its subjects. Subsequently, however, a more powerful justificatory argument was developed. On 8 January 1455, the hard-pressed Pope Nicholas V yielded to the skilful diplomatic pressure of the Portuguese delegation and issued the bull Romanus Pontifex, which declared that the Portuguese Crown was to hold dominium over the access to Africa south of Cape Bojador, to the exclusion of all other Christians, as a reward for its costly military effort against Islam. No power or person was to deprive the beneficiaries of the bull of their just reward. The revenues generated from the new terrritories were thus conceptualized as a redress for damages suffered and as a just reward for the Crown’s service to God.7 Whoever should deprive the Crown of its well-deserved rewards, directly or indirectly, would show disrespect both for the Apostolic authority of the Pope and for the service rendered by Portugal to God. The Bull carefully spelled out the ecclesiastical prohibition against any military, commercial, and fishing expeditions not authorized by the King of Portugal or D. Henrique.8 Interloping south of the Cape Bojador, or even organizing or ordering interloping expeditions, were declared to be offences punishable by excommunication if the offender was an individual or by interdict in the case of corporate bodies.9 An excerpt from the Bull stipulating these measures was to be posted on the doors of principal churches and announced to the public from the pulpit, and also sent to major potentates within and outside of the Iberian peninsula.10 The Romanus Pontifex did not content itself with relying only on the argument of a just reward but exploited the long-standing canon law principle that the Pope possessed the right to regulate contacts

7 João Martins da Silva Marques, ed., Descobrimentos portugueses. Documentos para a sua história, vol. 1, 1147-1460 (Lisbon: Instituto para a Alta Cultura, 1444), 505 (doc. 401). 8 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 1: 505-7 (doc. 401). 9 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 1: 507 (doc. 401). 10 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 1: 507-8 (doc. 401). For a surviving printed copy of the public notice see AN/TT (Arquivos Nacionais—Torre do Tombo, Lisbon), Gaveta 10, maço 5, doc. 27. See also Ch. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415-1825 (New York: Knopf, 1969), 22.

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between Christians and non-Christians, contacts which could potentially result in spiritual pollution or corruption. The Bull expressly permitted the king of Portugal, the Infante D. Henrique, and persons authorized by them, to associate with Muslims and pagans as long as trade in prohibited goods was not involved. The justification was that the Pope could trust the above mentioned parties that their primary motive was to advance the interests of God, whereas others might seek only fast profit or even supply weapons or iron to the Infidels.11 The two key arguments of the Romanus Pontifex, just reward and authorization to associate with non-Christians, provided the Crown with a rock-solid base from which to regulate the African enterprise to its greatest advantage. All subsequent royal legislation stressed the Crown’s sole right to govern the modalities of contact with Africa, in order to maximize its revenue advantages. Violators of the royal decrees faced severe penalties. Secular punishments could be very heavy. While in the 1440s interloping in West Africa was punishable only by confiscation of property, with the Romanus Pontifex it became a capital crime, sometimes punishable by burning at the stake. The bull itself only threatened offenders with excommunication but made it clear the church was willing to lift the spiritual penalty if they settled with the Crown.12 Nevertheless, the full implications of Bull provided the secular arm of the law with an avenue to invoke a spiritual offence ultimately punishable by burning at the stake. In at least one known instance, this punishment was applied before the codification of the scales of interloping punishments in 1474. An interloper, caught by Diogo Gomes off the Senegalese coast in 1460, was publicly tortured on the wheel and burned in Lisbon, together with the gold he purchased in Africa and the swords he tried to sell, against papal prohibition.13 The 1474 decree became the first law regulating the West African trade to include a penal scale. Direct or indirect participation in the West African trade, unauthorized raiding in West Africa, and piracy against the legitimate traffic were all offenses punishable by death and loss of all property to the Crown. Ship captains guilty

11

Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 1: 505 and 507 (doc. 401). Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 1: 507 ( doc. 401). 13 J. M. Garcia, ed., As viagens dos descobrimentos (Lisbon: Editorial Presença, 1983), 46-7. 12

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of false declaration or concealment of goods over one mark of silver in value were also to suffer capital punishment. Smuggling or consent to smuggle and a host of other fraud charges called for various fines and in many cases for banishment.14 By 1514, the punishments had become even stiffer. Capital punishment applied to a greater number of offenses. Unauthorized trading or raiding in Guinea and piracy against the legitimate traffic were still punishable by death and loss of property to the Crown. So was, however, smuggling of goods over the value of six marks of silver to Guinea. Anyone caught trading illicitly in Guinea in goods worth more than one mark of silver in local value was to be put to death.15 The stiffening of the penal scale reflected, ironically, both the practical difficulties the Crown experienced in enforcing its laws, and the legal strength of its proprietary claims.

Revenue-Generating Options The Crown had two basic strategic options to choose from in managing its business in Africa: direct or indirect participation, aimed at maximization of revenue benefits (fiscalism)16 and political objectives. These options permitted numerous combinations, decided by situational dynamics and policy oscillations (Table 1). Well into the first half of the sixteenth century, the Crown believed that direct involvement would generate more revenue, although indirect exploitation of the overseas enterprise clearly constituted a less risky and labour-intensive mode of revenue generation. It habitually reserved for itself trade with gold-exporting regions (Arguim and the Gold Coast). However, in the rest of Western Africa the Crown employed mostly indirect methods of revenue gathering.

14 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, vol. 3, 1461-1500 (Lisbon: Instituto da Alta Cultura, 1971), 154 (doc. 115). 15 António Brásio, ed., Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série (Lisbon: Agência Geral do Ultramar, 1958), 2: 79-92 (doc. 28). 16 For a concise definition of these concepts see Richard Bonney, “Introduction: The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c. 1200-1815,” in Richard Bonney, ed., The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c. 1200-1815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 4-5.



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favour of a more restricted policy, whether partial royal monopolies or monopolistic arrangements with private parties. The standing privileges of the Cape Verde Islanders notwithstanding, D. Afonso V leased, in 1469, exclusive rights to the West African trade to Fernão Gomes, a wealthy Lisbon merchant. The King reserved to himself specific commodities, in particular malagueta (grains of paradise), eventually compelling Gomes to negotiate a separate lease allowing him to trade the spice.20 The new Crown policy was far from consistent. In 1470 the King reaffirmed the licence system,21 de facto violating the Gomes contract. The ambiguities were resolved only in 1474 when the Crown Prince D. João assumed direct control over the African enterprise. The decree of 31 August 1474 prohibited all unlicensed traffic south of the Cape Bojador and reserved the right to profit from the trade with Atlantic Africa to the Crown or its designates. The decree forcefully reasserted the claim that the right to regulate contacts with Africa constituted a just reward for the royal services to God and Christianity and threatened transgressors with severe punishments.22 Its provisions were confirmed in 1481,23 and in principle reaffirmed in 1514.24 Although the assumption that a full monopoly was the most rewarding alternative formed the basic platform of the majority of the royal pronouncements on the early overseas ventures, the Crown attempted fully to impose such an option only briefly, in 15181520.25 Until then, it relied largely on regional and commodity monopolies, or on exclusive renewable contracts with private entrepreneurs. Hieronymus Münzer, a German humanist and diplomat writing in the early 1490s, claimed that the Portuguese King had a monopoly on every major Atlantic import and export commodity and that private parties were left to trade in parrots, monkeys and 20

Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 129-30 (doc. 97); João de Barros, Ásia de João de Barros. Dos feitos que os Portugueses fizeram no descobrimento e conquista dos mares e terras do Oriente. Primeira Decada (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional Casa da Moeda, 1988), 72. 21 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 86 (doc. 60). 22 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 153-4 (doc. 115). 23 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 220-2 (doc. 152). 24 Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 2: 71-3 (doc. 26) and 7992 (doc. 28). 25 Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 2: 71-3 (doc. 26) and 7992 (doc. 28).

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straw mats.26 The real picture was not so dismal. The Crown kept direct control above all over the main source of African gold, the Gold Coast and Arguim, a fortified trading station off the coast of Mauritania, which constituted an important link to the Saharan trade networks. All other areas could be rented out or licences could be purchased for them. Even the Arguim trading station was leased out several times before 1521.27 Certain key commodities were indeed reserved for the Crown. The decree of 1470 claimed that trade in melegueta, other spices, civet cats, and rhinoceros horns was reserved to the Crown from the very beginning of the trade, and added brasil wood and precious stones to the list.28 In 1480, the same restrictions were placed on hanbels (voluminous Moroccan outer clothing)29 and conchas, red shells from the Canaries, because of their importance in the Gold Coast trade.30 In March of 1514, the Crown summarily prohibited trade in all goods sold on the Gold Coast, and outlawed the export of such commodities to the Cape Verde Islands.31 The penal code issued in June of 1514 proclaimed that private traders could deal only in merchandise and areas specified in the respective licence or contract.32 However, only one commodity required a special additional licence: civet cats, a source of valuable musk for perfume production.33 The severity of this decree was further blunted by the availability of special licences and contractual exemptions, or simply through the lack of enforcement.34 The Crown also used its legislative power to insert itself as a compulsory middleman. Thus Fernão Gomes’ contract demanded that he sell all his ivory to the Crown,35 as opposed to disposing 26 Münzer, “Itinerarium,” in Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 1: 244-5 (doc. 31). 27 Viagens de Luís de Cadamosto e de Pedro da Sintra (Lisbon: Academia Portuguesa da História, 1948), 17-8; AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, liv. 9, fol. 96r; AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte I, maço 58, doc. 155. 28 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 86 (doc. 60). 29 AN/TT, Leis, maço 1, docs. 144 and 185. 30 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 214-5 (doc. 147). 31 Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 2: 71-3 (doc. 26). 32 Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 2: 81 (doc. 28). These provisions were later incorporated into the Ordenações Manuelinas 33 Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 2: 90 (doc. 28). 34 Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 2: 90 (doc. 28). 35 Barros, Ásia. Primeira Decada, 72.

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of it on the open market. The São Tomé charters of 1485 and 1493 compelled the settlers to purchase all their manilhas (heavy brass or copper bracelets), an essential European export to West Africa, from the Crown (whether in São Jorge da Mina or in Lisbon). They further ordered the settlers to sell all malagueta, tailed pepper, and slaves to the Crown agencies for a fixed price well below the market value.36 These requirements significantly delayed the progress of São Tomé settlement and, although they were significantly softened in 1500, continued to have negative impact on the supply of slaves to São Jorge da Mina.37 Measures such as these, in combination with the Crown’s repeated changes of policy, caused severe shocks both to the traffic itself and to its administration. In the early 1470s, for example, the partial retraction of the Cape Verdian trading privileges and the imposition of the Gomes contract resulted not only in a sharp formal protest from the povo (third estate) in the 1473 Cortes but in near chaos, smuggling, and piracy in Africa, because even those who would have normally purchased a license resorted to interloping.38 In the late 1510s, the Crown almost destroyed the rapidly expanding slave trade with Upper Guinea by first requiring the Cape Verde Islanders to trade only in locally produced commodities and, a year later, forbidding them to buy slaves for export.39 The law of 1518 reserved the Guinea trade for the Crown alone. As a result, the Upper Guinea slave trade declined from c. 2,000 to 80 slaves per annum, forcing the Crown to revoked the restrictions shortly after 1520.40 These measures, in particular those introduced in the early sixteenth century, were based exclusively on the desire to maximize Crown profit by preventing competition from private participants and by monopolizing what appeared to be, under a given set of circumstances, a well-established, lucrative market. Direct Crown

36

Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 207 (doc. 200) and 428-9 (doc. 289). 37 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 587-8 (doc. 361). 38 The hardening of punishments for interloping and smuggling in the law of 1474 demonstrates the Crown’s anxiety to master the situation. Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 153-4 (doc. 115). 39 Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 2: 139-50 (docs. 43, 44, 45 and 47). 40 See Ivana Elbl, “The Volume of the Early Atlantic Slave Trade, 14501521,” Journal of African History 38 (1997): 52 and 69.

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control was as a rule imposed on those commodities or in such regions and periods that happened to show remarkable growth or profit ratios. The jealously maintained and enforced monopoly on the Gold Coast trade is a prime example of this approach.

Problems of Direct Control The direct participation strategy frequently backfired because the Crown would overextend its resources and lose ability to act effectively, not to mention a loss of enforcement capability. Despite its political power, the Crown experienced problems faced by all large-scale medieval entrepreneurs engaged in complex ventures over large distances. These included daunting logistics, imperfect information, slow turnover, hard-to-control transaction costs, and agency problems. In addition, the Crown had to address far too many diverse concerns to give its overseas ventures the necessary and timely attention, or to view profit in strictly economic terms. The organizational structure of the royal West African enterprise emerged only gradually out of the general mechanism or the royal fazenda. In the 1440s and early 1450s, the Crown relied on shipborne expeditions administered through the Casa da Ceuta. The death of Prince Henry in 1460 brought the dual control of the West African trade to an end, and the Crown came into possession of its first shore-based West African outpost, Arguim. In the 1460s the West African enterprise graduated to the status of a special subdivision of the royal estate, as fazenda de Guiné.41 The Lisbon office, established already in 1455, assumed a central, but not exclusive role in administering the West African ventures, and became eventually known as the Guinea House (Casa de Guiné) or, later, Casa de Guiné e Mina.42 D. João and D. Manuel hoped the Guinea House 41

António J. Dias Dinis, Monumenta Henricina (Coimbra: Comissão Executive das Comemorações do V Centenário da Morte do Infante D. Henrique, 1973), 14: 280 (doc. 117). 42 The name Casa de Guiné appears first in 1481, in a letter of quittance covering the period 1476-1481 (AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. João II, liv. 1, fols. 53r-53v). However, the name of the agency varied. The older name trautos de Guiné that was in use since 1455 survived into the sixteenth century. Since the 1480s, the most commonly used name of the agency was Casa da Mina e trautos de Guiné (see for example Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 333-4 (doc. 217)). In some instances, the term “nossos trautos de Guiné” or

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would be able to handle both the Crown’s direct participation in the enterprise and the indirect revenues from it. This was not the case: merchandise continued to be cleared through regional customs and tax-collecting agencies (alfândegas and almoxarifados), despite orders to the contrary. The Guinea House was complemented by three satellite metropolitan agencies, the Casa dos Escravos, the Feitoria das Ilhas, and the Arsenal (Armazém), and by agencies located overseas, such as the North African factories, Arguim, and São Jorge da Mina. After the opening of the sea route to India, Asian trade was added to the official mandate of the factor of the Guinea House. The resulting workload was overwhelming. D. Manuel was forced to reform the system in 1509 by dividing the agency into two separate Houses, the Guinea House and the India House. The reform, however, was only partial. Both Houses still shared a single factor as chief executive responsible for all key decisions.43 As a result, the central agency was beset with inefficiencies which led to serious bottlenecks and slowdowns in turnover. The problem was rendered worse by the fact that the overseas agencies were responsible not to the factor of the Guinea House but directly to the King, whose authorization was required in even the simplest matters. The Guinea House acted only as a logistic and clearance center. The factor was responsible not only for its smooth operation and for enforcing royal instructions, but also for market research. It was his duty to collect up-to-date information on different trading regions in West Africa, and to make recommendations whether they should be rented out or administered directly by the Crown.44 At the beginning of each year, six months ahead of the next trading cycle, he prepared a list of supplies and merchandise needed for the African and, later, also Indian trade, so that his superiors, the vedores, superintendents of the royal fazenda could approve the list and orders could be placed. In urgent “nossos trautos e resgates de Guiné” were used, though obviously referring to the same agency (see Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 2: 339 (doc. 222) and 348-9 (docs. 231 and 232); AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. João II, liv. 20, fols. 11r and 114r). The fluid and somewhat confusing nomenclature has led historians to believe that the central agency was effectively established in Lisbon only after 1481 (see for instance Nunes Dias, Capitalismo monárquico português, 2: 190-1). 43 See Damião Peres, ed., Regimento das Cazas das Indias e Mina (Coimbra: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra, 1947). 44 Peres, Regimento, 6-7, 25-26.

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situations, he could request an authorization to make interim purchases.45 The supply process was time-consuming and inevitably placed a lag of as much as two years between African demand and its satisfaction. This was one of key problems characterizing the royal enterprise: by the time the goods arrived at their destination in Africa, the opportunities were often gone. Crown agencies were unable to react flexibly to the African demand, neither in terms of selection and quantity of the merchandise, nor in those of quality and logistical support. The Crown was unable to provide adequate merchandise or facilities even to the gold-producing Mina factory, the main focus of its entrepreneurial attention. The officials at São Jorge da Mina perennially complained about the poor state of the warehouses, the low quality of the merchandise, and the damage that it usually sustained on its way from Portugal.46 The factory facilities, built together with the fortress in 1482, were unsatisfactory from the very beginning, but in 1503 the factor of Mina still lobbied the King to order the construction of a larger factory suitable for the proper storing and display of textiles. It was not a logistical problem, as the factor pointed out to the king. Material and transport were both available; only a royal order was required. Meanwhile, cloths kept rotting unsold, and soon became unsaleable, to the king’s great loss.47 In 1510, the Guinea House found itself unable to fill an order for painted hanbels and large basins desperately needed in Mina, despite the king’s repeated and specific orders.48 Shortages of manilhas, one of the key Portuguese exports to the Gold Coast, occurred several times during the early 1500s, and hurt the trade so much that the King ordered the Guinea House to keep 100,000 manilhas in stock at all times,49 with doubtful results. In 1513 the factory was left completely deprived of suitable merchandise, because the supply ship failed to arrive. Trade was brought to a standstill. The older textiles from previous shipments

45

Peres, Regimento, 6-7. See for example AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte I, maço 3, doc. 119 and maço 4, doc. 42; AN/TT, Gaveta 15, maço 1, doc. 14. 47 AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte I, maço 4, doc. 42. 48 AN/TT, Gaveta 15, maço 1, doc. 14. 49 Peres, Regimento, 8. 46

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had to be placed in the second-hand cloth factory and sold off at a discount, and about 700 hanbels were lost this way.50 The Arguim factory, which was only of secondary importance to the Crown, was much worse off than Mina. Supply ships only arrived three or four times a year.51 Little effort was made to make attractive and fresh merchandise available during the first half of the year, when most of the trading took place.52 Shortages of brass and mastic cost the Crown much gold in missed opportunities, and damaged the factory’s reputation, thus further hurting the trade.53 To the amazement and indignation of the Berber merchants, in 1509 the factor of Arguim found himself unable for two years to get from Portugal a special order delivery of merchandise paid for with a large quantity of gold, despite complaints and appeals to the King.54 The supply of victuals was an even more nagging problem. Each year, the summer brought a period of hunger to the Arguim fort.55 The factors faced chronic difficulties in securing transport to Portugal for the slaves they bought, or even enough casks to supply them with water. In 1509, many slaves starved while awaiting embarkation and, subsequently, en route to Portugal.56 The extent of the problems faced by Arguim officials is well reflected in the 1515 exchange of letters between Estevão Vaz, the factor of the Guinea House, and the secretary of state who acted as the King’s representative. Vaz informed the secretary that the small caravel servicing Arguim arrived in Lisbon with slaves and that it brought an urgent request for merchandise and food supplies. Vaz urged the secretary to send the vessel back immediately with merchandise, as an emergency measure, because a large ship able to carry grain would take too long to get ready and would first have to be requisitioned, probably from the Arsenal. It proved impossible for months on end, however, to make even a small vessel with emergency supplies ready to sail. The merchandise it was to carry remained to be ordered 50

AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte I, maço 13, doc. 48. AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 888, fols. 172r-177r. 52 AN/TT, Gaveta 20, maço 2, doc. 67 and maço 5, doc. 42. 53 AN/TT, Gaveta 20, maço 5, doc. 42. 54 AN/TT, Gaveta 20, maço 5, doc. 42. 55 In the summer, wheat rations decreased significantly both for the garrison and slaves. AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 888, fos. 55-59. See also AN/TT, Gaveta 20, maço 5, doc. 42. 56 AN/TT, Gaveta 20, maço 5, doc. 42. 51

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from Flanders and other places abroad,57 and even under the best of conditions, a return trip to Flanders took a couple of months.58 It does not call for much imagination to picture how much time was required to process an order lacking urgency. The policy of micro-management and tight control over Crown employees and agents59 made it difficult to respond to the local demand and opportunities in a timely fashion. The conduct of trade was regulated by exceedingly detailed sets of binding instructions (regimentos) and price lists (taixas).60 On-the-spot initiative not only went mostly unrewarded but was often punished, either directly or through administrative chicanery, as demonstrated in the misfortunes of Francisco de Almada, the royal factor in Arguim from 1508 to 1511. Almeida sharply increased the supply of slaves to Arguim by fostering relations with mainland suppliers but ran into trouble because of disbursing unauthorized grain rations to feed the human merchandise. It took him eight year to clear his standing with the Crown.61 Almada’s predecessor, Gonçalo de Fonseca, received a 57

AN/TT, Gaveta 20, maço 2, doc. 67. A. H. de Oliveira Marques, Hansa e Portugal na Idade Media (Lisbon, Tipografia Albano Tomas dos Anjos, 1959), 79. 59 All Crown agencies laboured in an environment of suspicion and distrust. The elaborate security measures included ship and personal searches, as well as complicated control of access to money chests, and an accounting system which was almost entirely geared towards inventory control, ending with a full audit of each ranking employee at the end of his turn of duty. See Peres, Regimento, 6-7, 8-9, 11-15, 23-4, 26-9, 89-80, 95. For documentary evidence pertaining to concrete situations see, for example, AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte I, maço 8, doc. 72 (unauthorized trading during unloading); AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte I, maço 17, doc. 4 (complaints about the transfer of goods between royal pilots and the officials of São Jorge da Mina; Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 2: 86-87 (doc. 28). See also See for example Brásio, Monumenta Missionária Africana, 2a série, 2: 89 (doc. 28); AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte II, maço 50, doc. 22 (the record of the trial of a royal official, António Froes, filled with accusations and counteraccusations). 60 For examples of ships’ regimentos see A. Teixeira da Mota, “A viagem do navio ‘Santiago’ a Serra Leoa e Rio de S. Domingos in 1526 (Livro de Armação),” Boletim Cultural de Guiné Portuguesa 24 (1969): 562-7; Alan F. C. Ryder, “An Early Portuguese Trading Voyage to the Forcados River,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 1 (1959): 301-5; A. Teixeira da Mota and R. Mauny, “Livre de l’armement du navire São Miguel de l’île de São Thomé au Benin (1522),” Bulletin de l’IFAN, sér. B, 40 (1979): 68-71. 61 See Anselmo Braacamp Freire, “Cartas de quitação del Rei D. Manuel,” Archivo Histórico Portuguez 2: 354 (doc. 237). AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte 58

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clearance of his accounts only in 1522, fourteen years after his term had ended, because he sold some of the merchandise confiscated from a captured Genoese interloper, Miguel Pardo, together with the Crown goods without first consulting Lisbon and obtaining a proper clearance.62 Fonseca was reproached and Pardo’s best goods were left to rot in the warehouse until they were finally incorporated into the factory’s inventory several years later.63 Because they were not on the Arguim price list (taixa), none of the Arguim officials would take the risk of touching them without explicit orders. The commander of the ship that captured Pardo was theoretically entitled to a half of the cargo, but he died before the prize case was cleared, and his heiress finally received only a half of the expected sum. The rest was deducted, however ridiculous it may sound, as payment for the Crown’s mediation in selling the merchandise.64 The Crown was aware of its inability to compete with private participants on the open market. As long as it believed, as it did during the Joanine and Manueline period, that direct trade was easier to administer and potentially more profitable than collecting revenues from a multitude of participants, it routinely resorted to legislation to preserve for itself access to trade in more profitable commodities or trade with more promising regions. The officials of the Guinea House were instructed not only to watch the royal market, but also to inspect the ledgers of private merchants newly returned from Africa in order to recommend which parts of the West African trade should remain open, which should be placed under an exclusive contract and for how much, and which should be reserved for the Crown. Each year, the Crown would be presented with an estimate of the revenues expected to come from a particular sector of its overseas enterprise. The figures usually reflected the amount of taxes and customs that trade with those regions would yield in a particular year.65 The Crown, under the impression that if it took over directly a promising part of the trade it would be able to achieve four times I, maço 12, doc. 8. 62 Freire, “Cartas,” 8: 400-1 (doc. 642). 63 See the inventories from 1511 and 1514 (AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte II, maço 27, doc. 70 and maço 49, doc. 101). 64 AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte I, maço 16, doc. 94. 65 Peres, Regimento, 25-6.

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as much revenue, often dealt severe blows both to the trade with West Africa and to its own revenues. The most obvious example was the attempted take-over of the flourishing slave trade on the Upper Guinea Coast in 1517-1522. The Crown, claiming that the Cape Verde settlers caused major damage to its proveito e serviço (profit and service) by competing vigorously, and to that section of the trade in general because they offered the Africans better terms than the Crown expeditions, prohibited most of the trade between the Cape Verde Islands and Upper Guinea.66 Revenues plummeted as a result, and the Crown was forced to reverse its policy before 1525, but this and similar instances tended to undermine private confidence in the safety of investing in West African ventures. In the course of the sixteenth century, the Crown came to see leasing and contracting out as more advantageous that direct participation, and eventually made all aspects of its African enterprise available to interested parties with enough capital to provide large sums up-front, or to those in need of rewards for services rendered. Leasing and tax farming came to be definitely preferred over a system of individual licences, often too dispersed to be managed effectively. Theoretically, the leaseholders (trautadores) had an unlimited right to trade in the leased region, to take partners, and to issue licences to other traders in the name of the Crown. The Crown promised not to send its ships to such areas, and not to licence access for other private traders.67 The leaseholders paid the Crown either a fixed annual fee, or a share of imported African goods.68 The Crown, however, seldom refrained from involvement in the leased-out areas and used general regulations limiting traffic in certain goods to extract extra payments.69 D. Henrique initiated this type of policy when he rented out the Arguim trade to a group of entrepreneurs for ten years around

66

Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 139-50 (docs. 43, 44, 45, and 47. 67 For a typical contract see AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, liv. 33, fos. 46v-47. 68 The original 1474-1479 contract on the coast from Pedra de Galee to Cape Bojador called for one sixth of all imports (AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, liv. 33, fols. 46v-47r). It was renegotiated in 1475 in favour of yearly payments of 28,000 réis (AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, liv. 30, fol. 132r). For other payments in specie see below. 69 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 129 (doc. 97).

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1455. The leaseholders were responsible for maintaining the fortress.70 Arguim was still under lease in 1463, when the royal collectors of revenue from Arguim, resident in Lagos, were stripped of their offices for mismanagement and replaced by a Lisbon treasurer.71 These actions indicated that the Crown intended to pursue a similar approach in the near future. In 1469, the entire Guinea trade was leased to Fernão Gomes for five years, for an annual fee of 200,000 réis.72 The rent was relatively low considering that twenty-five slaves would have covered it.73 Yet in 1473 Gomes still owed most of the rent,74 despite the fact that in 1472 the Crown exempted him from all taxes except a sisa on the sales of malagueta,75 waived all standing regulations in favour of his privileges,76 and had lent him a round ship to carry on the traffic in 1471.77 Undeterred, the Crown renewed the contract in 1473, although it imposed an additional fee of 100,000 réis on the malagueta trade, raising the total rent to 300,000 réis.78 The malagueta fee, however, did not apply retroactively to the previous years. Gomes’ general contract was terminated in 1474, but he still remained in control of the Arguim trade, probably for five more years.79 Bartolomeu Marchione, a Florentine merchant resident in Lisbon and a naturalized Portuguese subject,80 held a lease on the Niger Delta (Rios dos Escravos) between1486 and 1495. The fee was set at 1,100,000 réis annually.81 The size of the fee indicates that Marchione was entitled to trade not only in the Niger Delta but also in the rest of West Africa. In the subsequent years the lease on the Slave Rivers were much less than Marchione paid,82 and most of the 70

Viagens de Luís de Cadamosto, 17. AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, liv. 9, fol. 96r. 72 Barros, Ásia. Primeira Decada, 72. 73 In this period, a prime slave freshly arrived from West African coast sold for 8,000 réis. The calculation is 200,000 réis : 8,000 réis = 25. 74 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 129 (doc. 97). 75 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 112-3 (doc. 83). 76 AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, liv. 33, fol. 141r. 77 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 90-1 (doc. 65). 78 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 129-30 (doc. 97). 79 AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, liv. 33, fols. 46v-47r. 80 AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, liv. 30, fol. 68r. 81 Freire, “Cartas,” 3: 477-8 (doc. 404). 82 In 1502-1503 the yearly rent was 800,000 réis (Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 239-40 (doc. 220)). 71

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slaves that he imported to Portugal and sold to his associate, Cesare de Barchi, in the 1490s, were Wolof. Only a very small fraction came from the Niger Delta.83 Marchione could, however, have sold slaves from this part of West Africa in Mina. His original contract was for six years, but it was renewed for 1492-1495. Marchione made his payments to the almoxarife of the Slave House in Lisbon, and on the whole proved much more dependable than Fernão Gomes. He paid regularly, and when his contract was renewed he made an advance payment covering two-thirds of the total fee.84 Later on he invested heavily in voyages to India and in the spice trade.85 In 1504-1505, his payments to the Crown rose to 64,158, 968 réis. In 1507-1510 his activity expanded, but he proved unable to sell all the spices received from the Crown, and as late as 1514 he still owed the Crown 36,640,355 réis, of which 16,514,297 represented several malagueta shipments.86 Malagueta, one the most expensive spices in the late medieval period, was not selling very well in the early sixteenth century. In 1512 Calliro Redolho leased the entire malagueta trade for two years for a more realistic annual sum of 1,050,400 réis.87 Leasing became routine in the 1500s and 1510s.88 Arguim was farmed out in 1515-l516, after almost forty years of direct Crown administration.89 The Senegal River zone was rented out in 15111512 for 393,900 réis, payable in two instalments, in June 1511 and January 1512.90 The amount due in 1511 was 195,000 réis.91 Cantor and the Gambia River were leased to Mestre Felipe, a Jew, for a period running from St. John’s Day (June 24) of 1510 to St. John’s Day of 1514, for 1,363,500 réis, of which he paid 450,000 in 1511. The payments were due after the arrival of the ships and after 83 Vicenta Cortés, La esclavitud en Valencia durante el reinado de los Reyes Católicos (1479-1516) (Valencia: Excmo. Ayuntamiento, 1964), 217-471. For the link with Cesare di Barchi see year 1497. 84 Freire, “Cartas,” 3: 477-8 (doc. 404). 85 Nunes Dias, O capitalismo monárquico português, 1: 360-1, 86 Freire, “Cartas,” 1: 360-2 (docs. 109 and 110). 87 Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 441 (doc. 247). 88 Peres, Regimento, 25-6, 30, 50. 89 AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte II, maço 58, doc. 155. It was also leased in 1525, for the staggering sum of 4,000,000 réis (AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 590, fol. 58r). 90 Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 440-1 (doc. 297). 91 AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fol. 105r.

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allowing for expenditures.92 Guinea Rivers, the area between Gambia and Sierra Leone, were leased for three years, from 24 June 1509 to 24 June 1512. Over this period, 195,000 réis were paid in 15091510; 911,666 réis in 1511; and 1,376,620 in 1512.93 The annual lease amounted to 917,747 réis, and over the subsequent two years, covered by a contract in favour of Joham de Lila and his partners, it rose to 1,212,000 réis.94 Sierra Leone was leased prior to 1502 for 600,000 réis to Pero de Evora, and before that for 640,000 réis to another leaseholder. António Fernandes, one of the past leaseholders, remained owing 84,600 réis.95 In 1510-1513 the lease dropped to about 540,000 réis annually.96 The Slave Rivers were leased in 1486-1495 for 1,100,000 réis,97 and in 1502-1503 for 800,000 réis yearly.98 Rio Primeiro, east of the Lagos Lagoon, was rented separately for 140,000 réis per year.99 Tax farming was probably less risky for the Crown than leasing, and was based on extensive precedent. Throughout the late Middle Ages, the Portuguese Crown, in accordance with general European practice, allowed most of its tax and customs revenue to be farmed out, and this policy eventually came to cover those Lisbon agencies which dealt with revenue from West Africa. Of these, the Slave House was particularly relevant because its head acted as receiver of most African regional and commodity rents. In 1509-1510 the Slave House was farmed out for 6,383,624 réis, or 3,191,812 réis yearly.100 Forty years later, in 1552 the annual rate was only slightly higher, standing at 3,400,000 réis.101 The Vintena House was farmed out in 1509-1510 for 3,884,275 réis, or 1,942,137 réis annually.102

92

Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 440-1 (doc. 297); AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fol.

108r, 93 Freire, “Cartas,” 3: 472-3 (doc. 392); AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fol. 112r; Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 441 (doc. 297). 94 Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 441 (doc. 297). 95 Freire, “Cartas,” 1: 243 (doc. 44). 96 Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 441 (doc. 297). 97 Freire, “Cartas,” 3: 477-8 (doc. 404). 98 Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 239 (doc. 220). 99 Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 239 (doc. 220). 100 Freire, “Cartas,” 3: 392 (doc. 370). 101 João Brandão, Grandeza e abastança de Lisboa em 1552, edited by José da Felicidade Alves (Lisbon: Livros Horizonte, 1990), 59. 102 Freire, “Cartas,” 3: 472-3 ( doc. 392).

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The West African Islands represented a very attractive target for tax farmers. The revenue of the Cape Verde Islands, namely Santiago and Fogo, was farmed out to Duarte Rodriguez Pinto and Pedro Francisco for three years in 1504. They undertook to pay 2,100,000 réis during that period, one third being delivered in advance as security.103 This amounted to an annual rent of 700,000 réis, and the sum increased to 900,000 réis yearly in 1510, when António Rodrigues farmed the revenue of Santiago, Maio, and Fogo for three years.104 In accordance with the provisions of the contract the amount, payable in slaves evaluated by the royal almoxarife, was later on further raised to 1,033,333 réis yearly.105 António Rodrigues joined in partnership with Nicolão Rodriguez, and by the end of their contract they had paid the Crown 3,130,999 réis.106 The revenues were promptly farmed again, this time to Jorge Nunez, who held the contract until 1515.107 Graviel Rodriguez was the farmer in 1519-1521, when the Crown’s repression of private trade reached its height.108 In 1525, the revenue increased again, and was farmed out for 1,200,000 réis.109 The revenue of São Tomé was farmed out in 1509 to Diogo Fernandes Cabral, and in 1510 to Joham de Fomseca and António Carneiro for the sum of 388,800 réis.110 Joham de Fomseca continued farming the São Tomé revenues in 1511-1513, for a bulk payment of 535,500 réis. The revenues of Príncipe were farmed out in 1510-1514 to António Carneiro for 535,500 réis,111 of which he paid 150,000 réis in 1511.112 The Ano Bom Island was a trading backwater, but it was still worth to Duarte Afonso and Duarte Bello, farming its vintena, some 70,130 réis during an unspecified period ending in 1513.113

103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113

AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte II, maço 8, doc. 104. AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fol. 100r. Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 2: 41-5 (doc. 15). Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 441 (doc. 297). AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fols. 90v, 97r. Freire, “Cartas,” 10: 4 (doc. 764). AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 590, fol. 58r. Freire, “Cartas,” 3: 392 (doc. 370). Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 440-1 (doc. 297). AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fol. 116r. Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 441 (doc. 297).

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In 1514 António Carneiro signed a four-year contract with the Crown, binding him to supply Mina with slaves from Benin in return for two thirds of the price of each slave sold in Mina, and a monopoly on the Niger Delta trade. This provision violated the privileges of the São Tomeans, who ignored it when they could not bypass it legally. São Tomé had been a slave supplier to Mina since it was populated in the 1490s. D. Manuel’s administration tried to assure itself of a guaranteed supply in the early 1500s, and instead of depending on the open market it signed a partnership agreement with Fernão de Melo, captain of São Tomé, under which the Crown supplied merchandise and Melo the necessary logistics in return for a share in the sales in Mina. Melo, however, did not have a monopoly on the supply. Carneiro’s monopoly contract was an exception in this respect, which was not repeated when a slave supply contract was signed with Duarte Bello in 1519 and João de Odon in 1525.114 The frequent changes in Crown policy and strategy reflect the difficulties presented by the logistical and administrative demands of a complex long-distance enterprise. The gradual move away from direct control of many of the African ventures reflects the hard lessons of the “capitalismo monárquico” (almost certainly a misnomer). The shift in revenue-collecting strategy in favour of guaranteed income was a result of a continual reassessment of Crown options, and an example of ongoing adaptation of past lessons from the management of royal domains and other revenues to the conditions presented by far-flung overseas enterprises. The Results While modern historians tend to be much more complimentary,115 contemporaries often criticized the Crown’s business decisions as ill thought-out or even irrational when it came to profit or income maximization. The third estate (o povo), in protest against the Gomes contract, argued in the 1473 Cortes that the Crown could derive as much as 100,000 cruzados (39,000,000 réis) in revenues from the 114 John L. Vogt, “The Early São Thomé-Principe Slave Trade with Mina, 1500-1540,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 6 (1973): 456-7. 115 Vogt, for example, praised the Crown’s West African enterprise as a “remarkable coordination effort” (John L.Vogt, The Portuguese Rule on the Gold Coast, 1469-1682 (Athens: University of Georgia Press), 72-73)).

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African trade if it was kept open.116 Since the Crown dues, which this sum represented, constituted 28.5% of the overall projected value of the trade, the Cortes believed the trade worth at least 120,000,000 réis only three decades after its opening phase. Given the fact that the Gomes contract came to only 300,000 réis annually, the povo certainly seemed to have a point here, well beyond mere self-interest. The Crown tended to voice only one kind of response to these and later protests by disgruntled subjects who pointed out that Crown policies were damaging to the latter’s own interests— invoking the royal prerogative to decide what was to the proveito (benefit/good) of the kingdom at large, in other words invoking what amounted to executive privilege.117 It is important to realize that the Crown’s idea of “profit” was not necessarily based on accounting principles. In contemporary usage the word proveito (“profit”) meant both “benefit” and “profit” in a bookkeeping sense. Like other medieval political bodies, the Crown had to consider both non-economic goals and the costs of revenue generation. Thus transaction costs were one of the key considerations the Crown kept in mind in its continual reassessment of overseas revenue sources. The licencing system and customs network represented a considerable burden for the royal bureaucracy, just as the collection of various taxes, tolls and dues did in the metropolitan area. In the fifteenth century, farming out tax collection and contracting out regalian rights were time-sanctioned, panEuropean methods of reducing overhead and securing a guaranteed, fixed income, even if it was lower that the potential overall revenue.118 It therefore does not come as a surprise that the Crown, 116

Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 1: doc. 68. Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 1: doc. 68. 118 For a series of studies on medieval and sixteenth-century revenue collection methods and taxation strategies see the conceptually fundamental volume edited by Richard Bonney, The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, in particular Bonney’s “Introduction” (1-17); also see Philippe Contamine, Jean Kerhervé, and Albert Rigaudière, eds., L’impôt au Moyen Âge. L’impôt public et le prélèvement seigneurial, fin XIIe-début XVIe siècle, 3 vols (Paris: Comité pour l’Histoire Économique et Financiére de la France, 2002); J.-Ph. Genet and M. Le Mené. eds., Genèse de l’état moderne. Prélèvement et redistribution (Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1987); For a general development of revenue administration in the West, since the Antiquity to modernity, see Carolyn Webber and Aaron Wildawsky, A History of Taxation and Expenditure in the Western World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), particularly chapters 4 and 5. 117

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like its European counterparts, showed a marked preference for dealing with a small number of large entrepreneurs, rather than with the public in general. This approach increased predictability, focussed the eventual application of sanctions and deterrents, simplified bargaining, and thus lowered the Crown’s transactions costs, albeit at the price of potentially lowering the income. The puzzling element in the early period of the Portuguese expansion is, in fact, precisely the one that has often been characterized as a progressive feature, namely the Crown’s insistence on direct participation in commercial operations as the preferred option. One possible explanation may lie in the fact that its administrative and accounting practices left the Crown in no position to determine efficiently how much profit (proveito) it was in fact deriving from the West African enterprises, beyond a well-justified but useless notion that the revenue was considerable. The Crown’s accounting system was geared towards inventory and agent control, not towards cost-benefit analysis or revenue-expense reconciliation. In essence, the Crown treated the African income the same way it treated its overall revenues: as a giant petty-cash box, from which money and goods were drawn as needed. The King drew on the Guinea House randomly and haphazardly to cover purchases for the royal household or to transfer money to other administrative departments which stood in need of a cash injection. Some of the merchandise arriving from West Africa was not even put on the market, but distributed in the form of presents— —a thoroughly medieval and Renaissance form of largesse. In 1486-1493, for example, only one third of the slaves registered as received by the Slave House were actually sold, the rest being distributed as gifts and favours according to royal dispositions in the matter.119 In 1511, the entire Crown share in the proceeds of the Atlantic slave trade went toward covering the enormous cost of building fortifications in Morocco. The revenue derived from regional leases and tax farms, similarly to some 80 per cent of overall Crown revenues, was assigned to defray social payments to the nobility.120

119

Freire, “Cartas”, 3: 396-7 (doc. 380). AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fols. 97r-121r, 190r. For the overall pattern, see Ivana Elbl, “Overseas Expansion, Nobility, and Social Mobility in the Age of Vasco de Gama,” Portuguese Studies Review 6 (1997-98): 53-80, in particular Figure 1, 67. 120

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The overseas expansion provided a valuable new source of rewards for powerful subjects or royal favourites, and thus constituted an important form of political and social capital. In this respect the Crown’s approach can be considered “economic” only if the concept is enlarged to include the application of formal economic thinking to social and ceremonial interaction— —something that, it must be stressed, was rather alien to the actors involved in such processes at the time. Grants in the Atlantic Islands and in Africa were one of the ways in which the Regency sought to pacify the restless ambitions of Infante D. Henrique during D. Afonso V’s minority, yet such grants also became an expression of the Infante’s political power once the King had come of age. After Henrique’s death, D. Afonso used overseas resources to offer boons to equally restless subjects, such as his brother D. Fernando and the celebrated D. Duarte de Meneses. In 1474, the African enterprise came under the direct administration of the Crown Prince, D. João, and its profits were assigned toward the maintenance of his household,121 establishing thus a precedent for subsequent heirs presumptive, D. Afonso and D. Manuel. In the 1510s, if not before, the revenues from various West African regions were merged into the pipeline of royal social payments to the nobility: assentamentos, tenças, and casamentos, becoming as inextricable a part of the system as the revenue from metropolitan fiscal districts.122 In 1511, the full amount of the assentamento of D. Manuel’s consort Queen Maria, amounting to 2,150,000 réis, drew on revenues of the Casa da Mina.123 At the same time, the African enterprise supported 45 per cent of the 4,460,000 réis to which amounted the assentamento of Queen Lenor, the widow of King João II and sister of the reigning King D. Manuel.124 The revenues from trade in malagueta (grains of paradise) covered the assentamento of the “Excellente Senhora,” D. Juana “La Beltraneja,” the daughter and heir of King Henrique IV, who lost her bid for the throne of Castile to Isabel the Catholic in 1474 but because of her betrothal to King Afonso V continued to be the financial responsibility of Portugal.125

121 122 123 124 125

Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 153-4, doc. 115. AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fols. 98r-121r. AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fol. 176. AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fols. 177-177v. AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fol. 177v.

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The annual orçamentos (budget estimates) and the receipts of the Guinea House and its satellite agencies indicate that the West African enterprise contributed significantly to the royal income. In the 1473 orçamento, for example, the overall domestic revenue of the Crown was estimated at 52,168,500 réis and in the 1477 one at 43,074,000 réis.126 In this context, the 300,000 réis of the Gomes contract look rather insignificant. However, within two years of Prince D. João’s assumption of control over the African enterprise, the gross yearly revenues exceeded 13,000,000 réis.127 While nowhere near the 39,000,000 estimated by the 1473 Cortes, the potential of the trade was undeniable. Moreover, as Table 2 indicates, the gross revenues of the Guinea House registered very rapid growth in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. Yet it is important to realize that these figures represent gross receipts, not net income. None of the operating expenses, or the overhead, had been deducted by the Crown.128 Since these raw figures were used for casting up the annual orçamentos, it is no surprise that the Crown was easily seduced into believing that its Guinea treasure chest was bottomless. The orçamentos are more reliable when the estimates are based on leases and tax farms, rather than Crown receipts, because those represent actual net income. Two of these orçamentos are available for the early sixteenth century, pertaining to 1511 and 1525. Both are incomplete but still comprehensive enough to be comparable. The 1511 orçamento indicates that African revenues accounted for 17 per cent of the Crown’s expected income, the rest coming from domestic sources.129 In 1525, domestic revenues declined to 68 per cent, but still formed the majority. Africa provided 16 per cent, India 14 per cent and the Azores 2 per cent (data for Madeira are missing).130 These figures suggest that Africa played an important role in the generation of royal revenues, but its share consistently

126

Jorge Faro, Receitas y despesas da Fazenda Real de 1384 a 1481 (subsídios documentais) (Lisbon: Instituto Nacional de Estatística, 1465), 82-5 and 225-9. 127 AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. João II, liv. 1, fols. 53r-53v. 128 For some of the problems of Portuguese revenue estimates in sixteenthcentury Asia see Subrahmanyam and Thomaz, “Evolution of Empire,” 312, 316. 129 AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fols. 1r-118v. 130 AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 590, fols. 1r-98r, 111r.











































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last recorded use of the clause (linear or squared) perform better than the distance from the location of first use. This is powerful evidence in favor of evolutionary spreading. The mutation introduced in the population was passed on to geographically proximate carriers, in a process that must resemble what I discussed in Part IV above. Interestingly, if all distance variables are omitted from the estimate, and the logit is recalculated with all the time variables and the political jurisdiction dummy, the latter is weakly significant (10 per cent) and negative in all cases. This is not surprising: since the earliest contracts are from Siena, once distance is taken out of the estimates, contracts signed in Florentine territory are less likely to include particular clauses. But it is the distance, not the political jurisdiction, that is driving the parameters. What do the estimates suggest about the nature of this diffusion? The evidence is ambiguous. In some cases, notably the probability that landlords would supply livestock vs. that tenants would, it appears that the diffusion follows a quadratic rather than linear form. In other cases (the probability that seed would be shared vs. that tenants would supply it) the coefficients suggest linearity. In some ways, this latter is intuitively convincing: if modifications to the original template traveled with notaries, provided that traveling times and costs were linear in the distance traveled, linearity in diffusion is to be expected. In this sense, the estimated coefficients for quadratic variables may indicate that beyond a certain point, traveling costs rose so that diffusion was slowed down above a certain distance. In any event, quadratic distance variables, even if strongly significant at times, are rather “weak.” Their marginal effects tend to be in the order of fractions of percentage points. The time dummies, which try to capture changing demographic trends, tell an interesting story. The worsening of the tenants’ bargaining power during the centuries of demographic growth is quite visible in the negative coefficients relating the probability that complementary inputs would be supplied by landlords or shared to the period 1200 to 1347. Equally evident on balance is the reversal of the trend after the Black Death: the probability that the supply of seed and livestock would be shared or taken on entirely by the landlord rises after 1347. If the distance variables were insignificant, this kind of result would suggest that mutations had arisen in several distinct locations independently. But it is the significance of

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the distance parameter estimates that underscores that learning was in fact taking place. The story probably goes something like this. The mezzadria contract fulfilled the function of giving labor self-monitoring incentives in conditions where it was costly to solve agency problems through direct supervision. The downside of the sharing rule was that both parties had an incentive to economize on their complementary inputs (= supply inputs only up to the point where their marginal product equaled their opportunity cost times the reciprocal of the rental share). If the technical coefficients of production were not fixed, bargaining between the contracting parties would determine their respective contributions. There was, and this must be stressed, no unique optimizing solution, no well-defined point of tangency among Edgeworthian contract curves, which require that actors be interchangeable and rules continuous.35 There was rather an area of possible outcomes, and over this area Tuscan landlords and tenants bargained to and fro for centuries. A landlord who had to supply tenants with seed in the early fifteenth century may have been, in some abstract sense, worse off than his ancestor who had obtained it from his tenants 150 years earlier, but was still better off than not having tenants at all. But above all what the logit strongly suggests is that there was in fact an evolutionary process at work here. The contingent events of a given time period affected the outcomes of the bargaining processes, but so did access to information about how best to make use of changing circumstances. There is, in other words, reason to believe that the changing relative contributions embodied in these clauses were not arrived at independently at different places and different times. Rather, they spread: distance (and, less clearly, time) matters to relative probabilities estimated by the logit. In periods of stress, that is in periods when one party was willing to give up some ground to gain access to an income stream, the carriers of the template, the notaries, must have communicated with one another (even across political boundaries) to find solutions, i.e., to identify successful mutations that would spread in the population. They communicated with the most proximate colleagues, who in turn spoke to others farther away, who in turn repeated the process. Any given solution spread 35

Knight, Institutions.

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because it reduced uncertainty for increasing number of people who found existing arrangements unsatisfactory. A notary who could satisfy many clients by introducing a “good” adaptation in the template would have additional clients beating a path to his door, and would be copied by other notaries, thereby ensuring that the successful clause would spread further. It matters little to present purposes that one or the other party lost or gained something as a result of each mutation. In fact, focusing on the clauses themselves makes the game in which landlords and tenants were engaged appear as zero-sum. In reality, however, this was a positive sum game, in that what players were ultimately bargaining for was the final output of land, labor and capital. All that was happening was that the price one or the other player had to pay to have access to this output rose or fell depending on contingent events. And the process by which contingent events affected individuals was an evolutionary one: solutions worked out in one place spread. Diffusion means learning: under certain stimuli, more actors were interested in learning of new solutions.

VI In the end, the exact process of diffusion of contractual clauses in late medieval Tuscan agriculture may in itself be of interest to agrarian historians. But the issue here is whether the historical process is theoretically enlightening for researchers interested in institutional choice and change in general, and it is on that criterion alone that the contribution of this article rests. In that sense the opportunity to follow change over 700 years is useful in that it may help define a research agenda for the analysis of institutional change, an agenda that would seem to consist of three main items. The first is that modeling institutional change requires the identification of the exact unit of selection. The approach taken here is that this is to be found in the simplest “non-reducible” rules, aggregates of which form institutions. The second is to identify the means by which these non-reducible rules are stored and transmitted. In the current instance this has been identified in the “template” of the notaries, and it would seem likely that in general members of the legal profession are likely to perform this function for a large number of institutions. Whether they do or not is an

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empirical question which need not detain us here beyond stressing that transmission is not independent of the transmitter. Finally, and as a consequence of the second point, understanding institutional choice and change involves understanding the incentives of the transmitters. In this case, this aspect has been neglected in that the notaries had no obvious interest in siding with one or the other party when drawing up the contract, unless they were themselves landlords. If so, however this does not seem to have affected the shift in contractual clauses against the interests of landowners after the demographic crisis of the fourteenth century. But those who store the information are not necessarily transmission neutral, and the distributional effects of passing the information on have to be modeled in any credible attempt to understand institutional choice and change as a general process.

x

x

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MARKET INTEGRATION

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A TEST CASE FOR REGIONAL MARKET INTEGRATION? THE GRAIN TRADE BETWEEN MALTA AND SICILY IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES Mark A. Aloisio

“Malta is very fortunate for this one reason, namely that Sicily, very fertile in all kinds of grain, lies nearby and is for the inhabitants as good as a granary, where otherwise they would die of hunger.”1 I The economy of medieval Europe is increasingly studied in the context of a “commercialist” or Smithian framework.2 This approach emphasizes the role of trade in promoting a greater division of labor in town and countryside, the expansion of commercial activity, and the progressive integration and greater sophistication of regional market networks. Towns perform a crucial role in these models, whereby urban demand for foodstuffs stimulates specialization and higher levels of productivity in agriculture, as well as more efficient distribution of resources. Yet while few would dispute the increased commercialization and sophistication of the late medieval economy generally, the extent and effect of these changes at a regional or local level is less clear. Legal, institutional or social barriers represented transaction costs that could significantly limit the flow of trade or access to markets. In the fifteenth century, the kingdom of Sicily—of which the Maltese Islands formed part—was a politically 1

J. Quintin D’Autun, Insulae Melitae descriptio (Lyons 1536), ed. with trans. in H. R. Vella, The Earliest Description of Malta (Lyons 1536) (Malta: DeBono Enterprises, 1980), 35. 2 For instance, R. H. Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society, 10001500, 2nd. ed. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996); J. Masschaele, Peasants, Merchants and Markets: Inland Trade in Medieval England, 1150-1350 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997). For an exposition of the commercialist approach, J. Hatcher and M. Bailey, Modelling the Middle Ages. The History and Theory of England’s Economic Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 121-73.

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unified state with a relatively commercialized economy. It has recently been argued that during the late Middle Ages Sicily’s internal markets became progressively more integrated. In the course of this paper I wish to discuss the extent of this economic integration by highlighting some obstacles that disrupted the trade in grain between Sicily and Malta during much of the fifteenth century. II The important role of Sicily in the grain trade of the medieval Mediterranean is well known.3 At one time or another, Sicilian wheat was exported to cities in northern Italy (particularly Florence and Genoa), France and Spain and occasionally even to north Africa.4 Sicily’s Norman, Angevin and Aragonese rulers took an active interest in the commercial exploitation of this vital commodity, fully aware of the substantial revenues that its export brought into their coffers. Since the reign of Frederick II, the grain trade was channeled through specially designated ports known as caricatori, most of them located in the western half of the island where much of the 3 M. De Boüard, “Problèmes de subsistance dans un état médiéval: le marché et les prix des céréales au royaume angevin de Sicile (1266-1282),” Annales d’Histoire Économique et Sociale 10 (1938): 483-501; M. Aymard, “Il commercio dei grani nella Sicilia del ‘500,” Archivio storico per la Sicilia orientale 72 (1975): 7-40; D. Abulafia, “Sul commercio del grano siciliano nel tardo Duecento,” in La società mediterranea all’epoca del Vespro: XI Congresso della Corona d’Aragona, Palermo-Trapani-Erice, 25-30 Aprile 1982, vol. 2 (Palermo: Accademia di Scienze, Lettere e Arti, 1983), 5-22, repr. in D. Abulafia, Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean 1100-1400 (London: Variorum, 1987), essay VII; O. Cancila, Baroni e popolo nella Sicilia del grano (Palermo: Palumbo, 1983); H. Bresc, Un monde méditerranéen: économie et societé en Sicile, 1300-1450, 2 vols. (Rome-Palermo: Bibliothéques des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 1986); S. R. Epstein, An Island for Itself: Economic Development and Social Change in Late Medieval Sicily (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). On the Mediterranean grain trade in the Middle Ages, P. Wolff, “Un grand commerce médiéval: les céréales dans le bassin de la Méditerranée occidentale: Remarques et suggestions,” VI Congreso de la Corona de Aragon, Cerdeña (Madrid: n.p., 1959), 147-74; M. Tangheroni, Aspetti dei commercio dei cereali nei Paesi della Corona d’Aragona, I. La Sardegna (Pisa-Cagliari: Pacini, 1981). 4 D. Abulafia, The Two Italies: Economic Relations between the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and the Northern Communes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); D. Abulafia, “Lo stato e la vita economica,” in P. Toubert and A. Paravicini, ed., Federico II e il mondo mediterraneo (Palermo: Sellerio, 1994), 165-187; M. Del Treppo, I mercanti catalani e l’espansione della Corona d’Aragona nel secolo XV (Naples: L’Arte Tipografica Napoli, 1972).

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grain was grown.5 Sicily produced at least three types of wheat by the sixteenth century but the hard variety (grano duro) was especially prized for its capacity to resist rot while remaining in storage for several years.6 The island’s reputation as a major grain producer was indeed well-founded. In the late thirteenth century annual export levels averaged 20,000 to 30,000 salme and perhaps around 40,000 salme in the following century (1 salma = 2.75 hl).7 Some 122,000 salme were shipped out of Sicilian ports in 1407-1409 but this may have been an exceptional year.8 An average of 50,000 salme was probably typical throughout the 1460s with a maximum of 90,000-100,000 salme in the 1490s.9 Nonetheless, in spite of these impressive figures, estimates put grain exports at less than ten per cent of domestic output, occasionally reaching a maximum share of fifteen per cent.10 It seems therefore that most of the grain produced in Sicily was consumed locally. A system of land and (more importantly) sea transport linked the caricatori of Sciacca, Agrigento and Licata to the two main cities of Palermo, Messina and to smaller centers such as Trapani, Syracuse and Catania. Unlike northern Italy, however, where urban centers frequently obtained jurisdictional authority over the surrounding their contado and its resources, Sicilian cities, with the partial exception of Messina, had little direct control over their hinterland. Stephan Epstein believes that, given their inability to rely on institutional privileges for economic and human resources, Sicily’s towns and cities were forced to obtain these resources on a competitive basis.11 However, this state of affairs, as Epstein himself concedes, did not apply in the case of a strategic and relatively scarce commodity such as grain. 5

Abulafia, “Lo stato,” 165-87. Cancila, Baroni, 44. 7 Bresc, Un monde, 127-8. 8 Cancila, Baroni, 16; C. Trasselli, “Sull’esportazione dei cereali dalla Sicilia negli anni 1402-1407,” Annali della Facoltà di Economia e Commercio dell’Università di Palermo 11 (1957): 217-52, repr. in C. Trasselli, Mediterraneo e Sicilia all’inizio dell’epoca moderna. (Ricerche quattrocentesche) (Cosenza: Pellegrini Editore, 1977), 331-70. 9 Epstein, An Island for Itself, 274. 10 Epstein, An Island for Itself, 275; Cancila, Baroni, 20 reaches similar conclusions. 11 Epstein, An Island for Itself, 133; S. R. Epstein, “Town and Country: Economy and Institutions in Late Medieval Italy,” Economic History Review 46 (3) (1993): 453-77. 6

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In 1392 Martin I of Aragon invaded Sicily in order to restore royal authority and put an end to years of wars and internal political instability.12 The Aragonese monarchy also took steps to revive Sicily’s economy and promote inter-regional trade by establishing new fairs, standardizing weights and measurements, and reducing tolls on internal trade.13 Among the latter measures was a decree passed in 1398 which stated that no tratte or trade permits were to be paid on grain exchanged intra regno and hence destined for internal consumption. Indications are, however, that Sicily’s domestic grain market remained quite fragmented throughout much of the fifteenth century. In this case at least, the monarchy appears to have been unable or reluctant to consistently enforce institutional reforms favoring more open markets. This is hardly surprising given that, in order to do so, the state often needed to act against powerful and entrenched local or sectional interests including monopoly rights of feudal lords and protectionist measures by individual cities.14 In fifteenth-century Messina, the grain trade was effectively controlled by local municipal officials who not only decided the price at which grain was to be sold in the city but frequently also owned the very estates from where that grain was bought.15 My own research based on the notarial archives of Sciacca, one of the principal outlets for the export of grain in Sicily, suggests that the interests of the local authorities were often in conflict with those who had grain for sale because the latter found it more profitable to sell their stocks to Catalan, Genoese and other foreign merchants. The grain reserves of many cities were frequently low and any interruption in the supply chain could provoke considerable hardships for the inhabitants. For instance, Catania’s annual grain requirements in the fifteenth century were in the region of 12,000-15,000 salme while production averaged some 18,000 salme.16

12

V. D’Alessandro, Politica e società nella Sicilia aragonese (Palermo: U. Manfredi, 1963); P. Corrao, Governare un Regno. Potere, società e istituzioni in Sicilia fra Trecento e Quattrocento (Naples: Liguori Editore, 1991). 13 Epstein, An Island for Itself, 96. 14 D. C. North and R. P. Thomas, The Rise of the Western World. A New Economic History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 97-100. 15 C. Salvo, Giurati, Feudatari Mercanti. L’élite urbana a Messina tra Medio Evo e Età Moderna (Rome: Bibliopolis, 1995), 107-8. 16 A. Petino, Aspetti e momenti di politica granaria a Catania e in Sicilia nel Quattrocento (Catania: Università di Catania, 1952), 30.

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Moreover, the desire on the part of the state to act in the interests of the urban masses and to implement long-term economic reforms often conflicted with more immediate political and fiscal concerns. An example from Agrigento serves to emphasize this point.17 In 1404, after the town’s giurati (municipal officials) had acted to prevent grain exports out of their port, Martin I declared to those officials the monarchy’s intention to act in the interests of the island’s cities first and the merchants second. That assurance notwithstanding, in 1433 the crown had given permission to two feudal lords to establish their own caricatori in the region thereby bypassing that of Agrigento. By then Martin had been succeeded by Alfonso V who intervened directly in the Italian grain markets, selling grain during periods of scarcity and high demand, apparently with great zeal.18 In the 1430s, while engaged in military campaigns against Naples, Alfonso passed a series of measures promoting grain exports at the expense of domestic consumption requirements. The Aragonese king was at that moment desperately in need of funds and provisions, both of which could be obtained by manipulating sales of grain. Thus, in the course of the fifteenth century, as grain exports increased, Sicily’s towns, faced with a growing population and rising grain prices, were increasingly forced into a harsh struggle to gain control over food supplies for their citizens.19 Some of the larger cities managed to either assure themselves of preferential access to grain stocks through special arrangements or by closing ports or even by interdicting grain destined for export. Smaller communities, such as the Maltese Islands, often faced even greater difficulties. III The Maltese islands, consisting of Malta, Gozo and Comino, have a combined area of only about 316 square kilometers. The surface is rocky in most places, the soil is shallow and water generally scarce 17

V. D’Alessandro, “Paesaggio agrario, regime della terra e società rurale (secoli XI-XV),” in V. D’Alessandro, Terra, nobili e borghesi nella Sicilia medievale (Palermo: Sellerio, 1994), 58-60; orig. publ. in R. Romano, ed., Storia della Sicilia, 10 vols. (Naples: Società editrice Storia di Napoli e della Sicilia, 1980), 3: 411-47. 18 Del Treppo, I mercanti, 357-9 and Chap. 3. 19 Bresc, Un monde, 744-7.

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so that even today agriculture is heavily dependent on winter precipitation. The archipelago was incorporated into the Norman kingdom of Sicily in the late eleventh century and after 1282 became a peripheral outpost of the Crown of Aragon.20 In spite of the harsh physical environment, Malta (the largest of the three islands) managed to support a sizeable population throughout the late middle ages, probably hovering around 10,000 by the early fifteenth century. The only sizeable concentrations of people on Malta were the town of Mdina with its suburb of Rabat in the center and the royal castle at Birgu, which guarded the island’s main harbor located in the south-east. Most other inhabitants were dispersed in rural settlements where they cultivated their own fields or worked on the larger private fiefs or royal estates. Agriculture was the mainstay of the economy and the land was worked by a free peasantry, with wheat, cumin and cotton being the principal crops. Cotton, both raw and in spun form, was widely exported and provided a valuable source of income through which Malta was able to pay for the growing necessity to purchase wheat from nearby Sicily.21 Given their geographical proximity, and the fact that they both formed part of the same political order, it was natural for the Maltese to look to Sicily, a mere 60 km away, to supply local needs. Sicilian wheat was of superior quality compared to that grown in Malta and was therefore always in demand. Nonetheless, the need for Malta to import grain was probably not acute prior to the fifteenth century.22 A number of instances are known in the fourteenth century when Malta actually exported grain to Sicily but even then these were probably unusual occurrences. A more accurate picture 20

A. T. Luttrell, “Approaches to Medieval Malta,” in A. T. Luttrell, ed., Medieval Malta. Studies on Malta before the Knights (London: The British School at Rome, 1975), 1-70, repr. in A. T. Luttrell, The Making of Christian Malta (Aldershot: Variorum, 2002), remains the best introduction to the island’s medieval history. For more recent overviews, C. Dalli, Iz-Zmien Nofsani Malti (Malta: Pubblikazzjonijiet Indipendenza, 2002); B. Blouet, The Story of Malta, rev. ed. (Malta: Progress Press, 2004). 21 H. Bresc, “The ‘Secrezia’ and the Royal Patrimony in Malta: 1240-1450,” in Luttrell, Medieval Malta, 132. Maltese cotton is mentioned in Genoa in 1164: Abulafia, The Two Italies, 218. In the fifteenth century it was extensively utilized in Barcelona and also in Genoa and Montpellier. Del Treppo provides several examples of Catalan merchants purchasing cotton in Malta. 22 G. Wettinger, “Agriculture in Malta in the Late Middle Ages,” in M. Buhagiar, ed., Proceedings of History Week 1981 (Malta: The Malta Historical Society, 1982), 13.

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of Malta’s grain requirements is possible for the fifteenth century for which more documentary material has survived.23 In 1435 the Maltese claimed that grain shortages occurred every two to three years and were reducing the island to “great poverty.”24 The Maltese historian Godfrey Wettinger argues that in this period it became increasingly necessary to supplement local production with regular imports, probably on the order of 1000-2000 salme each year.25 In critical moments the estimated need for grain could be higher still. In 1468, which admittedly may have been an unusually harsh year, the municipal council ordered the purchase of 4,000 salme, while in 1480, faced with the threat of a Turkish invasion, the authorities debated whether they should purchase 2,000, 3,000, or 5,000 salme.26 Given that one salma was equivalent to the yearly consumption for 1-1.5 individuals, these figures represent significant amounts that must have imposed a considerable financial burden on the island’s limited resources. A population list from 1480 for the community of Rabat, possibly drawn up in response to the above-mentioned invasion scare, indicated that its population of 317 households necessitated an additional 896 salme of grain.27 Certainly the need to import grain pressed ever more urgently upon the Maltese authorities between the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, as the island experienced a demographic upsurge that doubled the population to almost 20,000 by 153028 (at the time of the arrival of the knights 23 The main sources utilized here are the records of the Maltese municipal administration, in G. Wettinger, ed., Acta Iuratorum et Consilii Civitatis et Insulae Maltae (Palermo: Associazione di Studi Malta-Sicilia/Centro di Studi Filologici e Linguistici Siciliani, 1993). 24 S. Giambruno and L. Genuardi, eds., Capitoli inediti delle città demaniali di Sicilia approvati sino al 1458, 1, Alcamo-Malta (Palermo: Boccone del povero, 1918), 409: “ki omni dui oy tri anni pati penuria di victuaglu per ki a quista chitati et insola fa misteri trahiri di Sichilia gran quantitati di frumenti.” 25 Wettinger, “Agriculture in Malta,” 14. 26 Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 286, § 772. 27 S. Fiorini, “Li Buki di Rabatu: The Population of Rabat c. 1480,” in T. Cortis, T. Freller, L. Bugeja, ed., Melitensium Amor. Festschrift in honour of Dun Gwann Azzopardi (Malta: Gutenberg Press, 2002), 73-96. 28 G. Wettinger, “The Militia List of 1419-20: A New Starting Point for the Study of Malta’s Population,” Melita Historica 5 (2) (1969): 80-106; S. Fiorini, “Malta in 1530,” in V. Mallia-Milanes, ed., Hospitaller Malta 1530-1798. Studies on Early Modern Malta and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem (Malta: Mireva, 1993), 121-6. Comparable demographic growth patterns have been observed for Sicily in the later fifteenth century: M. Aymard, “Une croissance sélective: la population sicilienne aux XVIe-XVIIe siècles,” Mélanges de la Casa de

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of St John). By then, Malta and Gozo were importing about 9,000 salme of wheat annually.29 As in other towns and cities in Sicily, the task of ensuring that the population were adequately supplied with wheat was the responsibility of the local municipal council or universitas.30 The universitas of Malta was based at Mdina but its jurisdiction in fact extended beyond the limits of that town to include all the villages on the island, where a large section of the population lived. In addition to the procurement of grain, the universitas oversaw the defense of the island, the farming out of indirect taxes (gabelle) on imported and exported goods, and the enforcement of price controls on foodstuffs. The principal officials of the universitas were the captain, who was appointed by the royal authorities, and the jurati, who were chosen locally and served for one year. Studies on the Maltese universitas and other universitates in Sicily have demonstrated that they tended to be dominated by a small group of families, who often viewed public office as an opportunity to promote sectional or private interests.31 From 1402 to 1457, the universitas of Malta was effectively controlled by 68 families, of whom only 42 had members who became jurati. Moreover, that office was in fact monopolized by fourteen families whose members received 101 of 145 municipal appointments.32 The precise extent to which personal interests impinged on the public responsibility of the universitas to provision its citizens with grain is difficult to assess. The language used in the debates that took place during council meetings was often vague and the necessary prosopographical research that can identify relations among different families or groups has not yet been done. However, the proVelasquez (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1968), 4: 303-27. 29 Wettinger, “Agriculture in Malta,” 14. 30 P. Corrao, “Assemblee municipali nella Sicilia tardomedievale: note sul caso maltese,” in P. Xuereb, ed., Karissime Gotifride. Historical Essays Presented to Professor Godfrey Wettinger on his Seventieth Birthday (Malta: Malta University Press, 1999), 37-46; Fiorini, “Malta in 1530,” 111-98. Roughly 16 per cent of debates and deliberations within the town council between 1450 and 1499 concerned matters relating to grain. 31 C. Dalli, “Capitoli: The Voice of an Elite,” in S. Fiorini, ed., Proceedings of History Week 1992 (Malta: The Malta Historical Society, 1994), 1-18. For similar patterns of behavior within the universitas of Messina, Salvo, Giurati, 95-120. 32 Bresc, Un monde, 727.

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posals put forward by some council members frequently appear to have specifically favored certain individuals at the expense of others. For instance, in March 1474 a number of merchants protested a decision by the universitas that prohibited the sale of grain for eight days with the exception of one merchant who a few days earlier had been allowed to sell a quantity of wheat at the high price of 21 tarì per salma.33 In other instances, some jurati attempted to manipulate the selling price of imported grain to favor another merchant who was entrusted with its procurement (and who served periodically as a jurato). If these examples represent a more widespread pattern of behavior among Maltese municipal authorities at the time they would have certainly represented a further disruption to the flow of trade in grain between the two islands. When it became necessary to import wheat to Malta, communal officials often appointed a representative charged with its procurement. They also needed to decide how much grain to buy and at what price, and the price at which it would be sold in Malta.34 The Maltese universitas, like other Sicilian towns, had consuls in various parts of Sicily where its merchants traded, including Licata and Syracuse, and these officials most likely functioned as intermediaries between sellers and buyers. Most grain destined for Malta was apparently shipped from Terranova, Licata and Syracuse, all on Sicily’s southern coast. At other times, the Maltese authorities were approached directly by individuals or firms willing to bring grain to the island. In that case, the jurati discussed the offer and, if found acceptable, gave permission for the deal to take place. Contemporary records indicate the involvement of Maltese and Sicilians in this trade but Catalan merchants were especially prominent. This activity confirms a pattern, already delineated by Mario Del Treppo, whereby Catalans supplied cloth and agricultural products to Malta in 33 Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 556, § 561, § 562. As in Sicily, the money of account used in Malta and Gozo was the uncia, tarì, grani and denari (1 uncia = 30 tarì, 1 tarì = 20 grani, 1 grano = 6 denari). The Maltese uncia was equivalent to around one-seventh of that of Sicily in the late fifteenth century. 34 Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 219 (1462): council granted Fredericus Calabachi, a fellow jurat, “liberam et generalem potestatem administracionem et procuram pro emendo frumentum per universitatem et illud mictendo cum navigiis et si invenerit aliquem qui offeret fornire insolam frumento pro toto anno eciam ad granos duos ultra quod veniret ad expensas universitates quod habeat licenciam concordandi hoc prestito per eum juramento sollempni dum modo quod alii ferentes possent vendere ...”

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exchange for Maltese raw and spun cotton.35 As a territory that formed part of the kingdom of Sicily, commercial relations between Malta and Sicily should have been categorized as internal trade, and hence exempted from payment of licences, known as tratte, that were levied on exports of grain fuori regno. In practice things worked rather differently. In fact, one of the most pressing concerns for the Maltese universitas in the early fifteenth century was to obtain from the royal officials a permanent exemption from payment of the tratte and other taxes on trade. This aim appeared to have been realized in 1398, when shortly after the restoration of Aragonese power in Sicily, Martin I exempted from export duties all commerce intra regno involving grain and foodstuffs traded by sea. That privilege was hitherto enjoyed only by the city of Messina but was now extended throughout the demesne which included most universitates, among them that of Malta.36 In 1416 however, the Maltese petitioned Ferdinand I to reconfirm that privilege, alleging that they were being taxed at one-half tratta for each salma.37 It has been argued that Martin’s decree contributed to the formation of an integrated grain market in Sicily by opening the way for reduced incidences of shortages and more stable prices.38 As the example of Malta demonstrates, however, royal privileges could lose much of their effect if they fell into disuse (as the Maltese claimed) or were not reconfirmed or firmly enforced. It is not known whether Ferdinand acceded to the Maltese request, but any trade privileges granted would have been lost from 1421 to 1428, when Malta and Gozo were pawned to the Aragonese nobleman Gonsalvo Monroy and so were not part of the demesne.39 Alfonso granted another exemption from payment of export licenses on grain and other victuals in 1432, following the reincorporation of the islands into the demesne, yet other requests to reconfirm this privilege recur in 1435 and 1450.40 35

Del Treppo, I mercanti, 166-7, 172, 174-5. The exchange of Catalan cloth and foodstuffs for Maltese grain by a Catalan merchant company in the 1450s and 1460s is difficult to explain: Del Treppo, I mercanti, 176. 36 Epstein, An Island for Itself, 141. 37 Giambruno and Genuardi, Capitoli, 376. 38 Epstein, An Island for Itself, 141-50. 39 G. Wettinger, “The Pawning of Malta to Monroy,” Melita Historica 7 (3) (1978): 265-83. 40 Giambruno and Genuardi, Capitoli, 390.

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Even when trading privileges were in force, the Maltese continued to experience difficulties procuring grain, either because of the intransigence or corruption of port officials who refused to honor toll exemptions or because towns in Sicily were unwilling to allow sales of grain for fear that they themselves might experience shortages.41 Small towns or isolated communities may have been especially vulnerable because they could not easily make their voice heard, which perhaps explains why the capitoli (petitions) of the universitas of the island of Lipari contained complaints similar to those by the Maltese.42 In 1483, in spite of an order from the viceroy, the authorities in Licata refused to sell wheat to Malta, and in 1507 Maltese who wished to buy grain from Terranova were allegedly being forced to pay bribes to customs officials or risk imprisonment.43 Similar protests were made in 1513 and 1515 against other port authorities.44 Times of scarcity only compounded the usual difficulties. In 1483 the port official of Licata asked the Maltese authorities not to buy all their grain from his city but to extend their search to other ports, particularly during the summer months when the weather was favorable to longer voyages.45 In fact by 1515, Malta appears to have been buying grain from several caricatori including Agrigento, Sciacca, Mazara, Licata, and Heraclea.46 In difficult circumstances the universitas sometimes adopted harsh measures such as requiring those who held stocks of grain to sell it immediately,47 to conduct searches to reveal hoarded supplies,48 or to institute forced loans upon all or some members of the community with which the universi-

41

Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 517. Giambruno and Genuardi, Capitoli, 366-7, 371. 43 Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 927; J. Del Amo García, S. Fiorini, and G. Wettinger, ed., Documents of the Maltese Universitas. No. 1. Cathedral Museum, Mdina. Archivum Cathedralis Melitae, Miscellanea 33, 1405-1524. Documentary Sources of Maltese History (Malta: Malta University Press, 2001), § 84. 44 Del Amo García, Fiorini, and Wettinger, Documents, § 96, § 101. 45 Del Amo García, Fiorini, and Wettinger, Documents, § 45. 46 Del Amo García, Fiorini, and Wettinger, Documents, § 101. 47 Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 73 (1456); §215 (1462); §279 (1468). 48 Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 125 (1461); § 216 (1462). On the cherca, Bresc, Un monde, 745. Some people made their own private arrangements to purchase grain in Sicily. Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 314 (1468): “si faza la cherca di quilli ki hannu portatu frumentu et si l’annu portatu per usu so si pigla parti per vindiri a lu populu.” 42

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tas could purchase grain (inpronti).49 If the situation was deemed to be especially critical, the universitas authorized the seizure of ships carrying grain to other destinations and confiscated their cargo.50 IV In conclusion, I would like to remark on two implications which can be derived from this study. First, it is admittedly notoriously difficult, but nonetheless important, to assess the effect of commercialization on a local level. I suggest that the extent to which urban demand in the late Middle Ages was responsible for opening commodity markets and lowering the costs of trade was in part limited by conflicts of interests within and among individual towns. Even in a relatively commercialized society like late medieval Sicily, towns and urban elites were often more concerned with protecting their particular fiscal and commercial privileges than in reducing the cost of regional trade. As John Hatcher and Mark Bailey have recently noted: legal controls over trade in the Middle Ages were not intended to secure cheap and ready participation for as many as possible. Rather their object was to extend and protect the control of commercial activity ... for the profit of a few beneficiaries, and this inevitably restricted the scale of any reduction in the transaction costs of marketing for most producers.51

Second, I believe that the evidence presented above confirms the view that economic intervention by the medieval state generally came in spurts and its effect was, at best, unevenly distributed. When stategranted economic privileges were reasonably respected or enforced, they may have indeed contributed to a reduction of institutional constraints on trade and promoted regional specialization and greater market integration. However, the Maltese evidence shows that there were also several instances where, in practice, this did not occur. Malta’s alienation from the demesne between 1421 and 1428—by no means a unique event among demesnal cities in the 49 Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 25 (undated); §197 (1462); §218 (1462) (forced loan of 1000 florins on “persuni facultusi”). 50 Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 547; § 548; § 549. 51 Hatcher and Bailey, Modelling the Middle Ages, 168.

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kingdom of Sicily—stands as a reminder that, for the state, the benefits of short term gains might outweigh long-term expectations.

COMMERCIAL CREDIT AND CENTRAL PLACE FUNCTION IN THIRTEENTH-CENTURY YPRES David Nicholas

Of the five great cities of Flanders (Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, Lille, Douai) in the late thirteenth century Ypres was the last to develop urban characteristics, the most precocious in record-keeping, the most industrial, and the most involved in trade at the interregional fairs. Its cloth was the most highly taxed of any Flemish textiles at the fairs of Provins, and the city maintained its own houses for merchant lodging at Provins and Lagny.1 The decline of the textile industry of Ypres in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is well known.2 The extent to which the decline of the Champagne fairs was involved in the general decay of Ypres’ prosperity, either as cause or effect, must remain an open question.3 Indeed, most questions concerning Ypres must remain open, because the archives of the city, once the richest of Flanders, were destroyed in 1914. Before the war the city archivist, Guillaume Des Marez, published the city accounts from 1267 to 13294 and took extensive notes on the more than seven thousand chirographs, including 5,505 debt recognitions, that were contracted before the échevins of the city from 1 October 1249 to 18 June 1291, when the 1 Elizabeth Chapin, Les villes de foires de Champagne des origins au début du XIVe siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1937), 96, 109, 115, 118. 2 See particularly Hans Van Werveke, De omvang van de Ieperse lakenproductie in de veertiende eeuw, Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Klasse der Letteren, no. 9 (Antwerp: Standaard, 1947). 3 John Munro has argued persuasively that the eclipse of the Champagne fairs was due to a decline in the production of light woollens that had been the most important element in their prosperity. He links the change also to the rise in transaction costs with the onset of wars in the 1290s. John H. Munro, “The ‘New Institutional Economics’ and the Changing Fortunes of Fairs in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: the Textile Trades, Warfare, and Transaction Costs,” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 88 (2001): 1-47, at 14-9. 4 Guillaume Des Marez and E. De Sagher, eds., Comptes de la ville d’Ypres de 1267 à 1329, 2 vols. (Brussels: Commission Royale d’Histoire, 1909-1913).

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fish: gamaros)59 with hooks and nets, and porpoises (?or sharks: canes marini) are taken from the sea.60 73-84. [Garland concludes with discussions of domestic and wild beasts, garden plants, trees, house-construction, ships, instruments of martyrdom, musicians and their instruments, prostitutes and dancing-girls tormented by serpents (as punishment for their sins), Paradise, and the Last Judgment.]

APPENDIX II Transcription and translation of British Library, Additional. MS 8167, fols. 88r-90v. This transcription is based on that printed by G[eorg] Waitz in "Handschriften in englischen Bibliotheken," Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für altere Deutsche Geschichtskunde 4 (1879): 339-43. I have re-checked the manuscript and made a number of corrections to Waitz’s transcript. I have silently modernized the punctuation, use of “u” and “v,” and capitalization, but have used italics to show expanded abbreviations. Waitz mistakenly identified this treatise as having been written in a fourteenth-century hand. In fact, the entire volume, which contains a collection of dictaminal and legal materials, evidently was written in the first half of the thirteenth century. A note on fol. 2r (a front fly-leaf) records that it was acquired for Westminster Abbey by William de Hasele. Hasele, who died as sub-prior of Westminster before May 1283, had probably obtained the volume before 1250, since additional notes on fol. 2r record a dispute during the abbacy of Richard de Crokele (or Crokesle) in 1250, and national events of 1258, together with Crokele’s death at Winchester in 1258 on the feast of St. Kenelm the Martyr (17 July). Article 5 in the 59

Gamaros: the glosses here read espinoches, espinocles, and esperling (one MS. also gives “gamerus gallice vocatur tenche”). None glosses gamaros as lobsters (cf. Classical Latin cammarus), and some kind of fish would indeed make better sense here than lobsters, since the gamaros are listed with other fish caught with hooks and nets. The MED identifies sperling(e) as a “fish of the family Clupeidae, esp. the sprat (Clupea sprattus); ... also, the pilchard (Sardinia pilchardus); also, any small fish of the genus Merlangus, such as the whiting (Merlangus merlangus), or of the family Salmonidae, such as the grayling (Thymallus thymallus), or perh. the European smelt (Osmerus eperlanus).” 60 In the editions of Hunt and Scheler (p. 35, cap. 72), the last clause reads: “quia canes marini ab equore devehuntur.” Here I am following the editions of Géraud (p. 608, cap. LXX) and Wright (p. 135), which begin this clause with “et” instead of “quia.” The Oxford Latin Dictionary defines canis marinus as shark or dogfish (a small inshore shark), and the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources as seal or possibly dogfish, but Richard Hoffman has suggested (pers. comm.) that here it may instead mean porpoise, which was the meaning used by Albertus Magnus in De animalibus and, in the sixteenth century, by Conrad von Gessner in Historia animalium.

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volume (fols. 88r-133r), a miscellaneous dictaminal and legal collection, was probably compiled at Oxford between 1220 and 1240, and this treatise is the earliest known English dictaminal treatise.61 For further discussion of this volume and its contents, see H. G. Richardson, “An Oxford Teacher of the Fifteenth Century,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 23 (2) (1939): 3-24. Transcription [fol. 88r] Personarum quedam sunt ecclesiastice, quedam seculares, et tam harum quam illarum quedam sunt sumperiores [sic], quedam inferiores, quedam infime. Superiores sunt vero dominus papa, archiepiscopi, episcopi, abbates, priores. Inferiores sunt vero archidiaconi, decani, officiales, parsone, vicarii. Infime sunt presbiteri parochiani, summonitores, et simplices clerici. Superiores seculares, imperatores, reges, comites, duces, barones; inferiores sunt justiciarii, vicecomites, constabularii, forestarii, viredarii, miles, burgenses, libere tenentes. Infime sunt bedelli, rustici, sutores et omnes officiarii, sive ministri sive ministrelli, tam urbani quam rurales. Si superior persona scribat inferiori, superior debet preponi per nominativum casum, inferior postponi per dativum casum. Si inferior persona scribat superiori, superior debet preponi per dativum casum, inferior postponi per nominativum casum. Si autem par scribat pari, ut miles militi, burgensis burgensi, uterlibet potest preponi alii, set causa benivolencie captande, in literis petitoriis solet ille cui scribitur preponi per dativum casum. In omni peticione facta superiori vel pari debet petitus pluraliter designari. De literis vero creditoriis [corrected in MS from creditores] primo dicere proponemus, quod creditorum quedam [recte quidam] sunt urbani, quedam 61 For the dating of the treatise and of Additional MS 8167, and the latter’s acquisition by Hasele and presentation to Westminster Abbey, see Richardson, “An Oxford Teacher,” 447-50; and H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, “Early Coronation Records,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 13 (1936): 135. According to the British Library’s online catalogue, a mortgage on fol. 95r (line 5), dated 30 years after Henry III’s coronation, “is either a scribal error or indicates that most of art. 5 was written after 1246.” Richardson believed that this date was “a later modification” (“An Oxford Teacher,” 448, n.2). However, in the manuscript the year is given as 30 years from the birth (a carnacione) of Henry III (1 October 1207), not his coronation (a coronatione, 28 October 1216). Richardson noted two later versions of both this treatise and of our third text in two Cambridge manuscripts: Gonville and Caius College, MS 205, pp. 2 55-64 (1270s), and Corpus Christi College, MS 297, fols. 135v-138r (beginning of the fourteenth century?). Richardson, “An Oxford Teacher,” 447, 449-50. I have checked both manuscripts. Neither seems to derive directly from Additional MS 8167, and the Corpus Christi College manuscript (hereafter CCC 297) does not appear to derive directly from the manuscript in Gonville and Caius College (hereafter G & C 205/111).

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[recte quidam] rurales. Urbani vero vinetarius, pannarius sive drapparius, piscator, carnifex, auceps, pistor, pastillarius, flaonarius, aurifaber, zonarius, cerotecarius, cellarius, alutarius, cordevanarius, corvesarius, husuarius sive ocrearius, loremarius, pelliparius et consimiles. Et de unoquoque istorum suo loco dicemus. Vinetarius vinum habeat andegavense, gasconense, francense, averenense, vinum raspatum, zeduarizatum, saxifragiatum, pigmentum, claretum, mustum, piretum, acetum, siseram, medum sive ydromellum. Item vinitarius vendat vinum per modios, per dolea [corrected in MS from doleos] sive tonellos, per pipas, per sextaria, per dimidium sextarium, per lagenas sive galones, per potellos sive floxeos [sic], per quartas, per pintas, scilicet dimidias quartas. Iterum vinitarius habeat in cellare suo utres, cados, infusoria sive intonellaria, clepsedres sive dusellos, costrellos, alvealos [added in different hand in margin: pulanos], tabulum [?recte terebellum: gimlet or auger]62 sive penetralium sive persorium. Item habeat [fol. 88v] ciphos aureos sive de murra vel de macera, cuppos cum cooperculis cuppatos. Pannarius in celda sua vel ad nundinas habeat telas varias et multimodas de vili precio sive de vili foro, et habeat telas de foro cari [sic; added in different hand in margin: vel magni]. Item habeat telas angligenas latas habentes latitudinem duarum ulnarum, vel minus vel pauloplus [sic], etiam cum lisuris, telas densiores vel spissiores ad capatium faciendum, vel magis tenues sive minus spisses [recte spissas] et melius vestientes [sic] ad robas faciendas. Item habeat scarletam nigram, albam vel virede coloratam; burnetam nigram vel sanguineam; burnetam coloratam violetam, rugetam, persum, bluetam, wagetam, plucatam; russetum nigrum vel album. Item [habeat] russetum de Laycestre vel de Oxonia. Item habeat grossum russetum vel minuetum, burellum London’ vel burellum de Beaveis, imperiale russetum, imperiale bluetum, haubergentum album de Stanford’, haubergentum russetum, haubergentum tinctum in viride, vel in burnetam, vel in bluetum, vel in nigrum, vel in rubeum. Item habeat album cordium, [added above line: nigrum,] grossum vel minuetum, cordicium radiatum. Item habeat grisetum de Totenais, de Cornubia. Piscator, qui hamo vel reti vel lancea, sive piscarius, qui vendit pisces, habeat pisces marinos vel aque dulcis, vel limosos sive platias, et balenas sive tecefocas [corrected in MS from tecesfocas; recte cetefocas], sturgiones, cungros, pectines sive plaiceos, lupos aquaticos sive luceos, murenas sive lampredas, murenulas sive lampredulas, mecaros sive makerellos, salmones, conchilia [glossed above the word as wolk], sperlingos, bremnas [recte bremias], radeas, rocheos, merlingos, tencas, hadoccos, anguillas, gugiones, celluras [?recte siluros] sive minusas, lochias, caridones [recte capitones],63 verrones.

62 The later of the two Cambridge manuscripts (CCC 297, p. 317) gives “terebellum” here. 63 Both later manuscripts (G & C 205/111, p. 261, and CCC 297, p. 319)

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Macerarius habeat salsas carnes et recentes, bovinas, caprinas, porcinas, agninas, edulinas, vitulinas, porcellinas; item habeat bacones, perrias [recte pernas], sive petafulsus [recte petasiculos or petasunculos].64 Item habeat carcosia boum, ovium, arietum, sive multonum. Item habeat bacones ustos, scaturizatos. Item habeat porchetum pudratum vel in succedio positum. Item habeat lardum, saimum, unctum porcinum, [added in different hand in margin: et sepum] ovinum. Item habeat vicera porcorum vel boum vel ovium, et tripas boum vel ovium. Item habeat corea bovina et pelles ovinas. Item habeat secures quibus [boves] excribere [recte excerebret], et carnes porcorum dividant [recte dividat], et clunacula, attavos [recte artavos], unde porcos, oves et boves evicerant [recte evicerat] et excoreant [recte excoreat].65 [fol. 89r] Auceps sive aucuparius habeat aves silvestres et agrestes et domesticas, marinos vel ripeos. Item habeat ardeas sive airones, cigonios, perdices [corrected in MS from perdicas], geturnices [recte coturnices], castrimargios, wodecok, pluviarios, grues sive cignes [recte cignos] sive cleres [recte olores],66 malardos, mergites, pavones, anderes [recte anseres or anceres], aucas domesticas et alias, scilicet aucas albas, bisas, auculas, capones, gallos, gallinas, pullos, columbas, turtura, malvicia. Item capit volucres in visco vel tendiculis vel laqueis vel reti stante vel pendente, ut omnes volucres et campestres ut nisi [sic] et alias minutas [sic] capi possint, ut domiciliarios sive scingudarios [sic].67 Pistor habeat panem azimum et panem furvum et panem triticeum, ordeaceum, sigilinum, avenatum. Item habeat placencia, libia, liba, infungia, panem album, panem furmenteum [?recte fermenteum], panem bultatum, tribratum [recte cribratum], saclatum sive temesatum, et libia piperata, cokettos. Item

give “capitones” here. 64 CCC 297, p. 318, reads “pernas sive petasunculos” here. 65 This sentence is clearly defective. Clearer versions can be found in the two Cambridge manuscripts. G & C 205/111, p 259, reads: “Item habeat secures quibus boves excerebrat, et clunacula quibus carnes porcinas dividat.” CCC 297, p. 318, reads: “Item habeat macerarius secures quibus boves excerebret et porcos et carnes dividat.” 66 CCC 297, p. 318, reads “olores” (swans) here. 67 This last sentence seems corrupt. A much fuller version is given in the earlier of the two Cambridge manuscripts, G & C 205/111, p. 259: “Item volucres vel volatilia capit visco, tendiculis, laqueis, panteris, vel rethi pendente, vel castrimarginario rethe, vel rethe stante vel jacente. Item habeat recia [sic] unde capiat in rama nisos sive spervarios, ancipitres. Et tumberellos ut passeres et alias aves minutas domiciliaria et severundalia capi possit [recte possunt].” CCC 297, p. 318, has a version of this passage that combines elements from both of the other texts and introduces new ones: “Item volucres capit visco, vel tendiculis, laqueis, panteris, vel reti pendente, vel stante, vel castrimagiarum; et omnes volucres silvestres et campestres, ut nisos sive spervarios, vel trappis ut perdices, vel etiam reti quo anglice dicitur lof, vel cum tumberello ut passeres et alias aves minutas ut domiciliaria, sive severundaria.”

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habeat pistrinum, furnum, sive clibanum, confractorem. Item habeat polentridium, rotabulum, item ceotelatam [?recte cribelatam] farinam, florem frumenti. Item [habeat panem]68 coctum in clibano vel in fornace vel in saritagine vel in cratela. Pastillarius habeat pastillos de carnibus, de piscibus, bene piperatos. Item habeat de farina [recte ferina] sive venacionis vel carne domestica vel de feris vel de volucribus sive de volatilibus. De feris vero cerve vel de cerva, caprea, vel dama, leporis lardo, avibus marinis vel silvestribus [corrected in MS from silvestrisbus] vel domesticis, que superius enumerantur. Iterum flaonarius habeat opacos, artocopos, flaones de ovis, pane et caseo compositas. Wafrarius habeat wafras vel lagana in ferris vel in furnis decoctas. Aurifaber habeat opus tam ductile quam fusile. Operatur enim in metallis et in lapidibus. Metallum vero ductile vel fusile est, sed lapis scruptilis [recte scriptilis] tantum. Operatur siquando in auro, in argento, cupro, [added in different hand in margin: vel trifurat]69 stagno, auritallo [recte auricalco]. Item habeat opus concavum vel solidum, planum vel planatum, inpressum vel insculptum. Item faciet calices, platenas, [added in different hand above line: ollas] iustas, coronas, pelves, ampollas, fioles, filateria, cruces aureas vel argenteas, [fol. 89v] vel de ligno brateis sive laminis auri vel argento cooperato; candelabrum, coclearea. Item habeat ciphos de macera cum pede aureo vel argenteo, et superius aureo vel argenteo circumdatos. Item habeat cupas cum cooperculis et ciphos planos. Item habeat crateres vel crateras cum trifuris vel planos vel sculptos, scutellas, parapsides, salsaria et salleria. Item faciat anulos, firmacula, monilia, catenas, membra zonarum. Item habeat folliculos, forcipes, inclinum [?recte incudem, an anvil],70 malleos, et totum ad metallum purgandum, et mola [recte molam] ad aciem ferro conferendam, pedem etiam leporis et corte [?recte corium gremiale, leather apron] ad gramina [?recte grana] metallorum colligendum [recte colligenda] et expurgendum [recte extergenda].71 Habeat etiam vasa varia et minuta, aurifragium, filum argenteum, tabellam oblitam ad flosculos protrahendos. 68 Both of the Cambridge manuscripts (G & C 205/111, p. 260, and CCC 297, p. 319) supply “habeat panem” here. 69 Cf. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List, s.v. “Tri/folium, -/fura.” 70 G & C 205/111, p. 261, has “incudem” (glossed as “anveld”) here. 71 Where Additional MS 8167 reads “corte ad gramina metallorum colligendum et expurgendum,” the two Cambridge manuscripts (G & C 205/111, p. 261, and CCC 297, p. 319) read, respectively, “corium gremale ad grana colligenda,” and “corium gremiale ad gramina metallorum colligenda et extergenda.” For the translation “leather apron,” see the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, s.v. “gremialis,” 3. Compare this description of the goldsmith with that of Alexander Nequam in De nominibus utensilium (in Hunt, Teaching and Learning Latin, 1: 189; translated in Holmes, Daily Living in the Twelfth Century, 142). In Nequam’s text, the goldsmith is advised to have a hare’s foot with which he can polish gold or silver and also collect the small particles of metals, lest they be lost in his leather apron.

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Cutellarius faciat varios cultellos, clunacula venatorum, artavos scriptorum vel dolatorum. Habeat mensacula, sive cultellos ad zonam pendentes, cultellos etiam planos. Item faciat novaculas sive rasoria, forfices, cesuras, et cetera. Zonarius habeat zonas de cerico, lino, vel de coreo, scilicet nigro, rubeo vel albo, plusculas de ferro, cupro. Item habeat planas zonas vel barratas sive membratas, membris rotundis vel quadratis. Cerotecarius habeat cerotecas grossas, messoribus et fossoribus aptas, minutas ad opus non laborancium, opere scilicet manuali, servili, ad cardanos et spinas trahendos vel colligendos. Item habeat cerotecas duplices et singulas, pilosas vel planas. Habeat cerotecas magnas et duplices ad opus falconarii. Item, [habeat]72 cerotecas laneas, et inconsutiles desuper, et totum contextas. Allutarius habeat allutam veram de pellibus caprinis, de pellibus ovinis. Habeat estivalia, crepidas sive botas, largas, [fol. 90r] tentone munitas ad opus hominum, vel stricas [recte strictas] ad opus feminarum. Item habeat sotulares pecatos [?recte picatos], vel sotulares cum medullis corrigiis laqueatos. Item habeat sotulares cum colariis ligulis ad opus militum. Husurarius [sic] et sutor in coreis bovinis operantur. Sutor quidem ocreas sive husas faciat et sotulares pariter varios et multimodos [corrected in MS from multimodas] ut allutarius, sed husarios [recte husarius] tantum faciet ocreas et non sotulares. Sellarius cellas habeat diversas et varias, ad opus monachi cum articulis [?recte arculis]73 divisis et latis non coloratis, insculptas ad opus militum, domine, armig[er]i [in MS, armigi], et parsone et presbiteri, ad equum, ad palefridum, ad sumentorium. Item habeat singulas et cellas verniculatas [recte vermiculatas], albas, vel auro vel cinoplo coloratas [corrected in MS from colaratas], flosculis, leoniculis vel alicuius hystoria depictis [recte depictas] vel protractas. Item, habeat scuta colorata vel non colorata, alba, nigra, flosculis de flagella [recte glagello]74 vel aliis leoniculis depicta, rubeo vel cinoplo, viridi, vel auro, azuri. Item habeat scuta listata flosculis, avibus, bestiunculis, quaturnata, moncellata, lambata rosis.

72 Both Cambridge manuscripts (G & C 205/111, p. 262, and CCC 297, p. 320) have “habeat” here. 73 This phrase is murky. Of the two later versions of this text (G & C 205/111, p. 263, and CCC 297, p. 320), the former gives it as “cum articulis dimissis et latis,” while the latter has “cum arculis dimissis et latis.” “Arculis” (saddle-bows) fits the sense of this passage better than “articulis.” However, while “divisis” (separate?) seems awkward, “dimissis” seems worse than awkward here. 74 There is no ablative noun “flagella,” and both of the Cambridge manuscripts (G & C 205/111, p. 263, and CCC 297, p. 321) read “glagello” here. For its translation as fleur de lis, see the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, s.v. “gladiolous,” 3.

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Pelliparius habeat pellicia, penulas, fururas ex pellibus agninis vel foleis [?recte follibus] ex griso, experiolis, sorellis; ex cuniculis, laironibus, edulline [sic]; ex pellibus ovinis, hispidis et pilosis; ex grossis vel minutis sive crispis; ex catis sive ex pellibus catenis, grossas [recte grossis] vel super rasas [recte rasis]. Item habeat penulas albas, nigras, et habeat urlas de sablino matrice, ex fibro, ex wlpecula [sic for vulpecula] vel roserella, vel ex lutro, et cetera. Lorimarius habeat lorenas, scilicet frena, cingula, cum duplici coreo. Item, sint lorene in freno, in pectorali et strepis sive scancilibus, quedam de minutis clavis, quedam de clavis latis, rotundis, cum scutis, scutellulis pendentibus ferreis vel cupreis deauratis, quedam cum campanellis vel anulis. Item intelligendum est de strepis et de pectoralibus. Strepas habeat latas sub pede ad opus militum, cum virga gracili ad opus monachi, et rotundas, strepas quadratas, strictas et latas secundum varietatem equorum et equietaturum. Item habeat calcaria ad opus militum de- [fol. 90v] aurata, vel calcaria cum virga gracili et rotunda vel quadrata.

Translation Of persons some are ecclesiastics and some are seculars, and of both the former and the latter some are superior, others inferior, some the lowest. The superiors are the lord pope, the archbishops, bishops, abbots, and priors. The inferiors are the archdeacons, deacons, officials, parsons, and vicars. The lowest are parish priests, summoners, and simple clerks. The superior seculars are emperors, kings, counts, dukes, and barons; the inferiors are justiciars, sheriffs, constables, foresters, verderers, knights, burgesses, and freeholders. The lowest are beadles, serfs, cobblers and all workmen (officiarii), either officers or servants (tam ministri sive ministrelli), urban or rural. If a superior person write to an inferior, the superior should be put first in the nominative case, the inferior put after in the dative case. If an inferior person write to a superior, the superior should be put first in the dative case, the inferior put after in the nominative case. If, however, an equal write to an equal, as a knight to a knight or a burgess to a burgess, either may be put before the other, but in order to obtain good will (causa benivolencie captande), in a letter of petition, he to whom it is written is generally put first in the dative case. In every petition made to a superior or an equal, the one being petitioned (petitus) should be designated in the plural [e.g., as vos instead of tu]. I propose to speak first of letters to creditors, because some creditors are urban, and some are rural. Urban [are] the vintner, draper (pannarius sive drapparius), fisherman (piscator) or fishmonger (piscarius), butcher, poulterer (auceps), baker, pasteler (pie-baker), flan-maker, goldsmith, girdler, glover, saddler, cordwainer (alutarius, cordevanarius, corvesarius), hosier (husuarius sive ocrearius), lorimer, skinner, and similar folk. And of each of these in his place I shall speak.

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The vintner should have wine of Anjou, Gascony, the Île-de-France, and Auvergne; sweet or rosé wine (vinum raspatum);75 wine flavored with zedoary and with saxifrage; piment and claré (red and white spiced wines); grape juice (mustum); perry; vinegar; cider; and mead (medum sive ydromellum). And let the vintner sell wine by measures (modios), by barrels or tuns, by pipes, by sesters, by the half-sester, by gallons, by pottles or flasks (half-gallons), by quarts or pints, that is, half-quarts. Again, let the vintner have in his cellar bottles (utres), casks, funnels (infusoria sive intonellaria), spigots or taps (clepsedres sive dusellos), costrels, troughs (alvealos), slides for lowering casks (pulanos), and an auger or gimlet or wimble ([terebellum] sive penetralium sive persorium). Also let him have cups of gold, or of maple or mazer (de murra vel de macera), and cups with lids. Let a draper have, in his seld or at fairs, cloths of various sorts, both cheap (de vili precio sive de vili foro) and expensive. Let him have English broadcloths, having a width of two ells, more or less, including the selvedges; heavier or thicker cloths for making a hood (capatium), or finer, lighter, dressier (?or better-quality: melius vestientes) cloths for making robes (suits of clothing). Let him have scarlet [that is] black, white, or dyed with green; black or sanguine burnet; burnet dyed violet, red, perse (dark blue), bluet (a shade of blue), wachet (wagetam: light blue),76 [or] plunket (plucatam: a light or grayish blue);77 black or white russet, and russet of Leicester or of Oxford. Let him have unshorn or shorn russet (grossum russetum vel minuetum),78 London burel or burel of Beauvais, russet imperial, blue imperial, white haberget of Stamford, russet haberget, [and] haberget dyed in green, brown, blue, black, or red. Let him have white, [black,] unshorn or shorn (grossum vel minuetum) cordium, and striped (radiatum) cordicium. And let him have gray cloth (grisetum) of Totnes [and] of Cornwall. Let a fisherman, who [fishes] with a hook, a net or a lance, or a fishmonger, who sells fish, have sea fish and freshwater fish, mudfish (limosos) or flatfish (platias), and whales (balenas sive cetefocas), sturgeons, congers, plaice, pike, lampreys, lamperns, mackerels, salmons, cockles (?or whelks), sprats, breams, rays (radeas), roach, whiting (merlingos), tench, haddock, eels,

75 See MED, s.v. “Raspise” (1440-75). Latham, however, defines vinum raspatum as “wine freshened after it has gone stale” (Revised Medieval Latin Word-List, s.v. “Raspatum,” c. 1210). 76 See MED, s.v. “Wachet.” 77 See MED, s.v. “Plunket.” 78 This text describes both russet cloth and cordium as “grossum vel minuetum,” and cat skins that are “grossas vel super rasas.” This suggests a contrast between cloth or skins that are shaggy or unshorn and those that are shorn. A similar contrast is drawn between sheepskins with long-haired fleece (“grossis”) and those with short or curly hair (“minutis sive crispis”), and between gloves that are “grossas” (heavy or rough) and “minutas” (fine or thin).

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gudgeons (gugiones, celluras [?recte siluros] sive minusas),79 loach, capitones (bullhead, miller’s thumb, or gurnard),80 and minnows (verrones). Let the butcher have salt meat and fresh, of cattle, goats, pigs, lambs, kids (edulinas), calves, or piglets; also let him have bacons, hams (reading pernas in place of perrias), or fore-quarters of pork (reading petasunculos instead of petafulsus).81 Item, let him have carcases of oxen, sheep, goats, or muttons. Item, let him have scorched and scalded bacons (bacones ustos, scaturizatos).82 Item, let him have salted or pickled pork. Item, let him have lard (lardum, saimum, unctum porcinum) and sheep’s tallow.83 Item, let him have the entrails of pigs, oxen or sheep, and the tripes of oxen or sheep. Item, let him have cowhides and sheepskins. Item, let him have axes with which to brain [oxen] and divide up the flesh of pigs, and knives (clunacula, a[r]tavos) with which to gut and skin pigs, sheep, and oxen. Let the poulterer have birds of the forests and fields and domestic birds, seabirds and riverbirds. Item, let him have herons (ardeas sive airones), storks (cigonios), partriches (perdices), quail (coturnices), woodcocks (castrimargios, wodecok), plovers (pluviarios), cranes (grues) or swans (cignos sive [olores]), mallards, aquatic birds (mergites), peacocks, domestic geese (anseres [for anderes], aucas domesticas) and others, namely, white geese, gray geese, goslings, capons, cocks, hens, chickens, pigeons, doves, and thrushes (malvicia). Item, he takes birds in lime or with snares (in visco vel tendiculis vel laqueis) or with a standing or hanging net, so that all birds [?of the forests] and fields, such as hawks, can be taken, [?and he also takes] other

79

See MED, s.v. “Menuse.” The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources defines “capito” as a “kind of fish,” and cites glossings as bullhead, “caboche,” and gurnard. Alexander Nequam (or Neckam) included the capito among a list of fish in De nominibus utensilium; one manuscript of 1250-1300 glosses this as “caboche” while two manuscripts of the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries gloss it, respectively, as “caboche vel gurnard” and as “caboge.” Hunt, Teaching and Learning Latin, 2: 66. See OED, s.vv. “bullhead” and “caboche,” for fifteenth- century references to capito as a “bulhede,” and to “caboche” as a fish (bullhead or miller’s thumb). The OED defines miller’s thumb as “[a]ny of various freshwater sculpins of the genus Cottus, esp. the European bullhead, C. gobio; (also) a marine sculpin (rare);” and identifies gurnards as marine fish of the genus Trigla or family Triglidae, which have a large, spiny head. 81 These last two terms may instead represent a flitch and a half-flitch of bacon: a fifteenth-century Latin-English word-list printed by Thomas Wright (Volume of Vocabularies 1: 242) includes “Hec perra, a flyk,” and “Hec petasiculus, half a flyk.” 82 See Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, s.v. “Excaturizatio.” The hog carcases have been scorched or scalded to loosen the hair so that it can be scraped off. 83 For saimum cf. MED, s.v. “Seim(e).” 80

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small birds, such as those that live in eaves or shingles (ut domiciliarios sive scingudarios).84 Let the baker have leavened bread (panem azimum)85 and black bread (panem furvum); and wheaten, barley, rye and oat bread. Item, let him have fine white bread (placencia, libia, liba, infungia, panem album),86 sourdough bread (panem fermenteum),87 bolted or sieved [?flour] (panem [?recte florem] bultatum, cribratum, saclatum, sive temesatum), fine spice-bread (libia piperata) and cocket-bread.88 Item, let him have a bakehouse, oven (furnum sive clibanum), and dough-brake (confractorem).89 Item, let him have a bolting cloth or sieve (polentridium) [and] a molding board (rotabulum); item, sieved (c[rib]elatam) meal, wheat flour. Item, [let him have bread] cooked in an oven (in clibano vel in fornace) or in a pan (saritagine) or on a griddle (in cratela). Let the pasteler have pasties of meats and fish, well spiced. Item, let him have [pasties] of game (de ferina sive venacionibus) or of domestic meat, of game-birds or domestic birds (vel de feris vel de volucribus sive de volati-

84

This last sentence appears to be corrupt. Compare it with the fuller versions in the two Cambridge manuscripts, quoted in n.67 above. A vernacular gloss to Alexander Nequam’s De nominibus utensilium (in Hunt, Teaching and Learning Latin, 2: 84) translates domiciliarum as severunder; cf. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List, s.v. “severunda” (eaves or cornice), and Old French sevronde (eaves with downspouts). 85 Azimus was leaven; see Hunt’s glosses in Teaching and Learning Latin, 3: 17, 289; cf. Classical Latin acrozymus (“slightly leavened”). 86 Placenta were simnels (fine white rolls, twice-baked or perhaps boiled first and then baked, like modern bagels) and libum or liba was wastel bread (the finest white bread). See Hunt’s glosses for liba, -um; placenta(s), -e(s), -um (Teaching and Learning Latin, 3: 92, 126, 341, 363); and MED, s.vv. “Simenel” and “Wastel,”the latter quoting John Mirfield’s Sinonoma Bartholomei (ante1400): “Placenta est panis factus de pasca [?read: pasta] azima, i. wastel.” A Latin word-list with interlineal English glosses in British Library, MS Lansdowne 560, fol. 47r-v (late fourteenth-early fifteenth century) also glosses libum as wastel. Infungia was unleavened bread, here apparently also made from fine white flour. See Holmes, Daily Living in the Twelfth Century, 284, n.48, and Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, s.v. “Infungia,” where it is defined as cocket bread (described by Adam of Petit-Pont in De utensilibus as a sourdough bread, made without leaven). 87 Cf. MED, s.vv. “Ferment” and “Sour-dough.” 88 See n.86, above; cf. MED, s.v. “Coket” (n.2): bread made of fine flour, second only to wastel bread. 89 CCC 297, p. 319, elaborates on this term: “confractoreum, sive braccam, sive pincam, scilicet brake.” A dough-brake was a mechanical device used by bakers for kneading dough. See OED, s.v. “brake” (n.3), which quotes the Promptorium Parvulorum (c. 1440): “Bray or brakene, baxteris instrument, pinsa.” Latham’s Revised Medieval Latin Word-List, s.v. “pinsa,” took this instead to mean a kneading trough or board.

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libus); of game, that is, of the hind (cerve, vel de cerva: female red deer), roe (caprea: female roe deer) or doe (dama: female fallow deer); of the fat flesh of the hare (leporis lardo); of sea birds, forest birds or domestic birds, which are enumerated above. On the other hand, let the flan-maker have flans (opacos, artocopos, flaones) made of eggs, bread and cheese. Let the waferer have wafers or little cakes (wafras vel lagana) cooked in irons or ovens.90 Let the goldsmith have stock (opus) both ductile (hammered) and fusile (molten or cast), for he works in metals and in stones. Metal is ductile or fusile, but stone is only carvable or engravable (scriptilis). At times he works in gold, silver, [or] copper, [or ornaments: vel trifurat] in tin [or] brass. Item, let him have hollow and solid work, smooth (planum vel planatum) or engraved (inpressum vel insculptum). Item, let him have chalices (calices), plate, [pots (ollas)], flagons (iustas), crowns, basins, cruets for consecrated oil (ampollas, fioles), reliquaries (filatria), crosses of gold or silver, or of wood covered with thin sheets or plates of gold or silver; a candelabrum; [and] spoons. Item, let him have cups of mazer with a foot of gold or silver, and bound above with gold or silver. Item, let him have cups with covers and plain cups. Item, let him have bowls (crateres vel crateras) with decorations (trifuris), either smooth or engraved; dishes and platters (scutellas, parapsides);91 saucers and salt-cellars. Item, let him make rings, brooches, pendants (?or necklaces, monilia), chains, and girdle-studs (membra zonarum). Item, let him have little bellows (folliculos), tongs, an anvil (reading incudem in place of inclinum), hammers and everything for cleansing metal, and a grindstone (or whetstone: molam) for putting a sharp edge onto iron, and a hare’s foot and a leather apron (reading corium gremiale for corte) for collecting and wiping up (extergenda, instead of expurgendum) grains (grana, instead of gramina) of metals. Let him also have various small vessels, gold fringe (aurifragium, orphrey), silver wire, [and] a painted tray for displaying the choicest items (tabellam oblitam ad flosculos protrahendos). Let the cutler make various knives, huntsmen’s daggers,92 the knives of scribes (i.e., penknives) or of those who chip or chop [food or wood?] (dola90

Cf. the glosses in Hunt (3: 88) that translate lagana or laganum as cake, crampecake, pannecake, turtel, etc. The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources defines “laganum” as “unleavened cake cooked in oil, pancake, fritter.” 91 Scutella (French esquele) meant dish or bowl, while parapsides were “doublers” (dishes or plates) or platters. See the glosses for parapsides, parapsis and scutella(s) in Hunt, 2: 118, 146-7; see also Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, s.v. “Paropsis,” and MED, s.vv. “Dish,” “Doubler,” “Plater,” “Scutel.” Cf. the word-lists in English Glosses from British Library Additional Manuscript 37075, ed. Ross and Brooks, fol. 322b (“scutella, plater/ periapsis, dubler”); British Library, MS Lansdowne 560, fol. 47r (“parapcid’ dobler”); and British Library, MS Royal 17 A. III, fol. 31v (“haec scutella a plater/haec parapsis idem”). 92 On clunacula (daggers), see Hunt, Teaching and Learning Latin, 2: 44 and n.62.

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torum).93 Let him have table knives, or knives for hanging at the girdle, and plain knives. Item, let him make razors, scissors (forfices), shears, etc. Let the girdler have girdles of silk, linen, or leather, namely, black, red, or white, with iron or copper studs (membris). Item, let him have smooth or barred or studded girdles, with round or square studs (planas zonas vel barratas sive membratas, membris rotundis vel quadratis). Let the glover have heavy or rough (grossas) gloves, suitable for harvesters and dykers; fine or thin ones (minutas) for the use of those who do not labor at manual, servile work, pulling or gathering teasels or thistles (cardanos, instead of cardones) and thorns. Item, let him have lined and unlined gloves, shaggy (pilosas) or smooth (planas). Let him have large, lined gloves for the use of the falconer. Item, [let him have] woolen gloves, and seamless, moreover, and entirely knitted (et inconsutiles desuper et totum contextas). Let the cordwainer have true tawed leather of goatskins [and] sheepskins. Let him have boots (estivalia, crepidas, sive botas), roomy [and] padded with felt (largas, tentone munitas) for the use of men, or tight (stric[t]as) for the use of women. Item, let him have pointed (?or pricked) shoes (sotulares p[i]catos) or shoes laced up the middle with thongs (sotulares cum medullis corrigiis laqueatos). Item, let him have shoes with strapped (?or drawstring) collars (colariis ligulis) for the use of knights.94 The hosier (or leggings-maker, husurarius) and cobbler (sutor) work in cowhides. Let the cobbler make leggings (ocreas sive husas) and shoes equally varied and of as many fashions as the cordwainer, but the hosier shall only make leggings and not shoes. Let the saddler have diverse and various saddles: for the use of the monk, with the separate and broad saddle-bows (cum articulis [recte arculis] divisis et latis) uncolored; tooled (insculptas) for the use of knights, of the lady, the squire, the parson and the priest; for horse, palfrey, [and] sumpter. Item, let him have girths (singulas) and saddles, red (vermiculatas), 93 Chipping knives were used to chip or pare burnt crusts from loaves; chopping and paring knives would also have been useful in various types of food preparation. Cf. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List, s.v. “Dol/atura;”MED, s.v. “Chippen” v.(1). 94 In the fourteenth century, at least, “piked” shoes were those with long, pointed toes or “peaks.” However, picare could also mean “to prick” (cf. modern French piquer and piqûre), suggesting shoes with pricked or openwork ornamentation. See MED, s.v. “Pike” 5(a); Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word List, s.v. “Pica” (4). For a survey of medieval shoes and footed hose, shoemaking, and cobbling in London, see Francis Grew and Margrethe de Neergaard, Medieval Finds from Excavations in London, 2: Shoes and Pattens (London: The Stationery Office, 1988, especially 2-3, 9-21, 44-59, 79-81, 113-6, 119-22. Pages 16-20 include drawings and photographs of early-mid thirteenth-century shoes and boots with side-lacing, drawstring-lacing, and openwork, and with rounded and pointed toes.

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white, or colored with gold or red (sinoplo), painted or drawn with little flowers, lioncels (leoniculis: little lions, not lion cubs), or with a device of some kind (vel alicuius hystoria). Item, let him have shields, painted or unpainted, white [or] black, painted with little fleurs de lis (flosculis de glagello) or more lioncels in red (rubeo vel cinoplo), green, gold, [or] azure. Item, let him have shields bordered (listata) with little flowers, birds, [or] tiny beasts; quartered (quaturnata); strewn (moncellata: literally, “heaped”) [or] decorated (lambata) with roses.95 Let the skinner have pilches [and] fur linings (pellicia, penulas, fururas) of lambskins, of the bellies (?foleis; recte follibus) from the gray [winter coat of] squirrels (de griso, experiolis, sorellis),96 of coneys,97 of dormice or martens (laironibus),98 of kid (edulline),99 of sheepskins, rough and hairy, from longhaired or short-haired or curly-haired [sheep], of catskins (ex catis sive ex pellibus catenis), shaggy or shorn (grossas vel super rasas). Item, let him have fur linings, white [and] black, and let him have revers of sable-belly (urlas de sablino matrice), of beaver (ex fibro), of the little fox or weasel (roserella), or of otter (lutro), etc. Let the lorimer have items made of straps (lorenas), namely bridles, and girths with a leather lining. Item, let there be straps for the bridle, the poitrel (pectorali) and the stirrups (strepis sive scancilibus), some with narrow bands, some with broad bands, with round dangling shields (scutis, scutellulis) of gilded iron or copper; some with little bells or rings. Item, one should know about stirrups and poitrels. Let him have stirrups that are broad under the foot for the use of knights; with a slim stirrup-iron (?virga gracili) for the use of the monk; and round stirrups, square stirrups, narrow and broad ones, according to the variety of horses and riders. Item, let him

95

On the terminology of heraldry in this period, see Gerard J. Brault, Early Blazon: Heraldic Terminology in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries with Special Reference to Arthurian Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). I am grateful to David Crouch for this reference. 96 According to Veale (English Fur Trade, 219, s.vv. “Escureus” and “Gris,” 223-4, 228), medieval furriers distinguished between gris, which was the finequality gray winter back of red squirrels from the coldest parts of Northern and Central Europe, and variants of the Latin word sciurus (squirrel), which “were applied to squirrel skins from parts of Southern and Central Europe, usually of little value to the skinner.” Cf. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin WordList, s.vv. “Experiolus,” “Griseum,” “Scurellus.” 97 The coney (rabbit) skins may have been imported, since rabbits were not introduced into the English mainland until the early thirteenth century (ante1235), around the time of the composition of this treatise. Cf. Veale, English Fur Trade, 209-14. 98 Cf. Veale, English Fur Trade, 220, s.v. “Leron”; Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, s.v. “Laëro.” 99 Cf. Classical Latin haedulus, a little kid.

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have gilded spurs for the use of knights, or spurs with a slender shank (virga), both round and square.

APPENDIX III Notes on how to write and reply to a letter of request, together with ten sample letters, from British Library, Additional MS 8167, fols. 97r-98v (discussed in the introduction to Appendix II, above). The punctuation, capitalization, and use of “u” and “v” have been modernized; expanded abbreviations are shown in italics.

fol. 97r (mid-page)

(1) An earl of Gloucester orders wine and ale Precepciones et proibiciones sic debent fieri. Primo debet preponi salutacio, secundo [expunged by underscore: narracio] precepcio vel proibicio, tercio narracio, quarto conclusio, hoc modo. A. Comes glovernie C. fideli suo salutem. Precipio tibi ut visis literis istis omni occasione et dilacione postpositis mihi mitti facias per latorem presencium duos cados vini albi et duas floscas vini castanei et unum doleum servisie defecate. Sciturus quod ego et commitissa mea fleubotomati sumus apud .N. Tantum ergo facias ne nos in iram commoveas propter tuam negligenciam. Vale. (1) Translation Orders and refusals ought to be done thus. First should come the greeting; secondly, the order or refusal; thirdly, the explanation; fourthly, the conclusion, in this manner. A., Earl of Gloucester, to his faithful C. [perhaps A.’s household steward], greetings. I order you that, when you have seen these letters, having put aside every argument (occasione) and delay, you have sent to me by the bearer of these presents two barrels of white wine and two flasks of chestnut wine and one tun of filtered ale. You shall know that I and my countess are having our blood let at N. Therefore may you act in such a way that you do not move us to anger by your negligence. Farewell.

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(2) An earl orders his vintner, to whom he is in debt, to send him some wine Comes mandat creditori suo ut mittat sibi vinum. A. comes Glovernie dilecto sibi A. vinetario de C. salutem et dileccionem. Quum quicquid vobis de vino credito [corrected in MS from creditorio] multociens debuimus, ad diem vestrum semper plenarie fol. 97v persolvemus, et nichil est in re- [fol. 97v] ragio, audacius in hoc stanti negocio confugimus attencius rogantes quatinus v. dolea vini, scilicet duo gasconiensis et tria andegavense [recte andegavensis], quodlibet ad precium .xx. solidorum usque ad Pasca floridum nobis acomodetis. Scituri quod denarios vestros ad diem nominatum omni occasione [in MS, “aiccasione”] et dilacione remota persolvemus. Tantum ergo facientes [?recte faciatis] ut vobis ad gratiarum teneamur acciones. Valete.

(2) Translation An earl orders his creditor to send him some wine A., earl of Gloucester, to his beloved A., vintner of C., greetings and love. Whereas we have often owed you something for wine on credit, we have always paid in full on your day, and nothing is in arrears, the more boldly in this present business we have turned to you, anxiously asking that you accommodate us with five tuns of wine, namely, two of Gascon and three of Angevin, at a price of 20s apiece, until Palm Sunday. You will know that we shall pay your money on the day named without any argument or delay; therefore, may you act only in such a manner that we shall be bound to you in gratitude. Farewell. (3) Response to the preceding letter Responsio ad literas predictas. Dileccio domino suo et amico W. Comiti de S., suus A. vinetarius salutem. Litera [recte literas] vestras nuper accepi petitorias quatinus .v. dolea vini gasconensi [recte gasconiensis] et tria andegavense [recte andegavensis], quodlibet ad precium .xx. solidorum, usque ad pasca floridum vobis acomodarem. Quum quicquid mihi debuistis optime persoluistis precibus vestris ad presens adquiesco et .v. dolea vero

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petistis vobis acomodo, de vobis confidens quod ad diem nominatum iuxta consuetudinem vestram mihi debitum meum persolvetis [corrected in MS from persolvistis]. (3) Translation Response to the abovesaid letter To his beloved lord and friend, W., Earl of S., A. his vintner sends greetings. I have lately received your letters asking that I accommodate you with five tuns of Gascon wine and three of Angevin, at a price of 20s. each, until Pasca Floridum (Palm Sunday). Since whatever you have owed me you have paid in the best manner, I agree to your present request and shall accommodate you with the five tuns that you have sought, confident of you that on the day named, according to your custom, you will pay your debt to me in full. (4) How the vintner should respond if the earl does not repay his debts Si non soluit bene quod debuit tunc dicat sic Tantum de libertate vestra confidens presumens preces vestras ad effectum mancipare, vobis .v. dolea vini petita acomodo, rogans attencius quatinus de antiquo debito quod super est in reragio pariter cum hoc novo debito ad dictum diem mihi persolvatis. Valete. (4) Translation If he has not paid well what he has owed, then let him say thus Trusting only in your generosity, being so bold as to put your wishes in effect, I shall accommodate you with the five tuns of wine you requested, beseeching you anxiously that you pay me in full your old debt, which is in arrears, equally with this new debt, on the said day. Farewell. (5) An earl sends an order to his draper, to whom he is in debt Comes mandat pannario creditori suo B. comes glovernie dilecto sibi A. pannario London’ salutem et dileccionis affectum. Quamvis merita nostra non exigant (vel non pre-

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cesserint) tamen de libertate vestra confidimus (ad vos in hoc instanti negocio confugimus), rogans attencius quatinus .xx. ulnas de scarleta rubea et totidem de perso et totidem de minueto ad rationabile forum vel precium prout sustinere poteritis usque ad clausum pasca, absque pignore si vobis placuerit, mihi acomodetis (vel, super .x. anulos aureos et .x. ciphos argenteos quos vobis transmittimus). Sciatis enim pro vero quod ad diem prefixum, omni occasione remota, vobis bene persolvemus. Tantum ergo faciatis ut vobis tanquam familiari et creditori nostro grates et honores cum denariis vestris referamus. Valete. (5) Translation An earl sends an order to his draper, to whom he is in debt B., Earl of Gloucester, to his beloved A., draper of London, greetings and love. Although our merits are not compelling (or, have not been outstanding), nevertheless we have relied on your generosity ([or,] we have turned to you in this present business), asking anxiously that you accommodate me with 20 ells of red scarlet, and the same of perse (dark blue) [scarlet], and the same of shorn (minueto) [scarlet], at the most reasonable cost or price that you can manage, until the Sunday after Easter, without a pledge, if you please (or, upon the ten gold rings and ten silver cups that we send you). For you know it for a fact that we shall pay you well on the appointed day, without any delay. Therefore, may you act only in such a manner that we shall return our thanks and respect to you, as our friend as much as our creditor, along with your money. Farewell. (6) An earl sends an order to his skinner, to whom he is in debt Comes mandat creditori suo pellipario fol. 98r Comes dilecto sibi H. pellipario salutem. et amoris integritatem. Penulis et fururis ad hoc instans pasca quamplurimum indigeo sed denarios ad illas comparandas non habeo. Quare vos imploro quatinus .xx. penulas de griso et totidem ex variis, de agnelino minuto et crispo, de propria selda vestra mihi acomodetis vel aliunde, ad credenciam. Habere faciatis de propriis, [?vel,] ratum habentes de alienis manibus capientes et denarios vestros ad diem prenominatum omni occasione remota de manibus meis vel R. senescalli mei recipietis. Valete.

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(6) Translation An earl sends an order to his skinner, to whom he is in debt The Earl to his beloved skinner H., greetings and the fullest of love. I am sorely lacking in fur linings at this present Easter, but I do not have the money to pay for them. Wherefore I implore you that you accommodate me with 20 linings of gris, and the same of vair [and] of lambskin with fine and curly [fleece], from your own seld or from elsewhere, on credit (ad credenciam). Let you arrange to have [them] from your own stock (de propriis), [?or], having this authorization (?habentes ratum), taking [them] from the hands of others, and you will receive your money on the aforesaid day, without any dispute, from my own hands or those of R., my steward. Farewell. (7) The manner in which one should write a positive or negative response to a request In literis responsalibus ad peticionem notandam quod aud [sic] comodat aud [sic] expresse negat aud [sic] se excusat. In literis autem talibus visi tres partes ad minus sunt. Primo debet salutare respondens; secundo ostendere quid petitum sit; tercio qualiter velit parere vel qualiter debeat negare vel excusare; quarto si placet poterit concludere. Item qui wlt [sic, for vult] parere [corrected in MS from paretre] petitis, potest ostendere per vero vel per aud [sic] suam impotenciam excusare. Inde per quare vel per quapropter potest procedere ad excusacionem. (7) Translation In letters of response to a request, note that either one agrees or expressly denies or excuses oneself. Moreover, in such letters there are at least three parts. Firstly, the respondent should send greetings; secondly, he should describe what is sought; thirdly, he should [say] in what way he wishes to agree, or for what reason he must refuse or excuse [himself]; fourthly, if he pleases, he can conclude. Item, he who wishes to agree to requests can show [this] by “vero,” or excuse his inability [to agree] by “aud” [sic]. Then, by “quare” or “quapropter” he can proceed to his excuse.

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(8) Letter of refusal from a skinner ruined by fire Dilecto amico et cetera. Literas vestras nuper accepi in quibus me petistis ut ego vobis penulas et fururas perquirerem, quod libenter fecissem, sed ignis nuper superveniens [corrected in MS. from superveniens nuper] totam pecuniam meam redegit in cinerem. Unde vobis mittere non potui quod non habui nec creditores inveni qui aliquid mihi crederent post incendium. Dubitaverunt enim perdere totum quod mihi acomodarent. Precor igitur ne moleste feratis quod petita vobis non misi cum sciatis causam inpedimenti [sic]. Valete. (8) Translation To my beloved friend, etc. I have lately received your letter in which you requested that I purchase for you fur linings (penulas et fururas), which I would freely have done, had not a fire recently occurring reduced my wealth to ashes. Wherefore I could not send you that which I did not have, nor have I found creditors who would lend me anything after the fire, for they feared to lose everything that they lent me. I pray, therefore, that you do not take it amiss that I have not sent what you requested, since you know the cause of the impediment. Farewell. (9) Another letter of the same type Adhuc de huiusmodi literis dicemus A. B. salutem. Obsequium aliud exigit, et subtraccio exigit subtraccionem. Pecii nuper ut mihi succureres de tignis et trabibus quorum copia penes te est. Tu autem surdas aures peticioni mee prebuisti et ideo non mireris [corrected in MS from mirereis] si preces tuas presentes audire recusem. Nolo enim ([?vel] velle debeo) tibi de meo succurere, quoniam [?quando] de rebus vestris unum pecii dedignatus fuisti mihi subvenire. Et ideo ut de cetero amicum habeas, amicum [recte amicus] inveniaris. Valete. (9) Translation Again we speak of letters of the same type A. to B., greetings. One consent demands another, and a refusal demands a refusal. Lately I asked you to help me out with some lumber and beams, of which you have plenty at your place. But

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you turned deaf ears to my petition, and therefore you will not wonder if I refuse to hear your own present prayers. For I do not wish ([or,] ought I to wish) to aid you from my [stock] (de meo), since, [?when] I sought one thing of yours, you disdained to come to my aid. And so, henceforward, if you want to have a friend, you will have to be found [to be] a friend. Farewell. (10) An earl sends an order to his client (member of his affinity) Comes clienti suo precipit sic D. comes cestrie dilecto et fideli suo A. salutem. De fidelitate tua fol. 98v quamplurimum confisi, tibi mandantes (precipimus), preces preceptis adiungentes, ut pro amore nostro et fide quam nobis debes .C. solidos facias nos habere ad unum equum emendum. Sciturus quod palefridus noster mortuus est et non habemus equum cui possimus confidere. Quare tantum facias ne negocium nostrum admittatur pro defectu equitature. Vale [?or Valete]. (10) Translation An earl sends an order to his client, thus D., Earl of Chester, to his beloved and faithful A., greetings. I have put my highest trust in your loyalty, ordering you ([or,] we have commanded), adding prayers to commands, that, for the sake of our love and the faith that you owe us, you provide us with 100 shillings to buy a horse. You shall know that our palfrey is dead, and we do not have a horse in which we can trust. Wherefore may you act in such a way that our business be not hindered for lack of a horse. Farewell. (11) An earl orders his knights to equip with horses and arms Comes militibus ut muniantur equis et armis R. Comes Cestrie omnibus militibus suis salutem. De dileccione vestra quamplurimum confisi, vobis mandantes (precipimus; attentissime petimus) quatinus pro amore nostro parati sitis cum equis et armis in die tali coram nobis ubicumque fuerimus. Sciturus [recte scituri] quod dominus Rex nos sicut alios fecit summoniri et cum eo transfretaremus cum totis viribus nostris sicut amorem suum desi-

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deramus. Quare tantum faciatis ut domino regi placere poterimus et fideliter servire in necessitatibus [corrected in MS. from necessitabtibus]. Valete. (11) Translation An earl orders his knights to equip with horses and arms R., Earl of Chester, to all his knights, greetings. I have put my highest trust in your love, ordering you ([or,] we have ordered, we have most anxiously besought) that, for the sake of our love, you be prepared with horses and arms on such a day before us wherever we shall be. You shall know that the lord king has caused us, like others, to be summoned to take ship with him with all our men, as we desired his love. Wherefore may you act in such a way that we shall be able to please the king and faithfully serve him in his necessities. Farewell.

MOVABLE/IMMOVABLE, WHAT’S IN A NAME?—THE CASE OF LATE MEDIEVAL GHENT Martha Howell

The terms “movable” and “immovable” wealth, categories bequeathed to Europeans by Roman law, arrived in the North of the continent during the high Middle Ages where they conveniently served to distinguish assets that were, quite literally, “immovable” from those that were not. The words had more than descriptive value, however, for they were quickly conflated with terms that had long been used in the region to separate patrimonial from personal property. The categories did not, however, precisely overlap, and the confusion that resulted produced a messy legal record. Throughout the late Middle Ages, authorities frequently were called upon to resolve disputes about the movable or immovable status of particular goods or about their patrimonial status, questions which arose most often during commercial dealings, in marriage, and at death—all situations in which property was being transferred. Nowhere was the record messier than in cities, for in these commercial centers property was regularly in circulation. The Flemish city of Ghent, one of northern Europe’s most important commercial and industrial centers of the late Middle Ages, has preserved a rich collection of documents tracing this story. Its twists and turns reveal a great deal about how uncomfortably and incompletely the terms of market exchange took form in Europe, even among people like Gentenaren who lived almost entirely by trade. It also helps expose what is too often suppressed in our histories of the western market economy: the hard political, social and cultural work that went into its making and the unpredictability of its final shape.

Movables and Immovables in Northern European Society and Law Although the terms “movables” and “immovables” (in Latin, mobilia and immobilia) were imports, northern Europeans of the Middle

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Ages had no difficulty defining an immovable. For them, any good given that label was land itself or it was so bound to land as to be inseparable from it. Land is, of course, quite literally immovable, for unlike a dress, chest, or plow, land cannot be transported, hidden, or misplaced. It does not depreciate in the normal sense of the term.1 Land’s importance in the medieval economy heightened its assumed immobility. The medieval economy was an agrarian economy; even in the very latest years of the Middle Ages some 85 per cent of what we would called Gross National Product was composed of agricultural goods. Land’s perpetual productivity sealed its status as the premier—virtually the sole—immovable, for that quality made it the fundament of the social order. Thanks to land’s relatively stable value through time, rights to land defined both the aristocracy who controlled it and the peasants who worked it, providing each a social identity and assuring class continuity from generation to generation. In contrast, movables were an analytically distinct category of property. Clothing, jewels, foodstuffs, furniture, coin, and equipment were, after all, literally movable. Even grain or animals, which were closely tied to the land, were also separable from it, and as such they were readily labeled “movable.” In addition, movables did not hold value as land did, for they were subject to depreciation, destruction, theft, or just plain loss, as land never was. Easily understood in ordinary discourse, the distinction between “movable” and “immovable” wealth was also easily incorporated into northern property law. Throughout much of northern Europe, each of the many versions of customary law made a distinction between 1 The category of immovables was, in law, capacious, but land was the fundament. Jean Brissaud, A History of French Private Law, trans. of 2nd Fr. ed. (Boston: Little & Brown, 1912), provides a summary of the types of property included in the category in the Middle Ages: the land and everything which is an integral part of the soil, buildings, crops growing on branches or roots; the movables which adhere to the immovables in the quality of accessories or appendages of the latter (but only on principle, if there was a physical connection); rights over the land which are like the ownership because of their duration (servitude, quit-rent, and rents) and rights which, according to the feudal conception, were connected with the land itself (right of administering justice or tolls, for example); rights like established rents and salable offices which had movables as their object but which were immovable or feudal in their origin (270-2). On the immovability of land, also see Philippe Godding, Le droit privé dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux du 12e au 18e siècle, 2d ed. (Brussels: Académie Royale de Belgique, 1987), 142.

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the two kinds of property and the rights attaching to them. That difference did not, however, derive directly from their movable status. Instead, the Latin terms “movables” and “immovables,” along with their equivalents in French, Dutch, or German (meubles/ immeubles in French, meublen/immeublen in Dutch, and bewegliche Güter/unbewegliche Güter in German) were conflated with concepts deeply rooted in these cultures and expressed in a vocabulary that long predated the imported Latin terms. In French speaking regions, people traditionally spoke of cateux and heritages (héritages in modern French), not meubles or immeubles. In Dutch speaking regions people spoke of cateylen and erve, and in German-speaking regions of Fahrnis and Erbgüter.2 There are no precise equivalents to these terms in medieval English law, but the English words “chattels” on the one hand, and “patrimony” on the other capture their sense, for cateux, catheylen, and Fahrnis were what we think of as chattels or personal, private property while heritage, erve, and Erbgüter were, in fact, treated as patrimony. The distinction drawn in northern property law between chattels and patrimony was not, however, the same as the common-sense 2 For a fuller discussion, see Godding, Le droit privé, esp. 142; and Dirk Hierbaut, Over lenen en families: een studie over the vroegste geschiedenis van het zakelijk leenrecht in het graafschap Vlaanderen (ca. 1000-1350) (Brussels: Palais der Academiën, 2000). As Hierbaut explains, the distinction between “movable” and “immovable” does not, in fact, perfectly accord with customary law’s distinction between cateyl and erve: “an erve is a good that is both permanently existing and productive ... [but] an important difference between Roman and customary law is...that the distinction movable-immovable in Roman law has relevance only with respect to tangible (corporeal or material [“lichamelijke”]) property. For customary law it makes no difference whether a good is tangible (“lichamelijk”) or not. So long as a good has permanent existence and is productive, it is erve and thus usually immovable. The terms movable and immovable in the acts of practices of the thirteenth century thus have no sense in Roman law. They are only substitutes for the concepts of cateyl and erve” (22-3). Anne-Marie Patault, Introduction historique au droit des biens (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1989) also has a useful discussion of the way these terms were transferred from Roman law to customary in the French-speaking regions: “Au haut Moyen Âge, les mots proprietas, dominium sont toujours utilisés par des scribes qui reproduisent méchaniquement un vocabulaire romain desséché; nombreux sont les texts qui mentionnent ‘la propriété’ mais dés le XIIIe siècle les juristes romanisants ... généralisont les termes romains, proprietas, dominium, pour désigner une technique polymorphe d’appropriation qui n’a aucun point commun avec la propriété romaine, si ce n’est le nom” (19).

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notion of the difference between a movable good and an immovable. The key distinction in customary law was between goods that produced income (heritages, erve, or Erbgüter) and those that were income (cateux, cateylen, or Fahrnis). Goods that produced income were thought to have perpetual lives, yielding fruit or income from one generation to the next; in contrast, the fruit or income of these properties had no productive capacity. In his famous customal of the late thirteenth century, Beaumanoir perfectly expressed this logic. “Héritages” were goods that “ne peuvent être mus,” that produced revenues that “valent par années,” and that were perpetual because an “héritage ne peut faillir.”3 According to the logic of these northern European customs, a good with perpetual productive capacity was not subject to individual ownership, not fully available to a single person during his or her lifetime precisely because its productive life far exceeded that of any individual. It was thus intended to serve generations, not individuals. Any possessor of such a property, even someone holding the property as allodium (that is, independently of a lord or lessor), was nothing more than a possessor, and as such always had to take account of the interests of relatives by blood or marriage, those born or not-yet-born.4 Such assets were patrimony, not “property” in the sense we understand it. In contrast, goods that were deemed to be cateux, cateylen, or Fahrnis were under the 3

Philippe de Beaumanoir, Coutumes de Beauvaisis, ed. Amédée Salmon, 2 vols. (1899-1900; reprint Paris: A. et J. Picard, 1970), nos. 672-8; cited in P. Ourliac and J. L. Gazzangia, Histoire du droit privé francais de l’an mil au code civil (Paris: A. Michel, 1985), 233. 4 On this point, see Hierbaut, Over lenen en families, 23, and Patault, Droit des biens, 19: “Mais le mot désigne alors non plus la maîtrise corporelle de la matière, mais seulement la jouissance de ses utilités. Il n’évoque plus l’orgueilleuse puissance solitaire du propriétaire romain, étrangère aux rapports juridiques entre les hommes. Il est seulement maîtrise partiaire enserrée dans la solidarité des rapports avec les autres et légitimée par le consensus du groupe. La ‘propriété’ n’est plus la souveraineté, elle est seulement, et pragmatiquement, la possibilité légitime de tirer un profit de la terre. Elle ne se confond plus avec la matiére, elle n’est que l’exploitation de la matiére. La pratique l’appelle ‘saisine,’ mais dés le XIIIe siècle les jurists romanisants effaceront ce terme du vocabulaire de la propriété et généraliseront les termes romains, proprietas, dominium, pour désigner une technique polymorphe d’appropriation qui n’a aucun point commun avec la propriété romaine, si ce n’est le nom” (19). Also see Philippe Godding, Le droit privé dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux du 12e au 18e siècle, 2nd ed. (Bruxelles: Palais des Académies, 1991), esp. sections 190-2: 141-3.

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individual possessor’s full control.5 They followed no necessary route of transmission and were thought to change ownership simply with their physical transfer from one holder to another. Although the movable/immovable distinction could not, then, be neatly equated with the chattel/patrimony distinction, the two sets of terms were treated as rough equivalents for much of the late Middle Ages. The conflation functioned so well because land, as both the premier immovable and the principal patrimonial asset in the medieval economy, almost perfectly served as the middle term linking patrimony to immobility. To be sure, there were occasions when the equation broke down. Buildings, mills, granaries, crops, fish—all such goods could arguably be considered immovable, as integral parts of the land, or they could with equal justice be called movable, as items separable from the land. Each region, each set of customs, resolved these issues on an ad hoc basis, and, inevitably, the result was diversity.6 Other goods that bore no “immovable” qualities whatsoever might nevertheless have patrimonial uses. Jewels, for example, were hoarded from one generation to the next and efficiently served to store wealth and preserve status across time. Were they not then “patrimonial” in some sense? As we shall see, these confusions were one of the major sources of instabilities in the legal records that survive from the age, for disputes about such matters regularly drove people to court or forced judicial authorities to issue clarifications about definition and categorization. In cities, such problems of definition became acute, for there land played so a minor role in economic and social life that it could not provide the necessary fundament to the immovable/ patrimonial equation. Rather, movables were the principal source of wealth in urban economies, and they changed hands rapidly in these commercial societies. The imported luxuries that flooded aristocratic Europe after the Crusades had begun were the first to

5 Patault, Droit des biens, provides a full discussion of this logic. As she explains, “La circulation est au meuble ce que la productivité est à la ‘l’immeuble’: le fondament de son utilité sociale” (291). As a result, “depuis le Moyen Age jusqu’à la Révolution, le meuble a été la seule veritable assise de la liberté de disposition” (283). On this see in addition Beaumanior, Coutumes de Beauvaisis, no. 622. 6 See, for these and other examples from the southern Low Countries, Godding, Le droit privé, 2nd ed., section 195: 145. For Germany, see Hans Planitz, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte (Graz-Köln: Böhlau, 1971).

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disrupt medieval Europeans’ easy assumption that “real” wealth was the same as land. Then, and of more profound importance for city people, came the raw materials, manufacturing equipment, and inventories that constituted the productive basis of urban economies. Along with all of these movables arrived financial paper of all kinds, land rents that had been generated by loans, and eventually even the bureaucratic offices that sovereigns handed out to the hordes of eager bidders of early modern Europe, all of which would sit very uneasily on the “movable/immovable = chattel/patrimony” equation. The value of all such goods, although relatively small in the context of the entire European economy, dominated the urban. Although all historians of the northern city have energetically taken account of these economic developments and their effects on political, social and cultural life, only legal historians have fully acknowledged that such a fundamental socioeconomic transformation could have occurred only with a comparable upheaval in property law. Being regularly confronted with the unstable and complex meanings attaching to the categories “movable” and “immovable” in law, they have often commented that property law was in motion in this age, and many of them have gone further, sensing the socioeconomic importance of this story and implicitly calling upon their colleagues to pursue it. In particular, they have pointed out that the moments of greatest tension—and hence of instability in law—occurred at marriage and death, for these were moments of massive property transfers.7 As we shall see, in most customary legal regimes of the North, the use to which movables and immovables could be put was determined by their relationship not just to chattels and patrimony but also, via chattels and patrimony, to the marital property fund. That fund was made of two categories of property. The first was jointly owned by husband and wife together; the second was explicitly reserved for the “line,” that is, for children born of the marriage or, in their absence, collateral or ascendant lineal kin. In Ghent, where this paper focuses, goods considered joint were called “partible” (deelbar) because, being joint to husband and wife, they were equally divisible between them at death. Thus, the surviving spouse got one-half of all partible goods and the heirs of the 7

See in particular Godding, Le doit privé, 142-3.

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deceased got the other half. The lineal goods of the deceased, in contrast, went entirely to heirs.8 Thus, as we shall see, the struggles regarding the definition of movable and immovable and their relationship to chattels and patrimony were, in Ghent, waged in terms of the partible/impartible divide. In the end, we shall also see, the terms survived—both those indigenous to the North and the imported Latin words, but their meanings and relationships in law changed. By the dawn of the early modern period, an immovable good would no longer necessarily be patrimonial; a movable might acquire that status; a good once labeled movable might at another moment in its economic life be labeled immovable. In this way, Gentenaren took a giant step towards the “commodification of all” that is the tendency of what we call capitalism but at the same time, they learned new ways to resist commodification. To accomplish these apparently incommensurate ends, Gentenaren had to rewrite property law so as to free their assets to the market but at the same time select some of them for the benefit of the family and its descendents. By tracing their tortured route, we can learn a lot about their understanding of property, their sense of the link between property and social identity, and their commitment to values beyond those of the market. In the process, we are granted a rare look at the birth pangs of what we call the market society.

Tracking Movables in Ghent A version of the transformation that took place in Ghent was played out everywhere in northern Europe, but each story is particular to the legal jurisdiction in which it occurred, for customary law is by definition local and particular. Ghent is an ideal setting for such a study, not just because it has preserved the necessary sources. It was the second largest northern city of the fourteenth and much of the fifteenth century. Until the end of the Middle Ages when Antwerp, then Amsterdam and still later London displaced it, Ghent was also northern Europe’s leading center of

8 The surviving spouse had rights to half the income of this property for life. See below for a fuller discussion of Ghent’s customary marital property law.

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commercially oriented industry. Although almost entirely devoted to production for export and to trade itself, Ghent nevertheless honored the system of private property law traditional in this region of the North, carefully distinguishing movables from immovables and roughly equating the former with chattels (cateylen in the Dutch language of Ghent) and the latter with patrimony (erve). Ghent has left rich sources for tracing the long history of this custom. Most of the accessible documents are normative in character, ranging from occasional proclamations to rulings to formal statements of customary practices, and in their preponderance dating from the late thirteenth century to the first homologized custom of 1563. Similar records survive from later years as well, of course, but after 1563 the history of such texts is no longer Ghent’s alone, for the later records belong to a larger story of legal change driven by the ducal court and by legal theory explicitly drawn from Roman law as earlier custom was not. Another set of documents is less normative in character, for these consist of litigation records of various kinds, ranging from judgments handed down as a result of disputes to summaries of hearings in court. Four principal normative texts are a basis of this study, although they are supplemented by occasional proclamations, charters and similar texts. 1. The Grande Charte of 1297 (abbreviated here as GC), a privilege granted by the Count of Flanders to what was already his most important industrial center; 2. A text prepared by Ghent’s aldermen (scepenen), which exists in three manuscript versions, summarizing the customary rules of succession in Ghent and dating from the early sixteenth century (abbreviated here as SC); 3. A draft of the city’s entire custom, prepared by the aldermen in 1546 (abbreviated here as DC); 4. The 1563 homologized custom, a redraft of the 1546 custom which finally earned ducal approval (abbreviated here as HC). Alongside these normative texts two principal forms of “records of practice” survive: a selection of judgments or vonnissen rendered



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a seeded crop, one already in the ground but not yet ready for harvest, was customarily considered part of the land, which was undisputedly immovable. But according to a vonnis rendered by the aldermen in 1350, the surviving spouse of a marriage, in recognition of his or her rights to half of all movables in the estate, was to be compensated for the money that had been spent in preparing the ground and sowing the seed, presumably since that cost was assumed to have been borne by the couple together, out of their joint movable property. Having paid 50 per cent of planting, the reasoning must have been, the surviving spouse could be dispossessed of the eventual crop only after having been repaid his or her costs.12 That ruling assumed, however, that the crops were not ready for harvest. When the crop was closer to harvest the situation was muddied. A vonnis of 1371 decreed that “winter” crops in the ground were immovable, but only if the death of the landowner had occurred before mid-March.13 Accordingly, if one of the spouses were to have died on 31 March, the land alone would go to his or her direct heirs in its entirety, and the survivor would have rights to half the crop in the ground, implicitly on the theory that the a crop so close to harvest at the time of death was movable. If, however, the death were to have occurred on 1 March, the heirs would acquire both the land and the crop on the grounds that the seed had then not yet produced a recognizably “harvest-able” crop. According to the same ruling, summer crops became movable after mid-May, a position reiterated in a vonnis of 1415.14 Fruit trees caused as much confusion. Apple trees (appelboomen) more than “knee high,” for example, were specifically labeled movable in the early sixteenth-century listing of customary rules cited above, a statement seeming to confirm a vonnis from 1367 (here the term is bogarde or orchard).15 A turbe of 1525 seems, however, to have revised this norm, for there all “fruit trees” 12

Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 3-4 (vonnis of 26 July 1350, #2). Also see Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 72 (vonnis of 13 February 1370 (n.s.?), #14): seeded corn on a fief is movable even if the fief is not. 13 In Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 21-3 (vonnis of 10 December 1371, #24). “Winter” crops or “winter fruit” were those planted in fall for spring harvest. 14 Coutumes, 1: 588-90. These are crops sown in early spring for summer harvest. 15 Vonnis of 16 June 1367, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 21 (#23).

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(fruutboomen) were deemed movables, without qualification regarding height.16 The homologized custom of 1563 repeated the same blanket convention, adding that if the trees were located on a fief, along with its principal dwelling and major “shade” trees, they were nevertheless divisible as movables (here they were called fruytboomen).17 Although clear at one level—apple or fruit trees are movables—these texts are ambiguous at another, for it is not clear whether they had to have reached a certain growth. Nor is it obvious just what kind of trees were at issue. Were “apple trees,” “fruit trees” and “orchards” the same things in the eyes of litigants and the court alike? Nothing in the available sources directly tells us, but it is not unreasonable to suspect that the instability of terminology and the frequency with which fruit-bearing trees appear in our sources are the faint traces of debate about definition. When we turn from “fruit trees” to “trees” more generally, our suspicions are further aroused, for the texts are replete with signs of quarrels, indecision, and changes of direction. Some texts flatly labeled trees movable, but others implied that only certain trees, of certain heights or age, or in certain locations were movable.18 16

Turbe of September 1525, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2: 79 (#1). HC, Articles XXV-4 and 34. 18 Vonnis of 12 October 1367, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 21, #24; vonnissen of 1399 and 1415 in Coutumes, 1: 564-9 and 588-90; DC of 1546, article V-3; HC of 1563, XX-3 and passim. A vonnis of 1363 decreed bushes (bosch) movable if “one customarily cut them,” and another of 1367 confirmed that willows (wulghen) were movable, both texts suggesting by their very existence that litigants had contested the principle and were seeking exceptions (vonnis of 29 June 1363, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 16, #17; vonnis of 12 May 1367, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 20-1, #22). The sixteenth century SC introduced more vocabulary, this time leaving little doubt that the category “trees” was unstable. Article 17 of that text flatly declared “upgaende boomen, drooghe often groene” (grown trees, dry or green) movable, whether on fief or free land (“leen of erve”), whether inside the city or outside it (“binnen der stede often buuten”). Article 20 declared tronckycken (oaken stumps) movable if the trijshoudt (branches or twigs) were older than seven years (the branches themselves were also movable, the authors of the document took pains to remark). Dornehagen (hedges of pine evergreens), however, were movable after three years (article 21), while in article 22 it was explained that elshaghen (hedges of alders) had to wait five years. A turbe of 1531 seemed, however, to overturn the earlier statement regarding tronckeycken; here they were declared movable, even if located on a fief, and no age limit was indicated (turbe of 17 May 1531, in Meijers, OVE, 17

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If we reflect on the role these goods played in the economy of the day, contemporaries’ evident concern with trees and crops, even fish and peat, becomes comprehensible. In this age seed yields were only about 4:1 or 5:1, crop yields seldom exceeded 5 bushels per acre (today they are easily 10-20 times that amount), and foodstuffs were relatively so expensive that a family’s subsistence diet took up a significant portion of the daily wage of an adult male unskilled worker, and in some years took all of it.19 Under those conditions, any surviving spouse, no matter how rich, would have hardly been indifferent to the decision taken about a crop’s movability (in which case he or she got half of it as his or her own), and the heirs of the land would have been as eager to have a decision counting it immovable (in which case they got it all, and had to share only half its income during the life of the surviving spouse). Wood, whether used for its fruit, fuel, furniture or construction, was even more valuable than a crop in the ground itself. This was, let us remember, a part of Europe where most woodland had long ago been decimated, where lords valued their privileged access to forests above most other rights, where Baltic lumber was not yet imported at the rate it would later be (and in any case was used principally Bijlage 2: 99-100, #37). A slightly earlier turbe of 1525 had provided the same ruling, but that text also introduced entirely new terms: hauten (wood) was movable, even if on a fief, but the shade trees (schauboomen) were not, and slachoudt (cut wood) was movable so long as the schueten (shoots or limbs) were at least three years old (turbe of September 1525, in Meijers, OVE, Bilage 2: 79, #1). The DC of 1546 declared that “boomen” (trees) were movable, excepting only the schauboomen (shade trees) on a fief. The HC of 1563 significantly elaborated this ruling: the movable or partible account included only those boomen whose trunks were wider than two hands and higher than the chest, along with troncken, again excluding the shade trees on fiefs. Article XXV-32 again named slachoudt (cut wood) movable, confirming the minimum age of three years, and the next article (XXV-33) reiterated that doornehagen were movable if three years old, but thought it necessary to elaborate, adding that the rys, haer of waey (twigs, sprigs, or branches) were included in that ruling. 19 For measures of subsistence wages in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, see Jean-Pierre Sosson, Les travaux publics de la ville de Bruges, XIVe-XVe siècles: les matériaux, les hommes, Collection Pro Civitate, 48 (Brussels: Crédit Communal de Belgique, 1977), 230-1 and 308-9. Only master artisans in the building trades had incomes high enough to avoid risk of famine; day workers and journeymen regularly skirted disaster and sometimes met it. For the sixteenth century, see Johan Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen: aspiraties, relaties en transformaties in de 16de-eeuwse Gentse ambachtswereld (Ghent: Academia Press, 2002), and the sources he cites.

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in shipbuilding and other major projects), and where peat was the sole readily available fuel substitute. People, even rich people, hoarded then wood carefully and used it sparingly; so cherished was this item that some people made special bequests of it in their wills.20 Similar struggles plagued Ghent’s neighbors and the decisions taken in Ghent regarding crops, trees, fish and the like resembled, even if they did not duplicate, those taken elsewhere. Gentenaren deviated dramatically from regional norms, however, in their treatment of houses and, especially, of land. All the records we have from Ghent, even the earliest, treat houses and similar structures as movable assets. The surviving texts, whether normative or practical, are unambiguous, even dully repetitive. A vonnis of 1350, another of 1359, a third in 1399 and a fourth in 1415 all routinely included huusen (“houses”) in their lists of movables or chattels.21 A turbe of 1529 flatly repeated the principle, while the SC of the early sixteenth century elaborated further: article 16 intoned that “all houses or parts of houses” were movable, a ruling repeated in the subsequent article as well.22 The DC of 1546 spoke even more aggressively: houses in Ghent are, according to the custom, “partible and considered chattels and movable property.”23 The HC of 1563 repeated that clause almost verbatim.24 20 See, for example, the dispute between a rich widow and her deceased husband’s heirs over household goods and the trees/lumber supplies on the land he had left (vonnis of 12 May 1367, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1, 20-1, #22). 21 Vonnis of 18 February 1350 (ns), in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 3, #4; vonnis of 8 April 1359, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 14, #14; vonnis of 1399, in Coutumes, 1: 564; vonnis of 1415, in Coutumes, 1: 588-90. 22 Turbe of 5 June 1529, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2, 87-8, #17; SC, article 17: “huusen, schuren, stallen ende andere edificien, leeninghen ende latinghen, staende often wesende up leenen oft erven binnen der stede often buuten es gherekent often ghehauden muelbe (sic).” 23 Article X-25; repeated in VI-19 of the HC of 1563; also see article XXI-31 of DC 1546, where houses in the city are once again specifically labeled partible. 24 The only area of instability or uncertainty concerned houses located on land held in fief. While many of the available texts labeled them movable, as did article 17 of the early sixteenth-century SC cited above, others introduced qualifications. A vonnis of 1411-1412, for example, exempted houses on fiefs held of the Duke of Burgundy, ruling that their status was determined by the feudal court with specific jurisdiction (vonnis of 1411-1412, in Coutumes, 1: 582-4). A turbe of 1525 exempted the beste vuurst (best residence) on a fief,

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Ghent was not entirely alone in labeling houses movables, for some other areas of the North did so as well, Lille, Antwerp, several cities in West Flanders and some in Germany among them.25 But Ghent stands alone, as far as we know, in labeling most land movable. The story of how Ghent came to this decision is long and complicated. It originated in the awkward situation produced when a house and its tenure was being transferred at the end of a marriage. The house, being movable, was to be divided between the survivor of the marriage and the deceased’s lineal heirs (as a partible good), while the land, which was traditionally considered patrimonial and thus impartible, was to be passed directly to heirs. The result was confusion: the owner of the land was not the full owner of the house that stood on it, and the occupant of the house (typically the surviving spouse) was unlikely to hold the land rights. At some point during the fourteenth century, Ghent’s aldermen decided to treat these “packages” as movable if the land was encumbered by rental payments. The theory here was that the rental payments had been assumed in order to acquire land for building the house. Later even those conditions were dropped, and all land in the jurisdiction of Ghent, whether or not it paid rent and whether or not it was built, was considered movable. This left only land outside Ghent or land held in fief as potentially patrimonial property.26 and the DC of 1546 provided that a house in the countryside, although movable, could be kept whole by the landowner if she or she compensated the half-owner(s) for their share of its value (turbe of September 1525, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2: 79, #1; DC of 1546, article XXI-36; repeated in HC of 1563, article XXV-35). 25 For West Flanders, see Meijers, OVE, 33, n.4 and more generally for the Low Countries, Godding, Le droit privé, 2d ed., 143-4. For Germany, see Ashaver von Brandt, “Mittelalterliche Bürgertestamente: Neuerschlossene Quellen zur Geschichte der materiellen und geistigen Kultur,” Sitzungberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaft, philosophisch-historische Klasse 5-32 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1973). 26 Meijers’s OVE traces this story. The transition is documented as early as the fourteenth century, when a vonnis of 1353 declared that “erve within Ghent on which rent was being paid were partible; others from 1371 and 1450 repeated the judgment (vonnis of 22 June 1353, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 4-7, #4; vonnis of 10 December 1371, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 21-3, #24; vonnis of 1450 in Coutumes 1: 628; vonnis of 22 November 1363, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 17-18, #19). The sixteenth-century SC confirms this reading. Following article 24, which explained that all unbuilt erve in Ghent held of lordships [paying traditional landcijns] were patrimonial, came article

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Debt obligations were, however, a considerably more complicated matter than either land or houses, and it was this category of asset (or liability if one was the borrower rather than the creditor) that provided Gentenaren a way to both serve the market and preserve wealth for heirs. Like all other known regions of customary law, Ghent assiduously preserved a key feature of the traditional law of patrimony: perpetual “rents,” what Gentenaren called erfrenten, retained patrimonial capacity, even if the rents were paid on land that was itself considered movable and partible. Like the history of land and its legal status in Ghent, the story of rents and other forms of indebtedness is a complex one, and its details beyond the scope of this essay. Its general shape is, however, evident. In Ghent, as in all regions of customary law, most debts were thought to be personal obligations, and thus to attach to the movable goods of the individual who incurred the debt, for that was the only property in his or her possession that was truly personal. A French adage of 25, which deemed movable all patrimonial property (erve) in Ghent that paid landcijns, implying by the contrast with article 24 that built land paying landcijns was intended. Danneel cites two cases appearing to indicate that if a house with land paying rent had been acquired before marriage or inherited during marriage, the land portion was treated as heritable and only the house entered the community of goods (Danneel, Weduwen en wezen, 268, n. 81). Meijers argues that it does not, and the cases he cites, as well as the normative texts, seem to support him. I have been able to check only one of her cases (Gedele 330, #39, fols. 133-4, 13 April 1491). There we indeed find an eervachticheden (patrimonial property) consisting of land and a house, and the aldermen did indeed determine that the land held side, while the house itself was partible. This land was, however, not in the jurisdiction of Ghent, but in Deestinghem, and according to Ghent’s custom as then expressed such land would indeed have “held side.” Whatever the confusions of the fifteenth century, the circle had closed by the sixteenth. All land in Ghent, whether actually encumbered or not, whether actually built or not, was chattel property and therefore partible. The ruling is first visible in a turbe of 1529 in which “all land within the jurisdiction of Ghent” was deemed cateyl (turbe of 1529, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2: 91-2, #22). Section XXI-27 of the 1546 DC was equally precise: “Land ‘holds side’ except [my emphasis] land that is within the city, which is movable.” The 1563 HC extended the reach to the suburbs of Ghent: “land holds the side from which it came, along with the usufruct attaching to it, except [my emphasis] the land inside the city and outer fortifications of the city [which] is partible [movable] ... .”[ HC, article XXV-29]. No mention here of landcijns, none of houses. Land, whether or not encumbered or built, was movable if it was in the jurisdiction of Ghent.

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the day expressed the concept succinctly: “meubles sont sièges des dettes.”27 The notion that debts were personal and thus payable out of personal—movable—property alone had important implications for economic life. Debts “owned” by lenders (what we might call “collectables, “accounts receivable,” “debt payments due,” and the like) could easily be bought and sold, allowing lenders to trade future income for present cash. For example, a lender who was due 100 pounds but who needed the funds immediately could sell that debt to a third person, who would then collect the amount due from the borrower. Lenders had other advantages as well because they could claim all the borrower’s movables in case of default and did not have to rely on a single asset for their security. The Jaarregisters of Ghent’s aldermen of the “Keure” contain eloquent testimony to the ubiquity of such unsecured debt.28 During the month of December 1400 alone, for example, Gentenaren registered 114 transactions with the aldermen. Fifty-nine of the entries—over half—recorded debt obligations of unspecified origin 27

Cited in Patault, Droit des biens, 282. The central fundament of the basic rule was preserved in all the normative statements issued by aldermen and in all the rulings issued by municipal courts. A vonnis of 1350 flatly declared, for example, that debts were to be charged against the movable account of a marriage (vonnis of 15 August 1350, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 4, #3). Another of 1371 was similar: all “huutsculden, insculden, baten ende comer” (“payments or receipts on debts, income and expenses”) were movable (vonnis of 10 December 1371 in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 21-3, #24). Article 2 of the early sixteenth century SC confirmed the rule, specifically naming all “schulden van baten ende van commerce” (“all obligations arising from income and expenses”), while article 32 of the same text mentioned “all debts” and article 26 broadly included all “besproken blat” (“encumbered revenue”). A turbe of 1531 listed all “contracten [ende] obligatien.” (“contracts and obligations”) (turbe of 12 July 1531, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2: 100, #3). The DC of 1546 continued the litany; the HC of 1563 repeated the sentiment. 28 From the fourteenth century forward, civil (private) matters were dealt with by two separate groups of aldermen (scepenen), the “Keure” and the “Gedele.” The former dealt with matters of property transactions, debts, etc., the latter largely with inheritance and what were called “zoenen” or compensation payments for personal (and physical) injury. The annual registers of the Keure (the Jaarregisters van de Keure, series 301) were the transcriptions of agreements (of a financial nature) voluntarily brought to the aldermen for registration. For a fuller study of this source, see Philippe Lardinois, “Diplomatische studie van de akten van vrijwillige rechtspraak te Gent van de XIIIe tot de XVe eeuw,” Licenciaat, U. Ghent (1975-6). A summary of the thesis was published in Hand. Maatsch. Geschiedenis Gent 31 (1977): 65-75.

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and without specific security, just as custom imagined.29 Another fifteen of the 114 did specify how the debt had originated, but they did not imply that the object purchased with the money lent was specific security for the loan. Although this evidence seems to insist that secured debts were unknown to medieval custom, the contrary is in fact the case. The techniques for securing long-term debt developed slowly and hesitatingly, however, for medieval people faced opposition both from spiritual authorities and customary secular law. The problem for the church was usury, for payments on a secured loan looked suspiciously like interest charges unless they totaled no more than the precise amount of the loan—a deal no long-term lender could accept.30 The problem in secular custom involved patrimonial rights. Only an immovable good could properly secure a loan, for only such an asset would hold value and generate income to service the loan. Such assets were, however, the source of patrimonial wealth—wealth due heirs—and in the medieval imagination those heirs were due their property free of debt. No individual, it was thought, could encumber his or her heirs. Accordingly, the only obligations that could attach to or pass with patrimonial assets were those integral to its use, and such obligations were generally understood to be permanent and of a tenurial nature. The old medieval cens (census in Latin) and aides, the dues or honorific payments to lords that traditionally were exacted from all users of non-allodial land, were prototypical.31 29

This material is all taken from the inventories and case summaries of the Jaarregisters published by the municipal archive of Ghent: Regesten op de Jaarregisters van de Keure [Inventarissen en Indices gepubliceerd door het Archief, Stad Gent], ed. J. Boon (Ghent: Stad Gent, 1969) covers 1353-54 and 1357-58; Regesten op de Jaarregisters van de Keure, ed. J. Boon (Ghent: Stad Gent, 1968) covers 1339-40, 1343-44, 1345-46, and 1349-50; the three volumes of Regesten op de Jaarregisters van de Keure from 1967, 1970, and 1972 [no named editor] cover 1400-01) [hereafter RJR]. 30 John H. Munro’s “The Medieval Origins of the Financial Revolution: Usury, Rentes, and Negotiability,” The International History Review 25 (3) (2003): 505-62, provides a nuanced discussion of usury laws and their effects on financial markets. His references are extensive, but also see Joel Kaye, “Changing Definitions of Money, Nature, and Equality (c.1140-1270) and Their Place within Thomas Aquinas’ Questions on Usury,” Credito e usura fra teologia, diritto e amministratione. Linguaggi a confronto (sec, XII-XIV) (CNRS, École française de Rome, Università di Trento, forthcoming). 31 The history of debt in medieval Europe with respect to immovables is ex-

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It was precisely the census or cens, however, which provided the necessary structure for secured debt because it was early and easily conflated with what was called a rente foncière or bail à rente. Originally considered a kind of perpetual lease of land in exchange for a perpetual rent (thus, bail à rente), this instrument could also be seen as a sale of land in exchange for a perpetual rent (rente foncière). In either case no loan was involved—thus, no usury. The critical shift, however, was to what were called rentes à prix d’argent or rentes constituées. In this case, money was given in exchange for rent payments in perpetuity, the money being used by the debtor either to purchase the asset securing the “debt” or, more commonly as time went on, to invest elsewhere. In the latter case, the “debt” was secured by an asset that the debtor already owned. Although this device had all the earmarks of a secured debt, medieval people managed to conceptualize it as a sale (of money) in return for a perpetual rent, thus aligning it with the rente foncière or old census—and avoiding both usury prohibitions and disgruntled heirs. About a third of the entries in the indexed volumes of the Jaarregisters concern such debts. For example, in exchange for an unnamed amount of money, Jan Sersanders issued a rent (erfelijke rente) to Jan van Maelgavere of 2 shillings gros tournois per year, secured by a house and tenement (erf). The property was already encumbered with a rent of 2 shillings gros tournois, payable to a third party, so Sersander’s ability to borrow against it a second time indicates that the property produced at least 4 shillings of income a year.32 All such rents were treated as immovable patrimony and thus as impartibles. A vonnis of 1352-1353, for example, clearly declared “eerve, eeveliike rente” impartible; again in 1372 the same language appears.33 The rule is invariable, and is repeated with casual assurance throughout the period studied. If the perpetual tremely complex and hard to document in its specifics for a particular locality. The fullest study of rents, as they had evolved by the end of the Middle Ages and developed in sixteenth-century France (Paris above all), is Bernard Schnapper, Les rentes au XVIe siècle: histoire d’un instrument de crédit (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1957). Also see Godding, Le droit privé and Munro, “The Medieval Origins.” 32 RJR, #510, fol. 24v/1. 33 Vonnis of 22 June 1353, in both Coutume, 1: 529-40, and Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 4-7, #4; vonnis of 12 November 1372, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 23-9, #25.

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rent was repurchaseable by the borrower, however, the situation was more complicated in secular law. These losrenten, as they were called in Ghent, were structured just like erfrenten but the borrower could repay the obligation, whenever desired, at some amount that had been fixed in the original loan agreement. More than any other financial instrument of the age, these most resemble our secured loans—and least resemble the old tenurial rent. Because they were detachable from the asset (when redeemed), these debts could logically be considered movable, and that is what several early sixteenth-century texts provided.34 Other texts, however, offered a different interpretation. A turbe of 1528 declared all besette renten (secured rents) immovable except lijfrenten, thereby implying that secured losrenten were immovable.35 Article 27 of the early sixteenth-century SC repeated the same rule, as did a turbe of 1530.36 The DC of 1546 as well as the HC of 1583 were clearer still: all “realized” losrenten were treated as immovables, even if the security was a “movable” house, for under such conditions the rent attached to the real property and followed it.37 By the sixteenth century, then, redeemable rents, even if secured by an asset undisputedly movable such as a house, were considered patrimonial and, as such, immovable.38 34

A turbe of 5 June 1529, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2: 87-8, #17, specified that they were movable (common) unless purchased with the proceeds of the sale of an immovable erve. Another of 10 December 1529, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2: 92, #23, treated losrenten as movables in that they were part of common account. Again, see further in this text for a discussion of this relationship. This judgment, however, contradicted another turbe (of 9 September 1528, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2: 83-4, #9, where besette (secured) losrenten were treated as immovables. The difference may lie in the term “besette.” See note 40 below for an explanation of this term. 35 Turbe of 9 September 1528, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2: 83-4, #9. 36 Turbe of 10 October 1530, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2: 96, #31. 37 The term “realized” rents first appears in sixteenth-century texts, as an explicit reference to a process of formal “registration” (which could have been oral) of a secured obligation. Once “realized,” a debt was pursuable in court and the security underlying it attachable. I am grateful to Prof. Dr. Philippe Godding for this explanation. The clause is found in DC XXI-18 and in HC XXV-8 (the term appears elsewhere in these texts as well; see, for example, XXV-40 of the HC). 38 In what might seem a gross contradiction, however, the income received by the lender of the funds was treated as a movable (HC, article XXV-27). The logic is, however, clear. Losrenten, being secured by immovables, had to stay attached to that immovable if the creditor was to be properly secured.

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Clearly, Gentenaren, like others of their age, conceptualized perpetual rents as a different kind of debt, not in fact as “debt” per se but as a quasi-tenurial arrangement. As such these assets lodged, ultimately, with the family line and were not freely available to the market.39 The individuals paying the rents (the borrowers) also treated their payments as patrimonial in that they passed to heirs along with the property securing the rent. Oddly, however, this meant that a rent secured by a house and building lot was divided between heirs and the successor to a portion of the house. The rent attached to the land went to the heir of the land; half the rent went with half the house to the heir, and the other half went to the surviving spouse. By the late Middle Ages a new form of the rente constituée was at least as common, and its appearance further disturbed traditional norms. This was the annuity or, in French, rente viagère (lijfrent in Dutch). Although structured exactly like the rente constituée, the annuity was not perpetual but was due only for the life of the creditor (or the group of creditors, since such annuities were typically written on several lives—husband and wife, or sometimes the entire nuclear family). The obligation to pay rent ceased when the creditor(s) died; then the borrower would own the pledged property free and clear. In this case, the connection between the financial instrument and its security was, in effect, temporary, and annuities themselves had short lives—or in any case non-perpetual lives. Annuities were, thus, movables, and belonged in the partible accounts of Gentenaren.40 While the income from the rent could float free of the property and be considered “personal” to the lender, the capital tied up in debt had to be attached specifically to the asset generating the debt; in that way the creditor was still secured, even if the property was sold to a third party or passed on to heirs. 39 This was a fraught issue everywhere in Europe. For a discussion of the wide variety of solutions, and the patterns of resolution in customary law, see Schnapper, Les rentes, 244-60. 40 Vonnis of 14 August 1355, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 8, #6 (here it was explained that the rent had been purchased with common property during the marriage so the income was, naturally, common as well). A vonnis of 1 April 1359, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 12-13, #13, specified that even if the rental payment was secured by immovab1es that belonged to one spouse alone the obligation to service the annuity was movable; vonnis of 10 December 1371 in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 21-3, #24, explained that the annuity payments received were movables if both they had been acquired with common

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The Import of Change This legal history can seem a linear story in which Gentenaren gradually allowed the imperatives of commerce to trump the weight of medieval tradition. There is no doubt that the category of movables and thus of partibles was dramatically increased as the Middle Ages came to a close. We can also understand why Gentenaren would have wanted to make such adjustments to law. Being dependent on industry and trade for their livelihoods and social position, we might reason, Gentenaren would have been easily inclined to treat all goods as movables, since movables alone could be freely released to the market. If, however, we study the entire three centuries of change, if we look not just at the situations where property was freed but also at those where it was not, and if we also observe what Gentenaren actually did with wealth that was considered immovable—we can no longer tell Ghent’s story as the triumph of commerce over medieval legal tradition. Rather, we come to see that the imperatives of commerce were in constant tension with older and more deeply seated notions imbedded in the very concept of patrimony: property rights were the basis of social order, the mechanism by which people were connected to each other through time and space and, not incidentally, the means for establishing hierarchies among them. Hence, even if Gentenaren accepted that all wealth had to be released to the market, they were also convinced that the market alone could not be permitted to allocate property rights. Instead, they believed, property rights should ultimately be conferred by kinship status, and by that mechanism both gender and class hierarchies could be constructed and preserved. To achieve these apparently incommensurate goals, Gentenaren manipulated the partible/impartible divide at the heart of their marital property law. As we have seen, in Ghent’s custom movable

(movable) property. A turbe of 9 September 1528, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2: 83-4, #9, went on to specify that they were partible even if secured by erve (“besetten”). These rules were repeated in the SC of the early sixteenth century (article 26) and in the DC of 1546 (XXI-20) as well as the HC of 1563 (XXV-22). Thus, the annuity payments received by the purchaser during life were counted as movables, as were the payments made by the borrower, and the cash received by the borrower when the loan was first made went into the borrowers’ movable account.

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goods were not only equated with chattels, they were automatically considered partible. All partible goods belonged to what Gentenaren called the community of goods or the community (common) fund that was created when a woman and man married.41 Community goods were the joint property of both spouses, and at the death of either spouse, the survivor (or the lineal heirs of the survivor) had a full claim to 50 per cent of those assets, no matter their composition. Although the fund was technically jointly owned, during the marriage it was in fact entirely managed—and effectively owned—by the husband. As head of household he could buy, sell, exchange, alienate, or encumber the assets however he wished, without asking permission of his wife or her particular heirs.42 It was only when he died that the woman acquired her rights, but even then she assumed ownership only of 50 per cent of the assets; the other half passed to the deceased husband’s lineal heirs. Even if those heirs were minor children born of the marriage and the widow managed the assets on their behalf, she did so only as trustee and under the supervision of adult relatives of the deceased husband. The reverse was also true; if the wife died first, the 50 per cent of the community account that ultimately belonged to her passed to her lineal heirs, preferentially to her children; the survivor of her marriage, even if he was the father of those children, did not have full authority over that portion of the community account. The surviving spouse of the marriage did, however, have lifetime rights to half the income from the portion of the community account (thus 50 per cent of the income from 50 per cent of the community account) that had passed to heirs of the deceased, but those rights expired at the death of the survivor. It was thus a supremely important matter to decide whether a good belonged in the community account. Although goods labeled “community” were by definition the equivalent of partible goods, 41

Legal historians argue that the community property account central to marital property law in this region of Europe was a residue of old systems in which the entire family constituted the community. For this argument, see P. Ourliac and J. de Malafosse, Histoire du droit privé, 3, Le droit familial (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968). For examples of non-marital communities, see Jean Hilaire, “Vie en commun: famille et esprit communautaire,” Nouvelle revue historique de droit français et étranger, 4th ser., 51 (1973): 8-53. 42 See article XXI-7 of the DC, which was especially clear on this principle. The clause was repeated, almost verbatim, in HC of 1563, article XX-23.

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neither was contained by the terms “chattel” or “movable.” To be sure, all goods traditional law had considered movable or chattel were automatically labeled partible—furniture, cash, unsecured debts, raw materials, inventories, accounts receivable, clothing, jewelry, arms, kitchenware, household provisions, and animals.43 And, we have seen, by the 1500s the category of movable chattel had been radically expanded, leaving perpetual rents and land outside Ghent as the only significant outlyers. Another feature of custom expanded the partible account still further. Any good acquired after marriage, unless acquired by inheritance or gift promised before marriage, was added to the community account. This could—and did—include land both inside and outside Ghent and perpetual rents, as well as all goods considered movable chattel, for the implied assumption was these assets had been acquired with funds earned during marriage or obtained by sale of other goods in the community account. But there remained a potentially significant category of wealth that would not enter the community account. In the language of Ghent’s custom, these were impartibles. In contrast to partible goods that entered the community account and were under full control of the husband during marriage, impartibles were individually owned during marriage, and they were the residual property of lineal heirs of the spouse who possessed them. During marriage, the husband could manage his wife’s impartible goods, but he 43 Various clauses of the HC of 1563 laboriously detailed the items included: article XXV-4, for example, listed “houses, trees grown to the width of a man’s hand span and chest high, logs, chattels, leases and mortgages, minted and unminted coin, jewels and baubles, household furnishings, weapons, bows, stocks of munitions, horses and harnesses, peat and stone that has been mined ... excepting the shade trees and best residence on a fief that are expected to follow the fief”; article XXV-6 listed houses or parts of houses in addition to all movables acquired during marriage; article XXV-22 listed annuities (lijfrenten) XXV-24 listed income due from leases but not yet paid; XXV-27 included the income from repurchaseable rents (losrenten); XXV-28 specified non-hypothecated (“onbesette”) rents, no matter if they had been purchased with impartibles that “held side”; XXV-30 included windmills on fiefs, excepting the parts that were not physically movable; windmills on simple erve, however, were movable in their entirety; XXV-31 provided that watermills were movable just like houses and trees, even if on a fief but in that case the “stoel metten legghere” [chair with mill-stone] went with the fief; subsequent articles XXV-32-38 provided detailed instructions about trees and fish, while XXV-39 declared all “personal debts arising from expenses” partible.

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could not sell, encumber, or otherwise alienate these goods without her explicit consent.44 At death, the impartibles of the deceased passed to lineal heirs, and the surviving spouse had only lifetime rights to half the income produced by the assets; his or her heirs did not assume those rights at the survivor’s death. Because all movables were by definition partible, all impartibles were necessarily immovables but only certain immovables acquired this status, for, as we have seen, immovables acquired during marriage with common funds, as well as land within Ghent’s jurisdiction, were considered partible. This left land outside Ghent’s jurisdiction; as explained in article XXV-29 of the HC, it “held side.”45 Other articles in that text included rents that had been secured before marriage as well as land and secured rents acquired by gift or inheritance during marriage.46 In sum, by 1563 at the latest, only land outside Ghent and perpetual rents (including redeemable rents) remained impartible and then if and only if the property had been acquired or pledged before marriage or if given specifically to one of the spouses by a third party (even during marriage). When overlaid on the old movable/immovable divide, the partible/impartible binary provided Gentenaren a way to limit the free circulation of wealth and direct it where they wanted it to go. Customary marital property law was Gentenaren’s chief tool in their larger social project because it, almost alone, governed all marital property relations, succession, and inheritance in this city. Published law after published law proclaimed this principle, and court case after court case reflected its precepts. Thus Gentenaren were denied the right to issue wills privileging a spouse more than custom would have allowed, and they were forbidden to write marriage contracts instituting terms in violation of custom. Only in 1563 was the latter prohibition overturned.47 Ghent was, thus, a

44

See, for example, article 4 of SC. A turbe of 12 July 1531, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2: 100-1, #39, went further, specifying that a husband could not “encumber, alienate or sell” “errgront, erfachtycheid often erfvelicke rente” without his wife’s permission. 45 Article XXV-8. 46 Articles XXV-40 and XXV-55. 47 Vonnis of 1352-3, pp. 529-40. Also see vonnis of 22 June 1353, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 4-7, #4; SC, article 6 and DC, articles XXI-2 and 11 repeated the rules. Article XX-20 of the HC, however, flatly overruled these proscriptions.

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relative latecomer to the marriage contract, and its citizens resorted to such legal mechanism only in rare circumstances.48 In sum, all the presently available evidence depicts people who almost always married under the terms of custom and fought their battles in court over its terms.49 If they did not—and a few evidently did not—they were careful to make a public record of their decision and often to specially register their heirs’ consent to the new terms. This does not mean that custom perfectly satisfied the needs of all but a few Gentenaren. On the contrary. The entire 48

While all the evidence suggests that Gentenaren did not regularly issue marriage contracts, but instead allowed custom to govern marital property relations and succession, some people not only chose to overwrite custom, they also got away with it, all the assertions of published law notwithstanding. It is impossible to know how many of these instances there were, for the only records we have of such contracts are buried in the hundreds of manuscript volumes of Jaarregisters van de Keure housed in Ghent’s municipal archive, the registers in which private agreements of sales, loans, debt settlements and the like were recorded. Indices have been published for only seven years of the medieval centuries (1339-40, 1343-4, 1345-6, 1349-50, 1353-4, 1357-8, and 1400-01), and these provide our only systematic guide to the frequency and nature of such contracts. To judge from these documents alone, however, the marriage contract was rarely used in medieval Ghent. Of the 1,427 entries in the Jaarregisters indexed for the six years 1339-40, 1343-4, 1345-6, 1349-50, 1353-4, and 1357-8, only ten marriage contracts are mentioned, two of which the aldermen later crossed out as inoperative. Among the 1,580 entries for the single year 1400-1401, there are only two. Thanks to David Nicholas’s research for his Domestic Life in a Medieval City (Lincoln, Neb.: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1985) we know, in addition, of some 16 additional marriage contracts issued between 1345 and 1390 and also registered in the Jaarregisters van de Keure. Altogether then, we have 26 marriage contracts for a period of about 60 years. Fifteen of the 26 appear to violate terms of custom, but 6 of those elaborately detail the consents obtained from heirs whose interests were at stake in the changes, leaving only 19 in 60 years that appear to have violated custom’s norms. 49 It is also possible that marriage contracts were registered elsewhere than in the Jaarregisters and were simply not mentioned in the published inventory, but that seems unlikely given the care with which the archive has otherwise been catalogued. Some are referenced in the voluminous Weezenboec[en] where inheritance arrangements were registered, for many of these entries concern the settlement of orphans’ estates or the terms of wills, and in those texts it is possible to find occasional discussion of a prior marriage contract that set forth the terms of the inheritance. But most of those texts assume custom’s rules. It is also possible that Gentenaren simply did not register such contracts, but that too seems unlikely given the solicitude they showed in registering financial agreements of considerably less importance and given as well the risks that a disgruntled heir or spouse would challenge a marriage contract that violated published law and had not been publicly registered.

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legal record from Ghent—the editions of custom, the court disputes, and even the rare marriage contracts issued to override or supplement custom—speak eloquently about the social tensions embedded in the property relations constructed by marriage in this age, tensions which had their source in the conflict between the interests of the nuclear family on the one hand (“le ménage”) and those of the “line” on the other (“le lignage”). This was, however, but an expression, the exposed surface, of a deeper conflict in the cultural, social, and economic meaning of property. After all, the motor of the struggle between the “ménage” and the “lignage” could not simply have been “tension” between the conjugal unit and the wider kin group, although that is its structural precondition, because such tension is endemic to all societies where women marry out of the line and carry patrimonial property with them.50 The evidence from Ghent allows us to go deeper. The power that energized this structural tension there (and I would venture everywhere in commercialized Europe during the age) was the change in the nature of wealth and the proliferation of its meanings, in all senses of the word—economic, legal, social, and cultural—as movable wealth exploded in quantity and kind. With this explosion, the traditional axes by which property relations had been organized—the distinction between patrimony and chattels, between family or kin interests on the one hand and individual interests on the other—was disturbed, and these axes were thus the ground on which this story of “lignage” vs. “ménage” was played out.

Wealth as Capital; Capital as Patrimony This legal record reveals that Ghent did not steadily progress towards what is called a classic market economy, a world of easily fungible property subjected to a logic of profit and price. Rather, 50 For a structural analysis of these exogamous marriages and the social tensions they produce, see Jack Goody, Production and Reproduction: A Comparative Study of the Domestic Domain (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976) and his Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1983). The basic text for this approach is Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, trans. J. H. Bell et al. (Boston: Beacon Press,1969).

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Gentenaren deviated from that course by finding new ways to sequester wealth, in implicit refusal of such imperatives. In doing so, Gentenaren were enacting a sociocultural logic peculiar to their age. To understand their behavior and its historical significance, we must understand the assumptions about property that informed it. For them, property, or what they typically called “goods” (goeden), was constitutive of the self. Goods had cultural and thus social significance that did not just exceed their potential market value, but frequently trumped it. These assumptions about property’s meaning were the fundaments of a venerable and deeply rooted economic culture in which land had almost iconic status. For centuries, land had been not only the principal form of capital, it was also, in the legal and cultural imagination, the only one. Land was also the basis of the medieval social order. Peasants were not people who “farmed land” but a social class constituted by their rights to work and inherit the land and to pass those rights to heirs. They did not “do” peasantry; they were peasants. Similarly, aristocrats claimed noble or high gentry status because they lived from what other people produced for them—from the land—not simply because they were rich. Ghent’s traditional custom, with its clear distinction between movables and immovables, its easy elision of immovables and patrimony and its implicit equation of both with land, was the legal expression of this cultural logic. Thus, although Gentenaren manipulated law so that they could easily buy and sell, alienate and encumber most of their property at will, they did not abandon their culture’s insistence that property—concrete forms of property—constituted an individual socially. They also eagerly acquired and hoarded land outside Ghent, often even abandoning more profitable opportunities in commerce in order to become land “barons.” While these decisions had a kind of economic rationality, land being a considerably less risky investment than many commercial ventures, the principal rewards of land-owning, at least for urbanites, were not economic but social. Land was the premier vehicle of social promotion in this age. Thus, even as urbanites helped commodify land, they intensified its sociocultural value, for land could powerfully evoke the old equation between property and status.51 Rents were a close second as status-builders 51

The literature treating this process is rich. For a general summary, with

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and were considerably easier to acquire. Many rents were actually paid in kind, not coin, a practice that had practical advantages for bourgeois purchasers because it guaranteed them food supplies, but it also had cultural import, for it materially expressed the ideological link between rents and land.52 For people such as Gentenaren, luxury movables such as jewelry and clothing participated in the same logic. Cloth and clothing played a particularly complex role, however, because although they were traditionally powerful markers of status and social identity, they were also the preeminent commodities of the age. Their increasing abundance, the proliferation of variety, and their easy circulation steadily eroded the old equation between the self and the self’s vestments.53 Urbanites like those in Ghent played a major useful references, see Fernand Braudel’s magisterial The Wheels of Commerce, vol. 2 of Civilization and Captialism, 15th-18th Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1982), 249-51 and passim. 52 Schnapper, Les rentes, provides details about the history of these two credit instruments in the Parisian region, and presents data showing the extent to which rental payments were made in kind (see in particular pp. 80-3). The Jaarregisters van de Keure in Ghent provide scattered information confirming the same pattern. Although it seems that most rents in Ghent were expressed (if not paid) in monies of account (the pound groot, the pound parisis, or the gros tournois); they were of course paid in coin or kind. A few entries suggest the mix: for example, RJR, #576, fol. 28/6 (“... tot het betalen van 2 last torven [turf] op 4 schilden ...); 36, fol. 25v/5; RJR, #606, fol. 30v/5 (“... een erfrente van 4 lb. 15s. par. + 4 6/8 kapoenen ...”); RJR, #620 fol. 91v/2 (“... tot het betalen van 7 zakken en 7 mud tiendekoren [Aalsterse maat]...”). The so-called “Orphans’ Books” or Weezenboecen from Ghent provide more concrete evidence of Gentenaren’s commitment to land. These registers contained records of estate settlements and similar agreements, including the accounts registered on behalf of children who had lost a parent, for at that moment, as we have seen, the marital property fund was distributed among the survivor and heirs of the marriage. Thus, any so-called orphan standing to inherit any significant amount of property would have been registered here, and the properties to which he or she was heir would be listed, at least in summary form. For the four years from 1349/50 to 1352/53, 239 such accounts were registered, of which 79 listed only movables (excluding all real estate) among the assets to be distributed. About one-third held real estate Ghent, although only about 5 per cent of the accounts listed significant holdings. 53 The history of clothing and consumption has in recent years been given serious attention. Building on an older literature treating costume or dress on the one hand and sumptuary legislation on the other, sociocultural historians and cultural studies scholars have taken up the more subtle questions regarding the relationship of clothing and consumption to the creation of the early modern individual. Important literature (with useful guides to bibliogra-

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role in this disruption, for they were both producers and purveyors of these goods. At the same time, urbanities were also prodigious purchasers of such luxuries and it is in that capacity that they most clearly displayed their attachment to more traditional ideas of property’s meaning. In that role, they were not so much consumers as obsessive acquirers, for they collected, hoarded, and displayed their possessions as though they were the material embodiments of an imagined self.54

phy) includes John Brewer and Roy Porter, Consumption and the World of Goods (New York: Routledge, 1993); Alan Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions: A History of Sumptuary Law (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); Anne Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Also see Sarah-Grace Heller, “Anxiety, Hierarchy and Appearance in Thirteenth-Century Sumptuary Laws and The Romance of the Rose,” French Historical Studies 27-2 (2004): 311-48, for a useful discussion of the royal French sumptuary legislation and its confused textual and bibliographic history; for Italy see Diane Owen Hughes, “Regulating Women’s Fashion,” in Christiane Klapisch- Zuber ed., Silences of the Middle Ages, Vol. 2 of A history of Women in the West (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992) and Catherine Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002); for Germany, see Neithard Bulst, “Zum Problem städtischer und territorialer Kleider-, Aufwands-, und Luxusgesetzgebung in Deutschland (13.—Mitte 16. Jahrhundert),” in André Gouron and Albert Rigaudière, eds., Renaissance du pouvoir législatif et genèse de l’état (Montpellier: Socapress, 1988) and Kent Roberts Greenfield, “Sumptuary Law in Nürnberg: A Study in Paternal Government,” Johns Hopkins Studies in Historical-Political Sciences 36 (2) (1918): 1-139; for England, Claire Sponsler, “Narrating the Social Order: Medieval Clothing Laws,” Clio 21 (3) (1992): 265-82. I know of no full study of such legislation in the late medieval southern Low Countries, and of no source collections containing such legislation. 54 The relative importance of movables, including luxury movables, in the asset structure of urbanities is well understood, but many historians have argued, following Sombart and others, that such goods had their most comfortable home in the early modern court, among nobles, and they have pointed out that sobriety of dress came to mark the bourgeoisie of certain areas (Amsterdam, for example). See Werner Sombart, Luxury and Capitalism, trans. Philip Siegelman (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Univ. of Michigan Press,1967); Norbert Elias’s The Civilizing Process, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Blackwell, 1982, c. 1978) locates such consumption in a larger process of “civilizing.” Braudel returns to this issue (The Wheels of Commerce, 488-91). Although Braudel generally assents to the argument that luxury goods were the special obsession of the courtly aristocracy, he acknowledges that in some cities, in certain periods, urbanites were just as avid consumers of these products. Certainly this was the case in the rich cities of the late medieval southern Low Countries, surely influenced by the sumptuous court of the Duke of Burgundy

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City people enacted another aspect of this sociocultural logic by exchanging their goods on non-market terms. Rather than buying and trading these goods in response to price and profit, they often used them as gifts, thereby seeking to fix them in social place, clearly attach them to another person.55 The resistance to a market logic implicit in these actions was more than an earlier version of the hesitation we exhibit today when we collect family heirlooms and make gifts of them, when we keep unprofitable family farms rather than sell them to shopping-center developers for easy gains, or when we participate in what anthropologists have called distinct “realms of value” where such goods as antiques or artworks circulate, far outside the arena where interchangeable commodities are traded. But our passion for the uncommodifiable is not theirs. Rather than investing ourselves in particular possessions, we lust for many things, not for this or that precise thing except for brief moments, in rarified settings, or in occasional instances of sentithat resided in these cities, and the pattern continued there after the Dutch Revolt. And even the subdued garments of the Amsterdam patriciate were extraordinarily costly, it should be remembered, for their black woolens and velvets and their starched collars were unmistakable marks of luxury—and, not incidentally, the dress of the contemporaneous Hapsburg court. Braudel is certainly correct, however, to point out that dress—sober or fancy—was a contested site in the cultural history of the early modern bourgeoisie, and that the relationship between class and dress was unstable, if nevertheless highly significant. 55 The rich sociocultural history of the gift in late medieval and early modern Europe is treated in Natalie Zemon Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France (Madison, Wis.: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2000) and Valentin Groeber, Liquid Assests, Dangerous Gifts: Presents and Politics at the End of the Middle Ages, trans. Pamela E. Selwyn (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). My own “Fixing Movables: Gifts by Testament in Late Medieval Douai,” Past and Present 150 (1996): 3-45, explores gifting practices via testament in the southern Low Countries. Much of the historical literature on gifts in this period considers them more exclusively in terms of their political significance, particularly their role in state building. See in this regard, W. Paravicini, “Introduction,” in W. Paravicini, ed., Invitations au marriage: pratique sociale, abus de pouvoir, intérêt de l’État à la cour des ducs de Bourgogne 1399-1489 (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke, 2001); Maurice Arnould, “L’origine historique des pots-de-vin,” Bulletin de la Classe des Lettres et des Sciences Morales et Politiques, 5th ser., 62 (1976): 216-67; Alain Guery, “Le roi dépensier: le don, la contrainte, et l’origine du système financier de la monarchie francaise d’Ancien Régime,” Annales. Economies, Sociétés, Civilizations 34 (1984): 1241-64; Marc Boone, “Dons et pots-de-vin, aspects de la sociabilité urbaine au bas Moyen Age,” Revue du Nord 70 (278) (1988): 471-87.

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mentality. For us, the sphere of the non-commodifiable good is small indeed; today even babies, embryos, and body parts threaten to escape that tiny realm. While Gentenaren surely did not regard the easy fungibility of land, rents, family homes or even clothing with the same horror many of us view the selling of kidneys mined from the living, they, like all Europeans of their day, behaved as though goods could not be infinitely abstracted by money and thus rendered essentially identical. It was in this sociocultural context that Gentenaren adjusted law around the movable/immovable divide. Although the legal evidence reviewed here reflects this larger context only indirectly, it directly illustrates another aspect of this story. This is what other historians have called the “future-oriented” attitudes displayed when elites chose to buy assets such as land and rents rather than invest in commerce, industry, or agricultural improvements.56 The practices are well known to social historians, for they helped created the early modern “non-commercial” bourgeoisie—the elites of cities, courts and country manors in early modern Europe who lived from rents and office rather than pursuing the entrepreneurial activities that had made their predecessors rich. And, as scholars have also pointed out, this class prospered because such assets were transferred from generation to generation, thus solidifying—and rigidifying—a social hierarchy based on inheritance.57 In Ghent, this social process was managed via the impartible account where rents 56 For a discussion of this social process and its implications for the development of capitalism, see Ralph E. Giesey, “Rules of Inheritance and Strategies of Mobility in Prerevolutionary France,” American Historical Review 82 (2) (April 1977): 271-89. 57 Historians have referred to these practices as “the treason of the bourgeoisie,” thereby signaling urbanites’ abandonment of the commerce that had given them birth. Henri Pirenne’s “Stages in the Social History of Capitalism,” American Historical Review 19 (1914): 494-515, was an early statement of this position, a point of view elaborated by such scholars as Friedrich Lütge, Deutsche Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Berlin: Springer, 1952). For the Low Countries in particular, see Hugo Soly, “The ‘Betrayal’ of the Sixteenth-Century Bourgeoisie: A Myth? Some Considerations of the Behaviour Pattern of the Merchants of Antwerp in the Sixteenth Century,” Acta Historiae Neerlandicae 8 (1975): 31-9; and Marc Boone, “La terre, les hommes et les villes. Quelques considérations autour du thème de l’urbanisation des propriétaires terriens,” in Actes du 17e Colloque International, Spa 16-19 mai 1994, “La ville et la transmission des valeurs culturelles bas moyen âge et aux temps modernes,” Gemeentekrediet van België, historische reeks in-8, nr. 96 (Brussels: Crédit Communal de Belgique, 1996), 153-73.

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and land outside Ghent were carefully sheltered. There, as elsewhere, the law’s focus on the source of the particular assets eligible for impartible status was key to the social process: if these properties had come to the marriage by gift or inheritance they acquired patrimonial status; if purchased during marriage, they did not. Eligible property thus acquired its impartible status only in the second generation (since most gifts were made from one generation to the next and all inheritances flowed in that way). Once “in the family,” however—once passed from father or mother to child—such property could be repeatedly transferred from generation to generation, endlessly guaranteeing class status. It could even enhance class status, for the older the property, the more powerfully it established social rank. Any Gentenar seeking to preserve or create a stable social lineage was thus well advised, indeed compelled, to collect rents and rural properties and compelled to pass them as gifts or inheritances. In this way, Ghent’s custom both inscribed the practices of an emergent rentier class and helped to create it. Thus, Gentenaren were not capitalists manqués. While they understood and accommodated commerce, they also stubbornly refused the social implications of unbridled commoditization. They were not alone, as many historians have noted. While these patterns of investment and inheritance have been most obsessively studied in early modern France, they were not confined there. Propertied urbanites in Germany, Italy, England, and in the Low Countries, did the same.58 Almost next door to Ghent, in Douai, the pattern 58

Case studies such as Michel Mollat’s Jacques Coeur ou l’esprit d’entreprise au XVe siècle (Paris: Aubier, 1988) or Robert Forster’s Merchants, Landlords, Magistrates: The Dupont Family in Eighteenth-Century France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1980) give particularly rich texture to this social history, and sociologically inspired research confirms the patterns. See, for a illustrative evidence, Robert S. Duplessis, Lille and the Dutch Revolt (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991); Barbara Diefendorf, Paris City Councillors (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1983); Sylvia Thrupp, The Merchant Class of Medieval London (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1948); Albert Rigaudière, L’assiette de l’impôt à la fin du XIVe siècle. Le livre d’estimes des consuls de Saint-Flour—les années 1380-1385 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1977); P. Wolff, Commerce et marchands de Toulouse (vers 1350-vers 1450), (Paris: Plon, 1954); R. Fédou, Les hommes de loi lyonnais à la fin du Moyen Age (Paris: Les belles lettres, 1964). George Huppert, Les bourgeois gentilshommes; an essay on the definition of elites in Renaissance France (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1977) surveys and summarizes the literature on France, with references to

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is especially clear, thanks to the rich trove of marriage contracts left by its citizenry. So “uncommercial” did such behavior seem to Fernand Braudel that he declined to label these people bourgeois, even “non-commercial” bourgeois; instead he wanted to call them “honorables hommes” or even “gentry.” As he pointed out, these people were not distinguished by their entrepreneurial relationship to capital, but by their way of life, and their way of life was based on distinctive investment and inheritance practices, not on commerce and industry. Although these economic practices undoubtedly had a “stifling” effect on capitalistic development as some scholars have charged, because they immobilized assets that might have been more productively employed, it cannot be said that these choices represented an irrational retreat into the past.59 Rather, they were the solution to the problem of how to accommodate trade while assuring social order. And by “social order” people meant social privilege and class continuity. Hence they sought, and found, a way to let wealth circulate, but also to allow the most culturally significant goods to descend to lineal heirs. In this way, the market could flourish but hierarchy would be shored up, risks of social derogation minimized, and the newcomers more easily kept out. The evidence from Ghent not only illustrates this social history, it suggests that there was still more to this story. It links these social changes to a redefinition of property itself, giving people like the Gentenaren who stood at the center of this ideological upheaval an important role in the history of capitalism. The confusion about terminology that plagues the city’s legal sources, it is clear, was not just about words, not even fundamentally about law. It is the record of a sociocultural revolution essential to the future development of Europe’s capitalist market society. By its end, the revolution had emptied the term “immovable” of legal meaning, broken the venerable equation between land and patrimony, redefined property or what Gentenaren simply called “goods” as capital, and assigned new patrimonial status to a selected array of capital assets. A lot, it seems, was in a name.

other countries. 59 Giesey, “Rules of Inheritance,” summarizes the arguments in this vein.

CULTIVATION AND CONSUMPTION: MEDIEVAL LÜBECK’S GARDENS Charlotte Masemann

Garden production of food and other crops in medieval Lübeck took place on land located outside the city walls, in a broad belt around the city. Produce grown there was presumably sold and consumed within the city, although direct evidence on this point is somewhat lacking.1 Analysis of the evidence of this garden production reveals the types of crops grown in the gardens, some information on the size and value of the gardens, the location of the gardens and in some cases the identity of the owner or tenant. It also reveals a high degree of involvement of citizens of the city of Lübeck in the life of these gardens and a corresponding closeness in the urban-rural relationship. Archaeological evidence for the consumption of the produce grown outside the city underlines the importance of the urban-rural relationship. Much of the evidence for consumption of garden produce is derived from the ambitious archaeological program undertaken since the Second World War by the city of Lübeck. Archaeological material provides good evidence for consumption. Documentary evidence rarely identifies a plant to the species level; written sources are also generally quiet about food sources that are gathered rather than grown. Archaeological sources lack information on production, such as where and on whose land the plant was grown. A comparative approach to both kinds of evidence provides the fullest possible picture. The case of Lübeck’s urban gardens reveals a closeness in the urban-rural relationship.

1 Regulations concerning hawkers of fruit in the marketplace only appear beginning in the seventeenth century. Archiv der Hansestadt Lübeck (subsequently AHL), ASA Interna Markt 9/1 and 9/2 deal with apple-sellers (1614) and the sale of garden produce in the market (1669), respectively. In July 1465 a sea captain complained that his shipload of apples had been held up in Wisby, demonstrating that there was some longer-distance trade in this crop (Carl Wehrmann and Paul Hasse, eds., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (subsequently LUB) (vol. 10), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 10 (Lübeck: Edmund Schmersahl Nachf., 1898), 10: 631.

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Lübeck, located on a peninsula where the rivers Wakenitz and Trave meet, just south of the Baltic coast in what is now SchleswigHolstein, was founded in the second half of the twelfth century. In 1300 the population of Lübeck was about 15,000 and by the beginning of the fifteenth century it numbered around 25,000.2 There were signs that the city was finding it difficult to contain all its inhabitants within its walls. A document from 1465 expressly forbids people from living in houses outside the city walls.3 The pressure of population, combined with this regulation and others like it, meant that by the sixteenth century many of the large blocks of land within the city were being subdivided. The small houses built between and behind the larger houses belonging to the wealthier members of the city were rented out to those with fewer financial resources.4 Passages were often constructed through these large houses in order to provide access to an alleyway, or Gang, with many small houses built on either side. Many of these Gänge survive into the present day.5 While the houses and their inhabitants have been closely researched, the land that was not built up, both within and just outside the city, has remained largely unexamined. Although the city discouraged people from living right up against the city walls,6 its area and influence extended beyond those walls. The original area of city was the peninsula and the strip of land called Horegenbeke in front of the Burgtor, the gate at the northern end of the peninsula. In the fourteenth century Lübeck secured its area, called the Landwehr, with a large ditch, which, combined with natural rivers and streams, provided a barrier to access to the Landwehr.7 Many little villages started out as property of the city in 1262, but most were alienated into private hands and 2

Erich Hoffmann, “Lübeck im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter: Die große Zeit Lübecks,” in Antjekathrin Graßmann, ed., Lübeckische Geschichte (Lübeck: Schmidt Römhild, 1988), 306. 3 LUB, 10: 651. 4 Margrit Christensen-Streckebach and Michael Scheftel, “Kleinhausbebauung in Lübeck im 16. Jahrhundert. Zusammenhänge zwischen Eigentumsentwicklung und Baustruktur,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für lübeckische Geschichte und Altertumskunde 63 (1983): 168-169. 5 Rainer Andresen, Lübeck. Geschichte der Wohngänge (Lübeck: Verlag Lübecker Rundschau, 1985), vol. 5. 6 A document from 1465 expressly forbids people from living in houses outside the city walls. LUB, 10: 651. 7 Hoffmann, “Lübeck,” 302.

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became holdings (Güter).8 Many of these holdings were owned by citizens of Lübeck who looked on the purchase of land as a secure investment; the land was cultivated by the people who lived in the villages. The influence of Lübeck was therefore extensive in the area of the Landwehr and beyond.9 The picture of Lübeck’s gardens is partially derived from records of land transactions preserved in a collection of documents, the Lübeckische Urkundenbücher (LUB),10 dating from 1270 to 1470.11 The 8

Julius Hartwig, “Die Rechtsverhältnisse des ländlichen Grundbesitzes im Gebiet der freien und Hansestadt Lübeck,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für lübeckische Geschichte und Altertumskunde 9 (1) (1908): 209-212. 9 Hartwig, “Die Rechtsverhältnisse,” 278. 10 Carl Wehrmann, ed., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (Vol. 1), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 1 (Lübeck: Friedrich Aschenfeldt, 1843); Carl Wehrmann, ed., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (vol. 2.1), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, vol. 2.1 (Lübeck: Friedrich Aschenfeldt, 1858); Carl Wehrmann, ed., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (vol. 2.2), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 2.2 (Lübeck: Friedrich Aschenfeldt, 1858); Carl Wehrmann, ed., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (vol. 3), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 3 (Lübeck: Ferdinand Grautoff, 1871); Carl Wehrmann, ed., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (vol. 4), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 4 (Lübeck: Ferdinand Grautoff, 1873); Carl Wehrmann, ed., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (vol. 5), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 5 (Lübeck: Ferdinand Grautoff, 1877); Carl Wehrmann, ed. Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (vol. 6), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 6 (Lübeck: Ferdinand Grautoff, 1881); Carl Wehrmann, ed., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (vol. 7), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 7 (Lübeck: Ferdinand Grautoff, 1885); Carl Wehrmann, ed., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (vol. 8), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 8 (Lübeck: Edmund Schmersahl, 1889); Carl Wehrmann, ed., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (vol. 9), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 9 (Lübeck: Edmund Schmersahl, 1893); Carl Wehrmann and Paul Hasse, eds., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (vol. 10), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 10 (Lübeck: Edmund Schmersahl Nachf., 1898); Paul Hasse, ed., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (vol. 11), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 11 (Lübeck: Lübcke & Nöhring, 1905); Friedrich Techen, Wort- und Sachregister zu Band 1-11, Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch, Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde (Lübeck: Verlag des Vereins für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 1932). 11 Many of the documents preserved in the LUB are derived from the Oberstadtbücher and the Niederstadtbücher. The Oberstadtbuch was a record of transactions of movements of property, mortgages and rents within and, to some extent, outside the city of Lübeck. H. Bickelmann, “Oberstadtbücher,” Kanzlei Findbuch (Lübeck: Archiv der Hansestadt Lübeck, n.d.), 9. By far the most common source of these documents is the Niederstadtbuch, a record of all sorts of transactions between citizens of Lübeck. While it began as a record of debt

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usually indicate land use, as well as the identity of the person paying the tithes, the owner, if different from the payer, and often the previous owner or payer. The location of the garden in relation to the gardens of others and to local landmarks also appears. The tithe records usually provide the amount at which the land was tithed. Because of details about ownership, crop and location, it is in many cases possible to establish when the same garden has been tithed in two or more of the documents. Both tithe and land transaction records indicate that fruit, cabbages and hops were grown in gardens around Lübeck on land owned, rented or mortgaged by its citizens. The almost 200 years’ worth of records contained in the Wette garden books provide some useful information on production gardens in Lübeck. They confirm the impression given in other written records that there were many gardens just outside the city walls. Whereas the records in the Niederstadtbücher and the Oberstadtbücher deal mainly with transactions between individuals, and the tithe records are concerned with payments to ecclesiastical authorities, the Wette garden books tell us of the gardens on which rent was paid to the city. Most of these gardens were located outside the city walls to the west and south of the city. Payments on approximately 500 pieces of land are recorded in the first book, while the second and third contain records of about 250 and about 300, respectively. These gardens must have been a significant source of revenue for the city. Analysis of the records concerning the Soltewisch, an area of land outside the Holsten wall, on the west side of the city, reveals that while there was a great range in amount of rent paid, from four schillinge to 96 schillinge, the amount paid for an individual area remained almost constant over almost 200 years. When both the amount of rent and the area was recorded, four schillinge per piece was the usual amount. Most payers were men, with some women appearing as well. Most people’s occupations were not given. The Wette garden books provide a good general picture of a ring of gardens around the city, but none of the entries contains detailed information about crops. The title page of the second book, however, states that it covers hop gardens and gardens (hoppen höve und garden).17 A leaf inserted into the second garden book 17

AHL HS 289, Ar.

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CHARLOTTE MASEMANN

backs up this assertion, since it is labeled “Van den Hoppenlande” and concerns the four pieces of hop land and a hof owned by Tileke Warendorp, the proceeds of which she wishes to go to a brotherhood after her death.18 This emphasis on hops tallies well with the information gleaned from other documentary sources. While the documents that provide the bulk of data for this analysis indicate that hops dominated garden production in Lübeck, the regulations of the gardeners’ guild, known as the Willkür der Gärtner, amplify the list of crops.19 These regulations cover many aspects of the life of the guild and its members, including admission of new members, sale of produce, cultivation of produce, land management, fencing, wages, and transportation, among others. The Willkür provides a very important link between evidence for production (tithe records, and records of land transactions involving gardens) and consumption (archaeological data). The document is a prescriptive one, and it gives rules of behavior for the gardeners of Lübeck, although the definition of a gardener never appears. Some of its regulations refer specifically to certain produce. For example, it did not allow people to sell produce on the area at their gardens, other than cress and sage.20 Possibly the authorities wanted to avoid a situation in which large-scale food marketing was taking place outside of the central marketplace, where it could be more closely regulated. However, it also stated that turnips, carrots, krickelmoren,21 red cabbage and green vegetables should be sold bi

18

AHL HS 289, loose leaf between fols. 7v and 8r. LUB, 3: 771. Undated. 20 The words used in the document are kerszen and saluyen. Lübben translates kerszen as Kresse, or nasturtium (August Lübben, completed by Christoph Walther, Mittelniederdeutsches Handwörterbuch (Norden and Leipzig: Diedr. Soltau’s Verlag, 1888), 2: 54). Nasturtium officinale, or Rorippa nasturtiumaquaticum, is the hairless creeping perennial known as water cress, which grows in shallow fresh water and mud (David McClintock and R. S. R. Fitter, The Pocket Guide to Wildflowers (London: Reprint Society, 1955), 20-1). Lübben does not provide a definition for saluyen, nor do others, such as C. Schumann, “Beiträge zur lübeckischen Volkskunde. Pflanzennamen,” Mitteilungen des Vereins für Lübeckische Geschichte und Altertumskunde 5.4 (1891): 59-63; 78-80; 90-4. I am assuming that it refers to Salbei, or sage. 21 The document also lists a vegetable called krickelmoren, which would seem to mean something like crooked carrots, but I have not been able to identify this vegetable more closely. It could be the wild parsnip, which appears in the archaeological record of Lübeck. Körber-Grohne notes that the names of both these vegetables were often used interchangeably in the Middle Ages, for 19

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sik, which one would presume to mean from one’s house. This suggests that the gardeners lived within the city walls, and were permitted to sell two types of vegetables at their gardens, a greater number from their houses, and also could sell from a stall in the market. It is unclear whether one individual would be engaged in all three activities. Gardeners were not permitted to sell seed if it would be of use to the guild, and were not allowed to plant onion seed at all. No reason for this last stipulation appears. These regulations also make it clear that some gardeners were involved in some processing of their produce. One section of the regulations deals with the smoking of garlic. Garlic was to be smoked for nine days, and could not be brought out of the house without being inspected by one of the masters of the guild. The document is interesting not only in that it tells us how various vegetables were treated, but also in that it adds to the list of plants we know were cultivated in and around Lübeck. The vegetables listed here may be the ones grown in the so-called cabbage gardens. These are onions (cypollen), garlic (knuflok), turnips (roven), carrots (moren), red cabbage (roden kol), and green vegetables (groene warmoos).22 This document is important in another sense, because it provides a link between sources on production, such as the ones being examined in this chapter, and the archaeological evidence for consumption. It is one of the very few early documents that proves that people in Lübeck sold produce to other people in Lübeck. It is one of the very few early documents that proves that people in Lübeck sold produce to other people in Lübeck. This document forbade anyone to have more than one stall in the market during Christmas and at Easter, and thus shows us that gardeners cultivating produce outside the city brought it into the city for the purposes of commerce. All of the records examined here demonstrate that there were plots of land called gardens by the people who kept records. The gardens that appear in these records are located just outside the walls of the city and in the villages of the surrounding Landwehr.

example in the Physica of Hildegard of Bingen. Udelgard Körber-Grohne, Nutzpflanzen in Deutschland. Kulturgeschichte und Biologie (Stuttgart: Theiss Verlag, 1994), 225. 22 LUB, 3: 771.

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Citizens of Lübeck, men and women, members of the city elite and artisans, were engaged in paying tithes on them, paying rents from them to the city, and engaging in various other transactions involving them. They ranged in size from small to large; an absolute determination of size is not possible. The primary crop of these gardens was hops; these records also mention apples, cabbages and berries. Tithe records show that items grown in gardens changed over time, and that some gardens went out of production and became bleaching grounds. The Wette garden books show that the average income paid to the city from gardens outside the city walls remained fairly constant throughout the approximately 200-year period covered by these records. Questions regularly asked by agrarian historians will generally go unanswered by the available documents concerning Lübeck gardens. Little quantitative material is available, and no records that allow us to calculate the productivity of these gardens or to assess if crop rotation took place. Hops and fruit trees obviously do not lend themselves well to such farming systems. The tithe records show that land use did change over time; the reasons behind these changes are not clear, but could have been made based on analysis of prices. Figures for hop and cabbage prices during the fifteenth century are unfortunately not available. The documents also do not specify cultivation techniques; one must assume again that hard work with a shovel and hoe was the primary method of cultivation. While records concerning gardens in Lübeck do not address well the use of technology, crop rotations or yields of these parcels of land, they do reveal that plots of largely unknown size, often called gardens, existed outside the city walls and were cultivated for both industrial and food crops. They appear to have been a normal part of the life of the city and its inhabitants. While the Wette garden books, the tithe records, and records involving land transactions provide much useful information, they deal almost exclusively with issues of production. For information on consumption, archaeological evidence is an excellent source. Much of the evidence for consumption of garden produce in Lübeck is derived from archaeological evidence. Documentary evidence rarely identifies a plant to the species level; written sources are also generally quiet about food sources that are gathered rather than grown. Archaeological sources lack information on production, such as where and on whose land the plant was grown.

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Thus a comparative approach to both kinds of evidence provides the fullest possible picture. In the case of Lübeck, most of the botanical finds come from cesspits and wells. Cesspits in particular provide evidence for consumption, since they are collecting points for both human and kitchen waste.23 Although preservation condition in cesspits are usually good, the plant material found there can be damaged by mastication, processing as foodstuffs (e.g., milling of grain) and the action of the human digestive system. Fruit stones are usually very well-preserved in cesspits, and can give insight into changes in the species consumed over centuries, as well as giving an indication of when new species were introduced into the diet. These new species can either be imported fruits, or fruit newly going into local cultivation.24 An awareness of what is likely to survive in the damp conditions of a filled-in well or cesspit is necessary to a meaningful analysis of these plant remains. Pollen grains, seed, wood, and fruit-stones are the most resilient to rot, and are therefore most likely to survive. Root, stem and leaf fragments are much less likely to survive, although some interesting work has been done on identification of waterlogged specimens.25 Grains, legumes, and leaf and root vegetables are rarely well-preserved.26 The material recovered in Lübeck is almost entirely made up of seeds and fruit-stones. It would be incorrect to assume, however, that these seeds give an accurate representation of all the plants grown in these areas. Although no plant remains of the genus Allium, to which belong onions, leeks and garlic, were found, the Willkür states that these were grown in Lübeck. Thus comparison of lists of plants found in digs and lists of plants mentioned in contemporary documents could prove very illuminating.

23

Karl-Heinz Knörzer, “Aussagemöglichkeiten von paläoethnobotanischen Latrinenuntersuchungen,” in W. van Zeist and W. A. Casparie, eds., Plants and Ancient Man. Studies in Palaeoethnobotany (Rotterdam, Boston: A. A. Balkema, 1984), 331-8. 24 Knörzer, “Aussagemöglichkeiten,” 331. 25 P. R. Tomlinson, “Vegetative Plant Remains from Waterlogged Deposits Identified at York,” in Jane M. Renfrew, ed., New Light on Early Farming. Recent Developments in Palaeoethnobotany (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), 109. 26 Knörzer, “Aussagemöglichkeiten,” 333-6.

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Another consideration to keep in mind when examining the results of palaeobotanical analysis is the use of the plant, and their relative number of seeds. The seeds of plants that are used for those seeds (hazel or poppy, for example) will survive in greater numbers than the seeds of plants used for their leaves or roots, like cabbage or carrots. Similarly, seeds of fruits that have their seeds embedded in them and are therefore part of the package will also make their way into cesspits at a greater rate; examples of such fruits are strawberries (Fragaria vesca), cherries (Prunus avium), and damsons (Prunus insititia). Another consideration is the number of seeds produced by each fruit. A single cherry produces one stone, while a single fig can produce thousands of seeds. It is clear, therefore, that direct correlations between botanical macro-remains and the type and number of plants consumed in the area cannot be established through excavation. One must always keep in mind the plant remains that may have been excreted or thrown into the cesspit, but which rotted or sprouted; the plants which were used before they set seed; and the plants which produce many seeds per fruit. Despite these caveats, results of palaeobotanical work can be very informative, particularly when they are used in conjunction with documentary sources. Excavations in Lübeck have taken place in a range of sites located in areas of differing socio-economic status within the cities. The data derived from these excavations therefore permit commentary on the types of plants found, as well as analysis of change over time. The data also enable comparison of plant consumption by three socio-economic groups: artisan, ecclesiastical, and merchant/ seafarer. A detailed look at species found in Lübeck reveals the diversity of plants grown and consumed in, and presumably, outside the city. A closer look at the distribution of these species may shed more light on the effects of social class on food consumption in the city. The following sites are of particular importance, either because they contained numerous species or an unusual combination of species: St. Johanniskloster, Hundestrasse, and Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden.27 These three sites contained the highest number of species. Each of the three also represents a different socio-economic category: ecclesiastical, artisanal and mercantile, respectively. Throughout the Mid27

See Tables 1 and 2 for more details.

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dle Ages, Lübeck’s inhabitants seem to have lived mainly with their own kind. Merchants and seafarers lived on the western half of the peninsula, nearer the harbor. The bishop and chapter occupied the southern end of the peninsula, while the artisans resided in the eastern area, with some members living in the southeastern area towards the Trave.28

St. Johanniskloster St. Johanniskloster was located on the eastern side of the peninsula and occupied about two hectares. The monastery was founded in the years after 1173; it began as a Benedictine house, but the Benedictine monks were replaced by Cistercians in 1256 as a result, apparently, of poor discipline.29 The monastery was dissolved in 1574. The botanically-analyzed samples date from the beginning of the thirteenth century, during the so-called second settlement period (Siedlungsperiode II). The excavation took place between 1979 and 1983, as a result of a planned extension of a nearby building.30 The results indicate that use of the site intensified during the first third of the thirteenth century.31 A new well was built during this period. It has been dendrochronologically dated to around 1211. The monks also built a water channel, carrying water from the Wakenitz for workshops, washing and garden; the channel was two meters deep and roofed over. Gläser notes that a layer of humusypeaty soil, dating to this period, was found towards the southern end of the area. Because the soil had the smell and texture of garden soil and contained a number of holes from stakes, he postulated that a garden was cultivated there.32 The botanical evidence seems to support this conclusion. 28 Rolf Hammel, “Räumliche Entwicklung und Berufstopographie Lübecks bis zum Ende des 14. Jahrhunderts,” in Graßmann, Lübeckische Geschichte, 64-70. 29 Manfred Gläser, “Archäologische und baugeschichtliche Untersuchungen im St. Johanniskloster zu Lübeck,” Lübecker Schriften zur Archäologie und Kulturgeschichte 16 (1989): 11. 30 Gläser, “Archäologische,” 10. 31 Manfred Gläser, “Die Ausgrabungen auf dem Gelände des ehemaligen St. Johannisklosters in Lübeck,” Lübecker Schriften zur Archäologie und Kulturgeschichte 17 (1988): 118. 32 Gläser, “Archäologische,” 17.

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Eighteen species of edible, possibly cultivated plants appear in the data from St. Johanniskloster. Hops are the only beer-brewing plant. Hemp and flax are both found, as are the vegetables Brassica oleracea/napus, B. nigra/rapa, carrot (Daucus carota), wild parsnip (Pastinaca sativa) and celery (Apium graveolens). Parsley (Petroselinum crispum) and hazelnut (Corylus avellana) also appear. Fruits are well-represented, with a total of seven species. Most, if not all, of these fruits are those that could be either cultivated or gathered, such as raspberry (Rubus idaeus), elderberry (Sambucus nigra) and wood strawberry (Fragaria vesca), to choose those with the highest seed count. This range of finds, dating from the thirteenth century, gives the impression of a diet that was based on local crops with not much variation of vegetable matter. No exotic fruits or spices appear. Alsleben finds it surprising that herbs such as fennel, dill, coriander and caraway do not appear in the botanical finds from St. Johanniskloster.33 This does not tally with the stereotypical image of the monastery garden as described in some literature.34 It is also in contrast with the gold and silver cutlery found on the same site dating from the same period.35 No documentary record of the cultivation of this garden in the monastery has been preserved; such a record would provide a valuable source with which to contrast the archaeological plant remains from this site. The clergy in the thirteenth century do not appear to have eaten more luxuriously than their artisan brethren residing in Hundestrasse in the same period; indeed that evidence shows a wider range of species. Hundestrasse Finds from Hundestrasse, in the artisans’ quarter, are rich and occur over a relatively long span. They have been dated to five different periods: thirteenth century; before or around 1300, fourteenth century; fourteenth to fifteenth century; and before 1615. Twenty-one species, derived from six samples, appear in the botani33 Almuth Alsleben, “Archäobotanische Untersuchungen in der Hansestadt Lübeck. Landschaftsentwicklung im städtischen Umfeld und Nahrungswirtschaft während des Mittelalters bis in die frühe Neuzeit,” Offa 48 (1991): 357. 34 See, for example, Sylvia Landsberg’s discussion of the monastery garden in The Medieval Garden (London: British Museum Press, n.d.), 34-44. 35 Alsleben, “Archäobotanische,” 360.

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cal record from Hundestrasse in the thirteenth century. The number of individual items found is also high, numbering 1067. The material from this period, particularly from samples 781 and 832, both rich in organic matter, was quite well-preserved. As in the previous site, hops, flax and two types of Brassica appear. The oil seeds gold of pleasure (Camelina sativa) and poppy (Papaver somniferum) are added. There are no vegetables, but the legumes pea (Pisum sativum) and broad bean (Vicia faba) are preserved. Caraway (Carum carvi) and either fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) or dill (Anethum graveolens) were found. Hazelnuts (Corylus avellana) also appear. The range of fruit is wider than at St. Johanniskloster, with some of the same possibly wild species appearing, such as raspberry, strawberry and blueberry. Additions are blackberry, pear, apple, and sweet cherry. While it is likely that blackberries were gathered from the wild, or grew at the edges of the garden, the other three species were likely cultivated on trees on site. Grape seeds, perhaps from imported raisins, perhaps grown locally, appear as well, along with figs, an unequivocally imported fruit. A slightly later sample, deriving from a fecal layer, was dated to before or around 1300. Fourteen species appeared here, with a total of 322 items. One hop fragment was found. Species not represented in the material from the earlier period are the sloe (Prunus spinosa), the European plum (P. domestica) and dill (Anethum graveolens). European plum is not found from any other period in Hundestrasse. One find of hops appears, and none of any vegetable. The only oilseed crop is the poppy. Nine of the species are fruit; as in the other periods, hazelnut appears as well. Thirty-two species were identified from the fourteenth century, from a total of 23 samples, most of which were derived from one cesspit at Hundestrasse 9. Many of the finds are similar to those of the previous two periods. However, legumes are represented in the fourteenth century only by a lone lentil. Parsley and celery appear, as do coriander and positively identified dill. New among fruits are elderberry (Sambucus nigra), lingonberry (Vaccinium cf. vitis-idaea), sour cherry (P. cerasus), damson plum (P. insititia) and mulberry (Morus nigra). Numbers among other fruit finds are generally higher than for the previous periods. For example, 431 fig seeds were found, as opposed to 76 for the thirteenth century and 200 circa 1300, while the numbers for strawberry are 910, whereas previously these had been 523 and 28. These larger numbers may be

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a result of the large number of samples taken from a cesspit that provided excellent preservation conditions. The smallest number of species derives from one sample, from a humus layer, dated to the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries. They number three, and one item from each species was identified. One linseed, one poppyseed, and one stone from a damson plum appear here. Our last evidence comes from one sample taken from Hundestrasse 17; it is dated to before 1615 and contained fifteen species. No species were found that had not been unearthed in earlier samples. No hops appear here. The only vegetable to appear is the brassica; representing herbs are fennel and coriander. Fruits are much better-represented, with raspberry, blackberry, sweet and sour cherry, apple, pear, blueberry and fig. It is quite possible that this narrowing of species says more about preservation conditions than it does about changes in cultivation or consumption in this area; hard fruit seeds are more likely to survive worse conditions than are thinner-walled herb and vegetable seeds. Van Haaster states that the sample came from a cultural layer from the fifth period of building on the site, but does not provide more details about conditions favorable or unfavorable to preservation.36 At any rate, unlike the material from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it does not appear to have derived from fecal material or a cesspit. Another reason for the smaller number of species may be that the material dated to before 1615 comes from one sample, whereas the material with the larger number of species from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is derived from six and 23 samples respectively. It is not surprising that Hundestrasse provided more species than St. Johanniskloster, since many more samples, over a longer time span, make up the evidence here. The difference in the number of species between the thirteenth-century samples from each is three, and shows that plant material consumed and cultivated in these two gardens was similar. The one surprise consists of the fact that fig seeds were found on the artisan site and not the ecclesiasti36 Doris Mührenberg, “Archäologische und baugeschichtliche Untersuchungen im Handwerkerviertel zu Lübeck Befunde Hundestrasse 9-17. Mit einem botanischen Beitrag zu den spätmittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Pflanzenresten von Henk van Haaster,” Lübecker Schriften zur Archäologie und Kulturgeschichte 16 (1989): 271.

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cal, which runs contrary to the assumption that the clergy had a higher standard of living than artisans. Indeed, Hundestrasse 9 was a foundation in which poor people lived, from 1358 to the eighteenth century; Wilhelm von Warendorp left the house in his will to the poor in 1358.37 The richness of the finds seems to attest, however, to a high standard of living.38 These finds may have been deposited earlier in the century, or may show that a diet rich in fruit and vegetables was accessible to all socio- economic strata. An examination of the documentary evidence, conducted below, will show that those who owned these properties were not necessarily from an impecunious social order. The general excavations undertaken at Hundestrasse 9-17 can be helpful in assessing who lived and worked on these lots. Doris Mührenberg drew the following conclusions from the excavations.39 First, she notes that the land was increasingly divided and built up over time. The first building went up in the first half of the thirteenth century, and a fence divided the land into two parcels. At the end of the thirteenth century a house with three wings was built on the lots later numbered 13-17. In the west wing the archaeologists found a pit containing many bones and half-finished combs. She therefore concludes that a boneworker who specialized in combs lived and worked here. Timo Wobes, a butcher, lived in 15/17 in 1293.40 By the end of the fourteenth century, a house made of stone had been built on each piece of land, facing onto the street. Barrels, of the type used by leather workers, date to this period, and Mührenberg suggests that a shoemaker worked here. Stephan states that Nicholas Cuper, a rosarymaker, lived in Hundestrasse 13 in 1401.41 In the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries wings reaching back into the lot were built out from the houses. The lots were divided from one another with brick walls. Evidence from number 15 suggests the activities of a smith. Material from number

37 Hans-Georg Stephan, “Archäologische Ausgrabungen im Handwerkerviertel der Hansestadt Lübeck (Hundestrasse 9-17)—ein Vorbericht,” Lübecker Schriften zur Archäologie und Kulturgeschichte 1 (1978): 78. 38 Van Haaster in Mührenberg, “Archäologische,” 278. 39 Doris Mührenberg, “Der Markt zu Lübeck. Ergebnisse archäologischer Untersuchungen,” Lübecker Schriften zur Archäologie und Kulturgeschichte 23 (1993): 98-101. 40 Stephan, “Archäologische,” 78. 41 Stephan, “Archäologische,” 78.

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17 from the seventeenth century suggests a textile worker lived and worked here. Hammel’s study of the Oberstadtbuchregesten reveals much about the ownership and residence of houses in Lübeck from 1284 from 1600, the period in which they were kept.42 His examination of Hundestrasse adds to our understanding of its social composition. Hundestrasse was divided into an eastern and a western part by the cross street Rosengarten-Tünkenhagen.43 During the first half of the fourteenth century, the eastern half was characterized by a concentration of leatherworkers, while the western half contained owners of more mixed professions, such as two bakers, eight butchers, two chandlers, a rosary-maker and a carpenter.44 Ownership by council families was lower here than on any other street he studied.45 The intellectual occupations were represented by two magistri, both of whom lived in the western half of the street. In the second half of the century, the dominance of the leatherworkers in the eastern half continued, but their numbers were reduced to 11 from 21.46 In the western half, the number of houses owned by artisans went from 25 to 15, while the number owned by council families went from 10 to 15. The artisans who remained as owners on the street belonged to the occupations of apothecary, butcher, rosary-maker, goldsmith, carpenter, and smith, among others.47 Hammel has developed and analyzed a list of owners of Hundestrasse 9-17.48 He classifies all owners during the second half of the fourteenth century as belonging to what he terms social level III, except for the owner of number 11, who belonged to social level I.49 According to Hammel, social level I consisted of merchants and other people of status, while social level III was made up of the artisanal middle class, especially those from guilds of about 1350 masters. It also 42

Rolf Hammel, “Hauseigentum im spätmittelalterlichen Lübeck. Methoden zur sozial- und wirtschaftsgeschichtlichen Auswertung der Lübecker Oberstadtbuchregesten,” Lübecker Schriften zur Archäologie und Kulturgeschichte 10 (1987): 85-300. 43 Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 209. 44 Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 212. 45 Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 211. These streets were: Schüsselbuden, Fischstraße, Holstenstraße, Braunstraße, An der Untertrave 96-114/115. 46 Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 212, 213. 47 Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 213. 48 Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 276. 49 Hammel, Abbildung, 77, 389.

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included some trades with no guild, such as porters.50 This is consistent with his characterization of the street as mainly made up of members of social level three, with some representation from council families.51 The archaeological evidence presented by Mührenberg and van Haaster and the documentary evidence by Hammel are quite consistent with one another. Each confirms the other’s assessment of when the lots began to be built up. The butcher, who owned the house in the first half of the fourteenth century, may have made combs from the bones left over from his trade, or may have leased premises and supplied bones to a specialist. While the guesses of occupation made by Mührenberg do not correspond well to those of the owners in Hammel’s work, we must keep in mind that those who owned the houses did not necessarily live in them. Mührenberg’s guesses are, moreover, guesses; her supposition that a leather- worker plied his trade at this end of the street does not seem to be borne out by Hammel’s findings. Both Mührenberg and Hammel suggest that those who resided in Hundestrasse were artisans and mainly belonged to the artisanal middle class. If that supposition is true, the botanical evidence allows us to suggest that the residents of Hundestrasse 9-17 enjoyed a varied diet of fruit, herbs and vegetables, most of which were indigenous and some of which appear to have been collected from surrounding wild spaces. They also enjoyed the fig, an imported fruit. The inexactitude of both documentary and archaeological evidence does not allow us to conclude who, and of what occupation, consumed what.

Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden We now cross from the eastern side of the city to the western, the so-called merchant-seafarer section. Schüsselbuden is the street on the western side of the market, facing it, while Alfstrasse runs east-west from the market down to the Trave. Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden provides rich botanical evidence from the thirteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The earliest samples are derived 50 51

Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 130. Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 218.

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from a rubbish pit, while the later samples are taken from two wells. Alsleben, who performed the botanical analysis, is not specific about their exact location in relation to the modern house numbers.52 Twenty-eight species are attested from the thirteenth century, from a total of four samples. Hops, sweet gale and cannabis all appear. Vegetables are represented by the brassicas and white mustard, legumes by broad bean and another lone lentil. The oil seeds are gold of pleasure and linseed. The one herb is fennel. The almost ubiquitous hazel comes as no surprise. Fifteen fruit species appear here, including the wild, and assumed gathered, raspberry, blackberry, strawberry, elder, and sloe. Among the cultivated fruits are apple, pear, grape, sweet cherry and damson plum, both a generic variety and type C.53 One fig seed makes an appearance. Two species that have not been seen before in Hundestrasse or St. Johanniskloster were found here. The first is hawthorn (Crataegus oxyacanthus), found on few other sites. It appears for all periods for this site, arguing that a hawthorn tree grew on the property. The second is walnut (Juglans regia), found only at Alfstrasse/ Schüsselbuden, the tower of the Heiligen-Geist-Hospital, and Engelsgrube. The largest numbers are found at the probable site of a bakery in Engelsgrube. Four samples taken from a well and dating to the fifteenth century offer the largest number of species preserved at any one

52

Alsleben, “Archäobotanische,” 333. The damson plum (P. insititia) originated in the East as offspring of the sloe (Prunus spinosa) and the cherry plum (Prunus cerasifera). The European plum developed in the same way, and together they form a varied group of plums. Helmut Kroll, “Mittelalterlich-frühneuzeitliche Steinobst aus Lübeck,” Lübecker Schriften zur Archäologie und Kulturgeschichte 3 (1980): 167. This variation has led Behre to develop a classification system for the damson plum, based on shape, surface features, measurement and indices, and using his finds from Haithabu and Alt Lübeck as samples. Karl-Ernst Behre, “Formenkreise von Prunus domestica L. von der Wikingerzeit bis in die frühe Neuzeit nach Fruchtsteinen aus Haithabu und Alt-Schleswig,” Berichte der deutschen botanischen Gesellschaft 91 (1978): 161-79. His original system contained four classifications, from A to D. Kroll, noticing a great deal of variation in the C-type among the examples he was finding at Lübeck, extended the system to six types, A to F. This classification system enables palaeobotanists to distinguish minutely between types. Kroll, “Mittelalterlich- frühneuzeitliche,” 168. 53

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site, namely 46. Many of the species dating from the thirteenth century also appear here. New to this site are poppy, carrot, wild parsnip (these last two seen in St. Johanniskloster in the thirteenth century and not at all in Hundestrasse), parsley, dill, caraway, and coriander. The brassicas appear again, but there are no legumes. Once more, hazel appears. The site contains a very wide range of fruit species (25), of both wild and cultivated types. Many of these are common to other sites, such as blackberry, raspberry, strawberry, sloe, blueberry, and sweet cherry. European dewberry we have not seen since St. Johanniskloster. Pear species, apple species and the damson plum variants B, C, E and F were found here as well. Fig, with the highest seed count of any site (497), and grape are represented, as are the more unusual walnut and mulberry. On this site we have the first appearance of what may be quince (Cydonia sp.). The last site to be examined offers somewhat less diversity of species, but presents some hitherto unseen in Lübeck. This site also offers large preserved numbers of individual species. Hops, cannabis, the brassicas, poppy, caraway, coriander and fennel come as no surprise. Some of the spices preserved on this site are, however, unique to it. Grains of paradise (Afromomum melegueta), black pepper (Piper nigrum) and cardamom (Elleteria cardamomum) are all tropical spices that must have been imported.54 Dyer’s camomile (Anthemis tinctoria) is seen here for the first time since St. Johanniskloster. Many of the fruit species preserved here, which number 27, echo those preserved elsewhere. In some cases the number of preserved finds is unusually high. Some examples are sloe (411), sweet cherry (2079), and grape (1342). These numbers are many times higher than the next-highest find from other sites. All variants of damson plum appear here; the largest finds are of the variants B, C and F, which Kroll points out are probably local, since they are the variants least suited to drying.55 A second quince find appears on this site. Two species of fruit preserved nowhere else appear here. They are the peach (Prunus persica) and the medlar (Mespilus germanica), the former likely imported, the latter a rarely consumed local fruit. 54 A document from 26 July 1467 reports the arrest of a spice merchant from Nymwegen. His wife was petitioning the council in order to have his wares released to her. LUB, 11: 266. Unfortunately, none of the spices were named. 55 Kroll, “Mittelalterlich-frühneuzeitliche,” 168-9.

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In general, the botanical evidence from Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden contains a good diversity of preserved species. Much of this diversity is exhibited in the fruit finds. Both a wider diversity of indigenous fruits, and some non-indigenous introductions contribute to this picture. The picture presented by the finds from the thirteenth century does not differ markedly from that we derive from the finds for the same century at Hundestrasse and St. Johanniskloster. Certainly some species that were found in Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden did not appear in the other two sites for the same century, such as lentil, fennel, sloe, hawthorn, pear and walnut. However, the situation is reversed in the case of carrot (found in St. Johanniskloster) and pea (Hundestrasse). The appearance of the walnut, which was perhaps imported, may suggest access to more expensive foodstuffs; figs, also imported, were consumed at both Hundestrasse and Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden. More fruit species are preserved at the latter site than at the other two; all but two are species that one may assume grew in Lübeck. These differences do not seem illustrative of a significantly higher standard of living, as measured in food consumption, in Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden in the thirteenth century. Evidence from the later two centuries at Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden offers much more support for such a claim. Both these sets of samples offer a greater diversity of species than the roughly -comparable, in terms of date, samples from Hundestrasse. Part of this disparity may be explained by the superior preservation conditions offered for this period in Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden.56 However, when we examine the samples taken from similar preservation conditions in Hundestrasse, we note that a lower number of species was preserved. This may be attributable to the earlier time period (fourteenth century) and also to the different socio-economic conditions. Even more telling than this greater diversity of species is the presence of those hitherto unattested in Lübeck. These species are all exotic and quite probably imported. The first, quince, appears in the fifteenth century; by the sixteenth, the number has risen to five, and six if we count the quince finds also attested for this century. This evidence suggests that the range of foods available in

56 The Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden samples were taken from a well and were high in organic content; those from Hundestrasse were less numerous (one per period) and derived from soil less favourable to preservation.

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Lübeck was changing as exotic foods made their way north (this does not explain why figs were accessible in the artisanal quarter as early as the thirteenth century) and that the wealthier members of society had access to them first. The large number of finds for this century may also suggest commercial activity in that very site dealing in foodstuffs, since the ordinary consumption of a household might not produce quite so many fruit stones. The position of the lot, on the corner of Alfstrasse, which ran straight down to the harbor, makes this hypothesis perfectly possible. Unfortunately, Hammel’s study of house ownership is not as useful for this site as it was for Hundestrasse. His study took in the houses along Schüsselbuden, but did not extend down Alfstrasse, and he focused on the fourteenth century, a period not covered by the archaeological evidence presented here. Some of his general remarks on the socio-economic nature of Schüsselbuden may be illuminating, however. Schüsselbuden faced onto the market. Permanent market stalls were built in front of the houses and separated from them by a large passage. In the early fourteenth century, there was a preponderance of owners from council families. By the second half of that century, the balance had shifted, with more than half of the owners being artisans. No one profession was dominant.57 These artisans were concentrated at the south end of the street, south of number 16.58 The house at the corner of Alfstrasse was number 6. Hammel is doubtful whether the owners necessarily pursued their occupations from these buildings; he is able to say definitively that the goldsmith in number 12 did not, since goldsmiths were restricted to the 12 stalls underneath the arcade of the Rathaus.59 Hammel also notes that merchants were concentrated in the northern end of the street, and that the two corner lots at Mengstrasse and Alfstrasse were conveniently oriented both to the Marienkirche (the church of the merchants) and to the harbor.60 His map for 1350 to 1399 shows a tinsmith at Schüsselbuden 8, and also a tanner. Both these professions are derived from the last names of the owner.61

57 58 59 60 61

Hammel, Hammel, Hammel, Hammel, Hammel,

“Hauseigentum,” “Hauseigentum,” “Hauseigentum,” “Hauseigentum,” “Hauseigentum,”

197. 198. 197. 198. diagram 73.

594

CHARLOTTE MASEMANN

No occupation names appear in the map for 1284 to 1349. Hammel’s work certainly does not preclude the presence of a relatively wealthy merchant on this corner lot, but it does not confirm it either. Dumitrache and Remann refer to imported material found on the site that suggests the presence of a wealthy merchant; this includes glazed ceramics in Dutch, Danish and English styles. Unfortunately, because they do not discuss this evidence in detail, it remains suggestive.62 This closer look at the evidence from sites in three different socio-economic areas of the city is revealing. It shows that a wide range of fruits and vegetables were consumed on all three sites. Little disparity exists in the evidence from the thirteenth century on all three sites, suggesting that the standard of living at that time was fairly consistent across social levels. The St. Johanniskloster site does not present later evidence. Some of the evidence from St. Johanniskloster and Hundestrasse was slightly surprising. Archaeologists found very little herb evidence in an area thought to be a monastery garden; one would expect herbs to be plentiful in this area, in light of documentary evidence from other sites. This anomaly may be due to preservation conditions or the fact that the leaves of many herbs dried and used, rather than their seeds. The monastery gardeners therefore would have had an incentive to see that their leafy herbs did not go to seed. Evidence from Hundestrasse also presents something of a puzzle. Material found from the thirteenth century to before 1615 shows a consistently wide range of plant material, including fig seeds that must have been imported. This appears on a site that was known to be the home of a poorhouse. This evidence suggests that the poor may have been eating rather better than one assumes. Documentary evidence shows that the residents of Hundestrasse were primarily middle-class artisans; the archaeological evidence suggests that this class of person ate a varied diet of locally available produce. Material from Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden dating from the thirteenth century does not differ markedly from that found in the other two sites. The real difference appears in the evidence from

62 Marianne Dumitrache and Monika Remann, “Besiedlungsgeschichte im Lübecker ‘Kaufleuteviertel’,” Lübecker Schriften zur Archäologie und Kulturgeschichte 17 (1988): 112.

MEDIEVAL LÜBECK’S GARDENS

595

the sixteenth century; this is the only site in Lübeck containing significant numbers of exotic spices such as pepper and coriander. This evidence suggests a high standard of living for the residents, as well as the possibility that the site was used by an importer of spices. The botanical evidence derived from the archaeological digs in Lübeck records a wide variety of plants. The useful plants preserved there range from fruits, both wild and cultivated, nuts, vegetables, herbs, spices, and those used for flavoring beer, for fibre, and for oil. Some of these plants, such as hops and raspberries, are found throughout the city, in ecclesiastical, merchant, and artisanal sites. Others are found only in a very few places during a very short time period, such as the peppercorns found only in the merchants’ area. In many cases, the evidence provided by plant remains is the only proof that exists that certain types of plants were grown or consumed within the city. This is one of the great boons offered to the historian by the archaeological evidence; it can throw open a window and show a much wider range than appears in the documentary evidence. The case of Lübeck also reveals how this archaeological evidence can confirm what is known from the documents. Several of the plants found in the archaeological record, such as apples, hops, and cabbages, also appear in the documents. This evidence suggests that produce grown outside the city was consumed within it, and that rural growers supplied the urban market. This was an important aspect of the urban-rural relationship. In most cases, archaeology makes the identification more specific, since medieval documents name plants according to the custom of the day, and not according to the Linnean system of genus and species used by the palaeobotanist. In one case, however, in Lübeck, it worked the other way. Allium pollen could be identified, but its species could not. Both onions and garlic were named in a document, thus adding to the picture provided by the pollen analysis.63 The evidence from Lübeck shows not only what people of different economic and social status were consuming, but also how well documentary and archaeological evidence combine to provide a more complete picture than either can individually.

63

LUB, 3: 771.

596

CHARLOTTE MASEMANN

The picture that emerges of the role of Lübeck’s gardens in the life of the city appears consistent with other research on the urban-rural relationship in the Hanse and beyond. Many of Lübeck’s wealthier citizens owned land around the city, and some indeed owned whole villages.64 Citizens of Lübeck were also highly involved in gardens outside the city. Ownership or renting of land outside the city was of course an economic link, but it also had important effects on territorial politics. Many cities, Lübeck included, encouraged this sort of economic relationship so as to tighten the city’s hold on the area around it.65 Franz Irsigler has argued convincingly that cultivators in the area around Cologne in the Middle Ages made choices based on demands from the urban markets. Irsigler notes that increasing cultivation of cash crops such as woad and hops formed part of the phenomenon of response to demand from urban markets around Cologne.66 He also indicates that the cultivation of gardens outside the city was strongly linked to the city itself: “Der breite Gürtel von Gartenland, der sich um die mittelaterlichen Städte des Rheinlandes ausbildete, wurde von der Stadt aus bewirtschaftet.”67 The crop that illustrates this point best in Lübeck is the hop. Hops appear in significant numbers in both documentary and archaeological evidence. As we have seen, a significant proportion of the gardens around the city grew hops, presumably because there was a market for them within the city. Hops grown around Lübeck were sold within the city, and were either used for brewing there or for export.68 Hops were unequivocally a cash crop; the possibility is slight that they were consumed only by their growers. 64 Fritze has made similar observations (Konrad Fritze, Bürger und Bauern zur Hansezeit. Studien zu den Stadt-Land-Beziehungen an der südwestlichen Ostseeküste vom 13. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert (Weimar: Verlag Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1976), 85, 87). 65 Fritze, Bürger, 68. 66 Franz Irsigler, “Die Gestaltung der Kulturlandschaft am Niederrhein unter dem Einfluß städtischer Wirtschaft,” in Hermann Kellenbenz, ed., Wirtschaftsentwicklung und Umweltbeeinflussung (14.-20. Jahrhundert) (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1982), 181. 67 “The broad belt of gardens that formed around the medieval cities of the Rhine was cultivated from the city outwards”(author’s translation) (Irsigler, “Die Gestaltung,” 186). 68 Wilhelm Stieda, “Studien zur Gewerbegeschichte Lübecks. 3. Hopfenbau,” Mitteilungen des Vereins für Lübeckische Geschichte und Altertumskunde 3 (1-2) (1887): 6-7

MEDIEVAL LÜBECK’S GARDENS

597

Historians of agriculture consider horticulture as a more intensive form of cultivation.69 Cultivators of gardens usually manured them more thoroughly and cultivated them by hand rather than with a plough. This was especially true of hop gardens, since the perennial plantings made ploughing impossible and hops are very heavy feeders. Seen in this light, the presence of many gardens just outside the walls of Lübeck can be interpreted as part of an island of intensification that spread out beyond the city, a model first suggested by F. K. Riemann. Riemann argued that in thickly populated areas and those dominated by large towns and cities, agriculture is carried on more intensively as a result of the influence of those urban agglomerations.70 This idea has influenced the work of many agrarian historians and continues to have relevance.71 It is unclear how far this island extended; the ratio of land used for intensive cultivation, or gardens, to the land used for field crops is also unknown. The gardens of Lübeck seem therefore to fit into a pattern seen in other medieval cities in which they were an important part of the city-country relationship. Many of their owners came from the city, they supplied produce for consumers within the city from a range of socio-economic levels, and they formed a ring of intensive cultivation around the city.

69 Joan Thirsk, Alternative Agriculture: A History from the Black Death to the Present Day (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 17. Irsigler notes that 1,000 gardeners could occupy themselves on land cultivated by 100 farmers (Irsigler, “Die Gestaltung,” 194). 70 F. K. Riemann, Ackerbau und Viehhaltung in vorindustriellen Deutschland (Kitzingen-Main: Holzner, 1953), 29. 71 B. H. Slicher van Bath, The Agrarian History of Western Europe, A.D. 500-1850, trans. Olive Ordish (London: Edward Arnold, 1966), 15-6; Edith Ennen, “Wechselwirkungen mittelalterlicher Agrarwirtschaft und Stadtwirtschaft, aufgezeigt am Beispiel Kölns,” in Cultus et Cognitio. Festschrift A. Gieysztor (Warsaw: Paxstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1976), 140-1; Adriaan Verhulst, “Bronnen en problemen betr. de Vlaamse landbouw in de late middeleeuwen,” Ceres en Clio, Zeven Variaties op het Thema Landbouwgeschiedenis (Wageningen: Veenman, 1964), 205-12.

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INDEX

Aachen, 441 Aalst, 325 Abbeville, 199-200 Abbo, rector of the Tarentais, 259 ‘Abd al-‘Azíéz Abué Faéris, Sultan of sid dynasty), 435-6 Tunis (Haf . . Abel, Wilhelm, 379 I, Abué ‘Abd Allaéh Muhammad . Sultan of Tlemcen, 435-6 b. Abíé Abué ‘Abd Allaéh Muhammad . Yahya é , 435 . Abú Sa‘íd ’Uthmán III, Sultan of Morocco (Marínid dynasty), 435 Abulafia, David, 416-7 accounts and accounting, 436, 475, 479-480, 486, 502, 554, 558, 560-1, 569; bookkeeping, 112, 477; books and ledgers, 139; 418, 466, 481; England, 154, 164, 176, 211, 213, 217, 21920, 329, 469-70; Flanders, 310, 314, 322, 330; Portugal, 105, 112-3, 212, 222, 225; Provence, 267 accountability, 212, 220, 225 Achilles, Walter, 379 administration, Catalonia, 120, 141; Egypt, 401, 403-4; England, 160, 183, 212, 215, 220, 243, 245; financial, 211, 232; organization and methods, 90, 113, 120; Portugal, 99-117, 223-6, 230-1; Provence, 258, 263 Adrar, 423 Adrar des Iforas, 394, 413 Afonso, Duarte, 110 Afonso V, King of Portugal, 96, 114, 220-2

Africa, access to, 93, 94, 97, 99100, 117, al-Bilaéd al-Suédaén, 389; commodities, 417; European trade with, 102, 105, 115, 117; gold, 98, 102, 115, 387-90, 393, 413; slaves, 99, 103-4, 107, 108 Africa, East, gold, 396; Africa, North, 101, 417; captaincies, 221; commerce, 418; copper, 419; specie markets, 396; Sicilian wheat, 298 Africa, sub-Saharan, 415 Africa, West, 94-6, 99, 100-1, 105, 106, 108, 110, 117; malagueta, 417 Agli, Bernabò degli (firm), 431-2 Agordo, 447 Agricola, 439 agriculture, 250, 302, 597; goods, 539; historians of, 597; improvements, 569; labor, 266; production, 353, 376; productivity, 297, 375; products, 305; technologies of, 350; Tuscan, 292; Agrigento, 299, 301, 307 Ahaggar, 394, 413 b. Abíé Sanuéna, 435 Ahmad . Aix (en Provence), 263, 267 Alberti, Alberto degli, 427 Alberti, Diamante and Altobianco degli (firm), 419 Alberti, L. A., 276 Alchian, A. A., 271 Alcudia, 421 Alexandria, 388, 390, 396, 399; coinage, 402-3, 404; specie market, 409

610

INDEX

Alfons IV, King of Aragon, 123 Alfonso V, King of Aragon, 301, 306 Algeria, 415 Allenbach, 441 Allmand, Christopher, 188 Allon, Magaluf ben, 431-2, 436 Almeida, Francisco de, 104 Alps, 265, 387 Alsleben, Almuth, 590 America, cities, 172 Amsterdam, 363, 380; grain prices, 360-1 ancien régime, 120 Andrea, Domenico d’, 464 Andrea, Giovanni d’, 41-3, 46, 5357 Anjou, wine, 498, 501, 519, 524, 531-2 Anjou, counts of, 258 Annaba (Bône), 434, 435, 436 annuity, 85; census, 64, 83; censal, 122, 126, 128, 133, 139; liftrent, 558-9; Portugal, 220; rente viagère, 558-9; rents, 319 Ano Bom Island, 110 Antwerp, 351, 380, 485, 552; copper, 455; grain prices, 35461; markets, 361, 478; Pinxtenmarkt, 478; textiles, 470 Aquinas, Thomas (Saint), 50, 51 Arabian Sea, 391 Arabs, 434-5 Aragon, 122, 136, 145, 306; Crown of, 302, 416 arbitrage, 70, 475 Area, Bernat de, 140 Arezzo, 280 Arguim, 95, 98, 100, 103-8 Aristotle, 41-2, 51, 56; Ethics, 41; Politics, 41 Arles, 261, 263

Arnhem, 360 Arnold, Wilhelm, 64 Arquet, Abraham, 431, 432, 436 Arras, 315, 322, 324, 329; Congress of, 198; Treaty of, 483 Arrow-Debreu model, 271 arsenal, 193-4, 199 artillery, 193, 195-201, 203-4, 238 Artois, 199, 313, 326-7, 330, 3324, 336-7, 339, 341, 343-4, 346, 347; cities, 320; merchants, 327; money of, 313 Arundell (family), 252 Asia, 101; specie distribution, 389 Asia Minor, 387, 396 Atlas Mountains, 415 Austria, 447, 448 autonomy (sociological category), 66-7, 80 Aups, 264 Auvergne, wine, 498, 519, 524 Avennes, 200 Baiano, 273 Bailey, Mark, 308 Bailleul, 325, 337, 339, 341, 3434, 346-7 Bakewell, 181 Balearic Islands, 411, 415-7, 424, 426-7, 434; copper trade, 416, 419, 424, 426, 429, 438, 441; merchants, 412, 419; protectionism, 418; records, 426; reexports, 416; staples, 416 Ballard, Adolphus, 168 Baltic Sea, 166, 573; grain, 373; wood, 550 Bambeke, 324 banking and bankers, 467, 485; Barcelona, 132, 134; Borromei, 466-8, 475-7, 480, 482, 484-8; Borromei Bank Research Project, 460, 465; centers, 475; companies, 460; houses, 328,

INDEX

467; Italian, 481; merchantbankers, 470-2, 475 Banská Belá, 451 Banská Bystrica (Neusohl, Besztercebánya), 392, 451-5 Banská Štiavnica, 451 Banué ’Amr b. Zoghba, 435 Baratier, Edouard, 263-4, 267 “Barberia” (Barbary, see Maghrib), 428 Barcelona, 120, 122-4, 127, 130, 132, 134, 262, 436, 475, 476; Borromei, 467, 472, 475-6, 480, 481-3, 485, 486-8; Datini branch, 418; Italians, 475; trade, 416 Barcelona, Count of, 262 Barchi, Cesare de, 108 Bardi (family), 467 Barrera, Pere, 431 Bartolo, Bastiano di, 428, 432 Basel, 465 Bassa, Pere, 431-2 Bavaria, 447 Bavinchove, 324 Beaufort, Henry, cardinal, 197 Beauvais, 500, 519, 524 Beaugency, 191 Beaumanoir, Philippe de, 541 Beccario, Battista, 424 Bedfordshire, 153 Belgium, 311 Bello, Duarte, 110-1 Bellviure, Francesc, 432 Benedictine Order, 583 Benevent, Peyre de, 261 Bengal, Bay of, 391 Benin (Kingdom of), 111 Benedetti, Ser Marco, 433 Bere Ferrers, 387 Bergues, 324-5, 337, 339, 341, 343-4, 346-7

611

Berkeley, 216 Berwick, 154, 158, 181 Biervliet, 199 bill of exchange, 436; 471-9, 482, 484 bi-metallic, equilibrium, 387, 3901; exchange, 389; parity, 389; ratio, 387, 389, 396, 398, 4007, 409-10; standard, 389, 391; uniformity, 391 Bindotti, Giovanni, 466 Birgu, 302 al-Bíéríé, 402 Biscaro, Girolamo, 486 488 Black Death, 53, 119, 124, 127, 135-6, 138, 153, 269, 281-2, 290, 375 Black, Henry, 146 Blanchard, Ian, 412-3, 415-6 Bleiberg, 445 Bloch, Marc, 257-8 Blockmans, Wilhelm, 126 Bodrugan (family), 252 Boescheppe, 322, 324 Bohemia, 387; miners and mining, 446, 449; ores, 442 Bologna, 47, 54, 464 Bon, Bernardo, 424, 426, 428 Bonaccorso, Nofri di, 426 bondage, 257-8, 265, 269; personal, 262; to land, 266-7, 269; to lord, 269; “to this land,” 257-258 Bonet, Jaume, 431 Bordeaux, 238, 246, 248-9 Borromei (family), 460, 463-4, 470-1, 475, 478, 484; agents, 468; Alessandro Borromei and Lazzaro di Giovanni & Co., 464; Antwerp, 485; banks, 460, 467-8, 475, 477, 485, 486-7; Barcelona, 472, 480-1; Barcelona bank, 467, 483, 485, 487,

612

INDEX

488; “Borromei Bank Research Project”, 460, 465; BorromeoArese family archive, 465; Bruges partnerships/companies, 464-6, 471, 472, 475-83, 485-8; Felipe da Fagnano & Co., 487; Filippo Borromei & Co., 466, 479, 485, 488; Florence partnerships, 464; Galeazzo di Borromeo Borromei & Co. of London, 464, 466; Geneva, 472; ledgers, 465, 467, 469-72, 484, 488; London, 471, 480, 485; London partnerships/ companies, 464-9, 471, 475, 477, 478-9, 481-3, 485-8; Milan partnerships, 465, 485, 488; profits and losses, 474, 481-4, 487; textiles, 468-9; Prevosto e Alessandro Borromei & Co., 487; Venice partnerships/companies, 464-5, 483, 485; Venice, 471-3, 480, 482; wool, 467, 468-9, 477 Borromei, Alessandro di Antonio, 462, 465, 485 Borromei, Alessandro di Filippo, 464-5 Borromei, Alessandro di Piero, 463, 465, 487 Borromei, Antonio, 485 Borromei, Antonio di Borromeo, 462, 464-5, 480-1, 483 Borromei, Antonio di Francesco, 464-5 Borromei, Antonio di Lodovico, 463-4 Borromei, Bartolomeo di Francesco, 461, 463 Borromei, Benedetto di Lodovico, 463-4 Borromei, Borromeo di Antonio, 462, 465 Borromei, Borromeo di Filippo, 461 Borromei, Carlo di Antonio, 462

Borromei, Filippo di Lazzaro, 460 Borromei, Filippo I di Vitaliano I, 462, 466, 488 Borromei, Francesco, 461 Borromei, Francesco di Bartolomeo, 463 Borromei, Gabriello di Lodovico, 464-5 Borromei, Galeazzo di Borromeo, 464-5 Borromei, Galeazzo di Giovanni II, 462 Borromei, Guiliano di Piero, 464-5 Borromei, Giovanni di Borromeo, 462, 464 Borromei, Giovanni di Filippo, 461, 462 Borromei, Giovanni Andrea (Prevosto) di Vitaliano I, 462, 486-7 Borromei, Lazzaro di Giovanni II, 463, 465, 480-1, 485 Borromei, Lodovico, 461 Borromei, Lodovico di Bartolomeo, 463 Borromei, Margherita di Filippo, 462 Borromei, Piero, 461 Borromei, Piero di Bartolomeo, 463-4 Borromei, Piero di Gabriello, 463 Borromei, Tomasso di Matteo (?), 464 Borromei, Venturino di Vitaliano, 462 Borromei, Vitaliano I, Count, 4612, 465-6, 485-8 Bosporus, 135 Boston, 246, 329 Boto, Dr Rui, 224 Bourbourg, 325, 337, 339, 341, 343-4, 346-7 Bourges, cathedral, 504

INDEX

Brabant, 206, 349, 351; alliance with England, 189-90; markets, 350; towns, 325; wool, 468 Brahminism, 76 brass (“yellow copper”), 99, 103, 420-1, 427, 439, 494, 509, 527 Braudel, Fernand, 571 Brecht, Bertold, 41 Bridbury, Anthony, 138, 233 Bridgenorth, 152, 182 Brien, Lord Guy de, Admiral of the West, 251 Brignoles, 261, 263 Bristol, 154, 159, 169, 180-1, 183, 246; port of, 218; revenues, 218; Britain, 254 Britnell, Richard, 375 Brittany, 239, 253 Brixlegg, 449, 457 bronze, 194, 199-200, 439, 495, 510-1 Broussole, Jean, 123 Brucker, Gene, 144 Bruges, 188, 200, 310, 313, 320, 325-6, 329, 331, 334, 337, 339, 343, 344, 347, 371, 380, 427, 466, 472; banking, 467; Borromei, 464-8, 471-2, 474-83, 4858; castellany, 331, 336; Catalans, 476; constitution of, 324; copper, 419, 441, 447; credit, 419; exchange rates, 473-4; fairs, 330, 332-3; Franc of, 316, 321, 325, 331; grain prices, 356, 359-61; Hanse, 441; imports, 470; Italians, 476; merchants, 327, 332, 334, 484; money market, 470; rebellion, 208, 483; trade, 331, 334; troops, 203, 204, 206 Brussels, 351, 380; grain prices, 356, 359-61 Buckingham, estates, 218

613

Buckingham, Duke of, 216 Buda (Tuat oasis, Sahara), 421, 423-5 Buda (Hungary), 450 bullion (see also precious metals), 383, 470-2, 482-4; “Great Bullion Famine,” 383; ordinances, 483 bullionism, 176 Burford, 468 Burgundy, 188, 197, 259; alliance with England, 191-2, 196-8, 483; alliance with France, 191, 198, 209, 483; army, 193, 194, 202-4, 209; artillery, 187, 193201; fleet, 203-4; hostilities with England, 208, 483; Hundred Years War, 190; Joan of Arc, 191; leaders, 194-5; sieges, 191, 196-8, 205 Burgundy, Dukes of, 375 Burgos, 327 Burwash, Dorothy, 248 Byzantium (Empire), 43 Cabral, Diogo Fernandes, 110 Cadzand Island, 208 Cairo, coinage, 402; gold-silver ratio, 398 Calais, 191, 197-8, 203, 208, 315; siege of, 198-206, 208-9, 239, 483; Staple of, 468, 477, 482 Calatayud, 137 calculability, rational, 74 Calderini, Giovanni, 55 Cambay, 391 Cambrai, 326, 337, 339, 341, 3434, 346-7 Campanaro, Battista, 434 Canary Islands, 98 Canche River, 330 Cannes, 263 Cantor, 108

614

INDEX

Cape Verde Islands, 96-9, 106, 110 Cape Bojador, 93, 97 Capetian dynasty, 261, 263 capital, 155, 268, 279, 292, 564, 571; administrative, 245; assets, 571; Borromei, 466-7, 485, 487-8; commitment, 283; concentration, 334; concentration of in central place, 311; fixed, 278; intensive, 311; investment, 121, 235, 275-7; land, 565; losses, 280; maintenance, 281; market, 275, 320, 326, 331, 334, 336 political, 114; social, 114; value, 277; working, 279, 283 capitals, 120-1, 356, 363, 370 capitalism, 60, 68, 71, 73-7, 79, 83-5, 90 111, 544, 571; “capitalismo monárquico português” (Portuguese state capitalism), 90, 111 capitalist, 62-3, 65, 68, 71, 570-1; capitalistic development, 571; economy, 117 Capitana (galley), 427 caravan, trade, 387, 394, 411; trails (Sahara), 394, 396, 413, 414, 421, 423-4; robbery, 434-6 Cardiff, 150, 179 Carinthia, 447 Carneiro, António, 110-1, Carocci, Cristofano di Bartolo, 427-31 Carpathian Mountains (western), 451 Carpatho-Balkan area (metallogenic), 451 Cassel, 325, 337, 339, 341, 343-4, 346, 347 Castagnolo, Paolo di Antonio da, 466, 486, 488 Castellane, 264-5

Castile, 124, 128, 136, 253; merchants, 333; wars with Portugal, 220, 428; Catalan dynasty, 262-3 Catalonia, count-kings of, 261 Catalonia, 119, 122-38, 141-2; cartography, 424; censal, 126, 128, 130-5, 139, 141-2; Corts, 12932, 139; fogatge, 131, 138-9; imposicions, 122-24, 126, 128, 130, 132, 134-5, 138-9; imports, 416; maritime trade, 415; merchants, 305, 424; tallia, 123, 130-2, 134, 139; violari, 130-3, 135 Catania, 299-300 Cattano, Cristofano, 468 Celle, 444 CŠechoslav, Jan, 446 centinaio (unit of weight), 428 central place, 310-2, 319, 322, 326-8, 334, 363, 368, 373; function, 310, 326; theory, 311, 321; Ypres, 312, 316, 319, 322, 334 cessant gain (lucrum cessans) (interest title), 57, 83 Ceuta, defence of, 221 Champagne, fairs, 310, 313-4, 328-33 Champion, Pierre, 196 Charles VII, King of France (previously the Dauphin), 192-3, 203, 209 Charles, Duke of Bourbon, 205 charters, 85; royal or government, 96, 99, 146, 149, 151, 165, 168-71, 179, 183, 224, 231, 235, 244, 322, 545; exemptions, 166, 168-9; foreign nation, 333 China, gold, 391; merchants, 391 Chartier, Jean, 201 Chartres, cathedral, 504-6

INDEX

Chemnitz, 445 Chepstow, 154 Chester, 181, 246; Earl of, 536-7 Chioggia, 144-5 Chittagong, 391 Christaller, Walter, 311, 363-5 Chopa (vessel), 430 Christianity, 60, 72, 77-80, 82; medieval, 44, 60, 79 Christians, Papal authority, 93, 97; Majorca, 431; merchants, 412; “Old Christians”, 425-6, 433; relations with non-Christians, 92, 94 Church, Catholic 49, 59, 68-9, 72-3, 74, 77-9, 81, 94, 260, 465, 555; early, 43; eastern, 43 CŠiereazš Mountains, 452 Ciompi Revolt, 143 Cinque Ports, 235 Ciompi Revolt, 143 Circassian [Mamlu k] (dynasty, Egypt), 387 Cistercian Order, 583 cities, 369, 378, 506, 538, 542, 582, 596-7; American, 172; Artois, 320; Catalan, 120, 1224, 129, 133-6, 141; civitas, 121; classes in, 119; debt, 119; demesnal, 308; elites, 569; European, 119, 349-50, 363; Flemish, 126, 310, 324, 326, 334, 552; food, 350, 362-3; German, 64; Italian, 68, 298; Maltese, 308; Mediterranean, 142, medieval, 597; mediumsized, 144; Picardy, 320; Portuguese, 227, royal, 129; Sicilian, 299-301, 304 Clarence, Duke of, 216 Clausthal-Zellerfeld, 444 cloth, 102, 103, 147, 162, 165, 223, 469-70, 481, 494, 496-502, 509, 513-5, 524, 547, 566;

615

broadcloth, 469; demand for, 432; European, 418; English, 483, 499, 524; export of, 250, 329, 418, 469, 477; Flemish, 476; industry, 207; luxury, 477; market, 147; production of, 315, 322, 470; sales of, 329, 468-9; supply of, 305; types of, 322; Ypres, 310, 322, 329 clothing, 98, 496, 499-500, 515, 524, 539, 546, 561, 566, 569 Cockermouth, 173 coins, 48, 50-2, 313, 379, 396, 400-4, 408, 471, 496, 512-3, 539, 566; circulation, 402-3; debasement of, 401-2; English, 314; exchange, 379, 402; export of, 403; foreign, 313; gold, 402, 430; silver, 313, 401, 484; supply of, 213, 383; transfer of, 470 coinage, 401, 483; administration of, 403; copper, 403; Flemish, 313; gold, 401; re-coinage, 484; silver, 401; value of, 484 Cokerulle, rebellion, 321-2 Colchester, 154, 246 Cologne, 441, 596 Collo, 435, 436 Comino, 301 commerce, 62, 85, 207, 349, 434, 571; medieval, 147, 174, 178, 491; England, 176, 349; fifteenth-century, 349; Flanders, 207; Ghent, 559, 565, 569-70; late medieval, 373; Levant, 399, 402; Low Countries, 349; Lübeck, 579; North Africa, 415, 418; North Sea, 350; regulation, 374; Sicily, 306; transSaharan, 434; viability, 176; urban, 491, 493- 501, 503-30; Western Mediterranean, 415 commercial, activity/presence, 151, 160, 163, 166, 172, 297, 308, 389, 593; associations, 64;

616

INDEX

blockade, 207; capitalism, 90; cargo, 237; “catchment areas,” 447; centers, 169, 538; cities, 477; correspondence, 481; credit, 310, 333; customs, 65; dealings, 538; development, 176; disputes, 483; economy, 166, 176, 325; estate, 438; expeditions, 93; exploitation, 298; freightage, 237, 249; goods, 545; hazards, 503; industry, 545; infractions, 315; interests, 245; inventories, 503; law, 59, 66; life, 79; networks, 389, 394; “non-commercial”/“uncommercial,” 569, 571; operations, 113; partnerships, 60-1, 65, 85; practices, 69, 177, 506; privileges, 172, 308; protectionism, 320; reasoning, 484; regulation, 146; relations, 171, 306, 312; sites/venues, 173-4, 228; societies, 542; system, 391; transactions, 402; ventures, 412, 565; voyages, 63; commercialization, 297-8, 308, 564 commodities, 96-100, 105, 109, 122, 127, 146-7, 150, 153, 1567, 160-3, 165-6, 174, 181, 284, 298-9, 308, 383, 404-407, 412, 432, 467, 472, 494, 547, 566, 568 commodization, 570 Compiègne, 193; artillery, 195-6; governor of, 194; defence of, 194, 196; siege of, 191-2, 1945, 197-8, 209 Confucianism, 76-7, 79 Constitutum usus (Pisan commercial code), 65-6 consumers, 364, 567; food, 349; grain, 352; produce, 597; urban, 373; wheat, 352-3 consumptibility, 50, 56 consumption, 49-50, 572, 578-81, 586, 589, 595; centres, 364-5, 368; essential goods, 376; fire-

wood, 369; food, 582, 592; fruit, 591-2; grain, 299-301, 303, 368; hops, 596; household, 593-4; increase in, 353; levels, 353; loans, 63; needs, 85; norm, 369; plants, 582, 586, 595; point of, 364; price inelastic, 353; produce, 572, 595; species, 581; taxes, 119, 122, 126-7, 132, 134, 142-3; vegetables, 594; wood, 370 contado, 143, 299 Contamine, Philippe, 190 Contarini (family), Alvise, 427; Antonio, 427; copper, 424, 427-8 430 Contestí, Antoni, 426 contract, 9, 45, 48, 49, 53, 55-6, 69-70, 96-7, 99, 106-12, 115, 263, 266, 277, 280-1, 283, 287, 290, 314, 466, 486-7, 554; census, 64; Edgeworthian contract curves, 291; emphyteusis, 262, 266; lease, 48; marriage, 562-4, 571; medium vestum, 260; monopoly, 111; rental, 48; sharecropping (see mezzadria); stipulatio, 49 converso (Jewish convert to Christianity), 424, 432-4 Cope, William, 218, 220 copper, 392, 399, 401, 403, 411457; Belluno, 447; Enns Valley, 448; Erzgebirge, 445-7; Hammergarkupfer, 420; Hungarian, 438; Hunsrück, 441; Harz, 4425; ingot (hallmarked), 420, (loaf) 419-20, 428, 432; Low Countries (Bruges), 419; plate, 419, 421, 428-9, 431, 437-8, 448; Polish, 438, 441, 447; raw (Schwarzkupfer), 420; rod, 419, 437; Rosettenkupfer, 420; scrap, 419; Salzach, 447; Schwaz/ Brixlegg (Inn Valley), 448-50; Slovak, 438, 441, 450-6; Swe-

INDEX

dish, 441, 447; Valle del Fersina, 447; Walchen, 448 Corbie, 326 Corbinelli, Antonio, 464 Cornwall, Duchy of, 215-6, 218, 245 Cornwall, 235, 246, 250; shipping, 251; textiles, 500, 519, 524; tin, 420 costs, commodity, 103, 353, 369, 468, 507; borrowing/credit, 475; cost-benefit analysis, 113; farm, 279-80, 548; fortifications, 113; gunpowder weapons, 187, 1978; information, 287; labour, 442; monitoring, 275-6, 291; opportunity, 57, 291; ports and ships, 235-9, 243, 248, 250-1, 253; production, 363-5, 376; prospecting, 449; revenue generation, 112, 220; royal household, 214-5, 217; state and government, 91, 210, 215, 221; taxation, 140, 152; trade, 178, 308; transaction costs, 100, 112-3, 271, 297, 351, 362, 503; transport and travel, 290, 352, 362-4, 373-5, 377-9, 468, 470; war, 93, 187, 190, 233-5 Côte d’Or, 199 Courtenay (family), 252 Courtrai, 188 Coventry, 168 credit/creditor, 48, 50-1, 53-4, 67, 81, 85, 135, 143-4, 214, 268, 312-6, 319, 321-2, 326, 332-4, 466, 467, 475, 479-81, 498, 501-3, 507, 530-7; Catalonia, 132, 135; Champagne Fairs, 328; city, 141; commercial, 310-348, 431, 433, 437, 458, 468, 471-2, 475, 484; creditore, 458; credit market, 133; Flanders, 315; Florence, 144; Genoa, 143; Ghent, 533, 558;

617

Portugal, 221; Provence, 268269; Ypres, 310-348 Creil, 197 crisis, absence of, 269; climatic, 267; demographic, 275, 281, 287, 293; “energy,” 442; fourteenth-century, 119, 275, 293; gold, 383, 393, 399, 401, 407; in Manresa, 136, 142-3; Malthusian, 267; PugetTheniers, 269; revenues, 91; socio-political, 91, 425 Croatia, 450 Crokele (Crokesle), Richard, 517 Croft, Sir Richard, 212 Crouch, David, 508 Crown, Aragonese, 121, 123-4, 127, 129, 132-5, 140, 301-2, 416, 428; Castilian, 135; English, 176-8, 214-6, 218, 220-1, 231, 233, 235, 237, 240-1, 243, 245, 248-50, 470; Portuguese, 89-118, 221, 222-8, 231-2 cruzado (unit of currency), 111 Cumbria, 235 Cunningham, Sean, 210 Cuper, Nicholas, 587 currency, 187, 387; common, 484; Egyptian, 401; foreign, 480; fractional, 402; fluctuations of, 187; manipulation of, 483; prevailing, 352; values of, 352; Venetian, 401 customs, legal, 65, 69, 146, 170, 173-4, 177-83, 324, 502, 542, 545, 551, 555, 559, 561-5, 570; customals, 541; customary law, 539, 541, 543-9, 553, 555, 564 customs, 91-2, 96, 112, 130, 167, 176, 216-20, 228, 230-1, 243, 437, 468, 484; accounts, 329, 469-70; African regions, 105; agencies and officials, 101, 244, 307; customary charges/dues, 148, 152, 167, 216, 223, 252;

618

INDEX

farming-out, 109; valuations, 469 Dalton, 173 Daémghaén, 391 Dandolo (firm), 430 Danzig (Gdaxsk), 441 Dar’a, 423 Dartmouth, 244-6, 249, 250-1; harbour, 245, 251; revenues, 180, 218 Datini, Francesco di Marco of Prato, 411-2, 417, 428, 431-4, 436-7 Datini (firm), 424-7, 432, 441, 449, 454; agents and factors, 411, 417, 424, 427, 431; archive, 411, 416-9, 441, 458; Barcelona branch, 418 431, 437; Compagnia di Catalogna, 417-8, 427; competitors, 428; copper, 426-9, 431, 432-4, 4368, 455-6; Florence mother company, 431, 436; Jews, 4301; ledgers, 421, 456; letters, 418, 421, 424, 426, 438, 456; Majorca branch, 412, 418-9, 420, 427, 432, 436, 437, 458; North Africa, 418; Tuat caravan, 434; Valencia branch, 418, 429, 431-3, 436 Darwin, 273 Dauphiné, 265 Day, John, 383 debt, 135, 137, 142-4, 207, 268, 313, 481, 502-3, 531-4, 553-8, 561; civic, 119, 131-3, 139, 141; collection of, 312, 554; debtors, 46, 49-60, 53, 68, 3123, 315-6, 322, 333, 432, 471, 475, 480, 556; funded, 143; policy, 144; public, 132, 134, 464; recognitions, 310, 312-3, 315, 319, 321-2, 328-9, 331, 335; royal household, 211, 214, 219, 221-2, 227; secured, 555-

6; system, 119, 134, 144; unsecured, 554; Ypres and its jurisdiction, 312-5, 322, 324-9, 331-2, 334 deforestation, 442 Della Casa, Antonio, & Co., 486 demography and demographic trends, 91, 142, 144, 274-5, 280-3, 287, 290, 293, 303, 349, 375, 503 Del Treppo, Mario, 305 De Vries, Kelly, 187 Des Marez, Guillaume, 310-1 Dendermonde, 325 Derby, 177, 181 Despy, Georges, 147 Devon, 153, 235, 244, 246, 248, 250-1, 387 Devon, Earl of, 252 Dhué ’Ubayd Allaéh (nomads), 435 Dias, Manuel Nunes, 90 Dickinson, Joyceline Gledhill, 198 dinar (unit of currency), 401, 404, 408; double (dobla), 389, 399400, 402, 408, 413, 437; naésirí . é 404, 409-10 dirham (unit of currency), fulués, 401-4, 408; half-Mu’ayyadíé, 40910 dividend, fixed (certum lucrum), 63 double (dobla) (unit of currency), 389, 413, 437 (see also dinar) Domesday Book, 149, 153, 179 Domesday Books, 154; Ipswich, 146-8, 163 domination (sociological category), 78, 260, 262 dominium, 93 Dordrecht, 441 Dorset, 246; revenues, 218 Douai, 310, 329, 337, 339, 341, 343-4, 346-7, 351, 380, 570;

INDEX

castellany, 320; constitution, 324; fairs, 330 Dover, 153 Drava River, 450 Drienok, 453 Drogheda, 182-3 Dublin, 182 Duby, George, 259, 266 ducat (unit of currency), 402, 404, 409-10, 473, 475 ducat (aka dinar ifrantíé) (unit of currency), 402, 404 Dufourq, Charles-Emmanuel, 416 Dulcert, Angelino, 424 Dumitrache, Marianne, 594 Dunkirk, 208 Durance River, 264 Durham, 246, 369 Dyer, Christopher, 368 economic, actions, 77, 79; activity, 363, 376; advantages, 250, 374; approach, 114; barrier, 373; change, 66, 150, 223, 257; concepts, 365; condition, 81; contraction, 152; control, 325; costs, 190, 233; crossconnections, 453; culture, 565; depression, 426; development, 59-63, 67, 72-3, 79, 81, 84, 239, 543; divide, 191; dislocation, 268; doctrines, 64; enterprises, 91; environment, 177; equivalent, 272; ethics, 57, 73, 75-6, 80; expansion, 61; events, 274; evolution, 272; firms, 81; goals, 112; growth, 78, 151, 349; health/well-being, 174, 208; historians, 54, 85, 147, 235, 377, 503; history, 233, 71; illogic, 267; integration, 298; institutions, 60; interests, 84, 173; intervention, 308; impact, 268, 375; issues/matters/affairs, 60, 71, 79, 96, 173, 187; life, 542, 544, 554; limits, 377; link,

619

596; meaning, 564; needs, 62; niches, 503; opportunities, 91; players, 92; potential, 321; practices, 72, 82-3, 571; pressures, 269; privileges, 308; process, 77, 272; problems/ difficulties/troubles, 45, 191, 208, 257, 267, 432; procedures, 70; process, 89; projects, 91; questions, 44; rationale, 172; rationality, 92, 565; rationalization, 77-8; recovery, 218; reforms, 301; regulations, 68, regions, 311-2; relationships, 596; relevance, 64; resources, 266, 299; results, 82, 351; rewards, 565; scene, 62; sectors, 418; sphere, 80; status, 259, 595; structures, 71, 82; terms, 100; theories, 365; thought, 43, 47, 50, 54, 114; transactions, 78; viability, 364, 452-3; viewpoint, 61 economics, 191, 271; of household, 91; “New Institutional Economics” (NIE), 270 economists, 57, 59, 81-2 economy, economies, 73, 77, 178, 550; agrarian, 539; and agriculture, 302; capitalist, 60, 89, 117; commercial, 166, 176, 325, 350; commercialized, 298; Economy and Society, 61, 73, 75, 77; Egyptian, 405; English, 233; and ethics, 41; European, 67, 543; [financial restraint], 211, 215; Italian, 67; late medieval, 297; and law, 61, 667; Low Countries, 467; Manresan, 139; maritime, 235, 245; market, 80, 538, 564; medieval, 71, 539, 542; medieval Europe, 297; “middle band,” 416; modern, 77; monetized, 266; network, 270; overseas expansion, 89; political, 71, 82; port town, 146, 236, 239; profit, 80; rationalized, 77-8, 82; regional,

620

INDEX

415; and religion, 60-1, 75, 78, 86; salvation, 60, 79-80; shipping-based, 245, 350; Sicily, 300; site-based, 320; urban, 67, 150, 542-3; and war, 233, 235 Edward I, King of England, 150, 176-7 Edward II, King of England, 176 Edward III, King of England, 189, 253 Edward IV, King of England, 214, 216 Egypt, 383, 387, 389, 413; copper, 400-1, 415, 456; economy, 405; gold prices, 396-7, 399; goldsilver ratio, 406-7; monetary system, 399, 400-1, 415; specie markets, 396, 400-1, 404, 413, 415; Eiblschrofen, 449 Ekelund, Robert, 81 Elba, 464 Elburz (Reshteh-ye Alborz), 391 Elton, Sir Geoffrey, 211 Elverdinge, 321 emergent loss (damnum emergens) (interest title), 83 Endemann, Wilhelm, 64, 65, 67 England, 138, 146, 250, 320, 327, 336-7, 340, 342-4, 346, 348-9, 363, 368-9, 509, 570; AngloSaxon, 149; authors, 491, 493; balance of trade, 467, 469, 470; bills of exchange, 477; Borromei, 479, 485; conflicts with France, 234; conquest of, 188; Calais, 204, 205; Chancellor of the Exchequer, 212; Cofferer, 213, 217; 219-20, 231; Crown, 176-8, 221, 231, 233, 235-6, 245, 248-9, 250, 469; eastern, 468; fairs, 329; exchequer, 2112, 215-21, 231; Flanders, 206, 328, 329; firewood, 369-71; fleets, 203, 208, 240; grain prices, 354, 355, 356, 358-61;

Hundred Years War, 188-90, 233-6, 238, 245, 249, 253; imports, 477; king of, 205, 236; legislative control, 375; markets, 352; market integration, 349; merchants, 169, 172, 328; Papal revenues, 470; Parliament, 173, 189, 214-7, 231, 240-2; ports, 146, 233, 234, 235-6, 238, 240, 243, 246, 248; revenues, 146-78, 231; royal court, 210; royal household, 211-220, 232; shipping, 235, 237-41, 243, 248, 253-4; shopping, 483; silver, 387; southeastern, 349, 350, 369, 372, 376; southern, 354, 355-6, 35861, 380; textiles, 483, 499; towns, 169, 175, 233-6, 238, 248, 370, 372, 374-5; tolls, 146-78; trade, 156, 166, 238, 327, 329, 331; transfer of coin, 470; Treasury of the Chamber, 211-20, 231; Treasury of the Household, 212-5, 217, 220, 231; urban occupations, 504; warfare, 239, 253; wool, 163, 175, 328-9, 467-8, 477-8 English Channel, 251 Enns Valley, 448 Enrique I, King of Castile, 136, enterprise, Africa, 90, 92, 97, 1001, 106, 113-5, 117; Borromei, 481, 485-6; business/economic, 65, 69, 91; long distance, 111; noble, 91; overseas, 91, 92, 105, 111, 117; private, 91; royal/state, 91, 102, 117; shipbuilding, 240; urban zones, 172 epidemics, 91 Epstein, Steven, 142, 299, equilibrium (economic), 270-1 Erdmannsdorf, 446 Erg Chech, 421 Erzgebirge, 442, 445-6; copper, 447

INDEX

Erzgebirgsvorland, 442, 445-6 Essex, 246 Europe, 281, 413; aristocratic, 542; balance of trade, 467; banking, 475, 485; bullion, 383, 385; capitalism, 571; Central, 399; commodities/ goods, 418; early modern, 543; economy, 543; gold, 383-7, 391, 393-4, 396, 399, 401-2, 407; gold-silver ratio, 389, 391; copper, 438-9, 440, 443, 453, 455; medieval, 43, 57, 119, 137, 297; markets, 391; merchants, 404; minerals, 440; money payments, 471; Northern, 349-51, 363, 374-5, 385, 453, 464, 538-9, 543-4, 552; NorthWestern, 351, 361, 442; Roman law, 528; silver, 387, 389, 393, 413, 415; specie markets, 391, 399, 407; trade, 349, 389, 404-5, 413; wood, 550 evolution, 271, 277-80, 283, 286, 290-2, 356; Darwinian, 272; Lamarckian, 272; mechanisms (as analogies), 272; of contract, 274; of mezzadria, 280; of peasantry, 261-3; of tax systems, 120, 123 Evora, Pero de, 109 Évora, 211, 227 exceptio usurariae pravitatis (canonical defence), 69-70 Exeter, revenues, 179, 218, 238 exchange, 70, 83, 85, 560; bill of exchange, 436, 471-2, 476-9, 484; mercantile, 167, 300, 306, 320, 334, 351-3, 361-2, 416, 538 expenditures, 109, 126; royal household, 213, 215, 217, 219, 221-2; state, 91 Fagnano (family), Ambrogina da, 462; Giacomo da, 462; Felice da, 462, 486-7

621

fairs, 331, 338-40, 498, 524; Antwerp, 478; Bruges, 330, 333; Champagne, 310, 313-4, 328-33, 339-48; Christmas, 473; debts, 331; English, 148, 154, 171, 183, 329; Geneva, 472, 474; Ghent, 333; Flemish, 3304, 339-48; interregional, 310, 328, 331; Lille, 330; local, 331; Manresa, 121; Mesen, 330; payments, 331-3; Portugal, 223; Provins, 310; regional, 351; Sicily, 300; St Bartholomew, 474; St Peter, 474; tolls, 154; Torhout, 330; Ypres, 330, 3324, 339-48 Falkenstein, 448 Falchi, Giaconello de’, 426 Falun, 441 family/families, 121, 211-2, 252, 259, 263, 304, 324, 368, 370, 425, 447, 460-1, 464-5, 467, 485, 544, 550, 558, 564, 56870, 588-59, 593 famine, 91, 131, 137, 141, 483-4 Sultan of Egypt, Faraj (al-Na sir), . 401, 404 Farbisšte, 453 Farmer, David, 161-2 Fazuati, Samuel, 431 Felipe (Mestre), 108 Fenughil (Fenourhil), 423 Feraig, Balaix, 430 Ferdinand I, King of Aragon, 306 Feria bridge, 182 Fernandes, António, 109 Fernando, Infante Dom, 96, 114 Ferrer, Rafael, 431, 432 Fersina, 457 feudal, dominance, 121; dues, 123, 132, 134; economy, 60, 71; law, 92; lords, 300-1; period, 259; possessions, 120; tenure, 224, 268; towns, 121

622

INDEX

Février, Paul-Albert, 259 Fez, 415, 421, 434, 435 fief, 92, 120, 125, 302, 461, 549, 552 Figuig, 424 finance/financial/financing, 68, 85; administration, 211, 224-6, 2312, 401; assistance, 503; bureaucracy, 218; burden, 303; civic, 135; conquest, 129, 188; constraint, 213; court, 212; Crown, 221, 232, 327; effects, 135; deficit financing, 119; departments, 212, 220, 231; difficulties, 487; financiers, 130; forms of, 189; Ghent, 546, 573; household, 214-5, 219-20, 2223, 226-8, 231; incapacity, 141; institutions, 120; instrument, 471, 557-8; levies, 134; machinery, 119, 129-30, 212, 222; military, 188; ministers, 216; municipal, 129; operations, 312, 467; paper, 543; and Parliament, 189; planners, 145; public works, 148; recovery, 214, 227; reform, 122; rebellions, 188; records, 491; reform, 210; responsibility, 114; royal, 129, 211, 220-1, 230; stature, 425; trade, 477, 485; trouble, 215; urban, 124, 148, 150; walls, 151, 173, 181; war, 187-91, 196, 198, 206-8 Finland, firewood, 369 fisc/fiscal, 135-6, districts, 114; concerns, 301; “domain state,” 117; exhaustion, 129; fiscalism, 95-6; fiscality, 129; innovations, 121; institutions, 188; policy, 122; privileges, 308; problem, 91; system, 117, 128-9 Fischbach an der Nahe, 441 Fitzwarren, estates, 218 Flanders, 126, 199, 204, 312, 320, 324-7, 330-3, 336-7, 340-1, 343-6, 349, 351, 416; alliance

with England, 189, 207-8; balance of trade, 467; banking and capital market, 336, 475-6; cities, 310, 538; coinage and money, 313-4; copper, 319, 438, 441-2, 445, 447; fairs, 313, 330-3, 438; hostilities by England, 208, 328; merchants, 321, 329, 333; raids on, 253; rebellions, 188, 483; subjects of Burgundy, 206, 208; textiles, 476; towns, 315, 325; transfer of coin, 470; troops, 204, 205; Venetian galleys, 416, 427-8, 431; west, 552; wool, 329, 329, 468 Flanders, counts of, 315, 321, 545 Flavy, Louis de, 195 Flavy, Guillaume de, 194-6 Flextorfer-Zenner, 392 Florence, 53, 69, 107, 120, 134, 142-4, 280, 286-7, 290, 298, 428, 460; Borromei, 460-1, 464-5; Catasto of 1427, 464; Datini firm, 431; merchants and merchant houses, 321, 328, 392, 464-5, 469 florin (unit of currency), 52, 308, 401, 407-8, 410, 432, 434, 4645, 488 Fogo Island, 110 Fomseca, Joham de, 110 Fonseca, Afonso de, 104 Fontcuberta, Julià, 425 food and foodstuffs, 103, 174, 213-4, 222, 227, 320, 539, 550, 572, 581; access to, 375; consumption, 349, 582, 592; controls, 304, 374; crops, 580; demand for, 297, 372; duties and taxes, 306; exotic, 593; and gardens, 572-607; grains, 3504, 361-2, 368-9, 371; imported, 592; marketing, 374, 578; production, 349, 352, 368-9, 371; range of, 592-3; shortages, 267-

INDEX

8; sources of, 363, 372-3,375-6, 421, 572, 580; supply, 301, 363, 368-9, 372-3 373-4, 566; trades, 174, 495-6, 500, 503-7, 512, 527 Ford, C. J., 250 Fordwich, 158, 180 foreign, carriers, 248; coins, 313; correspondents, 471; creditors, 312; currency, 480, 484; debtors, 313; exchange, 485; income, 219, 230; merchants, 166-7, 300; nation, 333; operations, 465; policy, 129; shipping, 251; shippers, 232; trade, 228; traders, 167 foreigners, and trade, 166; taxes on, 131, 167, 170; Forqualquier, 262, 264 fortifications, 137, 141, 194, 201, 202-3, 514; cost of, 113, 238 402 Fostat (Fust. a t), . Fowey Water, 245, 246 Fowey, 250, 252 Freiberg, 445 Freiberg-in-Meissen, 387 France, 136-7, 147, 261, 327, 332, 336-7, 340-1, 343-4, 346-7, 509; coinage, 313; early modern, 570; English armies, 208; firewood, 369; Hundred Years War, 188, 190, 192; northern, 314; peace with Burgundy, 192; southern, 268, 333; Sicilian wheat, 298; wine, 519 Francia, 259 Francisco, Pedro, 110 Franks, 400 Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, 298 Freiberg, 446 Frome, 153 Fryde, E. B., 469 fungible, 42, 49-53, 55-6, 564

623

Funk, Franz Xaver, 64 Furness, Abbey, 173 Fugger-Thurzo, partnership, 454-5 Galápagos Islands, 273 Gaddi, Zanobi di Tadeo, 427, 438 galley(s), Majorcan, 432-3; Venetian, 406, 416, 427-8, 429; Capitana, 427; Lombarda, 427; Moceniga, 427; Giustiniana, 427; Verzona, 428 Gallici, 392 Galloway, James, 368-70 Gambia River, 108-9 game (theory), 275-6; positive-sum, 275, 292; zero-sum, 292 Ganshof, FL, 149 Garéolt, 261 Garland, John, 491, 493, 495, 497-8, 504, 508-9, 514-7; Dictionarius, 492-4, 504-6, 508 Gascony, 238-9, 245; wine, 498, 501, 519, 524, 531-2 Gaussols, 265 Gdaxsk (Danzig), grain trade, 354 Gelnica (Hnilec, Gölniczbánya, Bánya, Bana), 453-5 Geneva, 470, 475; fairs, 472, 474 Gennaio, Tuccio di, 429 Genoa, 120, 129-31, 134-5, 142-4, 252, 298, 300, 407; gold, 401; gold-silver ratio, 398, 400; maritime trade, 415; merchants, 392, 412, 434 Géraud, Hercule, 508 Germany, 64, 70, 147, 188, 327, 333, 336, 338, 340, 342-4, 346, 348-9, 570; alliance with England, 189; creditors, 314; firewood, 369; laws, 552; merchants and merchant houses, 314, 328, 333-4, 392; scholars, 363; smelting, 420; towns, 361; trade, 349

624

INDEX

Ghadames, 387, 396 (Alcudia), 411, 420-1, Ghas. sa . é s. sa . 425, 429, 456 Ghent, 310, 324-6, 334, 371, 538, 545, 546, 547, 551, 559, 570, 571; aldermen (scepenen), 545, 546, 548, 552, 554; constitution, 324; custom, 545, 549, 553, 555, 559, 561-3, 565, 570; fairs, 330, 333; Gentenaren, 538, 544, 551, 553-4, 558-60, 563, 565-6, 569-71; houses, 551-2; jurisdiction, 552, 562; land, 539, 542-3, 546-8, 550-3, 555-6, 558, 561-2, 565-6, 56970; neighbours, 551; private property law, 545, 564; records, 547, 564; rents, 557-8, 562, 566; troops, 203-6 Ghir-Saoura, 423 Ghormali, 425 ibn Ghuraéb, Ibrahíém, 401-4 Giustiniana (galley), 427 Glandèves (family), 263 Gläser, Manfred, 583 Gloucester, Duke of, 215 Gloucester, Earl of, 530-2 Gloucester, 154-5, 159, 182-3 Gloucestershire, 153, 246 Godeveertsvelde, 322 Godinho, Vitorino Magalhães, 225 gold, 387, 389, 391, 393-4, 396, 399, 401-8, 413, 415, 430, 496, 498, 502, 507, 513, 516, 524, 527, 529, 533, 584; boom, 393, 396, 399, 407; Chinese, 391; coinage, 139, 389, 401, 484; crisis, 383, 407; European, 391, 393, 399, 402; markets, 383; mining, 387, 391; minting, 387; prices, 383-7, 389-90, 393-7, 399-400, 407; production, 391, 393; exchange for silver, 387, 389; Slovak, 392; sources of, 392, 413; supply of, 387, 393-

5; stocks, 383, 396, 401, 407; trade, 227-8, 388; from West Africa, 94-5, 98, 102-3, 116, 387-90, 393 Gold Coast, 95, 98, 100, 102 Goldschmidt, Levin, 59, 66, 67, 75, 80 Gomes, Diogo, 94 Gomes, Fernão, 97, 98, 99, 107, 111, 112 goods, 65, 81, 106, 119, 147, 156, 174-5, 214, 236, 251, 262, 265, 268, 315, 319-20, 354, 373, 375, 405, 477, 493-6, 499, 503, 507, 509, 541-2, 544, 546-7, 567-71; African, 106; agricultural, 539; basic, 376; bulk, 362; commercial, 546; community of, 560; concealment of, 95; cost of transport, 378; Crown, 105, 113; essential, 376; European, 404, 418; exhibiting, 350; export, 304, 478; flow of, 375-6; fungible, 42; goeden, 565; illicit trading, 95, 98, 105; immovable, 542; impartible, 561-2; imported, 166, 223; and income, 541; lists of, 157, 166; luxury, 74; manufactured, 122; movable/immovable, 218, 228, 258, 553, 559, 561; moving, 374, 378-379; partible, 543, 560-561; passage of, 148; pirated, 252; prices of, 156, 161; prohibited, 94; role of, 550; saleable, 228, 232; significance of, 565, 567; smuggling of, 95; status of, 538; trade, 146-7, 157-63, 165, 389, 405, 416, 419, 434; value of, 156, 161-3, 543; wholesale, 166; at Ypres, 329, 334 Gottleuba, 446 Gozo, 301, 306 grain, 49, 103-4, 122-3, 131, 137, 156, 160, 166, 265, 277, 297309, 350-79, 416, 496, 515,

INDEX

527, 539, 581; commodity, 299; corvées of, 261; consumption of, 368; demand for, 300, 303, 350, 354, 368-9; exports, 299302, 306; governments and, 304-8, 378; hierarchy of, 252-3; imports, 302-3, 305; markets, 300-1, 306, 354, 373; permits and licences, 300-1, 306; prices, 300-1, 352-8, 361, 378-9; purchases of, 319; procurement, 304-5, 307, 350, 351; production of, 299, 300, 352, 370-1, 376; reserves, 300; shortages, 303, 352; sale of, 300-1, 305, 307; sources of, 352, 362; stocks, 301; supply of, 370-6; tolls, 160; trade, 297-8, 300, 305-6, 350, 354, 356; yield, 368 salma (unit of weight), 299 Grand Erg Occidental (Great Western Sand Sea), 421 Grantham, 154 Grasse, 261, 264-5 Gratian, 43, 69 Gravelines, 200, 206 Great Yarmouth, 155 Greece, 135; lands, 402 Greenwich, meridian, 423 Gregory IX, Pope, 44 Grimsby, 173 Grispi, 276, 279 gros tournois (unit of currency), 313-4, 329 Gross National Product, 539 Großkogel, 448 Grummitt, David, 211, 220 Guinea, Upper, 99, 106, Guinea, 95, 99 Guinea Rivers, 109 Giovanni, Polo di, 426 Goslar, 442 Gurara, 421, 422, 435 Haddaéj, 435

625

Haf sid dynasty, 435; mints, 395-6, . . 413 Haim, Aion, 430 Hakí ém, 435 . Hainault, alliance with England, 189 Hamilton, Earl, 127 al-Hamma, 436 Hammel, Rolf, 588-9, 593-4 Hampshire, 235, 246 Hanse, 441, 450; salt fleets, 252 Hartz Mountains, 442, 445; copper, 447 Harzgerode (Hagenrode), 444-5 Hasele, William de, 517 Hatcher, John, 308 Haverfordwest, 238 Hawley, John, 251, 253 Heers, Jacques, 416 Henrique IV, King of Castile, 114 Henrique, Infante Dom (Henry the Navigator), 92-3, 96, 100, 114 Henry I, King of England, 150 Henry III, King of England, 169, 493 Henry V, King of England, 203 Henry VI, King of England, 196, 214 Henry VII, King of England, 2102, 215-8, 220, 223, 230-2, 242 Henry VIII, King of England, 211 Heraclea, 307 Hereford, 151-2, 182 Herlihy, David, 122, 143 Heron, John, 212-3, 217 Hettstedt, 445 Hijaz, 387, 402 Hindu Kush, 391 Hithe, 182 Hoffman, Richard, 508 Holland, 199, 207, 349, 469

626

INDEX

Honein, 411-2, 415, 419, 421, 424-6, 431, 433-6; copper, 4289, 431-2, 437-8, 441, 456; caravans, 428-9; Jews, 425, 429, 437 Hontiton, Count of, 195 Hora Svaté Kateršiny (St Katharinaberg), 446 Hornsea, 180 Horrox, Rosemary, 210 Hosenbachtal, 441 Hosenberg, 441 Hostiensis (Henry of Susa, c. 12001271), 44-6 household, Crown Prince, 114; income, 174-5; noble, 91; peasant, 268; royal, 91, 210-23, 226-32; urban, 119, 124, 127-8, 132, 138-9, 141, 143, 303, 491, 504, 507, 546, 560-1, 593 Hull, 239, 246 Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, 208 Hundred Years War, 188, 195; aristocracy, 234; benefits, 239; Burgundy, 190-1, 196-8, 209; costs, 190, 235-7; financing, 188-91, 208, 233; historiography, 188-9, 191, 233-5; impact, 233, 235, 238-9, 240, 253-4, 374; Low Countries, 190; outcome, 191; piracy and privateering, 239, 250; phases, 196; port towns, 233-5, 237-8, 2447, 249, 253; profits and losses, 187, 190, 235, 253; shipping, 236, 237, 241, 242, 244-5, 247, 249; sieges, 195, 198, 208; troops, 241; trade routes, 234 Hungary, copper, 392, 393, 438, 441, 450, 457; gold, 387, 3924; kingdom of, 392; Lower, 451; mines and mining, 438, 451 453-4; Upper, 453 Hunsrück, 441, 447 Hunt, Tony, 508

Huntingdon, 158, 168, 170, 180, 197 Iberia, 93, 122, 127, 245, 327, 331, 336-7, 340, 342-4, 346, 348, 428, 456 Ibiza, 429-30 ideology, modeling, 89-90; motivator, 91 Ieper, 336 Ifriqíya, 413, 415, 435 IJzer, 321, 324, 337, 339, 341, 342, 344-5, 347 Île-de-France, wine, 498, 524 Imperina, 457 income, 96, 113, 541, 560, 562, 580; consumers, 352-3; customs, 218, 228; fixed, 112; future, 554; guaranteed, 111-2; household, 141, 174-5; land, 91, 218, 231, 550; loan servicing, 555; market, 174; maximization, 111, 173, 364; monetary, 92; net, 115, 117; noble, 155, 224; overseas, 115, 117, 221, 227-8; per capita, 128; property, 556; rents, 91, 174; royal, 92, 115, 122, 127-8, 130, 132, 215-7, 226-8, 231; sources of, 92, 216, 219; toll, 149, 1545, 165, 167, 174, 276, 279, 291, 302, 482 India, 101, 108; trade, 231 Indian Ocean, 389; spice trade, 223 industry, central place, 311; centers of, 311, 538, 545; cloth, 207; Ghent, 545, 559, 569, 571; labor, 311; medieval, 311; rural, 368; shipping, 241; silver, 392; textile, 310-1, 323, 334; Ypres, 325-6, 334 industrial, capital, 71; cities, 310; crops, 580; infractions, 315; investment, 235; operations, 312; production, 349; protec-

INDEX

tionism, 320; statutes, 314; transformation, 234; uses, 369; Ypres, 310 inheritance, 205, 257-8, 265-6, 324, 464, 480, 561-71, 575 Inn Valley, 449, 450 Innsbruck, 448 interest, 45, 53, 61-5, 67, 69-71, 73-81, 83-5, 119, 132, 134-5, 141-4, 315, 473, 555 Inzegmir, 423 Ipswich, 146, 180-1, 246; Domesday Book, 146-8, 154, 163; leadership, 146; privileges, 168; tolls, 154-5, 158, 164 Irsigler, Franz, 596 Isabel the Catholic, Queen of Castile, 114 Isaurian Taurus, 389 Islam/Islamic, 76, 79, 82, 93, 259 Israel, 76 Italy, 133, 143, 327, 331, 332, 336-7, 340, 342-4, 346, 348, 456, 485, 570; balance of trade, 467, 469-70; central, 273; banking, 467; cities and towns, 349, 374-5; cartography, 424; coinage, 313; governments, 374-5; grain markers, 301; merchants, 327-9, 333, 392, 424, 426, 469, 470; money market, 481; northern, 298-9; sharecropping, 270, 274; sources, 328; textiles, 469; trade, 349, 416; transfer of coin, 470; wool, 468-70 Ixer, R. A., 440 Jargeau, 191 Jasov, 453 Jaume II, King of Aragon, 121-2, 125, 129 Jew(s), 74, 76-77, 82, 108, 180; aljama in Palma de Mallorca, 425; copper trade, 425, 431, 433-4, 437; Honein, 525, 437; Maghribi, 424-6; Majorcan,

627

424-6, 429, 430; merchants/ traders, 412, 424, 429, 433, 437; negotiators, 436; Tamentit, 425; Tuat, 425; Valencian, 429 Joan of Arc, 191-6 João II, King of Portugal (previously Crown Prince), 97, 100, 105, 114-5, 210, 221, 224, 232 John XXII, Pope, 56 John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, 198 John Lackland, King of England, 153 John, Duke of Bedford, 192, 208 Johnson, Dr Samuel, 353 Jonas, Ilona, 267 Juana, Crown Princess of Castile, 114 Judaism, 76-7, 82 jurisdiction, 43, 178, 222, 259-60, 263, 266, 281, 287, 290, 299, 304, 312, 319, 379, 544, 552, 562 Justinian, Emperor of Byzantium, 43, 45 Kahal de Tabelbala, 423-4 Kammerer-Seiler (firm), 392 Kandlerin, Gertrud, 449 Kapelle, 324 Kaérimíé merchants (tujjaér al-kaérim), 405 Karst, 450 Keene, Derek, 369, 370 Keller, Franz, 73, 74 Kent, 246 ibn Khalduén, Walíé al-Díén ‘Abd alé n Abué Zayd, 421, 423 Rahma . Kharaéj, 435 Killem, 324 King’s Lynn, 158, 168-70, 180 Kleinkogel, 448 Knight, J., 271

628

INDEX

Kolba, 452 Kortrijk, 325 Kraków, 441 Kraslice, 446 Kremnica, 451 Krk Island, 450 Kroll, Helmut, 591 Krusšné Hory, 446 Kulmbach, 447 Kupferberg, 445-7 Kutná Hora, 387 Kvarnericá Embayment, 450 labour, 276, 278, 292, 311, 368, 528; agricultural, 266; cost of, 442; division of, 297, 425; incentives, 291; labourintensive, 95 275; labourers, 138, 275-6; land/labour ratio, 279, 283; market, 334; services, 261; shortages, 138-9, 391; undersupply of, 276; works (corvées), 257 La Celle, Abbey of, 261-3 Lagny, 310 Lagos, 107 Lagos Lagoon, 109 Laguedoc, 263 Lancashire, 173 Lancaster, Duchy of, 215-7 land, 192, 197, 204, 207, 259, 278, 292, 299, 350, 352, 464, 552, 553, 561, 570-1; alienation of, 261, 265; allodial/nonallodial, 260, 555; area requirements, 368-73, 376; “bondage to,” 257-8, 266-7, 269; casamentum, 265; Church, 259-61, 263; colon, 259; commodification, 565; confiscations, 216, 221, 231;Crown, 220-1, 224, 231; fungibility, 569; holdings, 91; immovability, 539, 542; importance, 539, 542-3, 565; inheritance, 550-2, 558;

investment in, 63, 312, 334, 565, 569, 574; king’s, 214-8, 224; “land service”, 243; land/ labour ratio, 279, 283; landlords/landowners, 51, 275-85, 288-93, 364, 548; law, 552-3, 562, 565; market, 268; movable, 552; noble, 263, 269; ownership, 121, 144, 552, 565, 596; peasant and farm, 164, 258-60, 262, 265, 268, 273-4, 302, 362, 364, 368, 565; private, 259; products of, 546, 548; property rights, 275; public, 127; rents, 274, 543, 552-3, 555-6, 558, 561-2; rights to, 539, 552, 566; royal grants of, 220, 224; revenue, 215-6, 218-9; serfs, 262, 265-6; transactions, 574-5, 577-8, 580; urban, 572-3, 575, 579, 587; use, 365, 368-70, 547, 575, 577-80, 596, 597; value, 539, 575-6 Langdon, John, 374 Langholm, Odd, 51, 54, 55 Lannoy, Hugh de, 206, 208 Laon, 197 Lapaccio, Ser Antonio di, 432-4, 436 La Rochelle, 327 Lastig, Gustav, 65 Latham, R. E., 508 law, 41-58, 61-2, 64-7, 543, 546-7; canon, 43-50, 52-7, 61, 64, 67-9, 74-5, 78, 83; civil, 66, 70; commercial, 59, 66; common, 66; customary, 539, 541, 544, 553, 555, 562; English, 171, 177, 540, feudal, 92; Flemish, 315; Ghent, 547, 553, 559, 561-2, 565, 569-71; mining, 448; natural, 41, 43, 47-53, 55-8; navigation, 428; northern European, 538-9, 544; patrimony, 553; positive, 43, 47, 56; Portuguese, 94-9, 227; property, 539-40, 543-6, 559, 562;

INDEX

Roman, 43-7, 49, 51, 258, 2623, 266, 287, 538, 545; secular, 94, 555, 557 lead, 158-9, 194, 392-4, 440, 4445, 453, 510 leases and leasing, 48, 96-8, 106-9, 113, 115, 154-5, 273, 278, 320, 566, 589; leaseholders (trautadores), 106-7 legal, analysis, 61; arrangements, 65; barriers, 96, 297; change, 545; collection, 492, 518; concepts, 54; construction, 62, 64; controls, 308; customs, 324; defence, 70; development, 64; dissolution, 412; distinctions, 259; doctrine, 168; evidence, 569; expression, 565; forms, 491; heritage, 287; history and historians, 543, 559; illegal activities, 253-4; imagination, 565; jurisdiction, 544; liability, 66; materials, 493, 517; mechanisms, 563; meaning, 564, 571; opinion, 546; patterns, 442; perspectives, 66; profession, 293; protection, 85; records, 491, 538, 542, 564; reforms, 232; regimes, 543; rights, 169; scholars, 64, 67; sources, 571; standard, 47, 56; status, 553; strength, 95; systems, 43, 266, 324; tender, 313; theory, 168, 545; tradition, 559 Leicester, 168, 519, 524 Leiden, 380; grain prices, 354-61; markets, 361 Leighton Buzzard, 153 Leonor, Queen of Portugal, 114 Lérins, Abbey of, 258, 263 Leuprandus, 273-4, 276-8 Levant, 384, 404, 438, 456, 472 Lewes, 149, 179 Licata, 299, 305, 307 licences and licensing, 85, 96-9, 106, 112, 174, 250, 306

629

Lier, 356, 358, 361, 380 Liguria, 143 Lila, Joham de, 109 Lille, 310, 326, 329, 334, 337, 339, 341, 343-4, 346-7; castellany, 320; constitution, 324; fairs, 330, 332; government, 313; law, 552; merchants, 332 Lincoln, 154, 171, 182 Lincolnshire, 154, 246 Lindsey (Lincs.), 468 Lipari Island, 307 Lisbon, 97-8, 210, 225, 227, 231; Ribeira Palace, 228, 231; São Jorge Castle, 228; Liverpool, 246 loan (mutuum), 41-2, 48-50, 52-3, 57 loans, 59, 61-5, 73-5, 77, 81, 83-5, 131, 133-4, 144, 212, 219, 268, 281, 307, 315, 333, 461, 464-5, 472-5, 477, 543, 555-7 Loire River, 191, 193, 259 Lombard, Peter, 44 Lombard Street, 467 Lombarda (galley), 427 Lombards, 315 Lombardy, towns, 374 London, 155, 159, 162, 179 181-2, 240, 246, 349, 363, 369, 370-1, 375; banking, 467; bills of exchange, 478; Borromei, 4648, 471, 475, 478-83, 485-8; firewood, 369, 371, 373; food supply, 372; galleys, 468-9; international trade; 470; Italian imports, 469-70; Mercers, 4778, merchants, 468, 477, 502, 533; revenues, 218; textiles, 470, 499, 519, 524; Tower of, 220; wool 468-9 Lorenzo, Stoldo di, 428 Lorini, Antonio di Filippo, 426-7 Lösch, August, 363-5

630

INDEX

loss (economic), 62, 66, 73, 102, 128, 184, 190, 244, 403, 434, 466, 473, 481-6, 539; of business, 174; of capital, 280; emergent, 83; of income, 174; of property, 94-5; of revenue, 173-4 Lostwithiel, 245 Louis IX, King of France, 313 Louvain, 351, 380, grain prices, 356, 359-61 Lovell, Sir Thomas, 212-3 Low Countries, 188-9, 198, 209, 327, 336, 338, 340, 342-3, 346377, 570; artillery, 200; balance of trade, 467; banking, 478; Calais, 206; bills of exchange, 477; citizens of, 208; copper, 419, 441, 456; English campaigns, 253; farmers, 372; grain, 353-4, 356, 361, 373; heating fuel, 371; Hundred Years War, 190; markets, 352, 362; market integration, 349; rebellions, 190, 209; southern, 350-1; towns, 350, 375; textiles, 477, 483 Lübeck, 441, 572, 574, 579, 588, 593-6; Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden, 582, 590, 592-4, 598-607; archeological evidence and excavations, 582, 587, 594, 595, 598-607; cesspits, rubbishpits and wells, 581-2, 598-600; citizens, 580, 596; city of, 575; elites, 576, 580, 593; Engelsgrube, 590; gänge, 573; gardens and gardeners, 572, 575, 577-9, 594, 596-7; guild (Willkür der Gärtner), 578, 581; HeiligenGeist-Hospital, 590; holdings (Güter), 574; Holsten, 577; hops, 575-8, 580, 584; 586, 590-1, 595-6, 600; Horegenbeke, 573; Hundestrasse, 582, 584-9, 591-2, 594, 598-607; inhabitants, 583; Landwehr, 573-

4, 579; Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (LUB), 574-6; Marienkirche, 593; market, 593; Mengstrasse, 593; merchants, 333; Mühlentor, 576; Niederstadtbücher, 577; Oberstadtadtbücher/regesten, 577, 587; population, 573; produce, 579, 5801, 590-2, 595; Rathaus, 593; Rosengarten-Tünkenhagen, 588; Soltenwisch, 577; species, 582, 584-6, 590-2, 595, 600-7; St Johanniskloster, 582-4, 586, 590-2, 594, 598-607; Tileke Warendorp, 578; “Van den Hoppenlande,” 578; walls, 573, 577, 579, 597; Wette Gartenbücher, 575, 577, 580 Mubietová (Lybetha, Libethen), 451-3, 455 Lucca, 276, 280, 328, 466 Luporini, A., 276 Luther, Martin, 42, 71 Luxembourg, Jean de, 194-6 luxury, 567, cloth, 477; eating, 584; goods, 74, 331, 353, 400; imported, 542; movables, 566 Lynn, 246 Maastricht, 441 Macaire, Pierre, 416 Mâconnais, 259 Madeira Island, 228 manufacture and manufacturing, 275, 406; cloth, 322; goods, 122; equipment, 543; luxury articles, 400; techniques, 503 Marlgavere, Jan van, 556 Maggiore, Lake, 461 Maghrib, 387, 407, 413-6, 436; alMaghrib al-Aqsa . é , 387; commerce/trade, 415-8 425-6, 432; commodities, 417; copper and copper trade, 420, 427-8; gold, 395-6; imports, 418; demand, 432; Jews, 424-5, 430, 436;

INDEX

markets, 413, 418; payments, 432; ports, 411, 419; regional economies, 415, 418; western, 413 Maillane, 261 Maio Island, 110 Majorca, 135, 411-2, 416-7, 425; conversos, 424, 433-4; copper market and trade, 412-3, 416, 419-21, 426-8, 431-4, 436-8, 454-5; Datini branch, 418-9, 420, 426, 432; flood, 430; intermediaries, 418; Italians, 433; Jews, 411, 424, 426, 429, 433-4, 337; Maghrib, 427, 429, 431; merchants, 411, 419 424, 427-9, 432, 433; money, 421; notaries, 426; “old Christians,” 425, 426, 433; portolans, 424; records, 421; tin 420 Majorca, Kingdom of, 416 Malborough, 169 Malfante, Antonio, 412 Mallorca, 417; Ciutat de (mod. Palma), 425, 427, 430 Malta, 297, 301, 302, 306-8; cotton, 306; government, 304-6; grain shortages and imports, 303-4; Sicilian grain, 302-3, 307; Turkish invasion, 303 Malta Islands, 297-8, 301 Manchester, 181 Manresa, 119-144 Mansfeld, 445 Manuel I, King of Portugal, 100-1, 105, 111, 114, 210-1, 222-4, 227-8, 230-1 Ma‘qil, Arab nomad group, 434-5 March, estates, 218 March, Mr Thomas of, 468 Marchione, Bartolomeu, 107-8 Marck, 202 Margaret, Countess of Flanders, 313

631

Maria, Queen of Portugal, 114 Marínid dynasty, 435; mints, 3956, 413 market integration, 297-8, 308, 349-52, 354, 361-2, 373, 376, 378-9 marketing, 174, 269, 308, 374, 578 market(s), 70, 78, 85, 99, 105, 111, 113, 150, 163, 166, 168, 172-3, 300, 325, 351-3, 362-3, 368, 376, 378-9, 387, 389-90, 396, 399 405, 407, 491, 507, 544, 553, 558-9, 571, 579, 596; access to, 297; African, 117; capital, 275, 320, 326, 331, 334, 336; centre, 363, 367; city/town, 147, 151, 153, 172, 579, 593; commodity, 308, 305; conditions, 399, 405, 408; copper, 412, 418-22, 427-30, 4323, 436-8, 453, 456; credit, 67, 133, 134, 268, 324, 327; development, 61, 379; disorders, 383; distant, 352; economy, 80, 538, 564; environment, 81, 405; equilibrium, 383; exchange, 484, 538; fees, 154; feudal, 121; forces, 375; gold, 383, 391, 396, 399, 413; grain, 300-301, 306, 350, 352-4, 356, 358, 361, 368, 373; hierarchies, 311; integrated, 350, 352, 373, 378; internal, 298; internationalization of, 362; labour, 334; land, 268; late medieval, 352; local, 354; logic, 568; marketplace, 78, 148, 165, 194, 379, 407, 578; money, 467, 470-1, 481; networks, 297, 399; organization, 373; prices, 401; regional, 351, 362; religious, 84; research, 101; revenues and income, 153-5, 174; rights, 173, 177; royal, 105; rural, 165, 168, 175; situation, 407; society, 544, 571; specie, 383, 387, 389, 391-2, 396, 399, 409;

632

INDEX

speculation, 547; stock, 70; structure, 389, 413; student, 495; terms, 568; tolls, 153-4, 171, 177; towns, 153; traders, 165, 174; universal, 391; urban, 350, 352, 374, 595-6; value/s, 99, 153, 544, 565; wine, 121; wool, 163, “world market,” 321, 330 marriage, 44, 123, 131, 258, 262, 324, 538, 541, 543, 548, 552, 560-4, 570-1 Marseille, 258, 259 Marseille, count of, 261 Marseille, viscounts of, 263 Martin I, King of Aragon, 300-1, 306 Martin V, Pope, 464 Martínez, Manuel Sánchez, 129 Marx, Karl, Capital, 41-2, 71 al-Maqríézíé, Taqíé al-Díén Ahmad b. . , ‘Alíé al-Qaédir b. Muhammad . 400, 404 Masschaele, James, 374 Mattei, Piero, 430 Mauritania, 98, 423 Mayer, Joseph, 508 Mazara, 307 Mazzuoli, Niccolò di Giovanni, 431-4, 436-7, 456 McFarlane, K. B., 190, 233, 235 Mdina, 302 Measham, 181 Mešdešnec, 446 Mešdešný Potok (Kufurbach, Kupperbach), 454 Medici (family), 392, 465, 467; bank, 467, 484 Mediterranean Sea, 274, 384, 389; copper; 419, 455; gold, 399; ports, 399; specie markets, 399; trade, 62-3, 298, 413, 415, 456; western, 413, 415, 417, 419, 445, 447, 455

Melanchton, Philip, 42 Melcombe, 246 Melo, Fernão de, 111 Meneses, Duarte de, 114 merchandise, 98, 101-5, 111, 113, 117, 152, 157, 162, 170, 242, 429, 437, 472, 477 merchant(s), 57, 68-9, 79, 84, 16375, 213, 235, 239, 240, 251, 301, 305, 310, 321, 331-2; Balearic, 412, 418-9; banker, 471-2, 493-4, 510; banking houses, 328, 353, 378, 394, 403, 420; Berber, 103; Bruges, 334; Burgos, 327; Catalan, 305, 476; Chinese, 391; Christian, 412, 425; converso, 412; credit, 431, 472; English, 167, 169, 171-2, English, 329; European, 405; Fez, 434; Flanders, “Germanic,” 327; Florentine, 107, 469; foreign, 166-7, 300, 484; France, northern, 314; Genoese, 407, 434; guilds, 75; international, 69; Italian, 314, 328, 433, 469-70; Jewish, 411-2, 424, 429, 437; Kaérimíé, 405; Lisbon, 97; local, 165, 170-2, 213, 220, 313; London, 477-8; long-distance, 163; Lübeck, 583, 588-9, 593-5, Majorcan, 411, 424-5, 429, 432; Merchant Adventurers, 477; Milanese, 469; Montpellier, 312; Muslim, 391, 429; native, 23; Nürnberg, 454; private, 105; rights and privileges, 168-72, 175; seafarer, 582; ships and fleet, 236, 242; Southampton, 468; Spisš, 453; and taxation/tolls, 166-75; of/in town, 165, 168; Tlemcen, 434; Tuscan, 411, 419; Valencian, 419, 429; Venetian, 426; wealthy; 163, 165, 173-4, 594; wholesale, 174, wool, 69, 163, 175; Ypres, 322, 327-8, 332 Mesen, 331, 332; fairs, 330

INDEX

Messina, 299, 300, 306 Meung-sur-Loire, 191 mezzadria (sharecropping), 273, 278, 280 Michele, Benedetto di, 427 Micheli, Giovanni di Michele, 466, 486 Micheli, Niccolò, 486 Middle East, gold, 399; silver, 389; specie markets, 396 Middleburg, 468, 470 Middlesex, county, 372 Midlands, 468 Milan, 470; Borromei, 460-1, 4656, 468, 485-6, 488; merchants and merchant houses, 469; wool, 468 Milet, Jean, 197 Miller, Joseph C., 89 mint(s) and minting, 379; 383, 387; 389, 396, 400, 413, 513; sid, 396, 413; French, 313; Haf . . Marínid, 395-6; 413; Mamluk, 400; Maghrib, 387; Philip the Good, 484 Mittelharz, 444 Mixtow (family), 253; John, 252; Mark, 252 Mnísšek nad Hnilcom (Meczenzéf), 454 Moceniga (galley), 427 Modena, 424 monetarism, 187 monetized economy, 266; demonetizing, 401 monetary, assignments to royal household, 213, 219; confusion, 483; disorders, 407; income, 92; mechanisms, 291; payments, 241; problems, 379, 482; reform, 483; revaluation, 484; surplus, 228, 231; stability, 484; stock, 404 409; system, 399, 402-403, 415; value, 50;

633

money, 113, 128, 153, 176, 225, 313, 402, 471, 475-9, 484, 531, 533-4, 548, 556, 559; annuity, 133; borrowing, 81, 476, 479; changers, 431, 496, 505, 512-3; collection of, 139, 140, 225; conscience, 68, 79; disbursement of, 213; flows, 68, 415; function of, 42; incentive, 192; investment of, 75; king’s, 197, 211-212; lending and loan, 42, 48, 76-7, 316, 327, 472, 478, 502, 555; liability for, 220; making, 416; market, 467, 4701, 481; need for, 128, 130, 192, 502; owing, 121, 502; Parisian, 496; payments, 575; prize, 253; purpose, 74; raising, 123, 132, 151, 238; receipts, 116; royal households, 212, 216-7, 220, 226, 231-2; sources of, 216-8, 228-31, 238, 466, 469; supply, 151, 314; transfer, 113, 219, 253, 476-7; use of, 41, 219, 222, 226, 228, 320, 437, 556 Monmouthshire, 154 monopoly, 81, 96-7, 99-100, 111, 121, 244, 300, 374, 405 Monroy, Gonsalvo, 306 Monstrelet, Enguerran, 194-6, 200, 202 montes pietatis, 79 Monti, Richard, 508 Montmajour, Abbey of, 258 Montpellier, merchants, 312-3; Monzón, 139 morabatin (unit of currency), 139 Mornevech, Reinekin, 333 Morocco, 98, 113, 413, 415; armed forces, 435; markets, 421 Mostaganem, 436 Moulouya River, 434-5 Mueller, Reinhold C., 471,

634

INDEX

Mührenberg, Doris, 587, 589 municipality/municipal, 133; accounts, 314; appointments, 304; authorities, 305; council, 303-304; documents, 182-3; finance, 129; fiscal system, 128; officials, 148, 154, 300-1; royal, 133; universitas, 304-8; taxes, 123 Munro, John, 176, 187-8, 190, 191, 233, 411, 455, 477 Münzer, Hieronymus, 97 murage, 151, 155, 162, 167, 16971, 175-6, 182-3, 243 Murphy, Margaret, 368-70 Nadal, Pere, 141 Naples, 301, 424 nave (ship type), 429, 431, 433 Nefzaoua, 436 Nelson, Benjamin, 59, 80, 82 Nelson, R. R., 272 Netherlands, firewood, 369; towns, 351 Neudorf, 445 Neusohl (Banská Bystrica), 392 New Institutional Economics, 2702 New World, 254 Newark, 183 Newcastle, 150, 155, 158, 170-1, 179, 239, 246 Nice, 261 Nieuwpoort, 319 Niger Bend, 387, 396, 413, 421, 456 Niger Delta (Rios dos Escravos), 107-10 Nigro, Giampiero, 418, 458 nobles and nobility, 91, 113-4, 121, 205-6, 221, 223, 234, 260, 306, 507-9, 539, 542, 565 Noonan, John T., 54

Noordschoote, 324 Norfolk, 246 Normandy, 203, 253 North, D. C., 270 North Sea, 349-50, 354 Northhampton, 154, 182 Northumberland, 246 Norwich, 158-9, 162, 168, 171, 180 Nottingham, 468 Nová Banša, 451 Novalesa, Abbey of, 259 Novo Brdo, 393 Nunes Jorge, 110 Nürnberg, copper, 456; corporations, 392; merchants, 392, 454 Ober Enns Valley, 448 Oberfranken, 447 Oberharz, 442, 444-5 Öblarn, 448 Odon, João de, 111 Okehampton, 153, 179 Oran, 436 ore minerals, arsenopyrite, 452, 454; auriferous quartz, 391; cuprite, 452; chalcopyrite, 4523; fahlore, 439-40, 447-8; enargite, 439; galena, 454; siderite, 452; sphalerite, 454; sulphide ores, 442, 452; Kupferkies, 447; tennantite, 439, 449, 452-3; tetrahedrite, 439, 449, 452-4 Orléans, 191 Ormuz, 391 Orwell Haven, 246 Oswestry, 154 Oudenaarde, 325 Oued Guir, 415 Oued Messaud, 423 Oued Saoura, 415, 423 Oued Tuat, 423

INDEX

Oujda, 435 Oundle, 181 overseas expansion, 89; Africa, 90; economy, 89; Portuguese, 89, 92, 113-4, 118 Oxford, 491-3, 518-9, 524 Oxfordshire, 468 Oye, 202 Pachs (brothers), 425, 432-3; Nicolau de, 432-3 Padua, 462 Palastrello, Alessandro da, 486-7 Palermo, 299 Pamir, 391 Panigarola, Arrighino, 475, 483 Pánský Diel, 452 Paolo, Paoluccio di Maestro, 427 Parco Nazionale Dolomiti Bellunesi, 447 Pardo, Miguel, 105 Pardo, Pere, 432 Parigi, B., 276 Paris, 47, 193, 203, 349, 354, 363, 371, 491, 493-4, 498; GrandPont, 494, 496, 510, 512-3; Îlede-la-Cité, 494; Latin Quarter, 494; Left Bank, 494; linen trade, 506; metal trades, 503; money-changers, 496, 512; Notre-Dame, 498, 516; Porte St-Lazare, 495, 510; Right Bank, 494; rue Galande (clos de Garlande), 494, shops and shopping, 504, 506, 508-10 partnerships, commercial, 60-6, 75, 85, 106, 109-11, 316, 322, 4545, 461, 464-5, 468, 484, 486, 488; commenda, 62, 74; societas maris (sea-loan), 62, 66, 74; dare ad proficuum maris, 62-3, 74; dare ad portandum in compagniam (land-loan), 65; foenus nauticum (sea-loan), 74 Patay, 192

635

patrimony, 121, 132, 144, 205, 215, 228, 538, 540-6, 552-3, 555-9, 564-5, 570-1 patronage, 233, 245 pavage, 151, 167, 170, 176, 182-3 Pay, Henry, 252, 253 peasant/peasants, 163-6, 172, 174, 191, 258-69, 539, 565; bondage, 265, 269; and capital, 268; and credit/creditors, 268-9; dependent, 266, 268; free, 259, 263-6, 302; freehold, 260; land, 258-60, 262; and lords, 266-8; obligations, 265; rich, 260; servitude, 257, 260; status, 263; tenure, 262, 268 Pedro, Infante of Portugal, 92 Pedro I, King of Castile, 136 137, 140 Pegolotti, Francesco Balducci, 4201, 438, 448 Pere II, King of Aragon, 120 Pere III, King of Aragon, 135, 136, 141 Pérez, María Dolores López, 416 Péronne, 326 Persian Gulf, 391 Perugia, 328 Peterborough, 159, 181, 183 Petrarch, 54 Pettauer Weg, 450 Pevensey, 153 Philip, Count of Alsace, 324 Philip Augustus, King of France, 506 Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, 187, 191-3, 196-8, 200, 203, 204-6, 208-9, 482-4 Piacenza, 487 Picardy, 197, 199, 326-7, 330-3, 336-7, 340-1, 343-4, 346-7; cities, 320; merchants, 327; troops, 205 Piesky (Sandberg), 452

636

INDEX

Pinto, Duarte Rodriguez, 110 piracy, 94-5, 99, 239, 250-4 Pisa, 63, 65-6, 280, 460 Pistoia, 143 plague, 119, 126, 128, 130, 134-5, 137-9, 142-3, 283, 442 Plymouth, 239, 244-6, 249, 250; harbour, 245 Podbrezová, 451 Podlipa, 452 Pomana, 451 Poland, copper, 438, 447, 450, 456; grain, 354; lead, 392 Pomerania, 363 Ponická Lehôtka, 453 Poniky (Drienok, Predbane), 452-3 pontage, 151, 167, 170, 175-6, 183 Poole, 252 Poperinge, 321, 322 population, 111, 210, 272-5, 2778, 282-3, 285, 287, 290, 292, 302, 311, 350, 363-6; nomad, 413; overpopulation, 391; rural, 267-9, 368-70; taxes, 127, 207, 221, urban, 119, 124, 126, 128, 137-9, 142-5, 248, 301, 303-4, 311-2, 321, 325, 363-76, 573, 597 Portinari, Bernardo, 484 Portsmouth, 240, 245 Portugal, 89-118, 188, 210-2, 220232, 252, 428, 456; and Africa, 89-90, 93-7, 99, 117; alfândegas, 101, 229; almoxarifes, 108, 110, 225-6, 321; almoxarifados, 101, 227-9; Aposentador Mor, 227 231; aposentadorias, 226; Armazém, 101,103; assentamento, 114; Contador da Casa, 222; caravel, 249; Casa da Ceuta, 100; Casa dos Contos, 223, 226, 231; Casa dos Escravos (Slave House), 101, 108-9, 113; Casa de Guiné (Guinea House), 100, 102-3, 105,

113; Casa de Guiné e Mina, 1003, 105, 113-6, 229; Casa da Índia (India House) e Guiné, 101, 228-9, 231-2, casamento(s), 114; Cortes, 99, 111-2, 115, 221, 227; Crown, 89-117, 221-231; dízima, 223; dominium, 93; Escrivão da Câmara, 222; expansion, 89, 92, 113, 114, 221; expenditures, 114; fazenda, 92, 100-1, 224-5, 228; fazenda de Guiné, 100; Feitoria das Ilhas, 101; kings of, 221, 232; legislation, 92-5, 97-8, 224-7; moradias, 210, 222, 228-30; nobility, 113; and the Papacy, 93-4; relations with non-Christians, 94; orçamentos (budget estimates), 115; quittances (cartas de quitações), 116, 212, 221-2; regimentos, 103; revenues, 92, 95-6, 101, 111-117, 221-3; royal court, 210, 228; royal fazenda, 92, 100-1, 224-6, 231; royal household, 210-1, 222, 226-7, 230-2; revenues, 225; royal power, 92; reconquista, 92; sisa, 107, 223-5, 227, 229, 231; state capitalism, 90, 111; taixas, 104-5; tença(s), 114; Tesoureiro Mor, 222; trautadores, 106; Vedor da Casa, 222; Vedores da Fazenda, 225-7, 231 vintena, 110; Vintena House, 109 Postan, M. M., 190, 233, 235 pound (unit of weight), 162-3, 165-6, 431, 455; Majorcan, 421, 433 pound (unit of currency), 276, 465, 481-2, 554; Artois (Artesian), 313; Barcelona, 122, 1245, 127-8, 132, 137, 141; English/sterling, 153-5, 161-2, 192, 194, 214-7, 219-20, 225, 227-8, 231, 238, 250-3, 312, 314, 327, 329, 466-70, 501; Flanders (Flemish), 313, 466,

INDEX

471-2, 474-6, 478-84, 486; Milanese, 487; tournois, 327-8 poundage, 216-8, 220, 252 power, 91; bargaining, 270, 283, 390; baronial, 163; civic governments, 375; comital, 260, 262; financial/capital, 68, 75; legislative and jurisdictional, 92, 96, 98, 260, 263; noble, 375; political, 92, 100, 114, 239, 374, 375; purchasing, 404, 406; royal, 92, 96, 98, 100, 114, 117, 375; seigneurial, 262-3, 266; state agents and officials, 140; of subjects, 114, of wealth, 564-6 Pozzobonello, Arrighino di Ambrogio, 488; Francesco di Arrighino, 388 Prato, 411, 428, 458 precious metals, 49, 383, 387, 389; 399, 404, 413, 452-3 precious stones, 98, 513 prerogatives, royal, 112, 231; seigneurial, 262 prescription (praescriptio) (Roman law contract), 45-6 prestige, 54, 69, 92, 212, 453, 465 price, just (iustum pretium), 78, 79 prices, 373, 378, 564, 568; commodities, 111, 156-7, 161-4, 300-1, 306, 305, 352-62, 379, 383, 392-3, 399-403, 407, 420, 495-6, 501-3, 531-3, 580; copper, 419-20, 427-8, 437; correlation, 353-63, 378; control and regulation, 224, 231, 300, 304-5, 361; data, 156, 161, 355, 362, 376, 378, 380; fixed, 99, 104; gold, 383-7, 389, 391, 393-7, 399-400, 407; inelastic, 353, 363; land, 575; levels, 126; market, 70; movement and trends, 122 127-8, 142, 161, 164, 275, 306, 351-4, 361, 376, 379, 396, 399, 404-5; taixa

637

(Crown price list), 104-5; and transport, 373 Príncipe Island, 110 Pršísecšnice, 446 privateering, 234, 239, 250-2, 254 privileges, 165, 168, 461; access, 550; charter of, 96, 333, 545; Cape Verde Islanders, 96-7, 99; commercial, 172, 308; court, 227; economic, 308; executive, 112; exemption, 168-70, 175; Fernão Gomes, 107; fiscal, 308; merchant, 167, 171; monopoly, 121; institutional, 299; Ipswitch, 146; local, 150; recognition of, 171; royal, 121, 140, 155, 306; São Tomeans, 111; social, 571; spouse, 562; toll, 170; towns, 168, 170, 177, 183, 235, 244; trade, 306-7 products, 275, 291, 305, 389, 407, 504, 507, 546; cloth, 477; copper, 420, 438, 445, 449 producers, 308, 373, 567; cloth, 470; copper, 420; of fuel, 371; of gold, 392, 394; peasant, 163 production, 363, 376, 503; agricultural, 352, 376; costs, 363-6, 376; copper, 438, 445, 452, 454-5; crop, 364, 548; for export, 545; firewood, 369, 371; food, 349, 368-9, 371, 373; fuel, 373; garden, 572, 577-80; gold, 391-4, 407; grain, 299300, 303, 352, 370-1, 376; heating supplies, 369; industrial, 349; lack of uniformity in, 364; levels of, 393; regions of, 364; patterns of, 368; perfume, 98; silver, 387; technical coefficients, 291; wheat, 299; wood, 370; wool, 163; zones of, 364 productive, basis, 543; capacity, 541; life, 541 productivity, 297; of assets, 571; agricultural regions, 375; of forests, 369; of gardens, 580;

638

INDEX

land, 372, 539; overseas regions, 375; soil, 376 profit and profitability, 41-2, 48, 50-1, 57, 62-4, 66, 69, 73-4, 76, 80, 94, 96-7, 99, 100, 1056, 111-4, 174, 187, 190, 214, 216, 218, 220-3, 225-8, 230-1, 235, 239, 249-54, 300, 308, 356, 363-4, 378, 389, 400, 405, 418, 428, 432, 461, 465-6, 470, 472-5, 481-8, 512-4, 564-5, 568 property, 45, 49, 62, 538, 544, 559, 565, 570, 573, 590; allodium, 541; alienating, 324, 565; assumptions about, 565; category, 539; circulation of, 538; community, 324-5, 560; confiscation, 94; debt, 555-6; definitions, 538-9; fines, 231; forms of, 565; fungible, 564; “goods” (goeden), 565; immovable (immobilia, immeubles, immeublen, unbewegliche Güter, heritages, erve, Erbgüter), 324, 538-48, 550, 555-7, 559, 562, 565, 569, 571; impartible, 544, 547, 552, 556, 559, 561-2, 569-70; inheritance, 324, 555; joint, 560; law, 539-541, 543-4, 546, 553, 559, 562; loss of, 94-95; marital, 543, 559, 562, 564; meaning of, 564, 567; movable (mobilia, meubles, meublen, bewegliche Güter, cateux, cateylen, catheylen, Fahrnis, chattel), 234, 538-54, 557-9, 561-2, 564-6, 569; patrimony (erve), 538, 540-546, 5523, 555-9, 564-5, 570-1; partible (deelbar), 543, 547, 551-3, 5582; perpetually producing, 541; personal, 236, 538, 540, 553-4; private, 215, 540, 545; relations, 564; real, 64, 557; rents, 556, 558; rights, 258, 266, 275, 540, 559; residual, 561; taxation, 121; transfers of, 538, 543 Protestantism, 77, 80, 84

Provence, 257-9, 261, 262-4, 2669; maritime trade, 415 Provence, counts of, 262 Provins, 310; fairs, 310 Ptuj, 450 Puget-Theniers, 265, 267-9 Pukanec, 451 Puritans, 74 quayage, 176, 183 Quint, Antoni, 425, 434 quintal (unit of weight), 429-30, 432-3, 436-7, 456 396 Quseir, . Rachfahl, Felix, 68, 71, 73, 74 Rabat, 302, 303 Raimund Berenger V, 262 Raimund Berenger III, 262 Rammelsberg, 442, 444 Ramon Folc IV, Viscount of Cardona, 120 rationalization (social process), 59, 61, 76, 80, 82; economic, 77-9, 82; ethical, 78 Rau, Virginia, 225 Rayy, 391 reconquista, 92 Redolho, Calliro, 107-8 Reformation, 83 regalian rights, 91, 112 Reggane, 421, 423-4 real/réis (unit of currency), 107-12, 114-6, 224-5, 227-8 Remann, Monika, 594 rent, 51, 91, 270, 273-4, 278-9, 319, 552, 553, 556-8, 562, 565, 569, 575; African regions/commodities, 98, 101, 106-10; agreements, 48; annuity, 64, 319; bail à rente, 556; collection of, 225-6, 570; contracts, 274; erfelijke rente, 556; “eerve, eeveliike rente,” 556; erfrenten, 557;

INDEX

farm, 281, 291, 364; gardens, 575, 577, 580; houses, 573; impartible, 556; income, 174; inheritance, 558; land, 543, 553, 566, 575, 577, 596; lijfrente (rente viagère), 557-8, 561; losrenten, 557; payments/charges, 49, 552, 556, 566; peasants, 165, 266; perpetual, 62 64, 553, 556-8; redeemable, 557, 562; rentable, 48, 50; rente foncière, 556; rentes à prix d’argent, 556; rente constituée, 556, 558; rentier class, 570; rent-seeking behaviour, 81; royal, 216, 224-5, 228; secured (besette renten), 557, 562; tenurial, 557 rentables, 48-52 revenue, extraordinary, 130; market, 155, 172; maximization, 94-5, 117, 174; noble/seigneurial, 91, 117; nominal, 126-8 ordinary/regular, 123, 134, 140; Papal, 470; royal, 91-2, 95-6, 101, 105-7, 109-15, 117, 121, 127, 214-32, 298; tolls, 147, 151-6, 167, 174; urban, 122-8, 130-4, 139-40, 145, 152, 172-3, 237-8, 541, 577; village, 267 Rexpoede, 322, 324 Reynolds, Susan, 508 Rheims, 203 Rhineland, 596; gold, 393 Rhine River, 259 Richard III, King of England, 210, 215 Richardson, H. G., 492-3, 518 Richardson, W. C., 212 Richtárová, 452 Ridolfi, Lorenzo, 55 Riemann, F. K., 597 Riera, stream, 430 Rio Primeiro, 109

639

risk, 62-5, 83, 95, 109, 280, 439, 565, 571 ritl . (unit of weight), 400, 408 Rocchi, Ambrogio Lorenzi de’, 427 Rodrigues, António, 110 Rodriguez, Graviel, 110 Rodriguez, Nicolão, 110 Rogers, Clifford, 189 Romanus Pontifex (Papal Bull, 1455), 93-4 Romney, 180 Roover, Raymond de, 467-70, 481 Rotterdam, 199 Rozšnšava, 453 Rubin, Barbara Blatt, 508 Rudabánya, 453 Rudnšany, 454 Ruffini, Agostino, 483 Runn, lake, 441 rural, 125; areas, 311, 324, 371, 375; artisans, 322; creditors, 498; domains, 321; environs, 325; growers, 595; hinterland, 165; industry, 368; land, 312; markets, 165, 168, 175; people, 370; population, 368; proletariat, 71; properties, 570; servants, 523; settlements, 302; urban-rural relationship, 572, 595-6 Rye, 246 Sachsenberg, 445 Sahara, 412, 415; central, 387; copper, 411, 441, 456; northern, 421, 426; transSaharan trade, 98, 411-3, 416, 418, 429, 438, 441, 447, 456; trade routes, 394, 396; westcentral, 413-5 Sahel, 394 Saigerprozess, 392; Saigerhütte, 392 salvation economy, 60, 79-80 Saint Louis, King of France, 262-3

640 Saint-Bertin, Abbey of, 199 Saint-Omer, 199, 313, 326, 328; constitution, 324; fairs, 330 Saint-Quentin, 326-7 Salisbury, 216 Salon, 263 Salviati (family), 467 Salzach, 447 Samaran, Colette, 265 Samuel, 431 San Miniato al Tedesco, 460-1 San Salvatore, Abbey of, 273, 276 Sanchez, Manuel, 123 Sandwich, 180, 239, 246, 470 Sangerhausen Revier, 445 Santarém, 211 Santiago Island, 110 Santiago de Compostella, 244, 248-50 São Tomé Island, 99, 110-1 São Jorge da Mina, 99, 101-3, 110, 221 Sardinia, 129, 135-6 Savoy, 265 Saxony, 387 449; ores, 442, 445 Scarborough, 154, 176, 182, 238, 239 Scheldt River, 330 Scheler, August, 508 Schladming, 448 Schleswig-Holstein, 573 Schmoller, Gustav, 71 Schwabboden, 449 Schwaz, 449, 457 Schwaz-Brixlegg, 448 Sciacca, 299, 300, 307 Scotland, 188; wars with England, 239 Selonnet, 261 Semmeringstraße, 450 Senegal, 94, 108,

INDEX

seisin, 168-169, 171 Senj (Segna), 450 Serbia, 393; gold, 393; mining, 394 serfdom, 257-258, 262, 266 serfs, 258, 262-264 Sersanders, Jan, 556 servitude, 257-268 Seyne, 261 al-Shaé‘baéníé, Yashbak, 401, 403, 408 sharecropping, see mezzadria Sherborne, J. W., 235 shipbuilding, 240, 245, 248, 253, 551 shipping, 233-5, 244-5, 350-3, British, 248; cost of, 237, 373; copper, 419; “Councils of Shipping,” 240; Crown reliance on, 240; depots, 175; economies, 245; enemy, 250; expansion of, 248, 349; experts, 2401; foreign, 251; industry, 241; investment, 250; lanes, 245; late medieval, 239; to Maghrib, 429; mercantile, 236-7, 249; and Parliament, 241; trade, 252; and war, 239-40, 253; Western Mediterranean, 447; Valencian, 416; Venetian, 406; West Country (England), 249 ships, 203, 239, 242, 248, 251, 308, 374, 406, 426, 468, 517; arrival of, 108, 204; blockade, 207; building, 237; cargo, 236; costs of, 238; Crown and, 106, 235-238, 241, 243-4, 248; funding for, 249; impressment, 236, 241-4; merchant, 236; naval service, 246-7; and Parliament, 241-2; paying for, 238; sold, 123, supply, 103; value of, 235; and war, 199, 236, 239, 241, 243-4 shopkeepers, 240

INDEX

shops, shopping, 464, 491, 493-501, 503-7, 508-30 Shrewsbury, 152, 155, 169, 170, 182 Shropshire, 154 Sicily, 297-8, 302-3 308; governments, 304-5; markets, 298; ports, 299; towns, 299, 301, 305, 307; wheat, 298-300, 307 Sicily, Kingdom of, 302, 306, 309 Siena, Gerard de, 41-2, 46-8 50-7 Siena, 273, 280, 286, 290, 464 Sierra Leone, 109 Sijilmassa (Tafilelt), 413, 415 silver, 95, 313, 378-9, 387, 389, 391-4, 396-7, 399-405, 407-10, 413, 415, 439, 444-6, 449, 4523, 484, 494-6, 502, 507, 509, 511, 513, 527, 533, 584; silver mining, 391-3, 387 Sisteron, 261 Slánské Hory, 453 Slovakia, 393; Central, 451, 453; copper, 438, 441, 447, 450-1, 454-7; Eastern, 453; gold, 392; ores and minerals, 440, 451, 454-5; mines and mining, 394, 438, 453; silver, 393 Sluys, 199, 200 Smale, William, 251, 253 Smith, Robert D., 187 Smolník (Szmolnokbánya, Schmöllnitz), 453-5 social, asocial, 41; barriers, 297; capital, 114; changes, 223, 571; class, 565, 582; composition, 588; consequences, 233; crises, 91; derogation, 571; dislocation, 268; divisions, 260; domination, 262; force, 260; goals, 91; groups, 165; hierarchy, 569; history and historians, 569, 571; identity, 539, 544, 566; implications, 570; intentionality, 271; interaction, 114;

641

landscape, 259-60; level, 588-9, 594; life, 211, 542-3; lineage, 570; logic, 547; meaning, 564; necessity, 45; order, 539, 559, 565, 571, 587; payments, 1134; position, 559; place, 568; privilege, 571; processes, 89, 569-570; project, 562; promotion, 565; rank, 213, 242, 570; relations, 59, 271; rewards, 565; roles, 260; science, 271; significance, 565; sphere, 66; strategies, 117; status, 259, 595; structure, 259; system, 269; tensions, 564; ties, 212; unrest, 214; variability, 165; work societal, approach, 89; autonomy, 66; order, 75, 77-8; spheres, 82 society/societies, 363, 403, 564, 593; capitalist, 571; commercial, 542; commercialized, 308; European, 80; human, 56; market, 544, 571; Northern European, 538; record, 157, 180-3; and war, 233 socioeconomic, areas, 594; category, 582; conditions, 592; groups, 582; importance, 543; levels, 597; nature, 593; status, 576, 582; strata, 587; transformation, 543 Sombart, Werner, 60-1 71, 73-4, 76 Somerset, 153 Somme River, 320, 326-7, 330, 336-7, 340-1, 343-4, 346-7 Sonnenberger Moor, 444 Sorell, Solomon, 431 Southampton, 169, 175, 181, 240, 245-6, 470; Italian imports, 470; merchants, 468; port of, 218; revenues, 218; wool, 468, 470 Southwark, 179 sovereignty, 92, 119, 140, 543

642

INDEX

Spain, 188, 407, 456; ships, 251; Sicilian wheat, 298 SŠpania Dolina, valley, 452 Spencer, 216 Spinelli, Tommaso, 465 spices, 122, 228, 405-6, 468, 496, 584, 591, 595, 595, 603; African, 97-8, 417-8; spicers, 496, 505, 514; spicing, 498, 501, 511, 526; trade, 108, 223, 2278, 230, 405-7; wines (spiced), 498, 524 Spisš (Zips), 453 Spisšská Nová Ves, 453 Spisšsko-Gemerské Rudohorie, 453 St Ives, 183 St John, Knights of, 304 St Kenelm the Martyr, 517 St Victor of Marseille, Abbey of, 258, 260 St Vällan, lake, 441 Stamford, 322, 519, 524 Stapel, 324 Staré Hory (Altgebirg), 452 Starohorské Vrchy, 451 state/states, 89, 308; city-states, 287, 467; “domain state,” 117; enterprise, 91; finances and credit, 119, 142, 143-4; Iberian, 127; late medieval, 91; Sicily, 298, 301, 309 Steenvoorde, 324 Stephan, Hans-Georg, 587 Štiavnica, Banská, 451-2; stratovolcano, 451; ore district, 452 stipulatio (Roman law contract), 49 stock exchange, German, 60, 69-70 Strasbourg, 380; grain prices, 3612 Stufford, 182 Styria, 448 Suakin, 396

Sudan, Western, 411, 416, 434 Suffolk, 246 Sugden, R., 270 Sumption, Jonathan, 189 Susen, Ayon, 426, 431-2, 437 Susen, Haim, 430-1 Sussex, 149, 153, 246 Svätodusšná, 452 SŠvedlár (Schwedler), 454 Sweden, copper, 441; firewood, 369 Switzerland, 472 Syracuse, 299, 305 Syria, 402 Tabelbala, 424 Tademaït Plateau, 421 Tafilalt, 413, 415, 423 Tagenduhet, castrum de, 424 Tagus River, 228 ibn Taghríé-Birdíé, Abué al-Maha . é sin Yuésuf, 402 Tamentit (Tamantít), 421, 423-4; Jews, 425 Tamest, 423 Tanezruft (Sahara Desert), 413, 421, 424 Tangier, defence of, 221 Taoism, 76-7 Tartary, 399 Tatra Mountains, D Š umbierské Tatry, 451; Lower (Nízké Tatry), 451 taxes and taxation, 91-2, 96, 105, 107, 112, 224, 231, 461; burden and coercion, 124, 13740, 142, 173; censal, 126, 128, 130-5, 139, 141-2; civic, 119; collection, 140, 143; comital, 265; consumption, 119, 122-3, 127, 132, 134, 142-3; customary, 216, 223; direct, 152; dízima, 223; exemptions, 221,

INDEX

243; export, 328; extraordinary, 123, 126, 129, 134-5, 138; forms of, 148; indirect, 122-3, 304; imposicions, 122-4, 126, 128, 130, 132, 134-5, 138-9; institutions, 188; Manresa, 12342; municipal, 132-42, 224, 374; ordinary, 129, 218; port towns, 253; regular, 125, 12931, 138, 228; sale of, 123-4; sales taxes, 172; sisa, 107, 2235, 227, 229, 231; tallia, 123, 130-2, 134, 139; trade, 156, 172, 306; violari, 130-3, 135 war, 233, 268-9 tax farming, 96, 106, 108-10, 113, 115, 132, 151, 154-5, 169, 173, 252, 304 Taunton, 153 Taurirt, 435 Telkibánya, 453 teloneum, 148, 170 textiles, crafts, 497; display of, 102; entrepreneurs, 321-2; Flemish, 310; industry, 310-1, 323, 334; imported, 223; magnates, 327; trades, 234, 504-6; workers, 321-2, 504-6, 588 (see also “cloth” and “clothing”) theology, moral, 41-53, 56-8 Terranova, 305, 307 Tewkesbury, 153 Thames River, 210, 246 Thomas, R., 270 Thomaz, Luís Felipe, 89, Thorn (Torux), 441 Thorold Rogers, James, 161, 164 Tichá Voda (Stillbach), 454 Tidikelt, 421 time, sale of, 48 Timmi, 423-4 tin, 244, 250, 420, 430, 438, 510 Tirol, 447

643

Tits-Dieuaide, Marie-Jeanne, 350-1 Tlemcen, 415, 434-5 Tokaj Mountains, 453 tolls, 112, 146-83; Anglo-Saxon, 149; assessing, 148, 156; collection, 146-7, 149-50, 152-3, 156, 168-9, 173-5, 177-8; collectors, 151-2, 162, 165, 167-8, 173-4, 177; customary, 148; description of, 147; documents, 147; Domesday Book, 149; disputes, 169, 173; evasion, 167; exemption/freedom from, 148-9, 16571, 244, 307; grants of, 151-2, 155, 169; impact of, 148, 165; lists of, 147, 149, 152, 156, 179; local, 148-154, 156-60, 163, 166-7, 169, 172, 175, 17983; market, 153; murage, 155; passage of goods (thurghtoll, teloneum, teoloneum, theolonium), 148; paying and payers, 146, 148, 165-7, 171-17; policy, 174; privileges, 170; public works, 149, 151-4, 156-7, 159-60, 1667, 169-72, 175-7, 181; rates, 147-8, 150, 157-66, 172-4, 177; revenue/income generated, 147, 149, 151-5, 167, 174; right to collect, 150-1, 168-9, 173; sales, 148-9; schedules, 156, 174; special, 148; structure of, 158; “toll and team,” 149; towns, 151-4; and trade, 146-8, 161, 172-8; on trade, 300, 435; transit, 149; types/forms of, 146-8, 151, 156; use of, 147, 176 Tommaso, Cecco di, and brothers, 475, 480, 483 Toreyó, Joan, 425, 431-2 Torhout, 329, 334; fairs, 330, 3323 Torres, Dolors Pifarré, 416, 419 Torksey, 158, 179 Tortosa, 123

644

INDEX

Tosinghi, Giovanni, 433-4, 437 Totnes, 500, 519, 524 Toulouse, 514 Tourelles, 191 Tournai, 189, 326, 337, 339, 341, 343-4, 346-7 towns, 350, 352, 362, 371, 375-6, 378, 402, 507, 597; bailiwick, 121; Brabant, 325; capture of, 192-3; charters, 146, 149, 1691, 224; Catalan, 120; coastal, 198, 203; councillors, 128; customary, 146; defence, 137, 193, 202, 208, 238, 243, 253; economy, 239; English, 147, 15083, 200, 233-53, 349-50, 374-5; feudal, 121; Flemish, 315, 321, 324-5; food supply, 363, 36870, 372-4; fortifications, 194; fuel, 369-73; French, 192-3; German, 361; government, 146, 173, 301, 316; gilds, 165, 172; hinterland, 165, 174; Hungary, 451, 453; Italian, 328, 374-5; jurisdiction, 319; leadership, 151; litigation, 171; Low Countries, 190, 208, 361, 375; market, 121, 153, 172; medieval, 507; mining, 453; networks, 297; Netherlands, 351; North Sea, 349-50; northern Europe, 375; patricians, 140; Picardy, 327; population, 325, 363, 3712, 374-5; port, 233-40, 243, 248, 253; Portuguese, 211, 224, 227; Provence, 262, 267; real estate, 62; records, 136, 491; resources, 132; revenues, 237-8; rights and privileges, 168-83; rivalries, 208; royal, 132-3; Sicily, 299, 301, 304-5, 307-8; taxes and tolls, 132, 151-77; townspeople, 121, 146, 193, 195, 201, 312, 370, 372; size, 363, 371-5, 377; villa, 122; walls, 151, 202, 349; Walloon, 324, 326

Trapani, 299 trade, 62, 74, 76, 146, 156, 163, 166, 172-3, 180-1, 191, 207, 221, 328-34, 349-50, 353, 362, 378, 404-6, 416, 425, 468-70, 477, 482, 484-5, 538, 548, 559, 571, 589; Asia, 101; balance of, 467, 470; Balearic copper trade, 411-57; bulk, 407; bullion, 383; carrying, 249-51; centres, 434, 447; costs of, 178, 308; conduct of, 178; control of, 208; constraints on, 308; development of, 147; commodities and goods, 150, 153, 157-9, 165, 407, 568; English, 147, 156, 166, 327; export, 407; fish, 319; flow of, 297, 305, 415; food, 174, 350, 376; foreign, 228; geography of, 161; gold, 227-8, 388, 390, 399, 406-7; in goods, 389, 405; grain, 297-300, 305-6, 353-6; Hanseatic, 450; impediments to, 161; impact on, 153; import, 407; India, 231, 101; international, 163; inter-regional, 300, 310; intra-European, 349; internal, 300, 306; Jewish, 4245; local, 163, 331; longdistance, 163, 349, 374, 446; manual, 420; maritime, 234-5, 413, 415; metal, 438; network, 389; overland, 349; overseas, 228, 230, 238, 248, 250; passenger, 249; permits, 300; private, 110; regional, 121, 308, 326; right to, 167, 171; role of, 297; royal interference, 176; “secrets,” 426; shipping, 252; silver, 391; slave, 106, 113, 118; small-scale, 163, 174; specie, 389, 399, 405; spice, 97, 107; 223, 227-8, 230, 405-7; taxation on, 156, 172, 223, 306; terms of, 275; textile, 234; tolls and, 146-8, 161, 163, 165, 168, 172; trans-Saharan, 394,

INDEX

416, 422-4, 441; unit of, 157; urban, 275, 491, 503; volume, 172, 223; wholesale, 166, 321; with West Africa, 92, 94-112, 115, 117-8, wine, 246, 327; wool, 163, 328-9, 467-8, 483 traders, 106, 172-5, 178, 378; converso, 433; foreign, 167; indigenous, 405; Jewish, 429, 433; local, 175; long-distance, 374; low-level, 495; Maghrib, 425, 427, 431-2; petty, 165, 172, 174; private, 98, 106; retail, 494, 503; river, 374; small-scale, 163, 165, 174-5; stock-market, 70; urban, 172 trades, urban, 284, 493, 589; food and drink, 493, 495-8, 500-3, 506, 511-12, 513, 515-7, 523-7, 530-2; leather and skins, 494-5, 497, 501-6, 509-11, 515, 523, 527-9, 533-4; metals, 494-6, 501, 503-6, 507, 509-13, 515, 523, 527-8; stone, 505, 509; textiles, 493, 496-500, 502, 504-5, 510, 513-16, 523-4, 533; wood, 497, 510, 514 transport/transportation, 102-103, 156, 193, 242, 246-7, 373, 539, 578; costs, 352, 362-4, 373, 375, 377-9, 468, 470; desert, 394; horses, 236, 241; improvements in, 353; inland, 374; metal, 425; mode of, 147, 163; network, 394; pilgrim, 246-9; river, 374; sea, 299; technology, 286, 375; “Transport of Flanders,” 325; troops, 235 Trave River, 572 Trento, 447 Treppenhauer, 445 Trevelyan (family), 252 Trieste, 450 Troeltsch, Ernst, 72, 72 tronage, 154 Tuareg, 434

645

Tuat, 411-3, 415-6, 421-6, 433-7, 455-6, 458 Tuat al-henna (see Zaglou), 423 Tudela, Bernat, 425, 427 Tudela, Jaume, 429 Tudor dynasty, 211 tunnage, 216-8, 220, 252 Turner, Hilary, 155 Turner, Thomas Hudson, 493 Tuscany, 54, 273, 464; agriculture, 292; merchants, 411, 419, 460; towns, 374 Tyrrhenian Basin, 389 Tyrol, 448 Ubaldi, Baldus degli, 54 Ulverston, 173 Ungheria (see Hungary), 451 Unterharz, 444 Unterinntal, 448 urban, 572; agglomerations, 597; analysis, 366-7; areas, 324, 334; artisans, 503; budgets, 153; characteristics, 310; consumers, 373; consellers, 120; centres, 299, 371, 375; charters, 170, 231; commerce, 491, 503, 506; creditors, 498, 523; crisis, 143; debt, 120; demand/needs, 297, 308, 374, 376; development, 120; dwellers/urbanites, 275, 349, 369-70, 373, 565-7; elites, 308, 576; economy, 67, 542543; “enterprise zones,” 172; finance, 124, 148, 150; gardens, 572; government, 120, 374; growth, 376, 446; households, 507; institutions, 120; legislation, 375; life, 152, 491; markets, 350, 352, 374, 595-6; masses, 301; occupations, 493 498, 504; population, 128, 363, 372; poverty, 507; rights, 454; servants, 523; tax and revenue, 120, 122-3; trade and traders,

646

INDEX

172, 491, 503; trades and crafts, 503-4, 516; types, 160; urban-rural relationship, 572, 595-6; unrest, 120 urbanization, 311, 349-50, 374 usury (usura, usurae), 41-86; Aristotle on, 41-2, 51, 56-8; “extrinsic titles” to, 57, 64, 83; Gerard of Siena on, 47-53; Giovanni d’Andrea on, 54-6; Henry of Susa on, 45; laws, 63, 64, 67, 71; prohibition of, 45, 47-50, 59-79, 81-5; restitution of, 46; Roman law definition of, 49; Thomas Aquinas on, 50; Weber, Max on, 59-86 Utrecht, 380; grain prices, 354, 356, 359-61 Valencia, 412, 427-8, 431; copper, 429, 431, 434, 437; Datini branch, 418, 429, 431, 433; intermediaries, 418; Muslim merchants, 429, 433; shipping, 416 Vallis dominorum (Herrengrund valley), 452 Valle del Fersina, 447 Valle Imperina, 447 Valois, Dukes of, 187 value, 50-3, 55-6, 284; of bills of exchange, 471-2, 474-8; capital, 277; of cargo, 406; of commodities/goods/merchandise, 156-7, 161-5, 329, 543; coinage, 484; currency, 362, 399, 402-4, 468; exchange, 313, 475, 482; of fungibles, 52, 55; of gardens, 572; of gold, 408-9; of immovables, 555; of imports, 470-1; imposicions, 124; intrinsic, 51, 313, 402-4; of land, 539, 575; market, 99, 565; of markets, 153; measure of 41; monetary, 50; of movables, 539; of sales, 163; ships, 235; silver, 95; source of, 41; 50-3, 55-6; of

tolls, 153; of trade, 112, 406; of wool, 469 values, 77, 83, 544, 565, 568 Van der Wee, Herman, 350, 351 Van Haaster, Henk, 586, 589 Var River, 263-4 Varpan, lake, 441 Vatican, 424 Vaughan, Richard, 196, 203 Vaz, Estevão, 103 Velebitski Kanal (Canale della Morlacca/della Montagna), 450 Veneto, 447 Venice, 120, 134-5, 142, 144-5, 404, 407, 411-2, 416, 439, 464, 472, 475-6; and Aragon, 428; banking, 475; bills of exchange, 476; Borromei, 460, 464, 471, 475-6, 480, 481-3, 485; companies, 464; copper, 411, 416, 419-21, 424, 426-8, 430, 433, 438, 440, 447-50, 454-7; currency, 401; exchange rates, 473-4; exports, 400, 406; firms and agents, 419, 424; galleys, 416, 427-9, 431, 469, 472; gold-silver ratio, 398, 400, 406, 407; lagoon, 450; merchants, 392, 424, 427, 475; money market, 471; shipping, 426, 433; textiles, 469; tin, 420; trade, 406 Ventura & Co., 475 Veporské Pásmo, 451 Veporské Vrchy, 451 Verdon River, 264 Verzona (galley), 428 Veurne, 325, 337, 339, 341, 344, 346-7; castellany of, 316, 319, 324, 337, 339, 341-5, 347 Vienna, 450 Vienne, Council of (1311-1312), 56 Villadestes, Mecià de, 424 Visby, 441

INDEX

Visconti, Dukes of Milan, 461, 465 Viseu, Duchy of, 221, 228 Vismara, Taddeo di Ardizio, 388 Vitaliani (family), Gerolimo, 462; Giacomo, 462 Von Thünen, Johan, 363-9, 376 Volovské Vrchy (Volovec, Ochsenberg), 453 Volterra, 464 Waitz, Georg, 492, 517 Wakenitz River, 573, 583 Walaéta, 413, 423 Walchen Valley, 448 Wales, 235-6, 246, 468 Warendorp, Wilhelm von, 587 Wargla, 387, 415 wars and warfare, 91, 119; Aragon-Castile, 124, 128, 136; Aragon-Genoa, 135, 136; Aragon-Genoa-Venice, 142; Aragon-Sicily, 300; benefits, 239; civil, 124, 136, 144, 214, 483; domestic, 259; expenditures, 91; England-Scotland, 239; fifteenth-century, 188; financing and taxation, 119, 128, 135, 187, 189, 190, 191, 233, 268-9, 436; Flanders, 310; Genoa-Venice (War of Chioggia), 144; Hundred Years War, 187-8, 190-1, 195-6, 198, 209, 233-5, 239, 240, 245, 249, 2534; Iberia, 136; impact, 119, 142, 161, 233-5, 237, 238, 253, 351, 428; material and supplies, 199, 236, 237; medieval, 187; Portugal-Castile, 220, 223, 428; shipping, 236, 237, 239, 241-2, 244-7, 249; sieges, 195, 208; Wars of the Roses, 216, 220 Warwick, Earl of, 216 Warwick, estates, 216, 218 Waterford, 182

647

Waurin, Jean de, 195, 196, 200 wealth, 91-92, 227-8, 248, 464-5, 535, 542, 553, 555, 559, 561, 565; as capital, 564; circulation of, 562, 571; immovable, 538-9; king’s, 215; metropolitan, 221; movable, 538-9, 56; nature of, 564; patrimonial, 555; per capita, 126; private, 215; public, 215; “real,” 543 Weber, Max, 59-84; dissertation, 60, 61, 67; Economy and Society, 61, 73, 75 77; History of Commercial Partnerships, 61; Protestant Ethic, 60, 67-8, 70-1, 73-5, 79; non-Christian religions, 767; “spirit of capitalism,” 67-8 71; usury, 60-1, 67, 72-3, 75-84 Weinberger, Stephen, 260 Welf, 444 Wennington, Robert, 252 West Country, 249, 252, 254 Westminster, 177, 240; Abbey, 492, 517 Wettinger, Godfrey, 303 Weymouth, 246 William the Conqueror, King of England, 188 Wilson, Alan G., 365 Winchelsea, 246 Winchester, 180, 183, 517 wine, 49, 51, 119, 121-3, 127, 137, 158-60 162, 165, 223, 238, 245-51, 277, 281, 327, 495, 498, 501-5, 511, 524, 530-2 Winter, S. G., 272 Wissenbach, 442 Wisla River (Vistula), 441 Wobes, Timo, 587 Wolkenburg, 446 Wolof, 108 wool, buying of, 322, 328-9, 46770, 478; cloth and clothing, 477, 496-7, 500, 507, 510-1,

648

INDEX

513, 516; draper, 502, 507, 513-5; England, 147, 158-66, 175, 327, 329, 467-70, 478; exports, 328-9, 469, 477, 481; imports, 69; Italian buyers and sellers, 328-9, 467-70; Maghribi, 417; market, 163; price of, 161; merchants, 175; revenue from, 127, 147, 158-63, 175, 328; sale of, 165-6, 416; shipping of, 175, 328; Staplers, 477; trade in, 163, 328-9, 4678, 470, 483; workers, 498, 506, 516; value of, 164, 469; yield, 163-4 Worcester, 168, 182 Wright, Thomas, 508 Wyffels, Carlos, 311 Xipio, Jucef, 429 Yarmouth, 159, 239, 246 Yaxley, 179 Yemen, 387, 402 York, 171, 182; crown estates, 218 York, Duke of, 215 Yorkshire, 246 Ypres, 188, 208, 310, 313, 315-6, 319, 322, 324, 327-9, 333, 3369, 341-2, 344-5, 347; capital and credit, 320, 322 324, 327, 329, 331-4, 336; castellany, 321, 324, 332, 337, 339, 341, 342, 344-5, 347; central place, 312, 321-2, 325-6, 330-1, 3334; citizens, 319, 325, fairs, 314, 329, 330-3, 339-40, 342-8; government, 312-3, 316, 319, 322, 328; industry, 311, 316, 321, 327, 329; legal system, 324 merchants, 322, 327, 329; port, 319; residents, 321, 322; rebellions, 322; suburbs and satellites, 321, 324; troops, 205, 206 Zaglou, 423

Zagreb, 450 Západné Karpaty, 451 Zeeland, 207 zentner (unit of weight), 392, 454-5 Zerner, Monique, 257, 260-1, 264, 266 zinc, 420, 439, 448, 453 Zschopau Valley, 445 Zwickauer Mulde, 446 Zwin River, 208