I. POPULATION GROWTH AND MOBILITY

The development of economic life was accompanied by a process of expansion and diversification of society. If new prospects emerged and could be exploited, it was because the efforts of dense social groups helped bring them about and give them momentum; and such groups were formed amid an intense social crisis.

The progressive economic contraction that made the feudal period what it is unquestionably coincided with a process of demographic decline, noticeable from the mid-sixth century and bound up with the epidemics sweeping the world in that century. But from the mid-tenth century, a change began to take place. In ways that were visible but hard to quantify, the demographic frame began to change, and various signs began to show that the population was growing beyond the traditional economic and social frames. The population of England, which stood at 1,100,000 inhabitants in 1086 according to the data entered in the Domesday Book, had risen to 1,900,000 by around 1200 and to 3,300,000 by 1300. The population of France grew at a similar, albeit less steady rate, to a calculated 4,000,000 by the end of the eleventh century, 6,900,000 by 1200 and 12,000,000 by 1300. Various events suggest that a similar phenomenon was occurring everywhere.^[1]

If the birth rate rose, as it almost certainly did, the effects were quickly felt in various economic and social phenomena. The entire feudal-bourgeois period was convulsed, on the one hand, by an intense shuffling of populations who emigrated and redistributed, escaping from the narrow confines in which they had been enclosed and seeking out broader horizons, and on the other, by a no less lively movement of isolated individuals who aspired to finding better living conditions by moving away from the places where they had been born. To feed the old and new populations larger quantities of food were obviously needed, which had to be secured by improved methods of production and, above all, by setting aside vast tracts of hitherto fallow land for cultivation. Of particular importance, however, was the emergence of new urban groupings and the rise in population of existing ones, revealed not only by the evidence of their growing population density but by the repeated need to erect new walls around the suburbs springing up alongside the old ones. Military conscription, burdens of taxation and, most notably, ecclesiastical organization – implemented across ever more extensive territories, through the creation of many new parishes – reflected the needs of increasingly numerous social hubs spread across broader geographical areas.

There was, then, population growth from the mid-tenth century and throughout the period leading up to the mid-fourteenth. But this demographic expansion was accompanied by a sharp acceleration in ecological and social mobility, and it is perhaps this fact – more evident and better documented, let it be noted – that provides a deeper explanation for the tone of the period’s social and cultural changes. Those who managed to escape the frames of a social ordering that nullified them as subjects acting with will and aspirations, rose through society to become new consumers, holders of personal opinions, members of groups seeking a certain type of action – in short, economically and socially active subjects. This sometimes occurred in the same sphere where they previously acted as inert members of the community, but more often than not in another sphere altogether, to which they had emigrated in order precisely to start a new life. The fortunes of those rising and falling through the social classes made a particular impression on observers the fates of men seeking their fortunes in the great mercantile centres – Ricordano Malespini and Giovanni Villani among them^[2] – for triumph or failure was more visible in them. Yet surely no less significant was the case of those who, faithful to their customs, uprooted themselves only to take up the hoe again in other lands, even if it meant defending them with the sword against frontier foes, or those who renewed their ways of life in their own cities. All of them weighed the risk against the prospects of achieving fortune and, above all, the hope of finding a way out of the mass of economically and socially inert individuals and acquiring an individuated personality.

Both the transformation of traditional rural groups and the development of urban groups renewed the face of society and multiplied the effectiveness of countless individuals, undoubtedly greater in number than a century before, but above all greater in their capacity to make and produce as active, individualized members of the community. The upshot of this dual quantitative and qualitative phenomenon was the steady formation of feudal-bourgeois society.

II. THE TRANSFORMATION OF TRADITIONAL GROUPS

In rural areas, a process of change began first to emerge then intensify at the start of the feudal-bourgeois period. While the landed aristocracy sought to institutionalize its situation, consolidate its privileges and, above all, secure the patrimoniality of its lands and its sons’ right of inheritance, the entire social system began to fall apart at the very moment when efforts were being made to stabilize it permanently. The upheaval was felt particularly keenly in the subordinate sectors, which passively resisted this attempt at consolidation; all who found a favourable opportunity ran from it and seized upon the new opportunities offered by other economic activities outside the rural sphere to emancipate themselves. After a short period of time, the movement to liberate the serfs and the renewal of economic conditions in the rural sphere would eventually remove the legal distinction between serfs and freemen in the peasant population, reducing both to a single category of rustici. But then the boundaries previously separating the different groups became blurred. The ‘poor’, the ‘common folk’, those who owned nothing, began to draw the attention of the landed rich and powerful in a way they never had before: hospitals were founded for the sick, houses for lepers (of which there were two thousand in France by 1225),^[3] shelters for pilgrims, and kings began to consider protecting the poor as one of their duties.^[4] The conspicuous phenomena of upward mobility dissolved the notion of the connaturality of their social status, and the boundaries and distinctions between the groups tended to weaken. The words Seneschal Jean de Joinville wrote to King Louis IX of France’s chaplain, Robert de Bourbon, reproaching him for living more luxuriously than the king, are highly significant:^[5] ‘Master Robert, I merit no reproach for wearing green and sable, for I was left this manner of dressing by my mother and father; but you do merit it, for you are the son of villeins and have abandoned the manner of dressing of your father and mother and are dressed in richer camelhair than the king’s.’ Indeed, while the subordinate sectors were carving out a niche and their members slipping individually into the many avenues towards social advancement presented by the circumstances, the old aristocracy tended to draw back and close ranks, accentuating its class features.

This was how the nobility of the milites – knights – was formed, for, as Guibert de Nogent put it, ‘the horse represents the glory of this world.’^[6] While striving to ensure the dependency of all other sectors, the milites saw themselves legally speaking as men with no dependency. A fairly extensive tract of land over which a knight could exercise a degree of authority assured him relative wealth, which may need to be bolstered by extending his holdings or modifying the forms of exploitation. The nobility needed to perpetuate itself as a class and tried to achieve this by closing its ranks; and, while it was not entirely successful, as it could not withstand the onrush of intense mobility shaking up the entire social order, it at least sought to make both possessions and ranks hereditary. It also sought to assert its elite status through a kind of life that could demonstrate its members’ undeniable superiority in tastes and refinement, as well as that lent by their possession of wealth and power.

William Rufus, the king of England ‘liked to surround himself pompously with a multitude of knights […] whom he greatly favoured in their worldly splendour,’ notes Orderic Vitalis,^[7] adding that ‘he was wont to forgetting to protect the peasants from the knights.’ Guibert de Nogent says that Edward the Confessor ‘knew the French taste for elegant manners,’ and for that reason sent a chaplain as envoy who, when he became Bishop of Laon, ‘laid his hopes for success in his opulence […] which he knew how to utilise to lay on sumptuous banquets.’^[8] Courtly life was acquiring a precise profile clearly defined rules. It provided a backdrop for a refined literature and framed the everyday existence of the seigneurs, who, as Jacques de Vitry said in the first half of the thirteenth century, ‘given to prodigality and luxury, incurred many an unnecessary expense for their tournaments and their pompous worldly vanities.’^[9] And the immense new demands for money to meet the needs of outward ostentation were generally resolved by giving in to the temptation of business dealings and by accepting new forms of economic activity alien to rural tradition.

But in spite of its tendency to define itself as a class, the nobility never became a homogenous social group. To begin with, its ranks included a vigorous ecclesiastical sector made up partly by members of aristocratic families and partly by families that had risen on the back of fortunes amassed by one of their members – as popes, cardinals, archbishops or abbots – long before the time of Nicholas III, whom Salimbene and Giovanni Villani regarded as the earliest practitioners of nepotism.^[10] But most strikingly, it comprised clearly-defined groups, some of high and others of low nobility. Princes, barons, ricos-omes, capitaines, Ritter, knights, these were powerful men, men of proven lineage, usually with political and administrative functions; vavasours, infanzones, fijosdalgo were lesser nobles who formed a less closed segment as a group than the high nobility. Those who succeeded in rising to knighthood from lower strata in effect linked themselves to them. Not all those offered this prospect turned down the opportunity, like the soldier whom Frederick Barbarossa offered the belt of knighthood for his heroism. In general, they sought out and accepted knighthood, and Otto von Freising himself,^[11] who had recounted that episode, pointed out that the Lombard cities ‘did not spurn the granting of knighthood or ranks of distinction to young men of lower station and even certain workers engaged in base mechanical arts’. It was a common occurrence. Early in the eleventh century, Conrad II ‘by his own fair hand, made knights of many citizens of Florence and placed them in his service’;^[12] much later, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, Charles of Valois did likewise to seek out the support of the central Italian cities; in France, too, in the days of Philip III and Philip the Fair, it was common practice; and in Flanders, Count Gui de Dampierre knighted Pierre le Roy ‘and more than forty from the commune’ at the Battle of Courtrai, promising them, should they be victorious, that he would bestow hereditary status on their new titles.^[13] The incorporation of these new knights, along with the ministerials who attained that rank, opened up the lower layers of the nobility and facilitated not only their alignment with the bourgeois patrician class in joint mercantile operations but also their connections via mixed marriage.

At the same time, the nobility was under duress on a variety of fronts: it came under pressure from urban groups in places like Florence,^[14] where the nobles complained to Frederick Barbarossa that the commune had taken the castles and fortresses, while elsewhere being tempted with financial inducements to sell its estates or adjust the regime that exploited them. In such cases, and in others that similarly jeopardised the foundations of its stability, the nobility itself on several occasions and the royal power on several others sought ways to contain the process of change through constitutions or privileges that generally guaranteed the irrevocable, hereditary and inviolable nature of fiefs, while also legislating to ensure they were not divided up or sold and to reaffirm the seigneurs’ prerogatives in face of pressure from the different social groups.^[15]

But, while the attempt to fix the nobility’s status by juridical means was successful and its members were able to adopt a form of life that would demonstrate the uniqueness of their station, nothing could prevent its internal structure from being shaken. The lower layers of the nobility itself were unsettled, and all the dependent sectors were equally unsettled at the prospect that the traditional fabric of society might be ripped up and that, freed of personal tutelage, its members might embark on individual ventures in pursuit of wealth.

The extreme and most visible phenomenon of this change was the developing trend to grant serfs manumission, closely related to the gradual extinction of domainal latifundia and to the spread of leasing and taxation on rents or services. The shift in legal circumstances was followed by a certain rise in social standing for those manumitted, not so much because their own status improved but because they came to share a similar status as free colonists. Together they gradually merged into the condition of rustici, and all sharing a certain type of dependency – variable, of course, but fundamentally similar – and, at the same time, a certain tendency to grasp the opportunities offered by the new economic situations.

Unsettled by the promising new uncertainty – which had substituted the harsh security of seigneurial paternalism – the vast class of rustici or peasants constituted a revolutionary sector ready to weaken the traditional order through evasion and to strengthen the new forms of economic relations by inserting themselves in them and attaining a standing different from the one they had previously held.

Given the favourable economic circumstances, all that was needed to set off the revolution was the emergence of suitable social and policies circumstances. These were not in short supply. Periods of royal minority, civil war, jurisdictional conflict, all enabled numerous individual or collective migrations of varying degrees, as did local conflicts on a smaller scale. Once the traditional links with the seigneur and the land were broken, any uprooted peasant could embark on their personal venture, emancipated from the burdens that had previously fixed them in their status.

Yet, in spite of this, the position of those who had been serfs remained more difficult in some cases than that of the free peasant. It was reversible if their seigneur discovered them and they could not prove they had been enfranchised. In Champagne, if the seigneur found his old serf under another’s jurisdiction, he could reclaim him under the formula established by the AncienCoutumier:^[16] ‘Lord, this man is couchanz et levanz [i.e. a serf] before my justice; you must not listen to him for he comes not to you for want of justice or because I have issued a poor judgment. In view of this, I request that you send him to me.’ They were only safe if they could prove they had been manumitted, usually by means of a charter, the text of which might resemble the one granted by Emma de Dummart:^[17] ‘Let it be known to all, present and future, that I, Emma de Dummart, with the consent of my heirs, have granted freedom to my serf William, son of Baldwin; and I have guaranteed him and by this charter do confirm that he shall be free from all servitude to come and go freely or to go wherever he may wish as a free man. And for this freedom and its confirmation Richard, son of Hugh, has given me fifteen silver shillings for him. And if any should dispute it, I and my heirs shall guarantee it against whomsoever.’ But as socio-political instability allowed it and occasions abounded, individuals or groups emigrated in defiance of the risk of being reclaimed, if ill luck ever brought them face to face with their former seigneur. This risk hung over them regardless of the standing they might have attained. Queen Urraca claimed that three canons from the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela were her serfs and must serve her as such,^[18] and the assassination of Count Charles of Flanders was provoked by his attempt to reclaim as his servant the provost of the collegiate church of Saint Donatian in Bruges.^[19] How much easier, then, was it to question the freedom of those who had only become small landowners, rich merchants or simple craftsmen. Of any such man their seigneur could claim what the Abbot of Vézelay said of André du Marais: ‘he is mine from the soles of his feet to the crown of his pate.’^[20]

Formally freed, often individually, sometimes collectively, as in León in 1020, Santiago de Compostela in 1105 or Florence in 1289,^[21] or simply having their obligations and burdens lightened, as in the case of the villeneuves of Lorris in 1155 or of Beaumont-en-Argonne in 1182,^[22] former serfs acquired not only new opportunities for economic growth but for social advancement through marriage. Custom and legislation strove to regulate these new situations. In Flanders, it was established that a knight who married a serf would lose his freedom one year later;^[23] in England, the principle was established that the son of a serf would inherit that status even if his mother were free;^[24] but in France, the contrary principle usually applied; and in Champagne, provisions were made for the case of serfs marrying free men and noble women marrying serfs.^[25] Real-life situations circumvented and overtook traditional prescriptions in favour of the social mobility stimulated by the new economic opportunities. And alongside those cases in which the weight of custom or law came to prevail, many others – probably many more – ensured the renewal of the social structures and created a rich variety of situations.

Undoubtedly, the surest path to advancement was the ministerials’, who were serfs by origin but had been emancipated, de facto or de iure, and placed in positions of privilege through the favour of their seigneurs and the functions they performed. The case of the Erembaulds of Bruges became extremely notorious for their involvement in the assassination of Count Charles of Flanders;^[26] but countless others took advantage of this path to move up a class, most conspicuously in the Holy Empire and France. Called upon to perform an office – a ministerium – managing the administration of the castellany or serving as auxiliary troops, the serfs who did benefit from the seigneur’s proximity, confidence or opportunities such circumstances afforded them, acquired a degree of fortune and, from the eleventh century on, quickly improved their social status, especially regarding the power of command they acquired from their seigneurs. They soon achieved independence and the category of vassals – especially those carrying out administrative functions in the castellany related to the administration of the domain with its markets and cities; as a result of such offices, they grew in influence and wealth. Whether through marriage, access to ecclesiastical dignities – previously forbidden to serfs – or the consolidation of their position as vassals, they also succeeded in establishing a new echelon in this new, diversifying society.^[27]

For those who possessed nothing but their experience as farmhands but who aspired to escape dependency without changing their livelihood, the clearing of new land promoted by the seigneurs – either on their own estates or in far-flung regions they had conquered by force – offered an attractive new opportunity. At times it was the prospect of obtaining higher profits from increased production that led some seigneurs to promote the exploitation of woodlands or previously uncultivated lowlands. The growth of cities in particular drove up the demand for foodstuffs and seemed to guarantee profitable sales of produce. To carry out these ventures certain benefits were offered to farmers in the form of various franchises. At others it was the kings themselves who sought to develop crops in unproductive areas and subsequently establish new settlements with formally granted franchises. On occasion it was monks, especially Cistercians, who attracted the peasants to work uncultivated lands around their monasteries, always situated in sparsely populated regions. And it was often kings and seigneurs who conquered and subdued peripheral lands that tried to attract new settlers, who then had to work in dangerous conditions without neglecting the surveillance of the land granted to them ad populandum.^[28]

This process of incorporating vast tracts into arable land occurred in Castile and Aragón, in Germany (especially east of the Elbe), on the Baltic coast, in Poland, Bohemia and Hungary, as well as in the countless regions bordering already cultivated land that were cleared in Italy, France and the Netherlands. In all these regions, a class of peasants emerged – generally known as hospites – who attained a social and economic status different and better than the one they had had in the places they had emigrating from to occupy the new lands. Through cartas puebla (charters of settlement), fueros (municipal charters), cartas de franquicia (charters of franchise) or estatutos (statutes), their members acquired the status of freemen, broad exemption from tax burdens and liabilities and, in many cases, certain rights to administer the new community they had established. Importantly, the franchises granted to settlers of the new rural villages decisively influenced the demand for similar advantages by old settlers of traditional seigneuries. Another social group thus developed that fractured the old order.

Yet in spite of all these escape routes offered to people dissatisfied with the condition imposed on them by the traditional agrarian system, there were many who sought to escape it without following any of them. Incapable of submitting to new discipline or led on by the hope of boundless, unfettered freedom, or perhaps compelled by the difficulty of finding socio-economic opportunities suited to their station, ability, aspirations and hopes, many fled the traditional order and forged their own path by fighting it. Numerous and unregulated, bandits and mercenaries formed a sector that precisely reflected the profound transformation undergone by agrarian society, adopting a marginal stance and fracturing the existing order in a variety of ways.

Among the peasantry, there was no shortage of individuals who left the fields for the refuge of the forests and turned to robbery, and sometimes, after taking refuge in a village and losing any comfort they had won – like those who, escaping the burg of Vézelay, ‘had occupied the neighbouring woods and built huts; and from there, giving themselves over to banditry, they would fleece travellers and pilgrims’;^[29] or like those who, having left Sahagún, devoted themselves to ‘stealing, ambushing and lying in wait on public roads, robbing and even killing the pilgrims bound for Santiago and any other wayfarers.’^[30] The twelfth century seems to have been the period when this social process reached its apogee, precisely as the impact of the monetized economy on traditional agrarian society became more pronounced. This was also the time that groups offering themselves as mercenary soldiers, such as the cotereaux or brabançons of the English and French sources,^[31] or the birkebeiner mentioned by Snorri, became more numerous.^[32]

But the phenomenon of social upheaval that uprooted so many men was earlier and as complex as it was profound. As early as the eleventh century, such great expansive adventures as those of Robert Guiscard, William the Conqueror, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, the First Crusade and other lesser excursions mobilized and absorbed large social groups seeking new prospects in war; these were made up not only of peasants but, above all, of knights, whose horizons were limited to their regions of origin. The bandits who assaulted merchants and robbed pilgrims were also knights, and even those who had no hesitation in undertaking risky adventures of plunder, protected in strategic locations. One such man fell into the hands of Frederick Barbarossa in Italy and justified his behaviour as in the following words: ‘Hark, most noble emperor, to the lot of a most wretched man. I am a Gaul by birth, not a Lombard; though by my station I am a poor knight, by my condition a freeman. It is by accident and not deliberately, that I have come to join with these thieves, with the purpose of remedying my lack of land. They promised they would lead me to certain places where my need might be met. I, poor wretch, believed them in my naïvety. I was led astray into this misfortune by wicked men.’^[33]

Similar motives moved the knights who uprooted in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, leading to the outward expansion to the periphery of the Romano-Germanic area: the lands beyond the Elbe, Muslim Syria, Dalmatia and Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade, the border of the Hispanic Taifas, the Balearics, Sicily and Greece, where the Catalans ventured. The intention was impossible to conceal, and even the Livonians realised that Bishop Bertholdt had left his homeland and come to such distant regions because he was poor.^[34] Aware as they were of the risks, all – great and small alike – sought a way amidst the crisis of development shaking the Romano-Germanic area to escape the traditional boundaries and attain a position, by whatever means and wherever they could, that was open to economic and social advancement

III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF BOURGEOIS GROUPS

More attractive than banditry, war or tilling the soil was migration to the cities, where they could achieve better living conditions and greater wealth with less risk. But it was a decision that involved accepting a new path and required a new mental attitude: such traits characterized those who chose it.

Economic change demanded of those who accepted it a degree of understanding of a new type of process: the market, supply and demand, differences between cost price and sale price, means of payment, credit, these were mechanisms one had to adjust to if one decided to escape the rural economy and enter the new market economy. To do this, a new attitude of mind was needed: the mercantilist attitude, which the biographer of the monk Godric^[35] described as follows at the start of the twelfth century, recounting the events of his youth: ‘Having, then, spent the years of childhood peacefully in his home, he began in adolescence to cultivate the more prudent paths of life and to engage thoroughly, carefully and as one experienced with the secular workings of Providence. He did not devote himself to the labours of farming but set himself, rather, to training in the rudiments of acquisition, which is the pursuit of the sharpest minds. So it was that, stirred by the zeal of merchants, he began frequently to busy himself with the sale of goods: at first, to be sure, with very small items of very low price, he began to learn the art of turning a profit; then, little by little, to develop the abilities he had demonstrated in his adolescence to gain greater returns.’ Motivated by such desires and trusting to similar skills, many rustici emigrated from their lands, some taking to the roads to buy and sell, others to the cities, where they immediately settled to trade, often manufacturing the products they would later offer for sale.

Sometimes, when conditions demanded and proved satisfactory, merchants and artisans spontaneously founded new settlements on seashores or riverbanks, at crossroad, by abbey or castle walls or in any other suitable location; but they did not spurn the chance to settle in the old comital or archiepiscopal cities, and there they came into contact with the inhabitants of the seigneurial city: ministerials, censuals who performed administrative or service functions while, at the same time, undertaking certain economic activities – partly rural but also commercial and artisanal – which many were sufficiently familiar with to be able to intensify when the occasion arose. Alongside these, who enjoyed the advantages of their long-established roots and, on occasion, seigneurial favour, immigrants settled, all united by a common purpose but differing in their status and attitudes.

For the seigneurial city to whose walls they flocked – some inside, others outside –immigrants were all advenae, foreigners, falling outside the urban jurisdiction that had been establishing itself more precisely. The chronicler recalled that La Rochelle had been settled by ‘a multitude of natives and foreigners come by land and sea from all corners of the world.’^[36] Far away, in Sahagún, Alfonso VI of Castile erected a town, ‘for which burghers of many and various trades gathered from all corners of the universe, namely: blacksmiths, carpenters, tailors, furriers, shoemakers, shieldmakers and men trained in many and various arts and crafts, and also persons from sundry foreign provinces and kingdoms, namely: Gascons, Bretons, Germans, English, Burgundians, Normans, Toulousians, Provençals, Lombards and many other merchants of sundry nations and foreign languages; and so he [Alfonso] populated and built the town of no little size.’ The chronicler also put into the mouth of Queen Urraca these words of reproach for the burghers, who later rebelled: ‘My father King Don Alfonso […] treated you honourably, and, as you were very poor, he enriched you with gold and silver and made you shine in all kinds of riches.’^[37] The chronicler of the Vézelay monastery, for his part, recalled that ‘a great number of individuals flocked to the church from all parts, and with their presence and the abundance of riches they brought, they made the burgh of Vézelay renowned and important.’^[38]

A new social sector thus took shape, granted a certain homogeneity by the common purpose motivating its members but made up – as pointed out by the Comte de Nevers in words attributed to him by the chronicler – of ‘men who do not lead the same manner of lives nor have the same customs but are for the most part foreigners arriving from here and there, bringing with them the most diverse dispositions and conducting themselves more by whim than law.’^[39] The city welcomed them because they were a factor in development and wealth and took little interest in their origins, to the point that the city of Saint Quentin expressly declared that ‘the city is open to all: wherever they may come from, if they are not thieves, they may live in the commune, and from the moment they have entered nobody may lay a hand on them or deal violently with them.’^[40] But what each brought with them – by way of tradition or fortune – would inevitably influence how the different groups into which the mass of immigrants would split evolved.

There were, most notably, those who arrived in the city already possessing a mercantilist attitude, business or trade experience and money, as well as those who came, by contrast, moved only by a vague incentive and had to learn the ropes and amass their first coins. And not all those possessing a mercantilist attitude had the same style. With those who came ready to settle and become citizens were belonging to well-defined communities that were not easily assimilated: Russians and Danes in Lübeck, Germans in Prague, Muslims in Hungarian cities, Franks in Santiago de Compostela, Mozarabs in Toledo, Jews and Lombards almost everywhere. Those not yet possessing a mercantilist attitude – rustici for the most part – dragged their legal status with them and could only rest if they had obtained express franchises from the seigneur or the king, while those who had escaped from a seigneurie – serfs or censuals – hoped in time to secure their new status as freemen, obtained de facto but threatened by the long shadow of a seigneurial claim.

One group – usually known as the ‘patriciate’ – broke away from the rest of the urban population and, beginning in the early twelfth century, acquired a unique position of predominance in all cities, similar to that already enjoyed by the richest and most powerful sectors of Venetian society. This group was not solely made up of immigrants; it generally consisted of some immigrants joined by other sectors possessing greater initial wherewithal to develop new forms of economic activity.

Especially in the old cities, ministerials and censuals possessed a certain mass of accumulated capital which allowed them to join mercantile enterprises in search of higher profits. No doubt they formed partnerships or competed with the immigrants who had settled by the city walls but were often in a better position than these immigrants to expand their operations and turn a profit. They were not the only ones, however. Even more than them, certain nobles residing near cities were in a position to experiment with new forms of economic activity; some of them, particularly vavasours and middle nobility, had no hesitation to establish themselves in certain cities while maintaining their rural estates. Linked to them – nobles, rural landowners, ministerials – the more fortunate or wealthiest immigrants expanded their businesses due not only to the greater availability of capital but to the privileges and guarantees they could avail themselves of. Before long, this alliance had moulded a socio-economic group with a distinct physiognomy.

The phenomenon undoubtedly took on different characteristics depending on region. Salimbene noted as a well-known fact that the milites or nobiles in France ‘reside in their villae or possessions’, whereas, in Italy, many of them settled in cities and lived side by side with the burghers.^[41] In Castile and Germany, too, a certain tendency not to abandon their rural possessions prevailed amongst the nobility, but in regions where significant commercial activity developed – England, the Low Countries of France and the Empire, the Rhineland, Denmark, Aragón – some nobles became involved to varying degrees in lucrative enterprises, thereby forging links with the prosperous groups of foreign merchants and ultimately leading to a consolidated alliance.

The situation was different in the new cities, which had sprung up out of nowhere and were populated exclusively by immigrants. In such cities, the patriciate was perhaps forged – with different rules – by the free play of fortune. But in the specific case of border cities, especially those that had sprung up east of the Elba or in the Iberian regions conquered from the Muslims, the earliest settlers were granted special status permitting the use of weapons and horses, a situation that allowed a principle of social differentiation which was over time consolidated: such was the case of the caballeros villanos (knights-villein) in Castile or the infanzones de carta (chartered petty nobility) in Aragón, whose activity was otherwise predominantly rural.

This rise of certain immigrant sectors accompanied that of the ministerials, allowing a comparison with the lower ranks of the nobility. Just as memories of the servile condition were fading, so too did the origins of the new family groups, many of them based on marital alliances between people of different classes and soon establishing themselves as true urban lineages. The Erembaulds of Bruges – ministerials in origin – had successfully married off the women of their family to high-born knights.^[42] The noblewomen of Parma tended to marry the wealthy burghers of San Donino.^[43] And the Ancien Coutumier de Champagne stipulated that burgher women marrying noble men acquired the rights of gentis fenme.^[44] In time, only the minds of the curious or of someone particularly interested preserved the memory of each lineage’s social origins. Dino Compagni warned of this situation, recalling that the powerful citizens of Florence ‘were not all nobles by blood but for other reasons were called “great”’^[45] According to the Historia Compostelana, Queen Urraca called to mind that of ‘all the consuls and others who held principalities in Spain,’ her father Alfonso VI for some, ‘seeing how poor they were, had greatly enriched them and ennobled others, raising them out of their humble origins.’^[46] Werimbold, the all-powerful patrician of Cambrai, had amassed a considerable fortune, but it was remembered that he had been a servant to another merchant.^[47] Likewise it was recalled that William of Montréal – a very rich burgher of Vézelay, who ‘did nothing but apply himself to extending his properties to the detriment of the poor and abusing his seigneur, borrowed a hundred and returned thirty, while lending one and received a hundred coin, whereby he vastly increased his assets and earned incalculable sums’ – had been ‘a serf by both status and custom’;^[48] Salimbene noted that the powerful Manfredo Pelavicino of Parma, had become ‘rich and illustrious because he owned many salt wells.’^[49] Giovanni Villani, a keen and insightful observer of social events, pointed out that in Pistoia ‘there was a lineage of noble and powerful men called the Cancellieri, though of no great antiquity, descended from one Micer Cancellieri, who was a merchant and accrued a good deal of money and who had several children with two women, who all of whom became knights and honourable and valiant men, who had many sons and grandsons, so that, by this time, they came to a hundred men-at-arms, rich, powerful and of high standing, not only the great and good of Pistoia, but from the most powerful lineages in Tuscany.’^[50] And when speaking of this region, he would take great pains to recount the origins and the rise and fall of numerous families,^[51] no doubt commenting on not only the same reports but the same judgments that inspired Dante’s harsh reflections.^[52]

Such lineages existed in all cities: rich and powerful families whose successive generations inherited and increased their wealth, power and influence, much like noble lineages. Unlike the original immigrant, the adventure of rising through classes was no longer an individual venture but a collective enterprise, secured by alliances. And this sector of noblemen, ministerials and merchants of lowly origins, ordered itself by adopting as many of the characteristics of the nobility as possible. Everything favoured such an alliance. The thirteenth-century mayorsof Lincoln were at once merchants and large-scale landowners, as they were in many other English cities, where indeed merchants claimed the title of baron, granted to those in London and Hastings by the Crown.^[53] With common interests came a solidarity of sorts, perhaps symbolized in the words of the Nibelungenlied poet, when describing the mourning for Siegfried’s death: the knights and ladies wept, and the sound of their lamentations rang from the castle to the city of Worms close by it, which was, when the poem was written in the thirteenth century, one of the most powerful trading cities on the Rhine. ‘The noble-hearted burghers ran to the castle. They wove their lamentations with those of the foreigners, for they were cruelly afflicted […] The wives of these worthy burghers mingled their tears with those of the ladies.’^[54] Such solidarity was reflected in a shared way of life.

The patriciate sought out luxury as the conspicuous sign of its social standing, but this was mainly because its component noble sectors translated their ways of life to a new system characterized by an abundance of goods and the money to acquire them. The spending habits of these groups limited and offset the merchants’ typical habits of saving and accumulation and shaped a way of life that the highest mercantile sectors accepted and developed in order to ensure their integration and affirm their social advancement. The courtly nobility and patriciate started being identified by their way of life, and perhaps also by the increasing prevalence of a profane attitude; and in spite of the building of cathedrals and the endowment of monasteries, what Salimbene said of the seigneur of Cremona, Pelavicino, who ‘loved temporal comforts more that the health of his soul’^[55] may have been true of many.

Alongside the patriciate other groups formed, attaining great socio-economic power in the cities, though they had no decisive influence. Merchants, big businessmen, bankers or rentiers who grew rich after long years of work or perhaps after two generations of cumulative efforts came to form an important sector which, while reigning in its ambitions to challenge the patriciate for power, was content with enjoying the influence and prestige bestowed by money. Marginal groups devoted to money-lending – in the main Lombards, Cahorsins and Jews – also gained influence if not prestige, sometimes protected by the public power, later persecuted and expelled more for economic than moral reasons. The secular clergy of the cities and the friars of the orders that established their convents within them also came to form a large, influential sector in urban life. Close to all social classes by virtue of their functions, their opinions exerted a gravitational pull that no one could ignore, transmitted through the ecclesiastical hierarchy but also through parishioners via the sermon or confessional; mendicant friars going from house to house also came to be effective instruments in shaping currents of opinion. Everything contributed then to the secular and regular clergy being placed among the groups with most social power. Meanwhile, the bureaucracy gradually came to form a social class with distinct characteristics, influential in the functions it performed, as increasingly were those practicing the liberal professions – judges, notaries, doctors, pharmacists – who, by no accident, comprised the guilds of the Arti Maggiori in Florence and teaching in high education at studia and universities.

Notwithstanding the patriciate’s tendency to close ranks, it may be that wealthy new merchants were slowly able to gain access. But for the groups beneath them possessing no social prestige, such access was difficult or impossible, and they very soon found themselves up against a ceiling holding back their upward tendency.

All were frequently lumped together in a vague, undifferentiated pack: plebs, popolominuto, menuesgenz, alluding precisely to their lack of prestige and significance. Small merchants, craftsmen and those practising certain lesser professions formed the sector’s most important group, amongst which butchers or taverners might aspire at times in some cities to exert a degree of influence. But strictly speaking, the group of wage-earners as a whole was, in the long run, more influential, especially in the cities where textile manufacturing or metalworking had seen great development; though each of their members lacked personal strength and prestige, the collective they comprised soon gained considerable gravitational pull, allowing it to some extent to impose its social and political views.

Yet each of its members suffered under the harsh conditions imposed by a rigid and robust organization. Subjected to the threat of hunger or unemployment, the wage-earner lived under the burden of anguish, fatigue and misery, as declared the weaver whom Chrétien de Troyes gives voice to in Yvain: ‘We shall forever weave silken cloths and shall never be better clad for it. We shall always be poor and naked and shall always suffer hunger and thirst; never shall we earn enough to eat any better. We have bread constantly: little in the morning, still less at night, for none of us can earn by our handiwork more than four pence a day for our daily bread. And so, let everyone know this: that there is not one among us who earns more than twenty shillings. A duke would be rich on that! And we are in great misery, yet the one for whom we work grows fat on our wages. We keep watch for most of the night and work all day to earn it. We are threatened with having our limbs twisted if we rest, so we dare not rest.’^[56]

Highly diversified, the groups that had broken away from the old rural organization to try their luck took different paths: some chose to keep working the land, albeit under new conditions; others chose to adopt new ways of life in the cities and take up new activities. But either way, they were breaking up the traditional order and beginning to forge new social attitudes. Not with the same determination and intensity, however. It was in the city – seigneurial first, and later bourgeois – that the bourgeois revolution rapidly began to bear fruit.

PART III

THE FORMATION OF THE FEUDO-BOURGEOIS WORLD: SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CHANGES

CHAPTER I

SOCIAL CONFRONTATIONS

I. EXPANSION, DIVERSIFICATION AND CRISIS

The expansion and diversification of the economy and society set in train a profound crisis which, to varying degrees of intensity, made itself felt throughout the Romano-Germanic area and the incorporated periphery. The mercantile revolution renewed social situations and, as it created them, sparked conflicts and clashes of various kinds fuelled by different incidental pretexts. A general sense of instability began to spread, precisely at the time the Christian feudal order was becoming institutionalised, in the eleventh century.

The peculiarity of this change lay in the progressive emergence of a new economic sector capable of developing independently of existing conditions in the traditional sector of the rural economy. Differing from the latter in its internal tendencies, the type of relations it instituted and the social groups that drove it, the mercantile economy was able to organise itself in a short space of time. The old aristocracies deemed it a marginal economy because the social groups linked to it were themselves marginal; they watched it grow as an strange activity and, while only a few of their number warned there was an urgent need to join its process, most remained indifferent and kept to their traditional forms of action, while occasionally trying to share the benefits by plundering merchants. But the new mercantile groups were able to overcome such obstacles, and their activity grew at such pace that, between the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they came to form a mercantile economic system, alongside the agricultural economic system, albeit independent from it. Change was thus triggered through the juxtaposition of two economic systems that entailed two social systems.

The traditional socio-economic system was, then, jolted to the core. From then on, it lost its cohesion and the two tendencies manifesting within it developed at different speeds and in different directions. The situation had arisen spontaneously, and no one possessed ideas clear enough or experience sufficiently seasoned to define the phenomenon and so define each of those tendencies. Yet, regardless of the lack of a theory about the process, each of the social groups adhering to either tendency actively experienced the vicissitudes of its manifestation at all times and places. And they each reacted to them as the immediate circumstances demanded.

Overall, the old aristocracy was slow to realise the significance of the emergence of a new type of economic activity alongside the traditional one, which it controlled. It was, however, an activity that necessarily tended to exploit the fruits of the agrarian economy to its own advantage; yet the immense sense of superiority that the old aristocracy discovered in itself with regard to the new merchant classes and, above all, the security granted by its hold on political power may have prevented its alarm at and comprehension of the extraordinary phenomenon unfolding before its eyes. The Christian-feudal conception had become strongly entrenched in people’s minds and, with it, a static image of social life that obscured the prospect of any change.

A different attitude manifested itself in the new classes. Arising out of the change itself, they discovered at every turn all that was hostile to them in the traditional order, in particular, everything that stood in the way of their economic activities and their own development and advancement. They were characterised by extraordinary boldness and a lively imagination, but especially by a boundless ability to make out the endless possibilities opening up before their eyes. To develop them they needed to sweep before them countless limitations of every kind, some institutional, others born of ingrained prejudices supported by widespread belief in the established order’s immutability. But the new classes did not hesitate to meet them head on. ‘Such is the custom of the people: always to love what lies ahead,’ wrote the chronicler of the Historia Compostelana.^[57] And the new classes did indeed love what lay ahead, since, in light of their possibilities, the traditional order constituted a system of obstacles.

The sense of their incompatibility within the traditional economic, social and political system grew rapidly and resulted in dissenting attitudes that soon became visible. If wealth had previously been the heritage of groups who, for that precise reason, possessed social prestige and political power, the new rich began to break the old mould. Once enriched, they aspired to their wealth giving them what before it had given to others. To those who witnessed this change in attitude the phenomenon revealed nothing more than a moral deviation. ‘The abundance of belongings,’ wrote the monk Hugo de Poitiers,^[58] ’always engenders insolence in depraved spirits. When a man can do more by his wealth than another can by the gifts of nature, he raises himself above the sons of kings; forgetting himself, he soon puts on airs and, advancing under cover of his obscure status, brags about his private riches.’ But the new classes rising to varying degrees of wealth felt the legitimacy of their aspirations and flaunted and defended them. They challenged the established order and, with it, obscurely challenged the ideas that underpinned it while calling for the adjustment of institutionalised situations despite the charismatic support they enjoyed. The new classes hinted vaguely at their aspirations to establish a secular order whose norms played along with the changing reality.

Wealth brought the new classes to prominence. Constrained within the traditional order, the subordinate groups lacked all significance and played no part in the interplay of social and political forces. However, once the prospect of achieving wealth began to open up for certain sectors emerging from their midst, their growing importance became apparent. ‘Since the common people,’ one mid-twelfth-century chronicler had the Count of Nevers say, ‘is everywhere more numerous and consequently stronger than the noble class…, the prince’s authority alone cannot suppress popular movements.’^[59] The ‘common people’ that began to gain importance as an inescapable factor of social and political life was based mainly in the cities, whose intense development was attracting the attention of those beginning to express alarm at the state of crisis. Generalising about this new experience, William of Tyre had one orator say ‘It is well known that it frequently happens that an unbridled populace surrenders recklessly and without thinking to tumult and all kinds of disorder; but it is also well known – and this ancient practice is confirmed by long experience – that in all well organised cities the prudence of the leading citizens curbs the momentum of the people and reins in the boldness that knows no bounds. If it were otherwise, the people’s condition would be far better than the nobles’; if the great and good had no hope of being able to make up for the failings of an inconsiderate people, one would have to prefer the habitual confusion of a reckless multitude to the experience of the wise.’ It was indeed in the cities that the rising classes’ new state of mind was most visible. What had until then constituted a system invariably obeyed suddenly became the object of all kinds of aggression. Need became a more powerful law for the new classes than any practice or convention, and no consideration was adequate to quell their aggression against traditional forms of authority. Gathering in the public square or own their private organisations, the popular classes in the city became conscious of their strength and, depending on circumstances, pleaded for or demanded the establishment of new norms without any idea they might be shaking up the entire traditional order.^[60]

The privileged classes turned to the principle of authority in order to defend it. ‘In the obstinacy of their spirit,’ said Galbert in reference to the rebels of Bruges, ‘they had risen up criminally and haughtily, weapons in hand, against the authority God had imposed upon them. For, as the Apostle says, everyone must necessarily submit to the higher powers.’^[61] Like the Archbishop of Reims a little earlier, in his sermon against the rebels of Laon,^[62] the chronicler was alluding here to the texts by Saints Peter and Paul conferring sacred support on the established power;^[63] still, the commitment entailed by such an appeal – parallel to the commitment Frederick Barbarossa would later make to legal texts in response to Milan^[64] – testified not only to surprise and fear but also impotence, faced with an attitude inexplicable in light of traditional principles. It was precisely those principles which the new classes considered obsolete, not theoretically of consciously but simply as guidelines for their behaviour in each instance and in answer to the new needs imposed by their way of life.

It was this spontaneous, unthinking attitude, unconcerned with far-reaching doctrinal considerations and driven solely by overriding needs, that sparked the social confrontations which began to play out in the late eleventh century. Underlying these confrontations, in all the regions where the commercial revolution was taking hold, were common causes which gave rise to similar phenomena; in every case, they took on distinctive forms. Less violent and frequent where the economic prospects were more promising and there were fewer constraints, they unfolded tumultuously when resistance against the new aspirations was fierce. But, more often than not, they erupted when the opportunities were favourable and the traditional order was weakened by one circumstances or another. Exploiting a fracture, social confrontations erupted when the internal conflicts of the traditional order provided the opportunity to take sides without explicitly revealing the objectives of the disssenting groups. The new classes lacked the necessary strength and ideological clarity to openly defy the traditional order. But the latter offered up favourable opportunities for the new classes to dare to assert their aspirations without having to assume the responsibilities of a revolutionary initiative.

It was undoubtedly the religious crisis that contributed most to creating an atmosphere favourable to the free expression of the new classes’ dissenting tendencies. The development of Cluny’s reform movement and the spread of the pataria brought with them a fierce offensive against the feudal church. Accusations of simony and nicholaism loosened the bishops’ vice-like grip as heads of the Church, but no less so in their capacity as seigneurs of the cities. The Investiture Controversy sharpened the conflict by adding political to religious differences, and the polarisation of Guelphs and Ghibellines ultimately radicalised their positions and rendered them irreducible. Throughout this process, the opposing fronts were formed of groups from widely diverse backgrounds and of differing tendencies, but the social antagonists’ interference was unrelenting and, intermingled with religious dissensions, matters of influence and power were vented by the traditional elites and the new rising groups. These groups were also able to exploit jurisdictional conflicts between ecclesiastical seigneurs and lay seigneurs and to take sides, sometimes in the guise of defenders of the faith or of justice or sometimes simply joining one faction or another in a naked struggle for power.

Economic circumstances also played a part in precipitating social confrontations. First and foremost, there was the general tendency towards mercantile development, which prevailed in many regions from the eleventh century on: it was this development that stirred up the new classes, but the occasional fluctuations in that development were no less significant. Floods and earthquakes, droughts and hailstorms destroyed or reduced production and disrupted opportunities for consumption. Fluctuations in prices also made it uncertain. Populations were frequently ravaged by scarcity, famine and epidemics and, nature aside, men themselves contributed to the destruction by razing sown fields, burning granaries and slaughtering livestock. Need bred desperation. Some grew rich by speculating on the poverty of others, and the most poverty-stricken fled their lands, sometimes joining the population of a city, whilst others kept to the roads and plundered passers-by. The upheaval, with its corresponding phenomena of enrichment and impoverishment and the collapse of traditional authority, allowed the better organised, more homogeneous groups, united by their shared interests, to define their fundamental goals and to seek to achieve them through rebellion, supported by the masses of the discontent and the desperate. The line of mercantile development continued, but it had, somewhere, at some point, suffered a disruption, the response to which was a localised crisis and a confrontation between certain social groups.

The wars and anarchy ultimately crated favourable conditions for the new classes to challenge the sectors of privilege. Wars on the frontiers with non-Christian peoples – arising between kingdoms, seigneuries or cities – or civil wars waged during a royal minority, over a dispute for the throne or an insurrection by a sector of the aristocracy, created situations that favoured the strengthening of the new urban groups, and sometimes their intentional strengthening by one of the belligerent powers in the hope of securing their assistance. When war – especially internal war – created a power vacuum, the new groups demonstrated their effectiveness by quickly organising themselves to fill the void in defence of their interests. Their interplay with the warring parties enabled them to gain advantages or to justify an opportunistic policy.

Once the struggle was under way, their objective might simply be to obtain certain specific norms or provisions to facilitate and promote new economic activities or guarantee people’s safety, but it might also be – either covertly or overtly – to conquer or share power. And, in triumph or defeat, the new groups to an extent imposed their outlook on life insofar as they represented a line of development that offered unprecedented prospects not only for their own members but for all those who, in one way or another, joined in the process: kings, seigneurs, clergy, peasants, all were offered some opportunity in an open economy that was spawning an equally open society. Many and varied, the first social confrontations, between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, pursued the reshaping of social relations in accordance with the situations created by the bourgeois mercantile revolution. Amidst this turmoil, Salimbene could nostalgically remark ‘That is why it is good to be in heaven, where there are no parties nor divisions nor ambitions, where everything is held in common and is owned in common by all.’^[65]

II. ANTI-SEIGNEURIAL MOVEMENTS

1. Dissident groups

Social confrontations became inevitable from the moment the new groups began to form in mercantilised areas, sparking tensions previously unknown. These new groups generally joined already established communities but remained on the fringes and embarked on the venture of economic and social advancement removed from the traditional legal and political order: their members were therefore considered advenae – foreigners – everywhere they settled. Immersed in the problems of Europe, Archbishop Guillaume de Tyre wrote the following in the second half of the twelfth century describing the condition of the citizens of Muslim Antioch: ‘The vast majority of its inhabitants were Christians, but they possessed no power of any kind. They devoted themselves to trade and the practice of all the mechanical arts: the Turks and infidels were the only ones who had the right to fight and to hold positions of rank; the Christian faithful could not bear arms or involve themselves in anything related to military matters.’^[66] The same words could have been used to describe the situation of new rising classes – juxtaposed as they were to the traditional order – in the mercantilised regions of the Romano-Germanic area. Excluded from political life and lacking a status that provided them with security, foreigners might have seemed to those steeped in the traditional mentality on a par with serfs or rustici. It was precisely then that was ‘the great debate on freedom and servitude’,^[67] which concealed not only the personal problem of those who sought individual freedom but also the broader one of groups seeking to join the political order – not the traditional one, but a new order that would acknowledge their new economic and social significance.

The conquest of this new political order would not be easy, however. The social groups forming in the ferment of the mercantile economy were, in effect, advenae, foreigners or strangers to traditional community groups. They perceived this not only in the situation of political dependency in which they found themselves but particularly in judicial and legal relations. They perceived it in the contrasting forms of economic activity, since their own lacked social prestige. But it could also be a real fact, as their members were often newcomers to the region or city where they had settled, coming from distant parts. They might be Mozarabs or Francs in the cities of Leon, Castile, Aragon or Navarre; Germans or Danes in the cities east of the Elbe or the Baltic; Lombards, Frisians, Provençals, Venetians or Catalans in various regions; and they might also be people of religious traditions other than Christian – Jews, Muslims, Persians, Byzantines, Armenians – whose difference was even more pronounced.

It was these new social groups – strangers to the traditional communities in varying degrees – who sometimes created the new social tensions by taking a dissenting stance towards the prevailing situation. Consisting of isolated individuals who had sought to escape their former condition, they became more cohesive as their members developed a degree of group identity, and it was, above all, the perception of their exclusion from the traditional community that helped to create this. This may have been a negative sentiment, but time added positive elements to it.

The system of coercions that benefited the seigneurial class shaped the profile of its adversaries. Dissident groups began to acquire a sense of identity when, in addition to being excluded from the traditional community, they felt despoiled by the privileged classes. ‘Mutual fury,’ said Guibert de Nogent in his sermon to the people of Laon, ‘has incited the seigneurs against the burghers and the burghers against the seigneurs.’^[68] Hatred played its part. But what perhaps contributed more to galvanising a sense of group identity was the shared possession of certain norms and the coincidence of certain values. Those depending on their labour, success and enrichment for their social advancement and the improvement of their living conditions acquired a new notion of work, success and wealth. A mercantile mentality developed in them, and those who embraced it began to be steered by previously uncommon values, the defence of which contributed to closing their ranks. In their eyes, the privileged classes were idle classes, and leisure acquired a negative value for them. Other values, however, were positive: wealth, first and foremost, but also new moral principles related to their activity, such as honesty, which tended to merge with bourgeois honour. ‘It is ordained,’ read one proclamation by the local magistrates of Douai in 1230, ‘that, if a burgher from this city were to flee for debts they had with a man or a woman of the city, they shall be permanently expelled therefrom if they do not appear before the council of local magistrates.’^[69] Spontaneous attitudes had soon become explicit norms that revealed the vigour of the groups’ sense of identity.

But the dissident groups’ sense of identity strengthened, especially when it came to militant action. The distinction between what was lawful and what was unlawful became hazier. For the dissident groups, what was unlawful by traditional norms began to appear lawful if what was at stake were their forms of life and activity, their security and their economic and social advancement. Since traditional law enshrined their dependency and immobility, they rose up against it and set out by peaceful or violent means to secure recognition of the new norms that were alien to or ran counter to it. And in this confrontation, the sense of group identity strengthened and acquired an increasingly vigorous consistency.

The need for action and the risks involved compelled this group identity to manifest in an oath indissolubly binding those who took it. In 1076, the citizens of Cambrai ‘swore a conspiracy secretly prepared for a long time and a commune long desired of old’,^[70] and soon after them, the citizens of Saint-Quentin ‘steadfastly swore to maintain that commune and confirmed by oath to safeguard and preserve it’.^[71] At the start of the twelfth century, the citizens of Santiago de Compostela, ‘at the instigation of those whom I have called domestic enemies of the prelate,’ writes the chronicler of the Historia Compostelana, ‘formed a certain conspiracy to which they give the name of brotherhood, and in order to confirm and consolidate this conspiracy, they all bind themselves by oath, with the object, it is understood, of coming to each other’s aid against any men to guard and defend themselves as one, and if any of them should suffer harm or injury from someone powerful or from another who did not belong to the league, the other accomplices should help him according to their means.’^[72] And, at the end of that century, in 1188 the Charter of Friendship of the city of Aire proclaimed that ‘all those who are included in the Friendship of the city have confirmed by faith and oath that each will help the other as a brother in what is useful and honest.’^[73]

The oath transformed dissident groups – or rather the militant sector that formed under it – from a loose conglomerate into a compact, structured whole with a clearly defined membership and set of objectives. But it was not solely political action that had led to this definition; the need for economic action had also contributed. Merchants’ guilds – such as that of Saint Omer at the end of the eleventh century^[74] – brought together on a personal basis a defined number of traders who entered into strict commitments. From the moment one joined, one’s actions were combined with others’, not only ensuring the benefits of mutual aid but also obliging one to work alongside one’s fellow members with one accord. The group not only became conscious of itself as such but also led to the creation of an institutional organisation. It was, in a sense, a partisan organisation within a political and economic struggle, and the same character was adopted by the societies formed, in an even more restricted sense, by the wealthiest and most determined groups in different cities: the Brotherhood of the Holy Spirit in Marseille, the Association of Our Lady of Ardents in Arras, the Confraternity of the Damoiseaux in Tournai, the Society of Crusaders in Parma, the Credenza of consuls and that of Saint Ambrose in Milan, and finally the orders and arts of the cities of Tuscany. Guilds, hansas and corporations would all follow the same pattern and spirit. Having broken away and organised, these dissident groups set their views and wills against that of the traditional groups, creating social tensions never seen before.

2. New social tensions

Relations among the traditional groups and those that emerged alongside them took on a variety of forms depending on the distinguishing features of the dissident groups.

The groups that settled in given regions as a response to the call of kings and seigneurs acquired a special status and adapted their behaviour accordingly. Some were called upon to populate newly conquered areas that first had to be defended militarily and received land in return which they had to work to support themselves; others were called upon solely to promote economic development, sometimes to clear uncultivated land, others to stimulate mercantile activity; but all received the property or franchises that placed them from the outset in a situation of privilege. This was the case with the German peasants settling Transylvania and other regions of Hungary from the reign of Stephen I and with other Germans called to the regions east of the Elbe and Bohemia. As hospites they acquired a status not only higher than the one they possessed in their place of origin but also superior to that of indigenous rustici. Something similar occurred with peasants who received charters of franchise in rural areas of France that required clearing, such as Lorris during the reign of Louis VI or Prisches, Breteuil, Beaumont, Miles de Bellesfontaine or Bruyères, all in the twelfth century.^[75] The same occurred with the men repopulating Castile, Leon, Galicia, Navarra and Aragon, whose franchises were accredited in documents such as the fuero (municipal charter) of Leon of 1020, or the charters of Fresnillo or Oviedo, also from the twelfth century, and many others.^[76]

In no case were these objectives kept exclusively distinct, and the promotion of development brought with it both new land settlements and more intense mercantile activities. The case of Ávila was significant, settled by order of Alfonso VI in the late eleventh century. ‘In the first population,’ says the chronicler, ’there came a great company of good men from Cinco Villas and Lara, and some from Covaleda; and those from Covaleda and Lara came at their head and found their birds at the entrance to the town, and those who knew how to interpret the signs realised that they were good to settle there, and went to settle in the town as close to the water as possible. And those from the Cinco Villas, who came after them, found those same birds; and Muño Echaminzuide, who came with them, was a more accomplished soothsayer, and he said, for those who arrived first, that they had found good birds but had erred in alighting on the lower ground near the water and that they would be well versed in feats of arms, but in town, that they would not be as powerful or honoured as those who settled in the upper part of town, and he had those who came with him settle there… And in the meantime there came many others to settle in Ávila, notably infanzones and good men of Estrada and Los Brabezos, and other good men of Castile, and they joined together with the aforesaid in marriage and in all the other matters arising. And because those who came from Cinco Villas were more in number than the others, the other folk – who were many – who came to settle in Ávila were called serranos, or highlanders; but God granted great and good prosperity to all in that population. And the many people we have named later set about buying and selling and other bargainings and earned great fortunes; and all those that were called serranos worked to take up arms and to defend all the others.’^[77] Social tensions there arose very quickly and similarly arose elsewhere under analogous or similar circumstances. To these tensions were added those eventually stirred up among settlers who had received privileges and those still governed by the ancient custom.

This contrast was even sharper in cities where certain essentially mercantile groups of foreign origin were installed to boost the economy. William the Conqueror called Jewish and Frankish merchants to England who came to have great importance in such cities as London or Norwich; the social groups into which they were incorporated were already fraught with conflict from the juxtaposition of English and Danish elements, but internal tensions grew as new foreign groups under the king’s protection joined them. In Castile there were cities like Tlascla, Frómista or Carrión whose populations consisted almost exclusively of Jews; but in numerous cities throughout the Iberian kingdoms, it was normal – towards the mid-eleventh and early twelfth century – for the crown to call on Franks and Jews to settle in the suburbs of already settled ancient cities. This was true of cities like Jaca and Pamplona, in Aragon and Navarre. In 1129, Alfonso the Battler granted the latter a ‘charter of donation and confirmation for all you Franks who settle on the plain of San Saturnino in Iruña; I grant and give you such fueros in all your estates and proceedings as those with which the settlers of Jaca were established’;^[78] and shortly before that, in 1118, Alfonso VI of Castile had granted a fuero ‘to all the citizens of Toledo, namely, Mozarabs, Castilians and Franks.’^[79] A similar situation was created with the German mercantile groups that settled in Hungarian cities like Buda or Gran, or in Bohemian cities like Prague.

Protected by the public authorities, who expected them to galvanise the economy and activate mercantile life, the foreign groups that installed themselves alongside communities that were compact were homogenous due to their social composition and cultural tradition created a focus of social tension. The wealth amassed by the members of these foreign groups and the privileges they enjoyed brought them into conflict with the traditional groups, and a tendency to unify rights soon emerged. A different situation came about in the cities founded by merchants who emigrated to regions reas inhabited by populations with low levels of economic, social and political development who were subjugated or decimated by military action. This was the case with Lübeck, founded in 1143 by the Count of Holstein Adolf II, or with Riga, founded around 1200 by Bishop Albert of Buxhoeveden. ‘But the bishop,’ recounts the chronicler Henry of Livonia, ‘aware of the wickedness of the Livonians and seeing he could make no headway among the people without pilgrims sent Brother Theoderich of Treyden to Rome to sue for letters authorising an expedition. The envoy confided the matter had been entrusted with to the holy father Pope Innocent and, thanks to his kindness, obtained the letters he desired. At Theoderich’s request and insistence the venerable Bishop of Rome declared it strictly forbidden under anathema for any merchant to use the port of Semigallia. The merchants themselves were overjoyed at what had been done and placed that port under their own injunction by joint decree. If any of them dared venture there for commercial reasons, they were to be deprived of both their goods and their lives. When, two years after the building of the city [of Riga], some sought to break their promise, they were first gently admonished by the merchants not to go to Semigallia. But, disregarding the apostolic commnd and ignoring the merchants’ joint decree, they sailed up the River Duina in their ships. Seeing them so recalcitrant, the other merchants took other ships and attacked them. They eventually captured two men – the captain, notably, and the ship’s pilot – subjected them to a cruel death and forced the others to return. In the third year of his consecration [1201], the bishop left the hostages he had been taken in Germania and returned to Livonia with what pilgrims he could muster. The city of Riga was built the following summer on a spacious site near which there was a bay suitable for ships. Meanwhile, having learnt of the bishop’s arrival and the building of the city, the Curonians sent messengers there seeking peace, not for fear of war but in answer to Christ’s call. With the Christians’ consent, they confirmed the peace with the shedding of blood as is the pagan custom. The Lithuanians, too, came to Riga that same year by God’s design, soliciting peace. Once it had been agreed, they entered into a friendly alliance with the Christians. The following winter they sailed down the Daugava, bound for Semigallia.’^[80] The vigour, organisation and determination of the groups that settled these outlying cities enabled them to prevail over their native populations. Examples of this were Rostock, Stralsund, Danzig, Reval [Tallinn], Narva. But as time went on, the activity of foreign groups contributed to the formation of native groups with similar economic tendencies, with whom tensions of different kinds and degrees would arise. Added to those that pitted them against traditional groups, these tensions led to social and political confrontations and collisions.

Different tensions arose between traditional groups and the new groups formed in many cities by the spontaneous afflux of individuals emigrating from their places of origin in search of freedom and opportunities of economic and social advancement. Rustici from regions near or far sought in cities the air that set serfs free and, above all, occasions to engage in manufacturing and trade. They were foreigners, strangers to the traditional community, poor and lacking any social standing,^[81] yet their activities soon came to be of such importance that the collection of individual immigrants as a whole was transformed by the force of common interests into a compact group acting in solidarity. The actions of this group provoked extremely situations of intense conflict and with traditional groups reluctant to admit that the newcomers had become an integral part of their own lives and that they themselves could no longer get by without their activity. This circumstance accelerated the process whereby social tensions became political tensions, naked power struggles, especially in those cities – preferably episcopal sees – where seigneurial power rested upon a vigorous administrative apparatus.

The struggle for power proved that immigrant groups already possessed considerable cohesion and a sense of group identity, but their very development further accentuated these qualities and helped speed up their integration in the traditional community whose power they were competing for. However, the economic groups organised as trading hubs, whose members had no desire to settle permanently in the city, were sidelined from this effort to promote social integration and redistribute power. This was true of the Cahorsins and Lombards, powerful and influential in many cities for the sway they held over economic life, but against whom there emerged a degree of social resistance to their integration. Something similar occurred with Jews and Muslims, albeit with a different cast. Often also protected by kings and seigneurs, and beneficiaries of much of the city’s economic activity, they commanded a special status which was formalised on certain occasions in official documents. The same also particularly occurred with foreign traders who organised themselves in guilds, such as those of Saint-Omer or Cologne, who travelled to London and to whom Henry II afforded significant privileges.^[82] Such groups were outsiders to the community, but as in other cases, by stimulating and developing economic life, they helped to form native groups with similar tendencies and characters who would, in the long run, come to view them as undesirable intruders. The social tensions thus created culminated in the expulsion orders that frequently befell them.

Conversely, certain circumstances occasionally helped to ease the growing social tensions between the new social groups and the seigneurial power defending its own interests and the interests of those bound to it economically, socially and politically. Sometimes circumstances allowed the new groups to purchase certain privileges to which they vehemently aspired for money. The viscounts of Marseille^[83] or the canons of Laon^[84] considered that they benefited from what they received from the bourgeois and were not concerned about the positions they lost. On other occasions, the seigneurial power deemed it necessary to hitch the new groups to their cause and showed no hesitatation in granting or offering concessions. If it in any way associated itself to mercantile activities and received direct or indirect benefits from them, it felt that it was in its interest to favour the bourgeois groups. This was the case with the counts of Champagne, whom the advantages produced by rich international fairs prompted to form ‘communes of burghers and peasants in whom [the Count of Champagne] placed more trust than his knights.’^[85] However, if the seigneurial power feared that the new social groups would, in trying circumstances of war, lean towards its adversary, it often hastened to grant them the privileges requested of it or those which it believed might win them over to its cause. This was how the bourgeois of Dijon obtained an advantageous charter in 1183,^[86] as did those of Cologne in 1247^[87] or those of the cities in the regions disputed by Capetians and Plantagenets in the reigns of Louis VII, Philip Augustus or Henry II.^[88]

Yet the uncontainable growth of the patrician groups and the expansion of their ambitions created in many cities a climate of unrest which, when times were ripe, was bound to escalate tensions to intolerable levels. In those instants, insurrectionary movements became inevitable, and the degree of violence they reached demonstrated the magnitude of the interests at stake.

3. Insurrectionary movements

The most serious social conflicts broke out in cities and regions where the mercantile revolution had attained a certain intensity, although this was not the only circumstance that provoked them. The cities of Italy, the Netherlands and the Rhine Valley transformed their socio-economic systems so rapidly and radically that, by the eleventh century, the internal tensions had reached boiling point, provoking bitter rioting. These were the regions of most intense mercantile development. So too were certain parts of England, Scandinavia and the Baltic, eastern Germany, France and the Iberian kingdoms, and there too violent conflict sometimes occurred. But in the places of both more and less advanced mercantile development, tensions generally led to violence when the traditional power adopted a rigid stance.

This was the case with the Empire, first and foremost. Both the emperors who cherished the illusion of founding a theocratic power and those seeking to consolidate their authority by relying on Romanist legal traditions planned to preserve their situation in Italy without a thought for the radical change taking place, which was visibly weakening the social forces that supported them. Something similar occurred with the Papacy in the city of Rome, while circumstances elsewhere led it to support the new classes in search of allies in its conflict with the emperors. Most ecclesiastical seigneurs also adopted a rigid stance at first. Through the force of their authoritarian tradition and especially the opportunities afforded them by a well-organised bureaucracy, they sought not only to maintain the traditional political order but to benefit from the spoliation of those promoting the new mercantile and manufacturing activities. Lay seigneurs, on the other hand, generally proved more flexible, not only because of the precarious state of the administrative organisation of their domains but because of the impact the new economic prospects had on the social sectors constituting their support.

With social tensions mounting and the adversarial groups delimited and defined, the slightest circumstance was all that was needed to bring about confrontation and trigger insurrection among the discontented. In each case, such circumstances presented themselves with different outward forms, depending on the local situation. Sometimes it was a general flare-up provoked by desperation and lacking any precise objective. But there were, within the new rising classes, very well defined socio-economic groups whose objectives were equally well defined. Once the traditional equilibrium was broken, insurrection erupted to satisfy specific, immediate ambitions.

Sometimes the trigger was the legal oppression facing certain groups, particularly in view of the new opportunities for development opening up to them and which they could only take advantage of in other conditions. The vavasours of Milan who rebelled in 1035^[89] were under the yoke of the archbishop and the capitanei while a mercantile bourgeoisie grew rich alongside them; once freed, their prospects knew no bounds. The situation was similar in many other Italian cities subject to imperial power and directly to the ecclesiastical seigneurs and German milites or supporters of the Empire. These cities rebelled against them around the same period, and Conrad II had to subdue them, not without difficulty. ‘The armies of the common people wrought havoc among the Germans, and one baker killed eight single-handed,’ said one chronicler referring to the rebellion of the people of Parma.^[90] The rebellions had such clearly defined characteristics that the chronicler Wipo could write the following: ‘At the same time in recent years, there was in Italy immense and unprecedented turmoil on account of the people hatching plots against the princes. For all the vavasours of Italy plotted against the great and good, the ordinary soldiery against their seigneurs and all the lowly against the nobles…’^[91]

As the reformist movement spread within the Church, the religious upheavals swept the social upheavals along with, and the two intermingled. The protracted Patarene revolution in Milan between 1057 and 1077 shook the entire social order of the city,^[92] and something similar occurred in numerous other cities in other regions around then and later on. But many an insurrectionary movement broke out over specific issues, when social tension became polarised over a circumstance decisive for the activity of one of the new groups. The confiscation of a rich merchant’s ship by the Archbishop of Cologne in 1074 sparked a brutal insurrection.^[93] The right of dyers to use a river’s waters – the use of which for their mills was claimed by Beauvais’s chapter of canons – ignited a ferocious conflict in 1099,^[94] and the travel ban established by the Count of Flanders drove the merchants of Bruges to rebel against him in 1127.^[95] The new bourgeois groups aspired to freedom of movement, reduced taxes, security at market, the running of mills or olive-presses and protection from plundering. Whenever a seigneurial ruling – be it new or traditional – stood in the way of those or other specific goals, and pleas fell on deaf ears, rebellion would break out and multiple aspirations hidden in the new rising groups’ thinking would surface in pursuit of the immediate objective.

These aspirations were hazy but tended to become more precise and defined. If one of the new social groups attained certain privileges in one place, their neighbours would begin to think of emulating them. The example of Venice, governed by merchants, was undoubtedly present in the minds of the bourgeois of the Italian cities that maintained relations with it, and the commune of Laon was established on the model of those of Noyon and Saint-Quentin.^[96] English cities sought to obtain the same privileges from their king that, as Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou, he had granted the cities of his French domains; and the Castilian, Leonese and Galician cities on the road to Santiago witnessed a series of similar imitative movements.^[97] The example constituted a system of hopes which only required a favourable turn of events to try to make it reality.

Such a turn of events was frequently furnished by conflicts between the traditional powers, and this opened up opportunities to secure the support of one against the other. The long-standing quarrel between the Papacy and the Empire allowed the bourgeoisie in Italian cities to rely on the support of a power equivalent to the one it had to confront. When the conflict broke out between the reformist sectors of the regular clergy and the sectors of the secular clergy who adhered to the feudal conception of the Church, the new rising social groups rallied behind the former and won their support. A count – like the Count of Nevers^[98] – or a king – like the King of Aragon^[99] – could be decisive in the bourgeois challenging seigneurial power with some prospect of success, and such support allayed fears, united wills and also sparked insurrectionary action.

Lacking a sense of group purpose, all the insurgents could see in insurrections was an opportunity for looting, settling personal vendettas or perhaps to assassinate the official visible responsible for the acts of pillage, or even the seigneur, count or bishop themselves. But within the new social groups and when sufficient coherence and determination emerged to take on the traditional powers, there were sectors at least possessed a clear awareness of their most fervent aspirations and immediate needs. Insurrection was often a desperate means of forcing the seigneurial power’s hand over a specific, sometimes trivial problem. Yet in their minds certain general concerns predominated, expressed was a yearning for freedom and security. ‘Should you declare yourselves for us,’ said the Count of Nevers to the bourgeois of Vézelay, ‘should you associate yourselves to our power, you will no longer have to concern yourselves with the monks’ vain pleas nor the abbot’s frivolous succour; and having thenceforth the freedom to come and go wherever you please in full safety and freedom, you will enjoy perpetual security both for your persons and your property.’^[100] He thus incited them to rebellion with the promise of peace and tranquillity, just as Count Thierry d’Alsace promised ‘your merchants and those of all Flanders, peace and free passage for their commerce’, addressing the bourgeois of Bruges in 1128.^[101]

There was nothing hazy about the aspiration to freedom. It consisted of the desire for concrete freedoms in the face of exhaustive prohibitions or constrictions. To achieve these aims, the bourgeois could humbly petition the seigneur or, by his grace, obtain some concession in exchange for loyalty or services; but when the legal framework – hitherto considered inviolable – was broken and the traditional relations of dependency disrupted, they did not flinch from using violence to secure what they sought. ‘As you excommunicate us without just cause,’ the burghers of Vezelay said to the prior, ‘we shall act as men excommunicated and, consequently, we shall henceforth pay you no more, neither tithes nor census nor other ordinary dues.’^[102] And when they consulted the Count of Nevers about where they should grind their grain and bake their bread, the Count replied ‘Go and heat the oven with your wood and bake your bread. Should anyone oppose you, burn him alive; and should the miller offer resistance, crush him alive neath the grindstone.’

But the set of freedoms aspired to by the bourgeois established a novel social and legal situation for the new rising groups: if they attained it, the traditional relationship with aristocratic power was substantially altered; and with these aspirations there appeared, in some at least and perhaps obscurely, the design to participate in the exercise of power as far as possible. With this uprising lost its occasional character and became a revolutionary attempt directed at the transformation of the socio-economic and political order. Such was the meaning of the commune. Beyond the franchises wrested from those who possessed power, certain bourgeois groups began to pursue power itself in order therewith to establish the order that most suited them. ‘Under the pretext of defending justice,’ says the chronicler of the Compostela conspiracy of 1116, ‘the conspirators, associating with them people of the clergy and the town, oppress some and lift up others; they renew laws and plebiscites; they assume the power of the entire city; they destroy palaces; they even threaten some with death. The bishop, content with the mere appearance of the name, and yielding for the moment to the circumstances, though it does not approve their acts nor their designs, nor does it condemn them; it is enough for these conspirators to call him lord and to consult him on certain matters. Only outside the city did he retain the customary power. Moreover, neither time nor circumstance permitted the exercise of authority within the city. So much the conspiracy of the traitors had prevailed.’^[103] This political design gave insurrectionist movements a revolutionary character in that it entailed the revision of the traditional order. The commune was agreed or granted when seigneurial or royal power could not avoid it; but it was violently stigmatised by those who discovered the revolutionary background it possessed; and when the circumstances were favourable, it was counteracted or suppressed for the same reasons. Procuring it openly or trying to recover it if it had been lost, were acts that showed a clear group awareness in the sectors that laboured in it.

Strictly speaking, by leaving aside the solicitation of franchises and demanding the commune, the bourgeois movement was becoming radicalised. If the defenders of the traditional order quickly perceived the implications of the bourgeois groups’ new political attitudes, these groups were soon faced with certain situations that necessarily led them led to accept these implications and challenge the traditional order through revolution. Anyone who wanted to participate in power tacitly or expressly disowned the established order and needed very little to discover that at heart they aspired to replace it with another.

The bourgeois groups of the Italian cities who clashed with the Empire soon found out. There were within them social tensions caused by mercantile and manufacturing development, which were sometimes manifested expressly, other times indirectly through religious conflicts, but which were made more acute by the friction between the German civil and ecclesiastical aristocracy on the one hand and the subjugated Italian population on the other. When the bourgeois groups tried first to obtain more franchises in the Italian cities and then to share power, the seigneurial power in danger drew to itself the full support of the imperial system. Avoiding or rejecting the struggle meant accepting or evading the ultimate consequences of confrontation; but the Italian communes accepted them and, after punishment and plunder first and the subsequent definition of their position at Roncaglia, they braved the final decision and won the day at Legnano.

For their part, the bourgeois groups of the city of Rome very soon came to discover – perhaps by strictly intellectual means – that it was necessary to replace the pontifical power by a civilian power. What the bourgeois groups spontaneously wanted seemed to preach the centuries-old tradition of Ancient Rome, and shielded behind this example, they confronted the established order, the head of which was no less than the head of the spiritual power. The bourgeois groups sought a rift between the sacred and the secular spheres, and claimed the legitimate exercise of civil power; but the supposition involved a more accurate definition of the crisis that removed its absolute foundations from the traditional order. And in the same way the general struggle against the ecclesiastical seigneuries involved a radicalisation of positions: they sought to use their sacred nature as a shield to resist the pressure of the new rising social groups, whose objectives required a readjustment of institutional organisation. Those who defied the Papacy and the Empire, and braved the danger of staying outside the law and out of the communion saw the extent of the steps they were taking, since defeat meant the razing of the city and perhaps death. The response consisted in proposing a new system of economic, social and political relations, different from the traditional one and for that reason alone already revolutionary in relation to a system founded implicitly on the immutability of such relations; but also revolutionary because it rested on another system of foundations whose predominant feature was profanity.

The process of radicalisation of the anti-seigneurial movements came about in other areas with other traits. If in Venice it quickened apace while the power of the Byzantine Empire waned and before the Germanic Empire and the Papacy acquired force, in the field of feudal kingdoms they developed at the pace of the rise of royal power. In France, the Low Countries, Castilla, Aragón, Portugal, Provence or the kingdom of Germania, bourgeois movements clashed with intermediate powers that the monarchy was only interested to an extent in supporting, as they also constituted for it declared or potential adversaries. The anti-seigneurial movements became radicalised in response to these intermediate powers but, unlike what happened later, were not needed to confront royal power, in which the bourgeoisie was discovering a power similar in its nature and its tendencies to the one that it aspired to exercise within its own area of influence. Compared to the seigneurs, radicalisation meant excluding them from power or sharing it with them, without necessarily creating a power vacuum that would pose the problem of the source of sovereignty, as happened in Italian cities under the authority of the Empire or the Papacy. That is why the anti-seigneurial movements concluded as such at that stage and paved the way for an ordering of cities within the framework of the monarchy.

Where the radical anti-seigneurial movements in these areas did appear radical was in the system of guarantees that they attempted to formalise. The mere exclusion of the milites of the urban power, the delimitation of the burgher’s obligations to them, the guarantees and rights of the citizens, and the mechanisms whereby they would participate in government were the subject of careful reflection, drawing on experience and trying to correct customs through regulatory devices suggested by the former. From that experience and that reflection were born charters, statutes, municipal charters or constitutions in which the totality of the political system that it was intended to bring into force was not specified, but only what represented an innovation, or that it was wished to establish exhaustively. With economic, social and political relations thus regulated, the contracting parties implicitly or explicitly admitted the principle that it was lawful to modify them according to changing circumstances.

Not all of these charters, statutes or municipal charters meant a complete triumph by the new social groups nor did they set down all the requirements that they aspired to. Some were transactional documents, granted without a struggle and generally sparing with concessions. This was so, for example, with the charter granted by the Count of Dreux in 1180: ‘I, Robert, by the patience of God, Count of Dreux and Braine, brother of Louis, the illustrious king of France, have tried by means of written characters to notify all – present and future – that, having arisen a disagreement between myself and my burghers of Dreux, we have agreed in this agreement, namely, that we have granted them the commune that they had in the days of my father and that we have confirmed for them by oath I, Agnes Countess of Braine my wife and Robert my son.’^[104] But other documents were the consequence of bitter conflicts and laid down the conditions imposed by the strongest parties. The new social groups escaped little by little – albeit with difficulty and intermittently – from seigneurial power, although little by little they slid towards the area of influence of the crown or sought another form of strong government, such as the Italian signoria.

As disparate as the results of the anti-seigneurial movements were, and as fragmented and occasional as the provisions laid down in charters, municipal charters or statutes were, the insurrectionary movements of the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries were in response to a revolutionary ideology whose features, diluted at first, became gradually more specific. When the burghers of Sahagún asked themselves ‘Who allowed the abbot or the monks to have dominion over so many noble barons and such great burghers? Who was it that also allowed them to possess such and so great lands, fields and vineyards and orchards?’^[105] they were deep down questioning the whole traditional system, the entire set of foundations and events that made up the Christian feudal order. Consciously or unconsciously, all the anti-seigneurial movements involved to some extent calling into question the foundations of the Christian feudal order, especially with regard to universal, sacred, unchanging and eternal order.^[106] Neither the principles, nor the institutions in which they had materialised, nor the people representing these institutions were free from the attack of the new social groups, who in the attempt to improve their condition promoted the change of the traditional situation. Little by little the promotion of change ceased to manifest itself in the form of a simple reaction and acquired intentionality and meaning. Change was to lead to a new system of relations, in which the new groups inserted themselves between the traditional groups, thus dislocating the old balance. To achieve this it was necessary to set in train countless economic, administrative, legal and political mechanisms that operated that dislocation and which little by little integrated the provisions in an organic whole; if one could speak of a jus mercatorum, it was because a new institutional system opposed another that did not meet the new social groups’ needs. But this institutional system, still in its infancy, was sustained by certain attitudes which entailed another aspect of change. This was vivified by a new mentality that manifested itself at the same time in other aspects of life. The defenders of the Christian feudal order immediately perceived that behind the new social groups’ more moderate aspirations hid a revolutionary attitude.

4. The seigneurial attitude

Indeed, even before the new social groups had acquired clear awareness of their ultimate designs, the defenders of the traditional order had already begun to second-guess them and unravel their meaning. Whoever wanted to escape the obligations that such an order imposed upon them was preparing to contravene it first and modify it later; the aspiration to form communes represented the last step in this process inasmuch as it unequivocally signified the decision to achieve power. Ecclesiastics – wardens aware of the established order and often victims of bourgeois claims – were the ones who first arrived at the heart of the problem and rushed to denounce the general direction of the social movements.

At the start of the twelfth century, Raoul, Archbishop of Reims, went to Laon to purify the church that had been the scene of some of the scenes of the bourgeois uprising of 1112. Guibert de Nogent, whose account is an execration of the commune,^[107] claimed that the archbishop ‘held the divine office in memory of all, and in the middle of the tears and extreme grief of his relatives and allies, suspended the sacrifice of the mass to pronounce a speech on those execrable commune institutions in which the serfs can be seen against all justice and all right violently to withdraw from the legitimate authority of the seigneurs. “Servants,” he said, “be subject to your masters, the apostle has written, with all fear; and so that the servants do not argue over the harshness and greed of their masters, may they harken to these words of the apostle’s: be subject not only to the good and gentle, but also to the forward. The canons also punish with anathema those who, under the pretext of religion, drive servants not to obey their masters, or to flee to wheresoever and, with all the more reason, to oppose them by force. For these reasons it should not be admitted, either in the priesthood, or in the sacred orders, or in any congregation of monks, but people free from all bondage; and if by chance some servants be receive therein, by no means may they be kept against the will of their masters when these claim them.” These arguments the prelate asserted frequently in discussions, be it before the king’s council, be it in various public assemblies.’^[108]

The first seigneurial reactions then focused on the social and legal problem of freedom, which constituted the first step in the struggle for the promotion of the new social groups. But when these groups began to exercise government, the criticisms addressed their manner of conducting public affairs and the new criteria used, unfair for critics in the light of the traditional rules. At the Diet of Roncaglia in 1158 the Archbishop of Milan extolled the benefits of the imperial policy of Frederick I referring to the governments of the communes: ‘We know to which unjust, arrogant and cruel governments we have sometimes been subjected. We know that under such arbitrary predominance the innocent has been as maltreated as the guilty. We recall the prescriptions of the rich, perpetrated without being justified by the commission of a crime; magistrates and priests removed by perverse and shameful agreements; and many other acts decreed by the greed of the rulers and that were carried out impiously before our eyes. Therefore “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him”, for after such upheavals a serene peace has hung over us, because your desire is, dearest Lord, rather to preserve and protect your kingdom through justice than to increase it through crime and be stained with the blood of your subjects.’^[109] Behind the rhetoric, which the chronicler imitated from Sallust, the ideas expressed alluded directly to a new distribution of power, the result of which had been the transfer of certain jurisdictions and the weakening of the power of the former privileged groups.

As early as the beginning of the thirteenth century, Jacques de Vitry was stating outright in a sermon^[110] what the policy of the bourgeois groups opposed to privileged groups had been, and recorded the blows suffered by the latter: ‘Because if the thieves and money-lenders are obliged to repay what they have removed, the more these violent and pestilent communes, which not only oppress and weaken their noble neighbours stripping them of jurisdiction over their menfolk but also, as is evident, they usurp the rights of the Church and destroy and undermine its liberty by means of wicked statutes, contrary to the canonical provisions of the fathers; nowhere is it read that to the lay folk, even though they are religious, be attributed authority to dispose of the ecclesiastical powers. There is a need to attend to them, but they have no authority to command.’ In a world that was secularising, the traditional privileged groups were in danger to the extent that they recognised the legitimacy of change.

But both their immediate interests and the certainty of the legitimacy of their rights, fertilised by the doctrine that they now used controversially, they prompted the privileged groups to resist. An appeal was made to all resources. The insurgents were accused of heresy and immorality in order to burden them not with the weight of political responsibility but the stain of moral and religious stigma, and while the virtues of the inherited nobility were exalted, it was sought to reduce the value of labour and wealth.^[111] And beyond the doctrinal argument, they defended their inherited positions with arms and all resources offered by constituted power were mobilised.

Sometimes the weapon of excommunication was resorted to;^[112] at other times it was sought to rethink the traditional system not on the basis of the fundamentals of the sacred constituted order but of the secular foundations of Roman law.^[113] And when this was not enough and the balance of forces allowed, punishment, the claim of the serfs, the annulment of concessions granted and even the formation of a new politico-social front appealing to the support of the rustici, strangers to the process of change who kept their old adherence to the milites and the Church.

With this last attitude the nobility demonstrated its weakness. Since the twelfth century it had, in fact, been entering into a crisis that forced it to tighten its ranks and imposed on it the need to revise its position in the now far more complex social and political whole. To protect itself, it sought fresh support and concluded by admitting the possibility of joining forces with some of the new social groups.

III. TRIUMPH AND DIVISION IN THE PATRICIATE

In varying degrees and with varying scope the anti-seigneurial movements triumphed in many cities and, where they did not triumph, they promoted changes in the relations between the seigneurs and the patriciate that considerably increased the latter’s possibilities of action. But the patriciate, ultimately the beneficiary of the intense social upheavals, was not a compact, homogeneous group. As it gained greater influence, there began to be noted that the various sectors comprising it did not have either identical interests or the same political orientations.

However, certain sectors of the nobility’s rapprochement to the bourgeoisie had been a spontaneous phenomenon. Once the new possibilities opened the mercantile economy were in view, the lower layers of the nobility in many cases opted to take advantage of them; and this circumstance, given the attitude of the most rigid sectors of the landowning class, brought about that approximation, which was consolidated through both limited companies and mixed marriages. It was a functioning partnership based on the existence of adversaries and common interests. And the expanding city, renewed by economic development and transformed into a new nation whose destiny was in its hands, was transformed into a common heritage that created links and tended to keep them in spite of the dissent that was beginning to appear within the patriciate. Victorious at Montaperti in 1260, the proud Farinata degli Uberti tested their loyalty, ‘the noble homeland’,^[114] as Dante Alighieri has him say, opposing the destruction of Florence planned by the triumphant Ghibellines, an attitude that moved Giovanni Villani, a fervent Guelph, to qualify to the noble Ghibelline sovereign as ‘a good citizen’.^[115]

But that spontaneous and functional alliance began to weaken when the patriciate reached power or at least came to sharing it. From that time on, in the exercise of government the different component sectors tried to ensure their pre-eminence within the political system, defend their economic interests and protect the positions each family within them. These goals created innumerable collateral problems in connection with the purposes pursued by the patriciate as a whole. When chronicles contemporary intermingled economic, social and political conflicts with family or personal rivalries, they were accurately reflecting the situation of a society in which emerging individualistic tendencies had not managed to invalidate the possibilities of action of the major traditional groups. Added to these factors of the patriciate’s disassociation were external pressures, which drew various groups from the city towards economic or political alliances whose operations accentuated internal tensions. These tensions were ultimately those that endangered the patriciate’s hegemony over their adversaries, old and new.

It was certainly not long before social tensions appeared. The bourgeoisie was a highly elastic socio-economic sector that grew continuously through the inclusion of new individuals who swelled the ranks of the lower and almost marginal sectors; but these, of course, were applying pressure in various ways on the sectors of the high bourgeoisie who were defining their own interests ever more precisely. It would eventually be that pressure that would lead the patriciate to decide to strengthen their ranks, notwithstanding the play its internal groups would endeavour to make in order to dominate within it.

In the course of the twelfth century this tendency of the patriciate both in Italian and Flemish cities was progressively accentuated. The Venetian constitutional reform of 1172, the movement of the Ubertis in Florence in 1177, the passing of the Great Charter of Siena in 1186, as well as the charters obtained by Arras in 1194, and later by Ypres, Ghent, Douai and other cities in Flanders, led the patriciate to a position of privilege; and to a greater or lesser extent it attempted to block the path of the new groups who were being incorporated in the bourgeoisie’s economic activity and seeking access to political power.

But despite this tendency to agglutination, the nuances between the various sectors of the patriciate remained, and the differences that separated them according to their interests continued to widen. They were ultimately social tensions that opposed the patriciate and the new rising groups. But they were clearly political tensions that appeared within the groups of the nobility incorporated in the patriciate, and especially those that emerged between the component sectors of the nobility and the bourgeoisie.

Although in the eyes of the bourgeois the attitude of the nobility that had been incorporated into the cities might appear decided and resolved, its condition was one of constant instability. Sometimes inclined increasingly to approach the mercantile sectors, at other times it sought to realign itself and accentuate its features as a superior social group within the patriciate complex. But even proposing the latter, it could not always accomplish this because of the ambitions of power. The history of the struggles between the Guelphs and Ghibellines reflected interaction of different factors in the development of the politics of the noble groups. Personal matters, family rivalries, and the demands of external alliances influenced the political situations by relieving or accentuating the tensions and occasionally impressing upon them new directions. United by their interests and their prejudices, the nobility often split into factional groups that fought fiercely, notwithstanding that they agreed to peace when it suited them or when occasional the conditions that had caused the rift became disturbed. But this play where ambitions of power overlapped with group interests established a policy of rapprochement or distancing from the sectors of the bourgeoisie; and in this coming and going the bourgeoisie was also driven to situations of internal conflict that led to splits between the groups that hungry for power.

Political struggles, disputes for the ownership and exercise of power, shattered the unity of the patrician front even before it had completely consolidated. The struggles between rival cities’ patrician groups, whose factions clashed with a boundless fury, contributed to this rift. But the progressive importance acquired by the new rising social groups contributed no less to later provoking and accentuating war. Engaged in the challenge, both the noble and bourgeois sectors tried to adapt their behaviours to the emergence of this new power factor, which they could both bring into play in their service and widen their bases of support.

But the new social groups formed after the formation of the patriciate felt condemned to a sort of economic dependence, and social and political marginalisation. Tensions grew and very soon the clashes with the patriciate began.

IV. ANTI-PATRICIATE MOVEMENTS

1. New groups

The constitution of the new groups, naturally confronted with sectors that possessed their own prestige and power, was a slow process of economic development and social differentiation. As the urban concentration grew and new work opportunities arose, certain sectors acquired cohesion in which people of low visibility and modest economic condition came together. It was a slow process that did not attract the attention of observers until it was manifested through outbursts of violence. Giovanni Villani, who writes at length on the account of the Flemish movements of 1302 ‘because they were new and marvellous, and we were in the country at the time’,^[116] seems to have perceived the variations that came about across the whole of society and, in response to the ‘big bourgeoisie’, distinguishes ‘craftsmen and the popolominuto’;^[117] and Dino Compagni points out that in 1300 the city of Florence was divided into ‘large, medium and small men’.^[118] Albeit imprecise, this three-way classification seems to hint at the perception of the increasingly accented phenomena of social mobility that took hold from the twelfth century. With the patriciate now formed, those who were left out of its ranks but somehow took advantage of the new economic possibilities positioned themselves with respect to it in a combat stance insofar as the patriciate had sought to strengthen its alliances with certain sectors of the nobility and above all insofar as it sought to monopolise wealth and control their development. Thus the outline of the new groups began to take shape.

The three-way division suggested by Dino Compagni – by no means original and classical in reminiscence – was not unfounded. Where the commercial revolution had been consummated, the most economically powerful sectors, both noble and bourgeois in origin, formed a well-defined sector. But beside it a second sector in which they were reduced to a sort of halfway house by the action of the most wealthy immediately formed almost by exclusion; these were the small merchants who continued to work with their hands and who practised a variety of liberal professions of some status but low performance. These medium groups grew in number, but above all their members aspirations grew, certainly beyond what their economic power permitted, precisely because their numbers seemed to justify and reinforce moderate individual aspirations. They were unstable groups, with little awareness, because their various strata and individual members relied on the possibility of detaching themselves from the whole in order to improve their condition. Sometimes their most affluent sectors did not hesitate to join the patricians against the poorest groups, as happened at Huy in 1299, according to the chronicler Jean de Hocsem;^[119] and only with the culmination of the excesses of the urban plutocracies did they close their ranks and change their attitude.

Finally, a third sector was constituted by the group of wage-earners and the vague mass of people without a trade that formed in all cities, especially the most populous. This sector only acquired definite characteristics in those places where a vigorous enterprising organisation formed its physiognomy. The textile industry and sometimes the metal-working or shipping industries created a well-differentiated proletariat in certain cities, and that core served to draw together the popular classes irrespective of whether their concrete aspirations found an echo in the rest of the humble folk or not. The third sector sometimes seemed split by the latter. The proletariat dependent on large entrepreneurs had the possibility of coming together, taking advantage to some extent of the organisation of corporations or brotherhoods, and had clear objectives that were related not so much with power as with their immediate needs and their relations with the employers. The rest totally lacked cohesion and could only act by mob rule drawing on the strength of their numbers and especially their irresponsibility.

As a group of dispossessed people, the third sector was a unifying element in their struggle against the owners. Unfairly distributed wealth was a subject that demagogues could easily elicit, who aspired to mobilise the popular masses in favour of any cause and also religious men who felt driven by an evangelical conception. In the twelfth century William Cornelius in Antwerp and Lamberto the Stammerer in Liège preached against wealth, and the latter, suspected of heterodoxy, complained to the Pope of reproaching him for his preaching being successful ‘among the weavers, the furriers and not among the nobles, as if the manual activities essential to the human needs were shameful things.’^[120] As early as the thirteenth century the Franciscans abounded in this type of preaching and helped to strengthen a mood actually created by the economic and social conditions. Mutual aid, practised through the guilds, and the political experiments carried out in the heat of the incitements of those seeking their support, gave the third sector an increasingly precise physiognomy, and predisposed it to defend its own claims.

2. Popular uprisings

The new claims were related on the one hand with the primary needs of the most humble and on the other with the aspirations of those who were joining the group of the rich without being able to achieve participation in power at the same time. In every case tensions escalated, especially from the mid-thirteenth century, with the particular characteristic that the groups in conflict were increasingly defined by their economic level. Philippe de Beaumanoir described the situation with absolute rigor in this passage from his Coutumes de Beauvaisis: ‘We have had in the good towns many struggles against each other, sometimes of the poor against the rich, sometimes some poor against others when they could not agree to choose a maire or an attorney or a lawyer. We see several good towns in which neither the poor nor the middle classes participate in the city’s administration, but rather it is all in the hands of the rich because the common people fear them for their wealth or their lineage. Thus it happens that some are maires or jurors or treasurers and the following year they elect a brother or nephew or any close relative, so that in ten or twelve years all the rich have the administrations of the good towns in their hands.’^[121] Although with its infinite nuances, this situation was general and led to violent popular uprising aimed against the patriciate.

More than once such outbreaks had appeared before, semi-hidden in the ebb and flow of the anti-seigneurial movements. In the aftermath of the twelfth century the constitution of the Credenza di S. Ambrogio in Milan revealed the presence of strong tensions among the intermediate groups and those that were strengthening in power in the form of a feudo-bourgeois patriciate, and in England the movement led by William Longbeard during the time of Richard the Lionheart mobilised thousands of craftsmen incited by the warlord’s appeal to gospel principles of the vindication of poverty.^[122] These movements seemed to become more pronounced in the thirteenth century. The general convulsion triggered in Flanders by the emergence of the false Baldwin in 1225, whom the popular groups called ‘emperor’,^[123] for the first time acquired the character of an insurrectionary movement of the urban plebs. It did not have, certainly, definite political goals, but it was fed by the resentment of the poor against the rich and expressed the vague aspirations to change that would bring an improvement in living conditions for the most humble and the limitation of the patrician groups’ growing economic and political strength. The social movement that erupted in France in 1251, when the news came from the capture of King Louis IX in Egypt, appears to have had a similarly tumultuous, indefinite character. As in the Flemish case, the popular classes expressed their hatred of the wealthier classes through their adherence to the – this time legitimate – monarch. The movement achieved a remarkable development and, from Italy, Salimbene perceived its seriousness;^[124] it brought together the ‘pastors’, that is, the rural masses and the poorest population of the cities, a coincidence pointed out by Salimbene and Guillaume de Nangis;^[125] and placing its confidence in the fatherly protection of the crown, it produced a violent outburst against the nobility, the rich, the Jews and the clergy, especially the mendicant monks. This was, therefore, also a diffuse movement in which, taking advantage of a favourable situation, the vast mass of the dispossessed expressed their protest violently without determining their ends or trying to achieve a degree of organisation that would ensure their success. The consequence was the insurgents’ annihilation.

A more defined character was shown by other movements that were narrower in scope. While there were tumultuous upheavals in some parts, in certain cities there was a rigorous system of trades. Within them the position of the wealthy entrepreneurs or masters tended to be strengthened; and in parallel the differentiation of wage earners dependent on one another in different measure progressed. The guilds of small craftsmen and wage-earners began to develop and grow in importance, granting their members with a strength they previously lacked. Thanks to this they were able to challenge the powerful groups which controlled wealth and political power. Sometimes their weapon was the strike, particularly in the cities of Flanders and the country of Liège from 1245, after the popular movement of this nature unleashed in Douai.^[126] Sometimes it was direct violence, as in Beauvais, where in 1233 ‘a conflict broke out amongst the burghers; the poorest rebelled against the richest, as a result of which a great number of rich people were killed and an even greater number of poor were seized and imprisoned in various parts of the kingdom’;^[127] Bishop Milon supported the popular movement and did not hesitate to confront the king himself. A similar thing happened in other cities at around the same time, and in some cases, as in Paris in 1250, the opposition between masters and partners was extremely vehement.

The clashes, whatever their level of violence, provoked mixed reactions. Sometimes, as in the cities to the south of France, they led to a readjustment in the relations of power, manifested in the incorporation of the minori in the councils. But it was more frequent for tensions to increase, triggering strong measures of repression by the patrician sectors. One symptomatic measure was the requirement that wage-earners residing outside the walls, as mandated in several Brabant cities from 1252; recourse was also made to the ban on them gathering, carrying weapons and especially organising in guilds, as expressly pointed out by the Código de las Siete Partidas;^[128] but what was most significant was the constitution of the Hansa cities of the seventeenth century in the Netherlands, whose members confederated in it early in the thirteenth century to ensure the reciprocity of defensive measures taken against wage-earners.

From the mid-thirteenth century popular anti-patrician uprisings became more frequent and more severe. Where there were significant sectors of wage-earners the process accelerated, because the masses banded together more rapidly and acquired more boldness sooner; and it accelerated particularly where the popular groups found a determined leader, as happened in Liège in 1253. Henri de Dinant was the head of the movement.^[129] His patrician origin revealed the strange interplay of economic and social conditions, of de facto junctures and of individual ambitions, all these circumstances, favoured by the crisis of the Empire, sparked a movement that set the popular classes against the prince, tribunes and very soon, all the patriciate until it took on the proportions of a genuine class struggle; the acts of violence were accompanied by very definite government measures intended to pass the highest tax burdens to the richest classes. At this point Henri de Dinant only had the support of popular groups and the movement ended in failure.

The concern that had begun in the country of Liège had an impact on the length and breadth of the Netherlands and France; around the same time strange movements were seen in Italy, where the fall of Frederick II fuelled or triggered revolts of various kinds; and in 1263 the Barons’ War allowed the trades of London to rebel against the patricians. Some years later the tensions heightened. There were serious conflicts in Caen, Orleans and Beauvais about 1270, and shortly after, in 1274, a very serious one broke out in Ghent, where the weavers and fullers resolved first to abandon their work, then the city itself. For a moment it seemed that the intervention of the Count of Flanders would weaken the power of the patriciate, but it re-emerged and the uprising began again in 1280. This time it was a far-reaching movement across all of Flanders – especially in Douai, Ypres and Bruges – that had an impact in France – in Provins and Rouen – and in the country of Liège, particularly in Dinant;^[130] the violence, pillage and street conflict resulted in an equally violent reaction from the patriciate that, stimulated by insurmountable tensions, became a definite political action whose terms entailed an alliance of the threatened upper classes against the threatening wage-earning classes.

For the whole half of the thirteenth century there had also been similar movements in various Italian cities: Parma, Siena, Novara, Pistoia, Brescia, Pisa; and there, as in other commercial areas, the situation became tenser in the last decade of the century. While the cities of Valenciennes, Rouen, Reims stirred, the vast movement that would be led by Giano della Bella in Florence was readying itself. Strangers to power, the minor arts – and even more the popular classes – thought they had found a favourable opportunity to destroy the monopoly that the patriciate possessed on wealth and power, and resorting to force achieved the sanction of the Ordinamenti della giustizia.^[131] In so doing, the tensions acquired new nuances that soon led to the feud between blacks and whites, full of social and political implications. The polarisation became extreme. This happened exactly in Flanders. The struggles of Douai between 1296 and 1298 gave the victory to the petit-bourgeoisie, but the rival forces defended their positions and tried to strengthen the alliances among the patricians groups. Sometimes the implications entailed by the clashes provoked strange responses. In Huy in 1299 the bishop took the side of the tradesmen against the rich, precisely when the Count of Flanders also sought the support of the popular classes against the king of France, whose assistance was being demanded by the patricians. It was in the Flemish cities where the situation became more critical. Patricians and French polarised the hatreds of the various popular sectors, which drew together and found an effective chief in Prince Guillaume de Juliers. On 17 May 1302 the popular uprising broke out in Bruges with terrible violence, and a few days later the Clauwaerts dominated large numbers of Flemish cities. The reaction was not long in coming and the French king’s army arrived in support of the patricians; but at the Battle of Courtrai the people’s army, composed of peasants, fullers, weavers and dyers, defeated it completely, and their victory opened a new stage in the process of the social struggles.^[132] The revolution of the people of the trades in many cities and the oligarchical governments gave way to a new political organisation. Whatever the fate of the new regimes, the upheavals produced in the mercantilised areas modified their social situation at the root.

Different in nature, with different degrees of violence, all the movements that occurred from the second half of the thirteenth century revealed the existence of a process of deepening social tensions. Groups who previously lacked influence began to achieve it, shaking up the established situations, some of them since time immemorial, others through the process that led the patriciate to power, and such movements demonstrated the substantial changes that were taking place in the social order.

Certainly the excesses of the patriciate, perched high in the government where it was able to overcome the resistance of the old nobility or allied it when it deemed it more advantageous for its interests, were sufficient cause to trigger all sorts of popular upheavals in the thirteenth century and the first half of the fourteenth; but these phenomena responded to deeper causes; the demographic growth of certain regions and the concentration of the urban population largely contributed to provoking them; but more than anything it was the cohesion achieved by certain dependent social groups and the peculiarity of the political and economic circumstances that contributed most to bringing tensions to a cut-off point.

A set of political factors effectively combined in the second half of the thirteenth century in such a way that the recently established system of economic relations became compromised. The crisis of the Empire after the death of Frederick II in 1250 – and even earlier – significantly changed the situation of the cities of Italy and Germany, creating new perspectives for both the land-owning and the dependent groups. The conditions created by the Treaty of Paris of 1259, on the one hand, and the more or less occasional, recurrent conflicts that brought the two kingdoms face to face had a similar effect for England and France. This latter situation had an impact on the Netherlands, where, in addition, the conflict between the king of France and the count of Flanders reflected a latent crisis long before and also helped to accentuate it. Further afield, the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire in 1261 altered the system of possibilities for the various Western economic groups, and the progressive loss of territories in the Levant had similar consequences, culminating in 1291. Finally, the Muslims’ withdrawal from the Iberian Peninsula and the increasingly accentuated possibilities of economic expansion into the east of Europe also modified the overall economic picture.

To the political factors were added economic factors variously linked to them. The unequal development of the various regions and cities, and the also uneven growth of the various sectors of production led to successive readjustments in reciprocal relations and, of course, crises of varying intensity. Perhaps the most visible phenomena derived from the decline of Burgundy’s fairs, the changes in trade routes, for economic and sometimes for political reasons, and the sudden cessation of certain forms of mercantile traffic. All this changed the pace of activity in several places and, in doing so, altered the situation of various social groups. No less influential ultimately were other events: the adoption of the gold coin and the growing development of fiscal policy in various kingdoms and cities caused significant disruptions to the economy, which inevitably had an impact on social relations.

All these factors directly or indirectly contributed to the unleashing of the popular uprisings, which in every place and circumstance took a different nature, but which in all of them responded to similar basic situations. The confrontation of the popular classes and the patriciate was a general European phenomenon because it derived from common circumstances; but in each case it had a local appearance, in which it is necessary to separate what assigned it an accidental character from what was a reflection of a general situation. Beyond the root causes there were in every case junctures favourable to a resolution of social tensions through violence, and in them local circumstances operated that might have seemed sufficient cause of the conflicts; and, indeed, without them the tensions would have been able to maintain themselves without violent interruptions, because the economic process was slow and, above all, sufficiently new as to make it difficult for those suffering from its consequences to adopt a positive attitude and organise an action directed at operating on the root causes of the situation. The juncture was therefore generally regarded as the cause, and the action was frequently oriented towards the occasional factors that caused it.

Sometimes it was a power vacuum that prompted the more audacious to attempt the assault; other times, it was the interplay of alliances among dissident or resentful groups, favoured by factional hatred that used to be passed down from parents to children; on some occasion they were true generational conflicts that revealed a shrinking economy unable to provide room for the new promotions; and if it ever consisted in a sudden outbreak of despair, on more than one occasion this was triggered by a man or group aspiring to polarise the forces of the wretched for their own benefit. But the juncture disoriented the insurgents about the mechanisms that moved the crisis, and the result was an extreme variety in the goals of the popular movements. The objective was power, because, with it, the patricians groups imposed the measures that were oppressing people of lowly status. The small artisans and wage-earners wanted to break the oligarchies’ blockade and participate to some extent in the government. But if the decision was firm, and the thirst for revenge was firm, it was hardly ever clearly defined the use they intended to put power to. The redistribution of the tax burdens, the setting of precise conditions for the exercise of public functions or the guarantees granted to lowliest against the abuses of the highest were, amongst others, frequent targets; but, in terms of modifying the dependent classes’ situation, they had no more value than the death of the hated enemy or the confiscation of their assets.

The most significant development appeared in the strategy of popular uprisings. Regardless of the occasional acts of violence, popular uprisings and the actions of war, the popular classes found a method of struggle that was its own directed at the dearer interests of the patriciate. The natural reaction to stop working when the work became unbearable or wages were absolutely inadequate began to be transformed into an organised form of action: the strike. Philippe de Beaumanoir characterised this way of acting by saying that it consisted of an ‘alliance made in common benefit when the workers promise or agree that they will not work at a very low price as before, and they increase their salary by their own determination, agreeing not to work for less and deciding amongst themselves penalties and threats against those who do not comply with their resolution.’^[133] In cities where industries flourished that were concentrated an significant sector of wage-earners the strike gained great importance as a means of struggle, not only because it paralysed production and threatened the profits of the entrepreneurs, but because it helped to amalgamate the workers and organise them for action. This happened in Arras or Ghent, for example, after 1274.

But in some cases the attitude of the wage-earning sectors was even more radical. In addition to stopping work, they resolved to abandon the city itself and bring about a true secession. The patrician groups then allied themselves to try to prevent the fugitives from one city were received by the others; but the attempt polarised the different sectors and showed the depth of the differences that separated and opposed them. Thereafter the struggle was to be head-on, save when formulas appeared in which the oppositions masked themselves. And at other times radicalisation became even more extreme. From the defensive the popular classes went onto the offensive and did not hesitate to lower the patricians’ citizen status by subjecting them to close monitoring – as in Florence – nor to defy the forces of those who had hitherto monopolised them, such as in Flanders. Through the action of those who most resolutely confronted the established order the features of the political concept animating the popular classes shone through.

3. Revolutionary ideology

Certainly, the political conception of revolutionary groups consisted not in abstract theory. It was more like a set of ideas and feelings that generalise certain specific aspirations in relation to the conditions under which the coexistence of different social groups developed. What gave it unity was undoubtedly a vague feeling of class that set the petit-bourgeoisie, supported subsidiarily by the poorest popular sectors, against the grande bourgeoisie. The insignes that Jean de Hocsem^[134] spoke of are, like the nobiligrandi e possenti or the grandiborghesi that Giovanni Villani^[135] spoke of, the rich patricians that monopolised at one time political and economic power. Against them the arteficiminuti, the populares,^[136] joined forces, a dense set highly coherent in the opposition, but within which the sector of the petit-bourgeoisie exercised supremacy. The confrontation gathered in hatred and violence because the oppression of the less wealthy seemed to have reached intolerable extremes and unleashed a defiant attitude that recognised no limits. The popular classes broke the agreement with respect to the established order and discovered that the rich did not terrorise them and that their power was not intangible. And when they triumphed, they introduced certain changes in the existing order that constituted a revolution and that was felt as such by their contemporaries. ‘It then began to transform the state and the government of Ghent,’ said the chronicler of the Annales Gandenses^[137] referring to the changes that followed the upheaval produced by the ‘Matins of Bruges’; and Villani pointed out the significance of the changes that occurred in Florence from 1293, saying that ‘these innovations in the people and these changes in the government were very important for the city of Florence and later had many and varied implications in our commune for better or worse.’^[138] More radical was the Florentine chronicler assessing the consequences of the Battle of Courtrai: ‘From this defeat,’ he wrote, ‘the honour, status and fame of the former nobility and the valour of the French came out much diminished, for the flower of the cavalry of the world had been defeated and humiliated by their vassals, and by the lowliest people in the world, weavers, fullers and other lowly arts and crafts never exercised in wartime, as much for their contempt as for their lowliness that the Flemings were called by all the nations of the world rabbits fattened up with butter; but by this victory won so much fame and ardour that a Flemish on foot with a spade in his hand would have confronted two French knights.’^[139]

Anti-patrician movements resembled anti-seigneurial movements in that they did not propose general solutions open to future situations, but simply immediate responses to the needs of a certain socio-economic group in a given situation. But the context was different. If the anti-seigneurial groups had needed to break a traditional pattern in order to be able to develop an unusual activity involving substantial changes in the socio-economic order and in the forms of mentality, the anti-patrician groups participated in the prevailing order – as an urban, mercantile, bourgeois order – and aspired only to participate in the political power, economic power and the privileges that the two entailed, new groups that had risen after the groups that now constituted the patriciate acquired the monopoly. The attitude of the anti-patrician groups may therefore hardly look revolutionary. Yet it was, to the utmost degree, because it was the first assertion of the need to regularly adjust the mechanisms of power in a highly mobile society. If the first bourgeois groups that clashed with the seigneurial power were able to think that they were in some way joining the elite while keeping it closed to the future, the new rising groups made it their business to show them that the process of social mobility that they had initiated was unstoppable. Perhaps the latter also thought that they were joining an elite that would close again after their admission. But the repetition of the experience definitely opened up the way for endless revisions.

That such upheavals were moved by a certain sense of class seems to be proved both by the vehemence of the anti-patrician Ordinamenti della giustizia, and the coincidence and solidarity of identical sectors in various cities in the face of a given emergency.^[140] And that the anti-patrician groups contained sectors that aspired to fixing their situation seems to be insinuated by events such as the elevation to the rank of knight of Pierre Le Roy and some of his entourage in Courtrai.^[141] But anyway the situation had in many cities led to confrontations that could not be solved only by the defeat of one of the sides; and where the anti-patrician movement became radicalised, it could be seen that the ultimate goal was the annihilation or submission of the patrician groups that were monopolising political and economic power.

The immediate goal of almost all anti-patrician movements was the review of economic and especially fiscal policy of the urban oligarchies. A highly complex situation had led to the establishment of the gold standard, the readjustment of exports and imports via devaluation of currency and, of course, in many places to an attempt by the treasury to maximise tax mechanisms. When the popular classes considered in each city that new taxes were intolerable, the ill-feeling violently exploded there around that problem. In Rouen, in 1292, ‘the people often revolted because of exactions called maltôte,’ relates Guillaume de Nangis;^[142] and in the Flemish cities, in Ghent, Liège and Bruges, the irritation at the imposition of a new tax was what triggered the great popular uprising.^[143] But that was not all. If the petit-bourgeoisie decided to confront the patriciate with violence, it was because in addition to demanding it was not exploited by it, it began to have aspirations to play an active role in the stewardship of the economy. The principle that no tax could be established without their consent began to make headway, and on their other side other principles found their way in that were just as radical, related to the surveillance of prices and wages, and even more to the direction of economic activity, a problem that sometimes involved an international policy review. They both responded to the idea that new social sectors – especially the petit-bourgeoisie – should begin to participate in directing public life; and not only with regard to the guidance and supervision of economic life, but to the exercise of political power.

The participation of new sectors in the stewardship of the economy – a yearning deriving, moreover, from the distressing crisis – came about through certain political changes. After the Battle of Campaldino in 1289 the fear that igrandi might abuse the popolani and make them bear the burden of the costs of war brought about a rapprochement in Florence between the seven major arts and the five lesser arts, as Giovanni Villani explains, who later adds that this was ‘almost a beginning of the popolo (or people’s constitution) from which later it took the form of the popolo that began in 1292.’^[144] Something similar happened in Flanders, where the financial situation became so serious that it was necessary to access the formation of new judgeships – the XXII of Douai and the XXIV of Arras^[145] – in order to reorder it with the intervention of the petit-bourgeoisie.

But these bodies naturally had commitments and political responsibilities. To accompany the new groups’ rise to power it seemed essential in some cities to resort to organised military force. Sometimes they were popular armies formed in the heat of the rebellion itself and lacking elements and preparation, which submitted to an experienced command capable of wisely taking advantage of their special characteristics: this was the case with the people’s army of Bruges, entrusted to the leadership of Gui de Namur and Guillaume de Juliers;^[146] and others were the armies organised according to the law as regular forces to support the popular courts, such as the thousand infantrymen created in Florence – later increased to four thousand – in relation to the new policy raised against the great and good.^[147]

It is clear that only the decision to take a policy of fundamental reforms to its logical conclusion could encourage such purposes. This policy consisted of imposing an institutional form that included and represented the different power groups, namely, the patriciate and the trades. This was the goal of the Florentine movement of 1282, from which grew the trend in the arts to participate in government,^[148] and this was also the objective of the movements of many other cities, especially Liège and those of Flanders and Brabant. Douai reached it in 1297 and Arras in 1302; Liège in 1303 reformed the composition of the council of jurors, which henceforth would consist of patricians and people from the trades by halves;^[149] and in almost all Flemish and Brabantian cities attempts were at least made, after Courtrai, to establish similar regimes.

This objective constituted a revolution, and nobody could trust that it would be achieved without fighting. To ensure its conquest and the permanence of the institutions to be established according to the new designs, recourse was made in some cases, as in Florence, to the creation of revolutionary institutions, such as the gonfaloniere of justice, whose mission was to defend the new order from the state itself. The people’s armies – such as in Florence or Liège – responded to the same purpose. But the uniqueness of the institutional formulas made them unstable and ineffective.

Indeed, the institutional formulas concealed a traditional political principle that consisted in the organisation of power for the defence of the group privileges. The anti-patrician revolutions mobilised vast swathes of the populace but were directed at including one of them among the privileged groups, namely the petit-bourgeoisie, artisans and small entrepreneurs, traders and perhaps some sectors of very low wage-earners. Once this objective was accomplished, the other popular groups were to abandon those who had been their vanguard and passed to the enemy from the very moment of their triumph. This was why the position of the trades was taken up so weakly, and their conquests were questioned again and again when it was discovered they were alone.

The revolutionary ideology that drove the anti-patrician movement was therefore limited by an economic and political conception that had been developed at the dawn of the new bourgeois society and in light of the first experiences of the monetary economy. The groups that at every stage claimed the rights granted them by their rise also aspired to contain the phenomenon of social mobility than had pushed them towards it in order not to have to share the privilege achieved. But the social and economic process was unstoppable. When it was noticed, it began to be thought about the need to halt it in the political arena, and the inevitable reaction was the establishment of a strong power.

V. REACTION: KINGS, OLIGARCHIES AND SEIGNEURS

Those who earlier and more keenly felt the danger entailed by the escalation of social confrontations were the patrician groups, in whose hands was the largest amount of wealth and the most important means of production. Perhaps it was not concealed from them that the restlessness of the less affluent layers stemmed to some extent from the economic contraction which in different ways had been working its way into many regions since the thirteenth century; but precisely because they were the ones who could best foresee the scope of the crisis, the patrician groups reacted strongly against the first consequences of the social confrontations.

The emergence of new groups aspiring to power had led to the establishment of institutional arrangements in which it was sought to give balanced representation to the different sectors; but the formulas found in most cities did not manage to acquire solidity, perhaps because the composition of these sectors was extremely heterogeneous. While some of them were formed by a small number of people that concentrated a large part of the wealth and possessed a very clear idea of their designs and how to achieve them, others were extremely numerous but lacked sufficient economic power and the political experience necessary to give effective consistency to the social power they were garnering. This heterogeneity prevented the political formulas achieving efficiency, and the new regimes were as weak as they were unstable.

This political instability contributed to darkening the economic prospects. That was why it worried the high urban bourgeoisie; but it also worried them because it could not predict whether it would be overcome through the establishment of more stable regimes but in which it would lose its hegemony for the benefit of the rising middle-class groups; and certainly it was not concealed from it that the environment of upheaval was creating favourable conditions for the political powers to reclaim their authority against those that had once lifted the patriciate: kings and seigneurs.

Set between two forces, the patrician oligarchies identified precisely their urgent needs. If they wanted to preserve their economic privileges, they had to prevail unequivocally, first and foremost, over the other rising bourgeois groups. Everything indicated that they were the most dangerous enemy. But, generally speaking, the primary need was to end the political instability, and related to this they had to establish what price it was prudent pay for the establishment of a strong political power. This was, without doubt, the condition sine qua non to be able to practise the economic activities, which were already badly compromised due to the very nature of their own process. But if the worry was the same in all parties, the solutions had to adjust both to the different tendencies among the patrician oligarchies and to the circumstances that conditioned their decisions in each case.

The optimal solution for the patriciate was undoubtedly the assumption of all powers and the establishment of an oligarchical regime that would ensure through political power the maintenance of control of the economy. But the solution was more difficult to achieve. Opposed to it was the socio-economic process itself, the presence of groups already formed that, even though they had no effective force to impose themselves, had more than enough to hamper the patriciate’s designs, and the expectant presence of kings and seigneurs, who had on occasion rejected its authority but had never abandoned its purpose of reassuming it. This picture forced the patriciate to choose.

Where the patriciate did understand that the establishment of an oligarchical regime was impossible, it opted to hand the exercise of political power to those who offered some guarantees. It needed a strong power and sometimes tolerated or supported the power of someone who could exercise it with some sort of legitimacy and at other times promoted it by entrusting it to whoever could give it what it needed: order and peace in public life, authoritarian limitation of power struggles and restriction of the political aspirations of the socio-economic rising groups. The patriciate renounced therefore the exercise of direct political power, safe in the knowledge that it could exercise part of it through its economic power, which, by contrast, it retained intact.

At certain stages of the local processes, the patriciate were successful in temporarily imposing their optimal solution in more than one city. They worked in favour of the struggling associations in which they grouped together to defend their privileges, favoured by the advantageous situation of their members; but in most cases they had to give in to adverse circumstances. In the flourishing cities of the Germanic Hansa a system that, perhaps by being a little more elastic, guaranteed the commercial patriciate’s predominant situation proved longer-lasting; but it was in Venice where it reached its prime after the decision adopted by the Grand Council to proposal of Doge Pietro Grandenigo in 1297; through the ‘serrata del Consiglio’ the number of people with full political rights was definitively restricted, and only those who belonged to the oligarchy could elect and be elected. That oligarchy’s representative institutions concentrated a strong political and economic power and, after the failure of the revolutionary attempts of Marino Bocconio in 1299 and Bajamonte Tiepolo in 1310, they consolidated the hegemony of a small group over a very vast and complex social whole.

In certain cities the harassed oligarchy discovered within its reach the help and the threat to a time of royal power. In France, Castilla or England the kingdom was constituted with progressive force, organised its administrative and fiscal regime, accentuated its military force and delineated its jurisdiction with a firm hand. The ambit itself of the kingdom, as a territorial area subject to the same jurisdiction, offered increasing opportunities for the ordering of an economy that, owing to its volume, increasingly overstepped the urban limits. This perspective, coupled with the possibilities of power offered due to its magnitude by the kingdom and with the common interests of the royal treasury and the haute-bourgeoisie, proposed an alliance which the patriciate sometimes considered the most advantageous of the options open. The patriciate then provided the unmistakable expansionary policy of the monarchy, which sought to regularise the situation of cities that had in another time achieved more autonomy than it now seemed reasonable to hold. A wise policy of conservation of economic freedoms and guarantees in exchange for political restrictions allowed the monarchy in many cases to resolve the problem of the oligarchies at risk, drawing them to its side and giving them the security that they wanted in exchange for the surrender of the exercise of political power.

Something similar happened in more restricted areas with the seigneurs. The German princes – beneficiaries of the imperial statute of 1231 and victors of the cities in 1338 – the Count of Provence, the Duke of Burgundy or the ‘dauphins’ who salvaged their authority from the late thirteenth century offered to the bourgeoisies at risk a guarantee of security that they could not acquire for themselves. They too owned extensive territorial authority and sufficient military power to restore order, and could also rely on the social prestige they enjoyed, a prestige not extinguished in spite of the confrontations and capable of act as a sufficient basis of authority restored through subtle adjustments to the new circumstances.

Kings and seigneurs came to the aid of the patriciate, and it consented willingly to granting them its support and abiding by its authority, judging that the abdication of political power that such compliance entailed was a good price in exchange for the socio-economic advantages that were secured. Kings and seigneurs, incidentally, had never abandoned their claims to regain their authority, so the adaptation was smooth and speedy, and the results immediate and effective.

More troublesome was the emergence of the new seigneuries where, as in the Italian cities, there was no legitimate seigneurial power to attract the respect and confidence of all patrician sectors. Guelphs or Ghibellines, the patricians sought support in the emperor or the pope, or in the King of the Two Sicilies, or indirectly in seigneurs who would represent them or follow their policy. When the order founded on the equilibrium of different social groups seemed compromised or hard to sustain, the communes tried out a type of individual authority alien to factions, lodged in podestà. With it there insinuated itself a new conception of the state, of equidistant power supported on objective standards; but when the struggle of the factions escalated, the individual authority sole that ensued was that of the seigneur committed to one of them, such as those of Ezzelino da Romano or Ugolino della Gherardesca. Little by little, however, the type of personal power in the Italian cities began to acquire new features. They attained it those who had, as Salimbene de Uberto Pelavicino said, ‘an appetite for dominating over all men.’^[150] Whoever could attain it – through their military might and through the support of a strong enough group – sought to preserve it, no doubt in response to the interests of the wealthiest groups, but setting out to broaden the political base that served them as a support. To the effective defence of the interests of the grande-bourgeoisie – which also for the seigneur meant wealth – it added a vague protection of other more indefinite and manageable sectors, which with very little could be summoned to the city and urged to express riotously their devotion to the one who commanded. And as the stewardship of the public interests left of the seigneur money, power and influence between the fingers, the seigneurie gained a certain independence, which little by little led it to become an equidistant and protecting power of all sectors equally. The Roman idea of the republic served to invigorate this policy, by virtue of which the power of the seigneurs gained a degree of legitimacy, and many of them were able to pass on their authority to their children, founding dynasties that, merely by dint of establishing themselves and enduring, gained a new principle of legitimacy.

The establishment of the new seigneurie in the Italian cities, precisely where the social and political conflicts had been most severe and longest, signified the end of the processes of free play of the economic and social forces. From then on the strong powers to some extent regulated the forces seeking to manifest themselves in different ways, depending on the interplay of their diverse interests and according to the different situations brought on by their economic activity.

CHAPTER II

POLITICAL REARRANGEMENT

I. THE POLITICAL PROJECTIONS OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC CHANGE

Social confrontations, with its aftermath of irreversible decisions and violence, shook the traditional political regime and with it the principles that underpinned it. The profound economic change that was under way undoubtedly contributed to provoke the commotion, thereby altering the relationships among social groups. But the experience of the struggles that brought the patriciate up against the seigneurs was the one that influenced most heavily the situation of the seigneurs who exercised power.

The intangibility of seigneurial power was destroyed. When the tensions came to a head, in the small ambit of the city those who represented the dissident and rising forces physically confronted each other, with those who constituted the corporeal expression of traditional power. The confrontation often acquired uncommon violence: there were physical attacks, grotesque persecutions, premeditated and methodical acts of barbarity, refined vendettas. These events were accompanied or ensued when dissident forces triumphed partially or totally, such unequivocal political actions as the prosecution of the legitimacy of authority, the attempt to restrict or share it, or finally the expulsion of he who exercised it. Such actions resolved the tensions existing in each case ad hoc but provoked unprecedented situations that opened up vast and unpredictable prospects. A sort of chaos worked its way in and was felt as such by many contemporaries, because after the acts of violence not only the real possibility of replacing one authority with another opened up but the theoretical principle underpinning all authority was questioned.

No other thing entailed the exercise of violence and its subsequent validation through political acts. But none of all that would have been able to occur if the traditional political structure had not been cracked and its bodies weakened. What the attitude of the traditional powers should be in the face of new situations constituted a problem that admitted various responses. At the beginning of the thirteenth century the French historian Rigord explained the defeat suffered in Alarcos by Alfonso VIII of Castile at the hands of the Almohads in these terms: ‘This disaster should be attributed to the conduct of King Alfonso, who mercilessly oppressed the knights to increase the power of the peasants; in this way, his impoverished knights lacked horses and weapons, whereas the peasant farmers, who were not accustomed to bearing arms, fled headlong from the Almohads, who ran in their pursuit and wreaked dreadful carnage.’^[151] His successor, Guillermo le Breton,^[152] glossed the same interpretation, stating in another passage the haughty attitude of the knights on discovering mercenary and communal troops in the army Philip Augustus led at Bouvines.^[153] These were the signs of a crisis. In the light of traditional principles the authority recognised certain foundations and had certain supports; but the social reality had altered the relationships between those in power and those who had to recognise and support them, precisely because new forces began to appear that aspired to exercise power to some extent and offered their support at another price and in other conditions than the traditional ones. Challenged in this way, political power had to calculate its attitude to the various social groups – old and new – if it wanted to be effective against the new situations and decide to accept the presence and legitimacy of the rights argued by the new rising sectors. The old and new social groups, both in crisis but with different pasts and different viewpoints, opposed its interests, and by confronting it forced a political rearrangement.

The crisis of the social groups who traditionally possessed power originated precisely as new economic situations were established and as other social groups formed to challenge them. From then on it a varied set of problems were posed for the traditional aristocracy. The first –for its scope and significance – was the inevitable and forced slide of the traditional economy towards the forms proposed and developed by the new social groups. Speaking of the conflict between the monastery of Vézelay and the bourgeois who had rebelled against it, Hugh of Poitiers puts a revealing phrase in the mouth of the Count of Nevers: ‘He finally requested an interview with the king and, falling at his feet, he very insistently begged him to forgive his miserable exiles and to forgive the monastery itself, because if the hamlet was destroyed, the monastery too would fall into desolation.’^[154] The interdependence between the traditional groups and the new groups was cemented fast, and the former had to conform to new situations involving certain changes in the system of relationships; the old and the new social groups were at loggerheads and had to seek a compromise formula that would allow them to coexist, but meanwhile the various sectors of the traditional groups moved in different directions and with different purpose in pursuit of this formula, thereby raising internal problems that took the character of a real crisis.

Better located to perceive the changing circumstances and nimbler when it came to adopting new attitudes, the monarchy brought about the alteration of the regime of their relations with the aristocratic class. Through the system of aid, Philip Augustus little by little forced the seigneurs to pay tax in the same way as the bourgeois did, although the mechanism and the amount were different.^[155] The seigneurial class began around this time to become restive across Europe as a whole, because that fiscal policy began to develop from the end of the twelfth century, together with the policy of administrative centralisation. The crisis of 1198 revealed this in the Empire, but it was in the rebellion of the English barons of 1215 where the conflict became most evident. The feudal monarchy became a power erected over and above the different social groups, and the old privileged ones lost force under these circumstances. Twice, in 1226 and 1241, the French barons revolted against the monarchy’s efforts to recover its former positions, and the English seigneurs did the same in 1242 and 1258. With greater potential, Frederick II enhanced his authority and imposed his doctrine through the Constitutions of Melfi, while Fernando III of Castile and Jaime I of Aragón availed themselves of the conditions created by the conquest to search for new supports and establish new norms. The seigneurial class, powerless or less able to adapt to the changes, locked itself away everywhere in a policy of resistance against the monarchy without hesitation at the risk of triggering civil war, as in France, England and Castile, or rebelling against the Church itself, as did the English seigneurs in 1215 or the French in 1247.^[156]

Certainly not the whole seigneurial class adopted the same attitude to the new situations. New groups less strongly adhering to the traditional concepts accepted the challenge imposed by the socio-economic changes and responded by trying to adapt to them. But this attitude did not only worsen the internal crisis of the noble class, as large sections of it – and usually the most influential in its political and military power – persisted in their customary attitudes and began to adopt a controversial position in defence of traditional principles and values. In response to the hostile behaviour of these sectors and the transactional behaviour of the others the new bourgeois groups found a way around the opposition they both offered them without their adversaries managing to do anything more than distort their line of ascent to an extent. But, anyway, the seigneurial class proved that it had no chance of containing the development of the new economic activities or of preventing the growing influence of the groups that practised them.

Indeed these groups did not conceal their aspiration to participate in political power. They certainly underwent extremely trying ordeals and proved that not only did they not constitute a unit but that, on the contrary, they were composed of sectors with conflicting interests; yet in spite of everything, they persisted in their efforts and obtained progressive successes that allowed some of their sectors to achieve strong gravitation within the community.

It was wealth first and foremost, and then the influence that wealth bestowed inasmuch as it conferred control of economic activities that drove and justified the design of the bourgeois groups to come to power. They formed as pressure groups whose behaviour could decide the other sectors’ fortunes, and they operated with heightened realism, and with agility and intelligence to adapt to the changing situations and the different pressures. It was this latter aptitude that valorised their influence and made effective. Compared to a legal and political system unsuited to their interests, sustained not only by adverse social groups but also by an overwhelming feeling of resistance to change, the bourgeois groups were able to find the by-ways through which to enter and radically alter it, almost always without causing a frontal reaction. They imposed new norms tailored to their needs and were able to make the old ones vanish so that new political regimes gradually supplanted traditional ones or were constituted on their weakened structures. An empirical attitude prevailed in this pursuit of new ways to cope with new situations. But what allowed these formulas to impose themselves was the circumstance that they were launched from the cities – which faithfully represented the new situations – from which the strong influence of bourgeois groups could be made to be felt and from where it was possible to impose a new system for the ordering of coexistence by the sole gravitation of their ways of life.

The bourgeois city constituted the great creation of the rising new social groups: it was the crucible where were new ways of life developed and the rudiments of the rules that should govern them emerged. It was an area enclosed by walls within which a social group, whose members had been separated from their old ties of dependence, began to establish a new system of ties that would draw them together. The bourgeois city recognised the coercion of traditional norms, but decided to introduce among its meanderings the devices needed to force them and make them fall into a new system into which they were integrated with other new ones that changed their meaning. Thanks to this process – tortuous, empirical, irrespective of any transcendental concern – the bourgeois city developed a set of political habits that little by little began to highlight certain principles and trends that were at the root of its attitudes. These political habits began to be institutionalised and there was soon a schema for the mechanisms of power built on experience, whose effectiveness had been proved.

The bourgeois city later transferred to some extent its political schema to territorial jurisdictions: kingdoms and seigneuries. If the bourgeoisie organised its ways of life within the urban framework, its economic activities very often transcended these limits. The fundamental needs that the bourgeoisie felt in the cities – security, freedom, economic protection – it very soon began to perceive in larger areas, into which it projected its mercantile activity. Also there it required measures of protection or indirect control of the mechanisms governing production or trade; but while in the city, the bourgeoisie formed a compact group capable of imposing its designs in territorial areas lacked force and needed the support of the constituted political powers. This circumstance led to a change in the bourgeoisie’s attitude towards kings and seigneurs.

The coincidence of some of their interests with those of the territorial powers favoured the solutions aspired to by the bourgeoisie. As the volume of the monetary economy grew, so did the needs of money of these powers, and an opportunity arose to outline a favourable policy at the same time to the commercial bourgeoisie and the territorial political power. But to the extent that the latter power consented to outline and implement such policy, it began to abandon its traditional concepts and come closer to the ones put in place by the bourgeoisie. A new type of fiscal and administrative principles began to permeate the royal and seigneurial policy, and as these principles took hold, the territorial economic areas that the bourgeoisie were planning because of its continuing expansion came to be consolidated.

In a way this transfer of political schemas of the urban bourgeoisie to the ambit of kingdoms and seigneuries accelerated – if not actually determining them – certain profound changes in the attitude of the territorial political powers – kings and seigneurs – towards the different social classes: the significance progressively attained by the bourgeois groups moved them to certain concessions that indirectly involved a recognition of the role they played in society. In doing so, the territorial political powers stimulated a readjustment of the relations between the different classes which, other than that, the socio-economic changes spontaneously caused and which was expressed in certain formulas with which it would become institutionalised. A new political order – the feudo-bourgeois order – began to take shape.

II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE BOURGEOIS CITY

The city was the ambit – circumscribed and precise – within which the bourgeoisie developed and experienced an unusual way of life and coexistence, new in relation to the way of life characteristic of rural areas, daring in comparison to the traditional schemas of these regions’ populations and one that posed a challenge to the traditional ruling classes and their system of values. The city was a useful tool and the frame necessary for the development of the change in ways of social life and the mentality of a group that acquired dissident traits. It was inevitably seen as an original creation, to such an extent that it is sometimes imagined as a personalised entity, with strange and unusual traits that lent it an exotic and almost unreal physiognomy. Deformed by a prejudice that was inclined to the discovery of the unusual and the marvellous, descriptions of cities and the lives of their inhabitants were adjusted to fit certain moulds that formed an archetypal schema; but not only because the distances and the oral transmission of the stories dispelled any differences or peculiarities, but because, regardless of local features, the similarity of forms and the attitudes of city and urban life were becoming apparent.

That image was enriched through the fantasy of those who made the city the stage of a story that wanted to be surprising and wonderful. The cities where Gonzalo de Berceo locates the miracles of the Virgin were rich, noble or good, like Toledo (‘a famed place’), Cologne, Rome, Pavia, Pisa or Bourges.^[157] Those that were recorded in the memory of the observer and traveller Chrétien de Troyes were filled with goods and inhabited by prosperous inhabitants who spent their money lavishly, like the one where King Lac lived,^[158] or formed an active beehive, ‘populated of very pleasant people, and the benches of gold and silver covered with coins, and the squares and streets filled with good artisans dedicated to various trades,’ like the one Gauvain reached,^[159] Maudrane had walls of grey and green marble, majestic towers and movable bridges, according the poet of Gui de Bourgogne,^[160] who, however, was more surprised at the abundance of sendals and silk brocades in Montergueil produced by the beautiful Saracens. And those living at the edge of the sea or a navigable river saw ‘the great iron-riveted ships and the wealth-filled galleys that make the opulence of the inhabitants of good cities,’ plying the waves that lapped their walls,‘ enthused Bertrand de Bar.^[161]

The idealisation of bourgeois cities was still stimulated by the reminiscences of the major Muslim and Byzantine cities, which stunned those who saw them through educated eyes in the spectacle of the small cities of Western Europe. Palermo, ‘stupendous’, ‘the most beautiful city in Sicily’, according to Ibn Jubayr,^[162] came to the memory of the poet of Gui de Bourgogne when his character had to feign a foreign origin, and called it ‘the admirable city.’^[163] Antioch, Alexandria and Damieta attracted the attention of William of Tyre^[164] and Thessaloniki surprised Villehardouin;^[165] but the most extraordinary revelation was Constantinople for the warriors of the Fourth Crusade, witnessed by Villehardouin and Clari.^[166] The splendour, grandeur, activity, but above all the luxury and ways of life, revealed a system of customs and values that was beginning to be familiar in Western cities although on a far more reduced scale. Perhaps that is why it became a not unattainable ideal and its shadow floated on a world that was marching towards an increasingly sensual and refined attitude.

This tendency towards refinement and sensuality defined urban life in a way and consequently formed the image of the city as a hub of secularism. Against the strained tension in which the warrior had to live and to the ascetic renunciation of the monk, the bourgeois set their opulence, their shameless spending on goods that would bring them prestige and personal enjoyment, and their ostentatious decision to enjoy friendly coexistence within the conventions of ‘urbanity’, which imported not only the primary satisfactions of luxury, but also those that provided the joy of feasts or the attendance of intellectual speculations or artistic creation.

This whole set of new concerns expressed the bourgeoisie’s radical design to make the city an ambit outside the contingencies and determinations of the nature. The city was to have the characters of an oasis. Urban dwellings isolated their inhabitants from darkness and cold, just the way urban organisation sought to make them independent of the uncertainties of scarcity by regulating the supply and necessary resources to overcome it. The city was then the opposite of nature, and urban life was the opposite of natural life. The city was therefore perceived as a human creation opposed to the order of nature: it was inevitable that such a creation should evoke conflicting views.

Perhaps the most expressive were strictly antithetical. Brunetto Latini wrote in Li livres doutresor that ‘from the time that people first began to increase and multiply, and the sin of the first man sent roots into the earth, for his family and the world grew much worse, so that some coveted their neighbours’ things, and others through their pride subjected the weaker ones to the yoke of bondage, it was absolutely necessary that those who wanted to live lawfully and escape the power of evil-doers should turn together to one place and in one order.’^[167] It was an optimistic view, according to which the city did indeed constitute a different order of the natural order, but effective in preventing the sin, vices and wickedness of men. In response to this view there circulated the opinion of those like Rupert of Deutz who, recognising in urban life an alien order contrary to nature, warned that the city constituted a profane order in an increasingly vigorous way. ‘It is not the stones or the walls that I hate but the injustice that reigns within them’; because even in the dark cellars of castles dwell ‘people of dubious life, of unknown condition, with no reputation’; so that the fire that destroyed his own city looked to him like a ‘judgment of God’. Apart from being outside the natural order the city was a profane ambit, and the preacher concluded his examination by saying that neither Abraham, Isaac nor Jacob ‘built cities or castles; on the contrary, they fled the cities to dwell in huts and built the opposite of cities and castles: an altar in honour of God.’^[168] This dangerous creation had a noticeable and significant origin: according to the Book of Genesis,^[169] Cain was the first to build a city, and perhaps this persistent idea of the city evil in its profanity was what inspired the poet of the Gui de Bourgogne the plea that he put in the mouth of Charlemagne for God to destroy the city of Luiserne, for the possession of which two of his knights were fighting.^[170]

But the drive that determined urban concentration was totally alien to any considerations to be made about its characters and consequences. Sometimes it was channelled by the individual will of the king or magnate wishing to strengthen their possessions; sometimes it was channelled spontaneously by the needs of certain social groups. During the expansion towards the periphery and the economic changes from the turn of the tenth century social clusters found in the castle of the seigneurs a model for what their environment and medium should be. The same role was played by the fortified monastery, and within the castle or monastery, under the protection of its walls or at its side, in the hope of taking refuge in them, congregated the social groups of defenceless people who earned their living without intervening in the power struggles that shook the privileged. Being lucky enough to have a fortified enclosure where one could dwell in safety was for them a vehement aspiration in an insecure and threatening world; and they soon came to possess it in many places, such as Verdun, where Richer tells that as early as the end of the tenth century there was a ‘enclosed space for merchants, surrounded by a wall like a citadel, it is separated from the city by the course of the Meuse, while being bound to it by two bridges over the river.’^[171]

As early as the late ninth century and in the early days of the tenth the building of cities was one of the primary concerns of kings: it is revealed at either end of the Romano-Germanic area by the explicit statements of the Chronicle of Alfonso III of Asturias about Ordoño I, and those of Henry I of Germany^[172] about the numerous foundations and resettlements that they carried out. Even as late as the end of the twelfth century Louis VII of France could leave the predominant memento that ‘under his reign were built a large number of new cities and other older ones were expanded.’^[173] And in the second half of the thirteenth century Edward I of England reached fame as a wise monarch for having erected many cities not just in England but above all in the border regions of Wales and Gascony.^[174] Intense and widespread, the phenomenon of urban development bore visibly witness to the profound economic and social change taking place.

And it did not go unnoticed. Together with the testimonies already mentioned are the countless documents of foundation and settlement; but the awareness of the fact is even better proved in the attention given to it by the chroniclers. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle^[175] spins the story of the reign of Edward the Elder from the turn of the tenth century about the episodes of reconquest of cities, of their resettlement, of the erection of walls and fortresses, of the ordering of urban life. And the same attitude is shown by the writer of the First General Chronicle of Spain^[176] when he recounts the reigns of Fernando I and Alfonso VI. Many cities were indeed refounded on the site of ancient settlements occupied by invaders, which, on being reoccupied, were located in border areas and required, on the one hand, special devices for defence and, on the other, a prudent and effective settlement policy and economic reactivation. But in the urban development of the Romano-Germanic area other situations arose that have acquired a different meaning.

The most complex was that of the cities of vast mercantile development which had been held by Byzantines and Muslims, and later fell into the possession of the Christians. Incorporated until then to a highly restricted economic area and organised according to highly defined traditions, conquered cities – like Constantinople, Acre, Antioch, Palermo, Lisbon or Seville – were reordered according to the needs and principles of their new seigneurs. The surprise that aroused in them by the magnificence and economic activity of the old cities did not prevent rapid government measures being taken adapted to the new needs. Some fairly extensive sectors of the population were expelled, and as a result certain fields of the economy were weakened or extinguished. Conversely, the least complex, at least at first, were the situations of the new cities. The ones that formed spontaneously, such as the burg whose formation was recalled by Salimbene, who said simply that ‘as time went by people gathered there to dwell’,^[177] grew very slowly; the city, which was at first ‘small and weak’ and in which ‘few men lived’, as Henry of Livonia said about Riga early in the thirteenth century,^[178] gradually increased in population, and as it developed, it gradually adjusted its social mechanisms and economic possibilities. The ones, by contrast, that were founded through formal acts of seigneurial power, received from the start, an arrangement to which their populations had to adjust, since the building of a city usually had a preconceived purpose. This was the typical case of Alessandria, whose foundation a thirteenth-century Florentine chronicler tells as follows: ‘At this time the cities of Milan, Cremona and Piacenza formed one city against Pavia, which had been at war with them; and to be famous for its name it was named Alessandria after Pope Alexander. After that, at the request of the Lombards, the Pope gave it a bishop and deprived the Bishop of Pavia of the dignity of the cross and the pallium owing to the fact that he took the emperor’s side against the Church and always remained close to the ancient kings who persecuted the Church.’^[179] Something similar happened with the cities they founded on the frontiers or in the recently conquered regions by both the Castilian kings and the German emperors and seigneurs; and again in the thirteenth century with those founded by Louis IX of France (Aigues-Mortes), Federico II (L’Aquila), Manfredo (Manfredonia), Alfonso X (Ciudad Real) and Edward I of England in both Gascony and Wales.

But whatever its origins, the city revealed that urban agglomeration always had coinciding, definite trends. Those who spontaneously or by virtue of a incitement worthy of attention congregated in settlements primarily seeking a degree of security for their existence and new possibilities to earn a living and improve their social status. The first instance of urban agglomerations was primarily defensive, which is why walls and towers were the symbols of the city. At the start of the tenth century Henry I of Germany did not only make sure that walls were erected but forbade the markets or assemblies to be held outside their limits.^[180] Kings and seigneurs across Christian Europe devoted their greatest efforts to fortifying cities; the bourgeois constantly demanded that ‘secure cellars, fences and doors’ be made, like those in Sahagún,^[181] and those who penetrated into hostile regions did not hesitate, as did the monk Meinhard in Livonia, to bring in masons from afar who knew how to erect solid walls for people to live ‘as children of God’.^[182] Walls guaranteed security in the face of any unexpected attacks from outside; but the tendency to reinforce the city was so strong that it did not only manifest itself in the search for exterior protection but also in the efforts to secure internal peace. The peace of the market was the most urgent requirement of the bourgeois, but general peace was their constant concern. A legal regime, which had to be original and adapted to the new situations, and an urban police force that dealt both with problems of public interest related to manufacturing and commercial activity, and to problems of everyday life, were the goals pursued by those who barricaded themselves within the walls of cities to develop a new life-style based on work and geared to tranquillity and enjoyment.

But as urban agglomerations developed, it became apparent that the defensive attitude that had promoted the original concentration had given way to other increasingly active tendencies. Urban agglomeration primarily revealed a trend towards social concentration. Compared with the dispersed and impotent rural group, small, compact urban groups organised themselves by dint of their members agreeing over certain ends on which their existence depended, and deeply solid about the common destiny compromising the fate of each of its members. The city lodged therefore a primary group, in which all members were responsible for their collective behaviour. Within the narrow confines of the city walls the primary contact was strengthened through everyday contact. In the streets, the square or the market, in church, the tavern, or the communal building, the continual relations between people allowed a picture to be created of each of the members of the community, and with it the possibility to foresee their behaviour and judge it through the consensus of opinion. Private life became unmistakable and the gossip that circulated from hand to mouth aired all the secrets, so that coexistence was founded on a thoroughgoing understanding of each of the group’s members. Small cities given their extent – many did not reach fifty hectares – acquired their strength thanks to this force of the primary links, and they might have seemed to be populous cities, as was almost conventionally said of all those that had a certain importance, not only for the spectacle offered by a concentration of several thousands of people – and sometimes three or four tens of thousands – but also for the concentration of the activities that they deployed, because of which small crowds coincided on the jetties, in the markets or in the squares.

For a long time this did not compromise this cohesion or the diversity of the various groups’ origins, or even the division into parties or factions that are operated within them. There were different social classes in the cities, privileged sectors vying with each other for power, sometimes national or religious groups that preserved a certain marginalisation; but for some time the city managed to maintain a principle of cohesion capable of overcoming these differences. Its unequivocal manifestation was a sometimes almost fierce local pride, which on the one hand invigorated the internal solidarity and on the other unleashed irrepressible hatreds against rival cities. Only when economic differentiation reached certain limits did this principle of cohesion come to be broken and the mechanism of expulsion of dissidents began to be put into practice; but even so the tendency towards concentration social, albeit conditioned, subsisted, to the extent that the city needed to increase the number of citizens with a sense of solidarity in order to increase its wealth and power.

The tendency towards concentration of wealth was also characteristic of urban agglomerations. The city was the area where the market economy was developed and systematised, and urban ways of life were suitable mechanisms to stimulate it. Whatever the scale of the original production of manufactured goods or commercial transactions, the local market and even more the regional or the international fair created the inflexible hierarchy of wealth. While some artisans went on producing their products with little gain and some merchants went on selling their wares on a small scale, markets and fairs contributed to the emergence of nuclei of concentration of wealth. Those who controlled them accumulated a fund for manoeuvre that allowed them to influence all aspects of the economic life of the city and to accumulate private fortunes that, reinvested, would reinforce the possibilities of influence. These sectors that accumulated capital and orientated the various economic sectors exercised the greatest authority over the city, and in virtue of this the city outwardly possessed a particular significance as an economic power, which was manifested through a certain orientation of its policy and through a certain scale of its operations. From outside the city appeared as a focus of concentration of wealth, and according to the use that could be made of it, the city acquired that unique prestige that used to be expressed with the use of the word ‘opulent’ when it wanted to be classified. The abundance of goods, but above all a huge mass of available capital, allowed the city to bear on its surroundings, trying to subject them to its own interests and transforming them into its area of influence. The sign of this influence was its inclusion within a banking system or the imposition of its own currency.

This fast-growing concentration of wealth – in a city and in the hands of a few within it – provoked the astonishment of contemporaries. None other is the meaning of the words in which the chronicler of the Crónica General speaks of Seville,^[183] or those that Guillaume le Breton applies to Angers, Ghent, Gravelines, degrees Beaume, Ypres, Arras, Bruges, Lille or Douai,^[184] or of which William Fitzstephen or William of Malmesbury use to refer to London^[185] or those that Giovanni Villani writes of Pisa or Florence^[186] or those that Martino de Canal refers to Venice.^[187] But this concentration of wealth promptly registered a strong tendency to drift towards a concentration of power. Those cities with enough strength to do so switched from a defensive to an offensive attitude, leaving the walls after those who had protected themselves to impose their authority or influence upon the entire ambit that gave in to their pressure. In reality the city exercised its power essentially to impose its economic policy. Controlling a pass, a port, a crossroads was the guarantee that the city would orient the circulation of its products, secure its influence on the markets and above all consolidate the influence of one city’s economic groups over another. In this way, economic policy was confused with general policy and guided the power struggle of the various urban sectors. It was inevitable that in the same way it would influence both the delineation of the new economic areas as urban and the outbreak of the conflicts that confronted certain cities with others.

These attitudes revealed that urban society tended to develop a new way of life. The forms of both economic and political action were determined by original attitudes that to some extent defied the traditional rules but corresponded to new situations and, although looked upon with suspicion by certain sectors, they were underpinned by the consensus of vast, increasingly influential groups. New forms of association gave these groups a solid position within society and reordered the mechanism of reciprocal influences according to unprecedented schemas, tightly adjusted to the new situations. But it was especially in the ambit of intellectual life and certain forms of social coexistence that a new conception was most clearly seen to be prevailing.

Originally cultivated in ecclesiastical environments, the disciplines of thought began little by little to spread through other sectors of urban society. The liberal arts, as well as medicine, law, theology and philosophy, began to worry the new generations of bourgeois families; and the exercise of that intellectual activity created small, highly prestigious circles that attracted the respect of vaster sectors. Theoretical speculations began to be transferred to bourgeois environments from other more restricted areas, and formed hitherto unheard-of relations of co-existence in schools like those that made the reputation of Laon, Paris, Bologna or London.^[188] But other trends also led new forms of coexistence to be outlined. When William Fitzstephen described the city of London at the end of the century, he deemed it necessary to account for what entertainments the city’s inhabitants pursued, pointing out that ‘it is proper for every city to be not only a centre of mutual benefit and importance but also of pleasure and enjoyment.’^[189] The English chronicler’s observation gains value if it is related to the one inserted in his description of Milan a century later by Bonvesin de la Riva:^[190] ‘It is obvious, after all that has been said, that there is in our city a wonderful life for those who have enough money, all the comforts for human pleasure are known to be here at hand.’ All those who availed themselves of urban life no doubt wished to achieve the support that imported life within a compact community, to circumvent the threats of inclement nature, to mitigate the harshness of their work and to increase their profits; but as some began to accrue a certain wealth the desire began to awaken in them to enjoy leisure the way the noble classes did. The members of the mercantile guild of Saint-Omer carefully regulated the potatio where its members congregated to relax.^[191] The bourgeois also met to drink as ordinary folk in the city’s numerous inns and taverns; but when certain occasions came, lavish parties were organised, feasts with singing and dancing, and a dazzling display of luxury; a military victory or the arrival of a benevolent seigneur could be the occasion for popular revelries; in the religious festivities performances and processions were combined with private less pious parties; and in the spring – at the time of the May calends – all regular activities stopped to give way to popular elation, to which young people lent their ardour, who saw it as their right to enjoy freedom and joy, as pointed out Galbert.^[192] All this was what an old eleventh-century chronicler called ‘urban delights’, in the pursuit of which the bourgeois tried to buy leisure with wealth.^[193]

All these tendencies that characterised the life of urban agglomerations intensified and diversified as the growth of cities gathered pace. Once established, when their prosperity was secure, cities saw their power of attraction grow. The more populous and rich they were, the more seductive they became to rural populations and even for those from the smaller cities, which took the first opportunity to join them. The cities grew demographically through the constant influx of people seeking to benefit within its walls in order to enjoy the opportunities they offered, but also grew, until the mid-fourteenth century, through the decline of mortality that resulted from the rise in living standards. And this demographic development posed fresh problems that changed the face of urban agglomerations.

Dante’s testimony about the changes occurring in Florentine life is highly significant.^[194] Urban agglomeration had come into being under a strong aspiration to establish compact groups, suitable for the exercise of mutual protection and ultimately mounted on the existence of primary bonds. But the very efficacy of the bourgeois experiment unleashed a movement aimed at distorting it. The high vegetative growth of the urban population and the incorporation of new inhabitants attracted by the high praise offered by the city promptly transformed the city’s social composition: the primary groups were overtaken by a demographic wave and little by little became involved or dissolved within a society that seemed over-crowded. The pronounced social mobility caused by mercantile activity mixed the social groups and altered their appearance, creating new unstable groups. These events had an impact on the various ways of urban life.

Perhaps the most diffuse of the repercussions was the contravention of moral norms. Maintained at first by common interest and each man’s responsibility, enforceable through direct, personal intercourse, these norms became increasingly tenuous insofar as the social group became less compact and coherent. Upstart or marginal groups began to seek their own benefit, disregarding the collective interest perhaps because the collective interest increasingly seemed to be the interest of the original compact groups. Once society diversified, the system of moral norms had to be modified and adapted to a particular society that was becoming multitudinous.

No less serious were the ad hoc problems created by that society. The supply problem reached considerable gravity. A proper relationship between the urban ambit and its rural surroundings assured the city its provisions; but as the city grew that balance began to alter, and it was necessary to have an increasingly strict surveillance of the fairs and markets, and the traffic in foodstuffs in terms of price and quality. For a population of some tens of thousands of inhabitants the possibilities of supply ensured by technical resources were limited; and a bad harvest or a more or less speculative diversion of the traffic could cause shortages and hunger, with its corollary of famine and social malaise. Something similar happened with sanitation. The presence of doctors and apothecaries assured better individual health care for large numbers of people; but public health was increasingly threatened by promiscuity, poor ventilation, lack of water and the difficulties of eliminating waste and sewage. Even with the improved resources to care for their health, the urban population found itself more defenceless against the dangers of an epidemic; and this risk grew as the population narrowed within the walls that constituted the sign of the security everyone yearned for.

To benefit in some, albeit scant, measure, from the advantages offered by an urban agglomeration, they did not hesitate those who could not benefit from the walls of the city leaning back on them. Suburbs and slums appeared, extramural districts whose inhabitants were nevertheless part of the urban community and who after a time managed in many cities to have a new wall build that enclosed the old and the new districts. Sometimes the process was repeated in its entirety and successive enclosures were erected. However, as the population grew and became a multitude, new practical needs arose to solve the problems of urban agglomeration. The need for defence, trade and supply were generally the most important. The walls were integrated with towers, it was necessary to build bridges over rivers, the streets began to be paved and the markets – vital hubs of the city – began to be improved so that buyers and sellers could make their transactions easily.

The growth of cities was testimony to their wealth. The propertied classes began to build houses that reflected their wealth and with amenities that could fulfil their longing for well-being and enjoyment; and sectors with fewer resources sought to emulate them as far as they could. The city grew at first without rhyme or reason, but rules to govern its expansion and to cope with the process of demographic development soon began to be established. Some cities tried to defend their free spaces, others regulated building and all sought to foresee the risk of fire. To express the potential of the whole community, public buildings also gained value as signs. The cathedral, churches, communal buildings, markets, the headquarters of guilds or corporations, hospitals and convents, communal clock towers, everything that represented the spirit of the urban community received the support of all in order to display maximum splendour and express the might and solidarity of those who lived within the walls. The city had demonstrated that it was a physical entity and at the same time a social community, both inseparable. But the process by which it had formed showed unequivocally that it tended also to be a political community.

III. THE URBAN POLITICAL ORDER

The social community that inhabited the city had been organised over time as a result of complex and intertwined socio-economic processes. It did not have the same structure in all cities nor did its various elements retain the same meaning in all periods. But as an urban society formed on a market economy it everywhere acquired certain precise traits that were reflected in a relatively homogeneous political dynamic.

The difference between the cities of Italy and France – which drew Salimbene’s attention so strongly^[195] – was the result of socio-economic processes that varied from region to region: while in Italian cities nobles and bourgeois lived side by side, French cities contained only bourgeois. In general, and even though the facts were not so categorical, it is undeniable that the process of urban political ordering varied according to the scope of the influence of the noble sectors and to the type of nobility constituted them. The political attitude of the different bourgeois groups varied when the noble sectors came into play, and their own possibilities of action grew as much as those of the nobility did. There was no shortage of coalitions between the latter and certain bourgeois groups against others, and this possibility accentuated the frictions caused between them by the interplay of extreme social mobility.

This influence retained by the noble sectors where their power and number of their members was considerable relied above all on the endurance of their social prestige. But, even being large, it did not generally manage to neutralise the pressure of the bourgeoisie, which sought to achieve very specific objectives tailored to real needs. The bourgeoisie as a whole was effectively a pressure group, in whose favour acted the evidence that most of its demands tended to validate unconcealable de facto situations. All bourgeois sectors aligned early on in pursuit of these demands, because the suppression of certain jobs or the establishment of certain fixed rules in relation to public peace, people’s safety or judicial proceedings were of benefit to all, albeit in different ways. If later yawning gaps started to open up between the different bourgeois groups, it was because, once the instance in which the common fight had no other aim than individual rights had been exceeded, there ensued a stage of competition for political power.

Although the entire bourgeoisie acted towards seigneurial power as a compact and solid pressure group, only certain sectors became groups with political power. Sure of their wealth, prestige and social power – the latter strengthened by the emergence of new sectors that were economically dependent on them – the political power groups sought to turn into privilege the advantages that the entire bourgeoisie had helped to win by acting together as a pressure group. It involved constituting the urban body politic, and at first only the smaller sectors formed part of it. But the struggle was resumed several times. For new sectors to whom rights had been granted by their economic rise and the power of numbers within the narrow confines of the city to be incorporated into the urban body politic, the pressure of the groups with medium and small fortunes became increasingly strong, and lengthy, violent struggles occurred. The result was varied, but the design to constitute a closed body politic, if it was reached in some cities, was never stable. It lacked a principle of justification, since the right of the first groups that had swept to power were no different from than that which the groups rising in wealth and number, and outside its scope could argue in their favour.

However, if the order of the body politic was a hectic and confusing process, the organisation of the constitutional system achieved definite, precise forms. At the service of the power groups, whatever they be, worked new minorities of legists and experts in administrative matters, with whose knowledge and experience the institutions acquired increasing refinement in responding to the needs of urban communities and their tendencies. The structure of the body politic was kept under constant review, but the institutional system acquired sufficient effectiveness to satisfy this variable structure in which the new groups were not substantially different from the old in their goals and aspirations, but simply aspired to share power with them.

1. The urban body politic

Only through a tortuous and confusing process could what was to become the city’s body politic be organised and defined little by little amid urban society. If within the traditional Christian-feudal order the determination of those who legitimately participated in the exercise of political power presented no doubt, in the nascent feudo-bourgeois order the problem was posed from the outset, with no recognised patterns to delimit the group of those who were to participate in its government among the unstable throng that dwelt within the city walls. The establishment of these guidelines was never going to be easy and provoked numerous, sometimes extremely violent conflicts. Perhaps at first it seemed in any city that the precise definition of those who should enjoy political rights was obvious; but everywhere it was soon discovered at the expense of harsh experiences that it was not only not obvious but that any model established entailed the accentuation of social tensions inherent in a highly mobile society. Strictly speaking, no model designed for that purpose achieved general consensus and only occasional criteria prevailed which tried in vain to legitimise de facto situations.

Perhaps the difficulties of urban society to inscribe within it a definite body politic came from the fact that its members had to fight earnestly for a long time to win their civil rights. The constitution of the civil body of the city was a long, hard process, but in the course of it not just the problems associated with individual rights and guarantees were resolved but obliquely others were vented that had an impact on the political status of the city’s inhabitants. Intertwined as they were, the two groups of problems forged ahead while the significance of the individualised bourgeois grew apace, being the subject of civil rights as a person and the member of a group whose pressure could drive him to participate in power.

It was first necessary to clarify who by law were inhabitants of the city. As a centre of spontaneous attraction the city needed at some stage to stimulate the growth of its population in order to reach the level of development to make joint action effective. In order to create such a stimulus a number of measures were deployed, beginning with the opening of the city almost without conditions to all those who wanted to settle there. The Établissements de Saint Quentin contained such provisions at the end of the eleventh century, declaring that ‘we have likewise established that whoever enters our commune will give us help from their own; be it for flight, for fear of their enemies, or for any other lack, provided that they are not wont to wickedness, may enter the commune because the door is open to all. And if your seigneur had unduly retained your things and would not acknowledge your right, we shall do justice; and we shall according to our power look at all the things that were taken from you and shall take guarantee for lost things. And to come and go before your seigneur, we shall lead you for safe conduct there where you have the right to be summoned.’ In the same sense, they said before that ‘anyone who may want to and wherever they come from, lest they be a thief by day or by night, may live in the commune; and from the moment they have entered the city no one may take them prisoner nor treat them violently if it is not by the justice of the aldermen.’^[196] Thanks to these guarantees offered to all the urban conglomerate grew, comprising people from all walks of life.

It is generally understood that the franchises were so broad that serfs were not excluded from them, as expressly provided for the municipal charter of Oviedo in 1145 to clarify that all the residents of the city would be free ‘be they the king’s fiscal serf or from any service whatsoever.’^[197] The important thing was the willingness to be solid with the rest of the inhabitants and the decision to settle in the urban site. This latter attitude seemed to be proven if one resided a certain time continually within the city. The Établissements de Rouen, at the end of the twelfth century, admitted him under the proviso that ‘no one should remain more than a year and a day in the city unless they be a juror of the commune. During that time and before having sworn they may not enjoy any of the freedoms of the city.’^[198] But other charters directly established the need for this residence: the Charter of Arras of 1194 stated that, if a stranger came to reside in the city, they had to present themselves to the aldermen ‘and after remaining freely and without opposition for a year and a day, they will be bourgeois and will have the law of the city.’^[199] And in the Charter of Lincoln of 1160 the king stated that ‘if someone had remained in the city of Lincoln for a year and a day without claim by any claimant and had adopted the customs and could demonstrate by means of the city’s laws and customs that the claimant had been on English land without claim against him, he will in the future remain as in the past in peace in my home town of Lincoln as my citizen.’^[200] Once settled then, freedoms were guaranteed. But this guarantee was offered more firmly to those who had been expressly invited to join civic life, or to those who it was necessary to protect so that they would not leave it: Alfonso VII of Castile therefore granted in 1118 an explicit municipal charter ‘to all the citizens of Toledo, that is, Castilians, Mozarabs and Franks’,^[201] and Alfonso I of Aragón in 1129 granted a charter of donation and confirmation ‘to all the Franks that settle the plain of San Saturnino’, Pamplona that is, repeating the act that had been performed in favour of those who were established in Jaca.^[202]

The more broad-minded attitude was that of those seigneurs who, motivated by certain interests, extended the benefits to all the city’s inhabitants, as did the new Count of Flanders, William Clito, in 1127. ‘To all those who inhabit and who will in the future dwell within the walls of Saint-Omer,’ said the charter granted shortly after the crisis over the murder of Charles the Good, ‘I declare them free of capitation, that is to say, of the census by poll and the duties of the proxy.’^[203] This meant a recognition of the entire population which naturally only made sense in those cities where the population was homogeneous. Once its members had been formally admitted, the egalitarian provisions tended to strengthen the already very strong ties that united them, especially if there was a sworn commune. These links were contractual, so to break a formal act was also required. The municipal charter of Fresnillo^[204] stated that anyone who ‘would like to leave for other lands, should live a year with his wife and children and make smoke in his home, and those who have no wife should do so and then sell his estate and his houses to the men of Fresnillo and its towns.’ This period tested the decision to remove oneself from voluntarily of the urban group. When this happened, the bourgeois ceased to enjoy the franchises of the commune; but in order for there to be no doubt regarding the scope of his decision, he was usually required not to return for a time, as noted by the Établissements de Rouen in 1170: ‘and he shall not be able to enter there again save after having remained outside for a year and a day’,^[205] whereby he was obliged to swear a new oath if he wanted to re-enter the commune. It was a different matter if the person leaving revealed an equivocal attitude. The Établissements de Saint-Quentin was categorically: ‘If a jury,’ he said, ‘without prior public declaration, in anger at or contempt of the commune or to do it harm, should wish maliciously to be excluded from the commune, his house shall be knocked down; and if it pleases the maire and the jury, he shall be expelled from the city for ever.’^[206] These sentences could also be meted out to thieves^[207] or those who did not pay their debts.^[208]

Ultimately, the condition of inhabitant of the city in law was established by the specific freedoms and rights they enjoyed. These rights entailed certain fundamental guarantees, expressly granted by the seigneur, as well as certain duties, all gradually conquered by the rising classes and carefully fixed. Various causes converged for the seigneurs to agree to such claims: the need to improve the productivity of their land, the impossibility of objecting to uncontainable social phenomena of class rise and urban concentration, the pressure of the new monetised economy, the political and military exigencies that forced people to count on the support of the new classes. All this led to the granting of the rights, freedoms and guarantees that the new classes were claiming, easier to agree at first because they essentially consisted of economic concessions that ultimately did not appear to be detrimental to the seigneurial class or compromise their authority.

Rights and guarantees related to benefits and taxes were the first to be claimed and granted. The adjustment of the relationship between the seigneur of the land and those who worked it was seen as a problem of common interest and resolved accordingly on the basis of the granting of certain franchises that ensured the permanence of the peasant on his plot and the inhabitant in his town. Just as the municipal charter of Oviedo in 1145 provided for the situation of the serfs, the charter of Beaulieu of 1007^[209] ensured liberation from all bondage for all the inhabitants of the Frankish borough established there by Count Foulques Nera. The same thing was laid down in the town charters agreed by kings and seigneurs in León, Castile and Aragón which they had espoused in the new cities, and the charters issued in the twelfth century to the ville-neuves of Le Gâtinais and Champagne that were modelled on the Lorris charter of 1155, those of Bourgogne modelled on the Beaumont charter of 1182, those of Normandy modelled on the Breteuil charter or that of Hainaut modelled on the Prisches charter.^[210] But additionally the legal documents that addressed the solution of the problems raised by socio-economic change were not limited to vaguely granting franchise or freedom. They carefully established the terms of these franchises, the conditions under which they were agreed and the requirements that were to be met to fulfil the obligations that still endured. Along these lines the arbitrariness of the traditional system would disappear little by little.

Numerous documents clearly specified the taxes that were annulled. The municipal charter of Castrojeriz of 974 stated that the ‘men of Castrojeriz pay no tolls, nor cattle levies, nor do they weave, and have on themselves neither intestate succession, nor war levy nor facendera.’^[211] A century later the municipal charter of Fresnillo banned the king’s executioner from entering the town ‘for any calumny, nor for murder, nor for larceny, nor for fornication, nor for war levy, nor by anubda, nor by annalia, nor the dean of the bishop may enter your inheritance for any calumny, because ye are all entirely free and naive’;^[212] and in the same way the charter of Laon of 1128 freed ‘all men from the dead hand’.^[213]

The specification of the extinguished rights in relation to commercial activity gained singular importance. A vague guarantee in favour of the merchants used to be established to assure them they would not be pillaged, as ordained by the privilege of Barbastro of 1100.^[214] But more important was the express determination that they were not charged certain traditional taxes. The charter that Henry I granted to the city of London in approximately 1130 stated that ‘all the men of London shall be quit and free, and all their goods, throughout England, and the ports of the sea, of and from all toll and passage and lestage, and all other customs,’^[215] the charters of Nieuport and Saint-Omer expressly freed the merchants from the tax office and from the other duties that might slow transactions,^[216] and the charter that Frederick II granted to Lübeck removed many taxes, most notably the Ungelt, and prohibited the charging of duties to the burghers of the city in the Oldesloe customs.^[217]

But the clearest sign that a new conception of taxation was beginning to operate was the recognition that conditions with respect to its nature and forms of perception could be fixed expressly. Some guidance from the city economic policy could result in a tax system under which certain products would be duty-free, such as agreed by Count Alphonse de Toulouse in 1141 for the Toulousains^[218] for trade in wine and salt. In another aspect a given social conception could strictly fix which sector of the population was to pay taxes. At the end of the twelfth century the commune of Noyon established a tax that ‘all those who have a house in the city’^[219] were forced to pay; whereas the municipal charter of Cuenca stated categorically that ‘whoever has a house in the city and the town is exempt from all tribute.’^[220] This egalitarian sentiment was even more expressly stated in the text of the municipal charter of Belorado of 1116: ‘And whoever be an inhabitant or dweller of Belorado, Franks or Castilians, knights or villains, has a single duty: to provide pecuniary penalty.’^[221] Otherwise the tendency to suppress the arbitrariness of taxation could manifest itself in another way. The charter of Laon of 1128 established the payment of a reward but added: ‘and pay no other reward, unless he possess outside the terms of the peace some land on which he owe reward, and then give reward for it according to its value’;^[222] and the charter of Abbeville of 1184 would declare that the bourgeois were only to pay King Felipe Augusto three aids: one for their reclamation, another for the marriage of their daughter and another for arming his son as a knight, in terms similar to those John Lackland would establish in 1215 in Magna Carta.^[223]

But in Magna Carta this limitation is launched within another new legal conception. The exchequer may receive other taxes, but in order to be established, the consent of those who have to pay it will be needed: ‘No scutage nor aid shall be imposed on our kingdom, unless by common counsel of our kingdom,’ then stating precisely that they shall attend the meetings of that council and to that end not just the seigneurs but also the representatives of the city of London, the barons of the Cinque Ports and those of all cities, districts and villages.^[224] This principle expressed the tendency to condition the fiscal system within a framework of clearly defined requirements and derived from a contractual conception of social relations. The Bishop Theodwin of Liège stated in the charter he granted to the burghers of Huy in 1066 that ‘in order to gain the privileges of franchise, said city has given me first one third of all its assets in order to meet the needs of the Church; and then, so that those privileges should be broader, has divided them by halves.’^[225] The contractual conception led to a legal technique more in keeping with the nature of fiscal provisions as public law. Charters would establish the legal bodies necessary to ensure compliance with the requirements that they established, as with the Charter of Laon of 1128 which said: ‘We establish that the personal censi (capitecensi) pay to their seigneurs a census for their person, and if within the fixed period they should not have paid, emend it according to the law to which they are subject, unless, required by the seigneurs, they should be given something. And may it be legitimate for their seigneurs to call them to trial for their misdemeanours, and whatever be judged obtain it from them.’^[226] Severe as the regime might be, it constituted a breakwater to arbitrariness and revealed a new social conception: anyone who worked and produced with someone else’s assets could not be taxed beyond anything previously prescribed and accepted.

Something similar happened with respect to the use of the means of production. In the Charter of Dreux of 1180, the counts established categorically that ‘we have granted to the burghers that we would not force anyone of their commune to use of our mills or to meet any other obligations,’ but they later asserted in a no less forthright manner that ‘these bourgeois will be forced to press the grape in my wine-presses.’^[227] The important thing was not only freedom but more importantly the expresses regulation of the obligations. As the monetised economy developed, the self-determination of producers or merchants tending to speculate with supply and demand gained in importance. The free use of property was another of the fundamental concerns of the bourgeois. The Charter of Saint-Quentin stated that ‘anyone who has their land within or without the borough, inhabits it if they wish; may they not stop to inhabit it nor to build storey upon storey because it is forbidden to anyone, be he a powerful man or not’;^[228] and referring to carts and horses, the Charter of Dreux would coincide with the English Magna Carta on the principle that the bourgeois could not be taken by force.^[229] But that freedom could not exceed certain limits, since the community as such had strict requirements. The right to establish principles to regulate private sector activity was indisputable: while limiting individual freedoms, they were guarantees of the rights of the community. So in 1181 the commune of Toulouse and Count Raymond V fixed the salary of master masons and carpenters, the price of salmon and the benefits to which butchers and wood retailers were entitled.^[230] In this way those who dwelt in the city enjoyed the protection of the community and carried out their activities within a framework of vigilance that at once protected and obliged them. Only because of the security provided by this mutual vigilance could the bourgeoisie enjoy the privilege and obligation to mint and manage their own currency. A typical seigneurial law, its transfer to the bourgeoisie made them a privileged sector, thanks to the possibility of wielding such a powerful instrument of economic influence in the sense it deemed most favourable. ‘We concede, moreover,’ said Frederick II in the charter granted to Lübeck, ‘that the burghers in the city itself may mint a coin with our image and name, which is to be of worth for our life-time and the Roman king Henry’s, our illustrious and dearest son, for which they shall every year offer sixty silver marks in our court.’^[231] If the bourgeoisie managed to maintain the value of the currency, the city would benefit. That is why the Count of Flanders recommended very especially to those of Saint-Omer ‘that the burghers maintained the stable and steady currency throughout my life, from which the city will obtain benefits.’^[232] But the benefit was particularly significant for burghers who thereby acquired control of the main instrument of their economic activity.

All the rights and guarantees that the new rising classes claimed in relation to taxes and services, as well as the norms to ensure free economic activity, were intended to ensure the individual freedoms. The same goal was shared by the legal principles that were established on procedural and criminal matters. Taken as a whole, these norms ordered urban society as a civilian body, but actually transformed into a body politic, because at the same time as it fixed the freedoms of its members, it defined their ability to perform the public functions that the seigneurial regime began to delegate. That is why the legal conquests attained by the new men, some of which had an impact on the situation of the erstwhile privileged classes, acquired such unique importance for political reordering.

The condition of free having been declared generically many times over for all the inhabitants or dwellers of cities, the requirement for someone claiming someone as their serf to prove it by law constituted a crucial victory. This was determined in 1066 by the Charter of Huy.^[233] Traditional law stated categorically that servile status was not lost by the manumission granted by the seigneur, but urban norms began to admit new principles founded on irreversible social events so that, once the unilateral action of capture had been suppressed, elucidation before a court of each personal situation little by little enabled a new jurisprudence to be created regarding the status as free of anyone who could be suspected of being a serf.

Similar norms were established for all the cases with regard to the detention of someone accused of a crime. Sometimes it was established that ‘no one, freeman or serf, may arrest someone for any crime without the intervention of the law’;^[234] other times it was specified that ‘anyone who has entered – whoever they may be – for market,’ could not be detained ‘even if bail has been paid for him,’^[235] or it was agreed only to detain someone who was a manifest enemy or thief on the understanding that otherwise ‘he who arrests him will pay 300 salaries.’^[236] But whatever the condition of the individual, the norm that only with the intervention of the law was it right to deprive the inhabitant of the city of their freedom gained ground and gradually put a stop to the arbitrariness of those who, shielded by traditional privilege, obstinately refused to recognise rights for those who belonged to the new classes. Similar reasons inspired the measures intended to contain irresponsible denunciations and accusations. By the decrees of León of approximately 1188 the king was obliged to ‘reveal the accuser to the accused, and if (the former) could not prove in my curia the denunciation that they made, they shall suffer the penalty that the accused was to suffer had the denunciation been proven.’^[237] And the Établissements de Rouen stated that ‘if any man has presented a complaint against a man guilty of an injury and immediately rejects that justice be done him by trial of the maire and the aldermen, he shall be arrested and shall have to provide pledge and bondsmen, and swear that for that injury he will not do ill to the man of whom he had complained.’^[238]

The preservation of individual liberty was the mission of judges and courts capable of avoiding seigneurial influence and whose performance was governed by carefully stipulated norms and principles. The Decrees of León of approximately 1188 foresaw the possibility that judges were reluctant in the execution of their duty or that someone might object to their efforts to see justice done;^[239] for such cases they established precise guarantees, as established by the Charter of Saint-Omer and the English Magna Carta.^[240] The London Charter of 1131 already contained clear legal principles with respect to the functioning of the courts,^[241] but in Magna Carta^[242] such provisions are far more extensive and detailed. One particularly significant norm of Magna Carta, ‘To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice,’^[243] which constituted a commitment of the king, was found in other terms in earlier charters whose writers were trying to avoid bribery: the Établissements de Rouen obliged the maire, aldermen and peers ‘not to accept any monies or gifts, and to judge with equity according to their conscience,’^[244] while Établissements de Saint-Quentin stated that if the maire or some alderman received money from a litigant, ‘his house shall be torn down.’^[245] This constant concern to ensure individual freedoms with increasing firmness originated other procedural provisions. The manner of summoning an accused or defendant and the deadlines to be met in the course of judicial proceedings was carefully specified in many charters, ensuring that the damages caused to anyone summoned before a court were not be serious and did not constitute an injustice. From the start of the twelfth century, the Newcastle-upon-Tyne customs allowed the defendant not to go to court if there was no date established; and if the case was ‘between a burgher and a merchant, it shall be resolved before the third tide.’^[246] The Charter of Laon gave the accused a fortnight to amend his fault^[247] and the Établissements de Rouen stipulated two fortnights or two octaves for various judicial proceedings,^[248] whereas the Établissements de Saint-Quentin set more urgent: ‘And if someone be summoned today,’ it said, ‘they must answer tomorrow.’^[249] It was also sought to establish procedural jurisdiction. Numerous provisions, such as those of the Établissements de Saint-Quentin,^[250] established that ‘the justice of the count may never accuse the burgher before his court’; and many others expressly established the ambit of the city as the seat of judicial proceedings affecting the citizen.^[251] And in parallel to indications about place there appeared those that established what kind of court corresponded to each defendant, so that as the principle that burghers should be tried by courts of burghers spread – as the customs of the Guild of Saint-Omer had already established in the eleventh century^[252] – the principle that the nobles and clergy were judged by their peers was stood on its head.^[253] Furthermore, the rules regulating the imposition of bail and pledges, the depositions of witnesses and the guarantees offered by oath^[254] offered broad assurances to the new men, on whom, in an age of transition, the seigneurs’ threats of power and prestige always weighed heavily. And regarding the penalties for theft,^[255] debt,^[256] libel or slander^[257] and homicide^[258] precise provisions sought to ensure the peace and simultaneously avoid arbitrariness and injustice.

As the primacy of an objective justice became entrenched, the principle of private justice tended to decline. This relied, however, on a vigorous custom, justified besides within traditional social conditions, but its roots did not prevent its unsuitability to the new situations arising in the urban area from being noticed. For the bourgeoisie, dedicated to work and too busy to bear weapons, the violence was not only repugnant but also dangerous. ‘The relatives of the dead may never carry out investigations,’ said the municipal charter of Daroca^[259] and, although it admitted exceptions, it insisted on the need for the whole process to be channelled through the established jurisdiction. It was likewise sought to banish the principle of justification that revenge due to ‘an old hatred’ seemed to possess.^[260] And amongst the penalties efforts were made to erase the possibility that the bourgeois had to be present, as was the seigneurial custom, at the judicial duel, for which he had neither skill nor vocation. The municipal charter of Daroca set the conditions in which the duel was to be performed,^[261] the weapons to be used and the conditions to be met by he in whom someone delegated their defence: ‘Whoever should have to carry out the dispute, should take care not to bring knight or palace foot soldier, nor whomsoever is of very great strength, nor a smith, nor a left-hander, nor a dwarf, nor whomsoever may have fought another dispute.’ But others were more categorical. ‘In the commune nobody can call to fight for pay,’ said the Établissements de Saint-Quentin;^[262] and when Count William Clito granted a charter to the burghers of Saint-Omer, it established that ‘over all the markets of Flanders, if the burghers are the subject of a lawsuit, they will be subjected to the justice of the aldermen, without duel; and in the future they are in effect freed from the duel.^[263]

Slowly a new judicial system was gaining ground, adapted to the living conditions of the new men. What they expected of it was above all explicit guarantees to ensure individual freedoms and freedom of action for the exercise of their daily tasks, as could be given them by the principle of freedom of movement, which the English Magna Carta expressly guaranteed: ‘All merchants may leave or enter England in safety and security. They may stay and travel throughout England by road or by water, free from all illegal tolls, in order to buy and sell according to the ancient and rightful customs. This is except, in time of war, those merchants who are from the land at war with us.’^[264] The self-same sense was possessed by the provisions guaranteeing the inviolability of the home. ‘I hereby establish,’ said the king in the Decrees of Leon of approximately 1188, ‘moreover, that neither I nor anyone else in my kingdom shall destroy or invade someone else’s home nor shall we cut down others’ vineyards or trees.’^[265] And the Établissements of Saint-Quentin^[266] stated categorically that ‘it is something sacred and customary in our commune that neither the justice of the count nor can the justice of the maire penetrate, for a crime, into the house of a burgher or a juror; nor may he in any way break down the door on him if it be closed.’

The possession of these publicly acknowledged rights and freedoms ensured a privileged situation for the group that had obtained and fixed them by virtue of which it was defined and circumscribed. This group constituted urban civil society. But by that fact alone it came to be something more. As these rights and freedoms had been won through variously serious conflicts and at all events in the heat of extremely strong tensions between the sectors that had conflicting interests and disputed matters of jurisdiction and power, the groups that came to be formed as urban civil society conquered a new status by their rebellious attitude and the success they achieved. By virtue of this status they began to form not only a group with given rights and civil liberties, but also a body politic. In that capacity they acted towards the traditional powers, obtaining certain military and political duties and rights which they did not possess before and which helped to broadly define their new appearance.

In the order of military obligations the bourgeois classes had a pronounced tendency to circumvent the burden that these represented for their members. Depending on the circumstances, the seigneurs consented to a greater or lesser extent to the bourgeoisie’s requests. Precise conditions were generally established for their participation in military enterprises, since it was primarily a matter of ensuring they were not deflected from their daily labours; and that consent was an acknowledgment of the growing importance acquired by work in the new economic situation by those who put political and military activity at the core of their existence.

Among military rights and duties, that of aid acquired great importance, its limits being carefully regulated. The municipal charter of Daroca stated that the ‘knights and foot soldiers that the council might have as war levy or on horseback do not give the fifth, lest it be to the king or to the seigneur of Daroca,’^[267] and the Charter of Dreux, in contrast, established that the exemption from the obligations to provide carts and horses did not apply in the event of war, even if it was only specified that there would be ‘three chariots yoked to three horses, at my cost, from the city exit.’^[268] But the most important thing was to fix the precise scope of the aid in all senses, to foresee and remedy the arbitrariness that people from the non-privileged classes were exposed to. The Bishop of Liège granted the burghers of Huy in 1066 that they were not to join the army if the men of Liège had not gone eight days before;^[269] this avoided injustice to the detriment of the burghers of a city far removed from the seat of the seigneur. It was no less important to establish how long the military service would last and, in the case of the men of Lorris,^[270] the king established that none was to go on ‘parade or expedition if they could not, should they wished to, return to their home the same day.’ Sometimes the limit to which those who went to war were forced to move was established: ‘The citizens,’ said the Charter of Poitiers of 1222,^[271] ‘are obliged to army and ride farther than the Loire, in all the places where our men of fiefdom of the Poitou are obligated.’ It was also established on occasions when the burghers were to go to war only with a certain seigneur or with the king,^[272] what the number of knights was who had to go and even if the foot soldiers were to go.^[273]

But compared to the politics of the newly-emerging urban groups who sought to circumvent the military obligations to which the seigneurs subjected them the politics of those who wanted to take over the defence of their own cities was outlined, partly because their franchises were wont to have had that commitment as their price and partly because they preferred that burden to the risk of having seigneurial forces within the urban precinct. The burghers of Huy, said the Charter of Bishop Theoudin, ‘shall preserve Huy Castle with the income from the city’,^[274] and the Charter of Noyon stated that ‘all those who own a house in the city, save for the clergy and the knights, owe watches and aid to the city.’^[275] The situation in Saint-Quentin was envisaged in another way. The Établissements of 1081 stated that ‘should it occur that the seigneur of the commune have a fortress within the borough or his estate and wish to mount watches within it, he shall mount watches that are of the commune, by the will of the maire and the aldermen, and with their consent; for he cannot put any other one there for the destruction of the burghers.’^[276] It was the burghers who now wished to have the military control of the city, and in the same sense the Établissements de Rouen rigidly fixed the obligations of those who, in the event of war, had to leave with the army and who had to remain to guard the city, establishing rigorous penalties for those who did not obey the orders of the commune.^[277]

These military obligations corresponded to the responsibility attained by the members of the new communities. If they wanted to free themselves of the services demanded of them by the seigneurs for their benefit, by contract they claimed control of those who compromised their security or were destined to broaden their perspectives. That responsibility had grown as guarantees and individual freedoms were strengthened, but it had grown above all with the development of a deep sense of solidarity among the members of each community. This feeling engendered a political attitude, that is, a desire for action directed towards the achievement of certain purposes, and by virtue of it the peculiar civil society that was progressively constituted little by little acquired the character of a political society.

Its most solid foundation was the firmness of the primary ties amalgamating urban groups. Created by need, arising from the identity of situations in which its members found themselves in, these ties were often strengthened by a solemn oath.^[278] This was how the sworn communes were formed, where the body politic was previously defined and more precisely than anywhere else. But even when it did not come to be defined in this way, the urban group showed a strong tendency for solidarity, backed in turn by strong egalitarian sentiments. The establishment of objective norms justified the repudiation of traditional discriminations, which was incompatible with the new legal order that was forming little by little, and the charters and municipal charters emphatically asserted the subjection to even-handed law. ‘From whatsoever condition they be, be it is powerful or not powerful,’ said the Établissements de Saint-Quentin,^[279] all had to give satisfaction for any insolence or insult for which they might be liable. And the Charter of Fresnillo ordered punish anyone who rose up, ‘both very powerful men and those who are not.’^[280]

That vague egalitarian feeling – which certainly recognised the tacit exclusion of certain social sectors – led in borderline situations to the constitution of imprecise political bodies of which, in theory at least, all the inhabitants of the city were to form part. Undoubtedly it was in everyone’s minds that certain sectors did not form part; yet in 1098 the Archbishop of Milan could not only invoke their authority, but also the commune consilium totius civitatis.^[281] This ‘city’, previously governed automatically by the seigneur, began to rely increasingly on a collegiate body which, exclusively ecclesiastical in origin, later increasingly extended its representation. The omnis populus et omnis ordo laicorum,^[282] and this group, which for some could be seen as an integration of the community of the faithful, was for all an integration of peers in a system that in one way or another formed an egalitarian political society. There is no doubt that under these appeals to vaster social sectors hid, albeit imprecisely, the issue of where sovereignty resided. But the relationship between individual freedoms and guarantees on the one hand, and social and economic responsibilities on the other became increasingly narrow and shaped the features of the body politic. If the validity of the norm was founded on the possibility of holding anyone who transgressed it accountable, it was necessary that they should be able to answer in some way for their responsibility. Along these lines civil society was constituted only with people who considered themselves to be responsible, and that approach also constituted the principle of the body politic.

The Charter of Laon stated unequivocally what type of responsibility was required from anyone joining the urban group. ‘Whosoever be received in this peace,’ said, ‘shall build a house for himself, or buy vineyards or bring to the city all his movable wealth, all in the term of a year, for the official of justice to be able, if necessary, to perform in them their sentences.’^[283] The possession of goods seemed then to be the necessary guarantee for the validity of the common norm. But it was not the only one. Sometimes – as in the case of Toledo – it was perfected by forcing people to support the economic guarantee with other social guarantees: ‘No person,’ said the Charter of Toledo of 1118, ‘shall possesses inheritance in Toledo if he dwelt not in it with his wife and their children.’^[284] And hovering over these criteria was even a vague appeal to the relationship between socio-economic responsibility and virtue, lurking in the expression ‘good men’ or ‘prudent men’.

Taken together, these criteria were to lead to a practical and realistic version of the imprecise egalitarian sentiment that had appeared early on. Legal equality was to be understood by those meeting certain conditions; and varying in the definition of them, depending on the contingencies of the socio-economic process, the body politic began to establish itself within tighter and tighter limits. A patrician group, whose internal law led it to become increasingly closed, was thus set up in every city. Only in the heat of new circumstances would other sectors of medium and small bourgeoisie organise themselves towards it. These sectors summons would in due course demand some participation in the unstable and confusing system of government that the bourgeois city organised through innumerable crises.

2. The government of the city

The constitution of the urban body politic was a slow and torturous process whose instances are confused with the process of elaboration of the government of the city. As the political tendencies of the different groups were defined and the formulas for institutionalising them proposed, the rights and privileges that were peculiar to the citizens were also spelled out. Amongst them the ones related to their condition as private individuals were confused with the ones related to their condition as active members of a political community. Those recognised as beneficiaries of certain rights and privileges constituted the urban body politic, usually de facto and on occasion formally; and those who constituted this body politic sought to create constitutional springs to exercise power to some extent.

This intricate process – which entailed a revolution – was facilitated by the circumstance of developing within an narrowly circumscribed area. The city – a walled enclosure in the middle of a usually dependent rural area – very soon managed to constitute a well-defined territorial jurisdiction, within which the bourgeois revolution could take its first steps and later accelerate its course according to the circumstances of time and place. But it was not a deliberate action by the bourgeois groups that delimited that jurisdiction, but rather their spontaneous action and their way of life, phenomena with such force that the seigneurial power succumbed to them. The existence of heterogeneous groups with common interests clustered within the urban area made the city a unique ambit that required an original politics; and the seigneurial power assumed the responsibility of initiating it and intervened to regulate cohabitation through various acts whose wider implication was precisely the delimitation of the urban jurisdiction. This was effectively the result of what was called the peace of the city, a true procedural and penal system suited to the new circumstances that were created in urban areas, and whose validity unequivocally differentiated these areas from the other jurisdictions of power. ‘By the institution of that law,’ said the chronicler Gislebert de Mons, referring to the peace imposed in Valenciennes by Count Baldwin IV, ‘the knights [ . . . ], their serfs and their servants who lived in the same city were subjected to the same law and enjoyed the same freedom.’^[285] Turned by this process into veritable islands, cities began a process of political differentiation, which corresponded to their economic and social differentiation, and which developed within this circumscribed and limited area. And it was not only the peace of the city that contributed to triggering and strengthening it, but also the progressive transfer of other administrative powers – besides the penal, and especially in economic and fiscal terms – which the seigneurial power made to the urban powers in response to their particular needs. This was the case with the town of Noyon, where as early as 901 the city’s chapter received the right to collect customs duties.^[286]

This process of political differentiation resulted in the formation of a functional jurisdiction within the territorial jurisdiction of the city. But not everywhere did it have the same character, because its scope varied greatly depending on the circumstances; and amongst all of them, the one that was most influential in the formation of the urban political regime was the greater or lesser degree of autonomy possessed by the city. Brunetto Latini pointed out quite clearly the distinction between two classes of urban governments. ‘One as there is in France and in other countries,’ he said, ‘where they are subject to the seigneurie of the kings and other perpetual princes, who sell the provostry and the bailiwicks to whoever pays them best and that they scarcely considered either their goodness or the benefit of the burghers; and the other, as there are in Italy, where the citizen, the burgher and the communes of the cities elect their podestà and their seigneur as they believe advantageous for the common benefit of the city and all of its subjects.’^[287] These two classes of urban governments emerged from different situations and therefore unfolded differently.

The cities that sprang up and developed within a territorial ambit whose seigneur was not willing to give in to the claims of the urban bourgeoisie, but on the contrary was bent on enjoying the fruits of its economic activity, only succeeded in circumscribing within his dependency a degree of jurisdiction over certain local problems that directly affected the burghers and did not compromise the functions of the higher power. This was the case with many imperial, royal, comital or episcopal cities that were maintained within their situation of dependency despite achieving some degree of autonomy. While they only aspired to obtain certain freedoms and franchises, the burghers of such cities did not stir up fundamental conflicts. Conflicts there certainly were, but they did not acquire a subversive hue until the tendency appeared in them to participate in political power. This meant to some extent a threat to the relationship of dependency and in extreme cases triggered all-out struggle. This was the case with the cities of northern Italy, against which Frederick Barbarossa launched the full weight of his military power and the authority of the legal-political theories of royalist tradition furnished by the Roman legal tradition.^[288] Kings, counts or bishops alike appealed both to force and doctrinal argument to assert their inalienable rights to sovereignty over cities. But all the powers to some extent showed themselves to be ready to consent to the urban population exercising a certain type of authority, especially when it did in fact exercise it, in relation to activities not provided for under the political regime and administrative in force because they were new and alien to the traditional ways of life. this authority – more administrative than political – was granted in the form of recognition of certain ‘customs’, that is, practices originating from the need for the community to take certain decisions regarding the activities of its members. The slow legitimation of its customs and the steady recognition of this power as an institution of public law gave rise to the formation of a subordinate jurisdiction, whose ambit began by being negligible for the higher jurisdiction but ended up attracting its interest as it grew and its economic importance was perceived.

This was no doubt one of the causes that moved the traditional political powers to recognise and admit subordinate jurisdiction in cities. For these reasons emperors, kings, counts or bishops moved. But they were not the only ones. Counts and bishops, who exercised an immediate power over the city, to some extent shared the fate of the bourgeois and immediately saw the disadvantages and advantages of a flexible politics. Granting a certain participation in power to a responsible group of wealthy bourgeois who controlled the new wealth – this was how consulate cities were formed – involve no great political risk, but on the contrary certain guarantees of subjection and solidarity on which the seigneur could rely to strengthen his power. Such motives could act on the emperor and kings, always in need of financial support and in search of internal allies to confront the unstable and repeated coalitions organised against them. And in the most difficult times the cession of certain jurisdiction to the city could be the only alternative to not make an enemy of a social group whose help was necessary and valuable.

But this cession had its limits. The higher power sought to guarantee the freedom and security of the bourgeoisie, encouraged its ability for economic initiative and ultimately it consented to their participating in local power. But inasmuch as the higher power felt strong, especially just where it benefited from the new groups’ mercantile activities, it began to attempt to recover the powers it had delegated. This recovery, which meant the gradual extinction of the margins of autonomy the cities had conquered, did not however signal a hostile attitude towards the bourgeoisie, because to the same extent as the vestiges of urban political power were suppressed, the higher powers accepted the principles and objectives of bourgeois politics. Usually local powers with judicial, administrative, economic and police functions endured, and with them the bourgeois groups could ensure the sound development of their activity, confident that the political guidelines of the higher power were coinciding increasingly with its own interests. The situation of the autonomous cities was different. Where the totality of sovereignty fell on the city, true republics were formed in which the urban body politic projected itself in a government with the fullness of jurisdiction and responsibility. This circumstance was decisive. If sovereignty lay in the city itself, it was imperative on the one hand to establish precisely the composition of the body politic that held the sovereignty and on the other hand the composition and operating regime of the organs of power. With regard to the first, the peculiarity of the socio-economic process forced a constant review of the criteria, given the remarkable social mobility and repeated emergence of new groups that set out their demands with unbending force. The result was an marked political instability. And with regard to the second, the changes in the composition of the sovereign body determined an even instability in terms of its composition and functioning. To respond to the demands of the different sectors and offer representation to each of the social groups, there used to be added to the existing government bodies other new ones – collegiate bodies or magistracies – with different jurisdiction, which in reality primarily performed the function of preventing the monopoly of authority by the traditional groups. Thereby the executive authority was increasingly diluted and those who exercised it more supervised. Only in the cities where the traditional groups managed to keep the body politic closed – like Venice – did a relatively simple system of government survive; and to that system the cities that had sought hard-fought new principles of representativeness returned, once the territorial powers incorporated them into their special political system or, if they were autonomous cities, when seigneuries with absolute power were erected in them.

Autonomous or subordinate, cities needed an increasingly precise regulation if relationships among their members in order to operate; and in fact, the first of the problems raised by the development of urban life was to mount the government of the city on a set of objective norms of recognised validity. Throughout the dark period in which new ways of life were generated in the urban ambit, usages and customs were becoming established that responded to more or less immediate needs which by their effectiveness received the consensus of the community. They were simple rules and practices in which the different interests were reconciled and the mechanisms to settle any disputes that might arise were established. But as socio-economic change became more rapid and its most notable effects, the traditional practices and customs began to be sometimes unsuitable and sometimes questioned by new groups whose interests and tendencies differed from those of the original group or by the same political powers whose objectives changed quickly. The terms of co-existence began then to change and consequently it was inevitable that the norms would be reviewed. A sign of that need was the progressive tendency to set down the norms in writing. The Count of Dreux noted at the beginning of the charter that was granted in 1180 that ‘as amongst other weaknesses of human frailty we are subject to losses and failures of memory, Divine Providence has in compensation decreed the invention of writing in order to make the permanence of the characters preserve immutable things what at every moment is subject to change, due to the frequent variations of things.’^[289] A similar reflection was made ten years earlier by Ferdinand II at the opening of the charter whereby he returned the seigneurie of Tuy to the bishop of the city.^[290] But this tendency to fix norms in writing concealed – as pointed out by the seigneur of Dreux – certain deep-rooted causes that came precisely from the socio-economic change. Once overcome the original small and solid groups whereby they were successively formed to the beat of the transformations of economic and social life and having diversified it, the traditional practices and customs had to be perfected and complemented with new provisions related to new situations and particular cases that it was necessary to describe and resolve with precision. The documents in which the norms were fixed became more extensive and detailed, and security regarding their currency less steadfast.

In connection with this last circumstance the norms needed to be confirmed every time a new seigneur came to power, and not only because of the persistence of the personal nature of power, but because in every circumstance a new possibility of renewal was left open depending on the circumstances. The lengthy proceedings that followed the death of Count Charles the Good of Flanders to choose a successor gave rise to the burghers obtaining from the counts ‘the freedom to correct their common laws and improve them according to the nature of the times and places,’ just as Count William granted and Count Thierry later reiterated.^[291] In this way the perfectible norm would be transformed by this expedient into a faithful expression of reality. All situations being equal, it seemed legitimate to give one city a system of norms similar to the one already possessed by another, but social instability often necessitated its adjustment to real situations. Institutional changes therefore became normal and frequent.

The establishment of these norms, when they were not of seigneurial origin, and in all cases the surveillance of compliance and the exercise of power, were entrusted to the urban public powers. These powers formed a complex, unstable and often vague whole in terms of the formal definition of jurisdictions and relations among their members. This lack of formal definitions did not preclude the fact that indeed the powers and reciprocal relations of each of the organs of power were often well specified because they certain customs were operating whose undisputed survival rendered any express specification superfluous; and the instability of the power system was no more than a mere reflection of the shifting balance of forces between the different social groups.

The urban body politic was forged in the heat of a strong sense of community and consequently wanted to express its willingness in principle by means of decisions taken by the entirety of its members gathered in assembly. It did so while the numbers allowed it to, and while hegemonic groups did not take shape within the urban body politic. Originally the councils of León and Castile had the character of a general assembly of inhabitants; at the end of the eleventh century, the progressive realisation of the autonomy of Milan was achieved by the decisions of the Council of the entire city;^[292] and in the thirteenth century these imprecise general assemblies in Marseille or Bologna were still appealed to.^[293] But the growth of the city made impossible the workings of a body whose deliberations had necessarily to take on a mass character, and different forms of representativeness began to be tried.

Faced with the pressure of the new rising groups, influential because of their wealth and local prestige, at some point the seigneurs consented to the inclusion of representatives of these social groups on the seigneurial councils – the chamber of aldermen or the chapter. Although elected by the seigneur, they took to the bodies those who incorporated the concerns and interests of the sector to which they belonged. But it was a common occurrence for the dislocation of this sector to accelerate along that path. Those who received the protection of the seigneurs and thereby consolidated their personal rise, separated by rising above other members who only obtained small group advantages from the new situation, insufficient for each of them to achieve the social ascent they aspired to. As a result they sought other forms of representativeness. As a member of a solid socio-economic group they formed bodies, like that of the jurors, whose jurisdiction at first extended only to the bourgeois group but that little by little began to be integrated into the system of public authorities.^[294] When these became representative of the urban body politic, the selection mechanism was slowly implemented. It would be difficult to establish how they were elected those one hundred Florentine buoniuomini who prior to 1207 constituted what Villani called the senate of the city, with whose council the consuls ruled;^[295] but they were probably sought, as he himself points out for the consuls, among the ‘biggest and best in the city’. This was generally how the basic pools of the councils of the different cities were formed, sometimes from de facto situations, sometimes from a designation by the seigneur, and sometimes by delegation of more numerous and formless assemblies. Those basic pools were later renewed and the criteria used for such renewal certainly varied according to the social pressures. On the one hand there emerged a strong tendency for the functions, at first generally for life, to become annual;^[296] but on the other hand a heavily restrictive criterion opened up whereby vacancies were covered with members of a small group of families, or in any case by co-optation, the effect of which was to concentrate power within an increasingly small sector. This was the picture that led Philippe de Beaumanoir to claim that ‘all rich men possess the administrations of the good cities.’^[297] In some Italian cities, when the groups previously strangers to power reached a certain strength, they managed to impose new magistrates to exercise a parallel authority to that of the traditional magistrates, and advisory councils were formed not only for the latter but also for the former. This was the case with the councils of the podestà and the captain of the people of Florence.^[298]

For the executive functions, subordinated cities had generally a seigneurial official – a provost, bailie, sheriff, judge – who represented the authority of the seigneur and exercised the jurisdiction he had not delegated to the urban bodies. Sometimes, as happened with the sheriff of London in 1190, with the Castilian judges or the maires of the continental cities dominated by the Plantagenets, the seigneurs authorised the election of the supreme magistrate of the city by the urban bodies.^[299] A similar process occurred with the consuls in the Italian and Provençal cities, where the seigneurial designation was followed by an indirect election. In the cities that achieved autonomy, collegiate bodies took full responsibility for the election of the supreme magistrates. They were sometimes elected from among their members, and in some cases, in law or in fact, within a certain group that had achieved the monopolisation of power; but when social and political tensions became extremely intense, as in the case of the podestà of Italian cities, candidates were even sought in foreign cities in order to ensure their neutrality and independence in order to secure internal peace over and above the conflicts of the factions.^[300] It was a constant concern of the collegiate bodies to prevent any exercise of executive authority that enabled the perpetuation of a judge in power, and they therefore sought to supplant magistracies for life with annual magistracies. But that limitation was not the only one it was sought in order to prevent the build-up to an absolute, arbitrary power. The councils supervised the executive magistrates, and when a social group under-represented in them became strong enough to intervene in the government, it not only sought to enhance its representation in the councils but also, in some places, to establish executive magistracies in parallel to the traditional ones – like the captain of the town or the gonfaloniere – whose jurisdiction was barely specified.^[301] Thus a plural government was reached, mounted on a balance of powers that represented various social forces. One went then from a concept based on a neutral magistrate to a concept based on the coexistence of powers of various tendencies. This system, a reflection of cities’ internal social situation, found no lasting institutional formula: this paved the way for the constitution of autocratic governments – the signoria – which appeared in autonomous cities precisely when in subordinate cities similar situations allowed kings and seigneurs to reclaim their power.

IV. THE INFLUENCE OF THE URBAN POLITICAL ORDER

The progressive slide of the organisation of urban politics towards a non-representative regime marked the beginning of the crisis in the primitive urban order. Various circumstances led to this state of affairs. First and foremost the need felt by the most powerful and enterprising trading groups to free themselves from the limitations and constraints imposed by the city, whose policy and norms tended to keep their citizens enclosed within an ambit when the expansion of mercantile traffic had already surpassed it greatly. This last circumstance drove the haute bourgeoisie to dissociate itself from municipal links – which before had served to protect it – insofar as it needed to establish other ties with those who could ensure its expansion into vaster fields of action. In this way, and to the extent that it depended on it, the urban government tended to be oriented towards the solution of these problems and wash its hands of the new internal social situations that precisely the development of wealth stirred up. It was these situations however that hindered such a policy. While the haute bourgeoisie sought to instrumentalise the city to facilitate and consolidate the creation of new and more extensive economic spheres, the working and middle classes condemned the exclusivist tendencies of the oligarchies and began to try to control them in order to prevent them monopolising power and with it the benefits of mercantile expansion. But it was not easy to organise such control. It required not only possessing, de facto, the strength required to enforce it but also finding the institutional formula to make it effective. This involved a serious problem. The city having formed within feudal society, its original political arrangement upheld certain traditional political schemas, and consequently the urban government was founded within a social order based on the persistence of primary links that tied the bourgeois to the city as other similar links tied the serf to his seigneur. But this link was dissolved as the city grew and grew in terms of social mobility. To maintain the effectiveness of urban government and at the same time accommodate the new rising classes, it was necessary to find institutional mechanisms that would ensure the representation of these new classes. But the effective power of those classes was unable to organise itself enough and the institutional formulas could not be found in due course because of the instability of the society as a whole, whose changing composition frustrated any short-term formula. In this way the urban political order slipped towards a crisis, from which the bourgeoisie came out committed within a new order and with greater prospects.

These crises impoverished the cities, whose financial situation had generally been getting more and more difficult since the middle of the thirteenth century. But in the meantime the bourgeoisie continued to accumulate wealth as a result of an active commerce that exceeded the possibilities of urban control since it extended in every case to many cities and across various kingdoms and seigneuries. International banking began to regulate this wealth which was increasingly ascribed to people and not to corporations or cities. This latter condition was favoured by the territorial powers, which encouraged and facilitated the traffic, and overcame all kinds of difficulty. At the time of the conflict between Philip Augustus and John Lackland the truces negotiated between the contenders expressly specified the freedoms granted to the merchants. ‘The merchants of Rouen,’ said the convention of 1204, ‘may, during those thirty days, carry their goods by land or by water.’ And the truce established in 1206 stated, ‘During the interval one may go, come, traffic safely between the two kingdoms, except in the court of the king of France and in ours [John Lackland’s], where it shall not be permitted to anyone without the authorisation of the King of France or our own, save for religious men and known merchants.’^[302] Because of its needs for expansion and thanks to the protection it received, the grande bourgeoisie progressively decoupled from its urban links and began to integrate with a class that had continuity and homogeneity within the supra-urban territorial units: kingdoms or seigneuries. And where the urban grande bourgeoisie found no such opportunity, it attempted to overcome its limitations by striving to create a sphere of influence around cities – economic at first, but very soon political as well – the way the grande bourgeoisie of the Italian or German cities sought it.

In so doing, urban communities as such began to weaken; but the grande bourgeoisie – especially its most powerful sectors – was not weakened by this: on the contrary, it gained in independence and above all acquired a growing influence close to the territorial powers. As they sought to restrict urban freedoms or intervene in the administration of cities, kings and seigneurs attracted towards to themselves the bourgeois class that tended to detach itself from local ties and offered it protection; but at the same time, they transformed it little by little into the instrument of a new politics which only the bourgeois could manage with their private experience, and that was related to the interests of kings and seigneurs in the field of the monetised economy. The grande bourgeoisie accepted the mission as commercial and financial agent of the territorial powers, and took advantage of this status to ensure the protection of their own commercial activities. With that understanding the bourgeois came to achieve the confidence of kings and seigneurs. But this was not the most important thing. They also attained a new social and legal situation, based on a direct link between each individual and the seigneur, as stated the ordinance of Philip the Fair of 1287:^[303] with this the members of the new class acquired a highly defined ‘status’.

The arrangement of the bourgeoisie outside the urban environments and within the structure of the territorial state corresponded to a slow imposition of certain bourgeois attitudes and to the progressive diffusion of the bourgeois mentality outside the circles where it had formed. Without a doubt the seigneurial classes resisted it, for whom it was legitimate to take refuge in their traditional concepts. But the kings and seigneurs with high political responsibilities had to yield before the presence of effective groups in relation to new problems – raised precisely because of them – which began to be the most important problems of the kingdom or the seigneurie. To handle the new economy – the fiscal tax system, the investments and above all the new business that were offered – these ‘new men’ began to be indispensable. But the contact with new situations and with the groups that understood them made the kings ‘new men’ too; and inasmuch as they acquired that mentality, they contributed to modifying the structure of the kingdom to suit the new needs and prospects. In this way the political experiment that the bourgeoisie carried out within the walls of the city began to move to wider spheres within territorial jurisdictions.

As with the traditional kingdoms, where between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the monarchy profoundly altered its conception of royal power, its attitude to the various social sectors and its modi operandi. These kingdoms were vast domains, within which the mercantile groups could move while seeking expansion under the security offered by royal authority; and in such an extent, and with the protection of public power, they were able to extend and diversify the area of their operations. In contrast, the urban republics had little difficulty in adapting, since they could not offer sufficient areas for mercantile expansion. The response was to procure them through a policy of territorial expansion based on military action or through a political pressure that would conclude in the establishment of a zone of strong influence. But the response did not bear the same fruits as the change of attitude among the royal areas. There the bourgeoisie was incorporated as a privileged class, even though it was so to a lesser degree than others, and its incorporation strengthened the political order; in contrast, in the urban republics that attempted to exceed the limits of their walls, this attempt exacerbated the social and political conflicts and consequently accelerated the decline of the urban system, facilitating the establishment of seigneurial regimes. This was the case, for example, with the formation of the dukedoms of Lombardy and Tuscany, or that of the incorporation of the cities of the Netherlands in the Duchy of Burgundy.

The integration of the burgher class, or part of it, in the system of the territorial state was channelled through its incorporation in the large assemblies of the kingdom. Burghers, ‘good men’, ‘citizens’,^[304] ‘aldermen of the communes’^[305] begin to attend the meetings that were convened by kings to deal with most important and controversial issues: courts, diets, parliaments, states general. In Laon they appeared around 1188, very soon after in Castile, in 1218 in Catalonia, in 1274 in Aragón, in 1232 in the imperial diet, in 1263 in the English parliament, in 1302 in the French states general. Appointed by cities, the bourgeois represented their interests and above all supervised the setting of taxes and monetary problems. But in the progressive realisation of their mandate they gradually imposed, as being more effective, their methods of economic and administrative action. In this way the experiments the bourgeoisie had performed in the cities in both economic and financial, and administrative and judicial terms were little by little transferred to the territorial states. It could also be added that the political experiments of the urban bourgeoisie were transferred to the territorial powers. And in the slow process that leads from feudal to national monarchy the bourgeoisie contributed a conception about the relations between public power and the individual, founded in the suppression of personal ties, which were to be replaced by objective ties that were based on public norms and that only compromised a few well specified forms of individual action.

PART IV

THE FORMATION OF THE FEUDO-BOURGEOIS WORLD:

CHANGES IN MENTALITY

The mutation that gave rise to the nascent feudo-bourgeois world not only wrought intense changes in the system of socio-economic and political relations, it also produced far-reaching upheavals in the order of culture. In response to the new demands of the situation, different social groups veered away from traditional attitudes and little by little began to revise their ideas about the problems at hand. A new form of mentality began to take shape, displaying unmistakable signs of dissent towards the system of traditional attitudes, beliefs and opinions.

Yet it was not only socio-economic and political change that helped trigger these new attitudes and mentalities. Significant as it was, the slow pace of change would not by itself have been enough to bring rapid alterations to a system of ideas of such deep roots and extraordinary vigour. Other circumstances proved decisive. The attitudes and mentalities typical of a closed environment also fell away under the pressures of a world in the throes of an intense experience of radical opening. Territorial expansion, indeed, brought not only considerable social mobility but a mass movement of people breaking out of the confines of their small jurisdictions. Those moving from one part of the Romano-Germanic area to another began to compare customs and ideas; but this was even truer of those venturing to the distant regions of foreign cultures. From the twelfth century – and earlier – there was tremendous intellectual ferment. Everything once deemed traditional and seemingly immutable began to be discussed, compared, scrutinised and challenged. Every question, every situation, every one of the demands raised by the new ways of life was met not only with the traditional response but with others from different cultural contexts. These responses were sometimes inadequate, but they were always stimulating and thought-provoking.

From the moment the feudo-bourgeois world began to take shape, the change in attitudes and mentalities was intense. It accompanied the changes under way in the economic order and in the system of social and political relations; yet those who promoted and developed it before the start of the fourteenth century were, with few exceptions, largely unaware of its intensity and significance. It was a spontaneous, tumultuous change oblivious to any systematization. Its vigorous momentum began to slow precisely when its full consequences began to make themselves felt, and, from that moment on, only those who consciously decided to challenge the traditional order remained committed to it.

CHAPTER I

NEW ATTITUDES AND MENTALITIES

From the eleventh century, the territorial expansion of the Romano-Germanic area brought with it strong economic expansion. This in turn had an impact on the prospects of all those who could escape and preferred the traditional system. But such a possibility and such a preference came to be identified with a change in attitude that occurred in certain individuals and some groups for whom the traditional order ceased to seem immutable. The change in the overall prospects settled down into a change in individual perspectives, and shortly afterwards in a marked tendency to promote it and agree with. If previously an attitude other than acceptance of the traditional order did not seem possible, expansion led to the adoption of a selective attitude, which involved the judgment – tacit or expressed – of that traditional order and a vague programming of a type of activity that inevitably involved a new way of life and a new picture of norms and values.

This new attitude resulted then at first in the emergence of new prospects for individuals and groups constricted within an order in which they could only serve the interests of others. But once the opening had occurred, the circumstances linked together in favour of a renewal. Anyone who left the geographical area in which they had been confined began to compare their old attitudes with other similar or different ones, their traditional picture of norms and values with a different one or one that barely resembled their own. Perhaps more of an influence than the first spontaneous movement of dissent on the delineation of a new mentality was the comparison of one’s own attitudes with others. And this comparison was possible by virtue of a change that brought about the transhumance of vast sectors, not only of those who previously had the ability to move about, but of those who had now begun to acquire it.

Expansion brought transhumance. Especially among merchants, who in the exercise of the primary activity that enabled them to escape the traditional order and break the bonds that had immobilized them began to connect with each other different regions once almost cut off. Fairs and markets were the centre of this cross-linking, in which people adhering to a certain conception of life began to discover the rightness and possibility of other conceptions. The activity that these people carried out certainly predisposed them to tolerance, mutual understanding, indifference to all those ideas that did not affect the strict terms of the trade treatment. In any event, observation and knowledge stimulated such cross-linking; but no less important was the fact that certain merchants’ contact with others also contributed to create the idea that they constituted a group in themselves. The principles that were to govern their activity – both commercial and strictly ethical principles – began to be assimilated and very soon characterized those who already constituted a well-defined social sector because of the economic function they performed. Merchants began then to be identified not only by the traits they had depending on their city or region of origin, but also by their attitude towards life, by the norms and values that they upheld and applied, and by the mentality that was their own.

Something similar happened with transhumant scholars and monks belonging to the large international orders. The mutual attendance of schools, universities and monasteries, as well as roadside inns and taverns, led to comparisons of ideas and customs, ways of thinking and behaviour. Like merchants, they too accentuated with reciprocal treatment the perception of a changing world and reinforced their spontaneous attitudes both in response to both traditional and new situations. They adopted and introduced ideas and opinions, disseminated in every place what they had seen and heard in others, and exercised judgment comparing habits, ways of life and opinions. And since the merchants, while expanding the opening of the world caused by the mercantile revolution, resumed and strengthened the links that were grouped the people involved in the same activities and facing the world in the same way: new forms of mentality began to appear and gained momentum.

Pilgrims and minstrels also contributed to establishing this new system of communication among various regions and different sectors. As well as the flood of news about what was happening in each city or in each court, they transferred and disseminated information about the new responses made to calls for a sensitivity that was fast changing. They repeated in different places plastic or poetic forms that had been discovered in others and left traces of their journey through schools of miniaturists, image-makers, carvers or poets who broadcast the good news of hitherto unknown forms, which were received with enthusiastic surprise because they constituted a just response to vague desires not satisfied with the traditional forms of creation. The itinerary of the Matière de Bretagne, the way of Santiago or the ambulatory of the lyric show this transfusion of new formulas, which were greeted eagerly and imitated and developed feverishly, as if there were a strong predisposition to receive them.

More profound and decisive than transhumance within the Romano-Germanic area was still the influence of the contacts that were established with the Muslim world and the Byzantine Empire, differing from Western Europe not only in the type of culture but also in the degree of economic development.

After the radically hostile contacts of the period of the Arab invasion, new relations were established in certain areas between the Muslim world and the Romano-Germanic area through the blurred boundaries that separated them. A relatively surreptitious commercial traffic and a relatively occasional transit of persons enabled penetration in the latter of certain ideas, some techniques, isolated elements, in short, of a culture whose foundations and principles seemed to be reprehensible but from which many immediately useful or attractively exotic things could be learned. Something similar happened with the Byzantine world, with which relations alternately languished and were reanimated through the sea, leaving certain influences filter through.

These contacts were precipitated from the eleventh century, when the Christian-feudal world went on the offensive. The knights and those forming their large retinue, composed of men-at-arms, artisans, monks and nuns, women, sailors, minstrels and merchants, immersed themselves in an exciting world because of the differences it displayed compared to their lands of origin. The refinement of their own ways of life by the upper classes, the luxury, the abundance of certain goods, the physiognomy of the big cities, their markets and their architecture, all constituted an unexpected revelation at the very time it was discovered. The comparison was immediate and, materially speaking, always favourable to what had just been discovered, with the sole limitation entailed by the religious context. But even that context, with everything it represented, was understood and partially accepted by those who stayed in the regions of the Byzantine or Muslim traditions for a long time, being imperceptibly incorporated into certain ways of life and approaching certain currents of ideas previously known only through the controversial simplifications typical of political and religious confrontation. This was especially true in the Christian states founded by the crusaders, set deep in the Muslim area: the principalities of Edessa, Antioch, Tripoli and Jerusalem, where the cultural interpenetration was swift and deep, as the observers concerned about the future of the Christian faith reported in alarm. This also occurred in the Eastern Latin Empire, where it seemed legitimate to dissociate the direction of the unexpected ways of life that were discovered from the religious beliefs, which in principle were the same for the new seigneurs. And in both cases a long stay forced returnees to readjust their opinions and attitudes, which broke the strong resistance against the foreign cultures that had previously characterized the Christian-feudal world. And those, like the Templars, who maintained a permanent contact between the two worlds, consciously or unconsciously incorporated many features of the foreign culture, so deeply that it was possible they did not notice the scale of the transfusion.

It was different in the case of states that have functioned as borders. In Venice, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Hispanic kingdoms, the penetration of foreign influences was slow and continuous, with some adaptations occurring quickly to reveal the existence of certain common assumptions. And in the Mediterranean ports, where ships from the most diverse backgrounds were concentrated, tendencies of heterogeneous origin came face to face and unusual syntheses were tried.

To these regular pathways, through which certain influences were openly introduced that prompted an immediate response, were added other tortuous and occasional ones. Crusaders, monks and travellers of various conditions returned from the eastern countries with spirits saturated with images, memories, opinions, which they then poured out diffusely in stories, sometimes oral and imprecise, sometimes written and detailed. Information was thus disseminated about the conclusions of direct experiences, which slowly penetrated into the spirits and moved by the irrational bases of certain prejudices according to which all the elements of foreign cultures were necessarily hostile.

Along all these pathways knowledge of the Muslim and Byzantine worlds as realities with vigorous existences that challenged the strong ethnocentrism characteristic of the Christian-feudal ambit was disseminated in it. But there were still other pathways open to the exchange of ideas. Both in the Hispanic kingdoms and in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies important intellectual centres appeared from the twelfth century, where philosophical and scientific works, some of Muslim origin, others of Greek, began to be translated into Hebrew and Latin. The significance of this renewal was immense. Intellectual life opened up to new problems, scrapped traditional inhibitions, broke impoverished schemas and renewed its concerns and points of view. Thanks to this, teaching in convent and cathedral schools was revitalised, universities acquired force and influence and the picture of the theoretical problems raised by the new real-life situations was delineated. As the sources multiplied, so did the concerns, and new and unsuspected currents of thought were outlined that, maintaining the original signs, displayed the impact of the stimuli that had unleashed them.

This vast flow of ideas, both those that derived from the new attitudes towards the socio-economic change and those that were disseminated in the wake of the intensification of the exchange within and without the Christian-feudal world, impacted the totality of the social whole, but differently according to the sectors.

Since new classes and groups emerged, new mentalities began to tell, forged in the heat of the situations that were being delineated. But the traditional classes of the order Christian-feudal were also heavily impacted by those flows of ideas. Within the feudal aristocracy a change in economic attitude was promoted, steering some groups towards new types of exploitation of the land that will be tailored to the nascent market economy. There were those who began to prefer certain ways of life that were different from the traditional ones. Some preferred to leave their castles and installed themselves in the renovated cities that were growing rapidly and being transformed into hives of activity from which the life of the rural surroundings began to be directed. Still others preferred to remain in their castles, but gradually modified their way of life, and with it their picture of norms and values. The courtly way of life, illustrated by a revolutionary literature about the idea of the life it entailed, was an equivalent response to the one given by the nascent bourgeoisie to the new demands and perspectives. Refinement, sensuality, individualism woke certain seigneurial groups to a new way of life at precisely the moment they were also tempting the rising social groups. And this similarity of response was due to the similarity of the stimuli. Even the rural classes, battered by their secular subjection, displayed the change: and not only those of their members who escaped from the relationship of dependency, but also those who remained in it, who however began to adopt a critical attitude to the foundations of their situation, by gradually removing the consensus they used meekly to grant to the established order.

The impact was nevertheless more pronounced and profound in the social sectors that emerged from the socio-economic change. The first groups to achieve promotion and accumulate wealth and power in the booming cities modelled an image of their own activity and their own destiny that was a huge turning point in the ideas underpinning their behaviour. Other social groups later emerged and in turn began their struggle for promotion, but as the competition escalated, the expectations varied, and with them the image that each group and each individual within it made of life. Thus the general picture of attitudes, ideas and rules was fixed sharply in terms of the relative position of each within the society as a whole.

Nevertheless, social diversification brought with it a professional diversification that created certain fundamental variants in the picture of the mentalities of the rising classes. The urban clergy, both the secular and mendicant orders that were established in the cities, was particularly conspicuous; notaries, lawyers and doctors, scholars, free artisans manufacturing luxury items, businessmen and bankers, established traders, innkeepers, hauliers and so many other professionals that arose in the bosom of urban life also adopted rules that resulted in unique ways of life sustained by a more or less coherent body of ideas and norms. A growing diversification of attitudes effectively brought increasing variety to all the rising classes, which did not constitute a homogeneous whole, but on the contrary, an unstable complex. This social instability was echoed by a pronounced instability in customs and ideas.

Heterogeneous and unstable too were, as a result, the typical traits of the mentalities constituted in the feudo-bourgeois period. Born of vital, sometimes emotional reactions, barely discernible when new situational changes were already inducing people to change them, the new mentalities barely took shape. They joined by very different and very varied elements: beliefs, exotic opinions and revolutionary intellectual concepts, all without the sentiment of radical inconsistency that underlay everything coming to the surface. But the combination was always unstable. When the situations went sour the attitudes of the various groups towards them shifted, while the fluidity of inner and outer contacts periodically renewed and enriched the flows of ideas being incorporated into the mental world of those groups.

They were thus mentalities of an open world. Certainly both opening to the outside world and internal opening shattered the images of the world and life that had been born of a closed world, a world on the defensive. Both the new courtly mentality arising within the seigneurial classes and the nascent mentality that was permeating the bourgeois groups displayed the traits of an adventure of thought, triggered more beyond the limits set by a cultural ambit and beyond the pictures enshrined by the prestige of a traditional elite. The institutionalization of traditional attitudes alarmed by the force of heterodoxy was precipitated precisely as a result of this challenge. But the social forces regrouping around the demands of a new situation exceeded the fragile barriers imposed by the traditional elite and, to the same extent as they their attitudes shattered the system of socio-economic and political relations, went bankrupt with their attitudes and ways of thinking shattered the picture of traditional attitudes. Nothing was spared the critical onslaught, the problematization, the examination: not moral attitudes, nor forms of social coexistence, nor the meaning of work or creation, nor the conception of knowledge, nor the image of nature, nor the very idea of the relations between man and God.

Ultimately the new forms of mentality emerged from decisive changes in both the image of nature and of socio-cultural life. Little by little the identity between reality and unreality that had been formed vigorously in the Christian-feudal world began to dissolve. The area of sensible natural reality began to become autonomous, to recover the significance it had in the frame of Roman culture, to dissociate itself from the supernatural and the sacred. Man began to rediscover that he formed part of it and above all that it was within it that his action played out. Action, in fact, began to be interpreted as a sign of life. Action made it possible to discover that sensible reality was thereby upset, constituted situations were upset. The perception of change that might operate in natural reality prompted the perception of the change in socio-cultural life. The image of an immutable order began to be replaced by the image of an unstable world, a world chained to the wheel of fortune.

Creation and change were two revolutionary ideas. They were the expressions of a renewed and conscious love for life. They were in fact the expressions of a radical renewal of the traditional system of values, for life itself began to take on an absolute value. As such, life replaced death, which was ultimately the absolute that presided over the Christian-feudal conception.

CHAPTER II

THE NEW IMAGE OF MAN, SOCIETY AND HISTORY

The daily experience of life within a set of changing circumstances very soon determined a spontaneous and profound alteration in the traditional image of the relationship between the individual and the society as a whole. The relations themselves changed, and the new forms of coexistence escaped from the established schemas. Little by little others were formed and, albeit very weakly, a new image of man began to take shape and acquire force on the one hand and, on the other, a new image of socio-cultural life conceived as a system of changing relations. Rather than from any theory these images was born of experience and were translated very soon into in forms of individual and collective behaviour; and the judgments about the behaviour began to be modified, precisely because the entire system of principles, standards and values was quietly transforming in the heat of a substantial modification of each individual’s daily experience within their group and society as a whole.

I. THE IMAGE OF MAN

The psychological experience of the breakdown of personal ties of dependency was profound and decisive for those who made it, escaping from the frameworks of traditional society and situating themselves in the flow of a fluid situation, without institutional support, insecure but open to multiple unpredictable perspectives. From that experience was born the image of man as an individual, as a being who began and ended in himself, alone amidst a chaotic situation – in relation to the traditional order – devoid of protection and relying on own forces, with so many possibilities of being destroyed and transformed into the centre of a system that would provide it with great strength: neither a creature of God nor a man of his seigneur, but, simply, an individual launched on a unknown adventure.

What was typical of the individual who began to be considered as such was precisely to regard himself as the subject of an adventure that was his own, non-transferable. His fate was not pre-established. He was not the serf of someone who had been the seigneur of his father and grandfather, nor had he been assigned the plot in which he was to plunge the hoe. But nor did he have any other protection or assets. The only ones he had were those that Reason, according to Juan de Meun, attributed to the Lover: ‘Lady, are there not, then, things that are mine? – There are, but they are neither fields, nor houses, nor clothes, nor such or such ornaments, nor lands or domains, nor any kind of furniture. You have one thing better and more precious: the assets you feel in you, that you will always keep and that cannot abandon you to pass to another; those assets are rightfully yours.’^[306] These ‘inner goods’ were the faculties of man, the forces hiding in each individual in varying measure that could act on the external world. The fate of each individual was not therefore written but seemed to rely on the faculties of each man and how he might apply them over his environment. Life was the adventure of each man, the work of each man.

If the circumstances of socio-economic life opened up the possibility for a certain number of individuals to conceive their own existence as an unpredictable adventure dependent only on their own authority, the experience of such circumstances conferred an increasingly accentuated value on that idea of life conceived as an adventure of the individual alone, such as free adventure, non-determined, born of an omnipotent imagination capable of shaping reality. Beyond the judgments imposed by traditional standards, the spectacle of the individual adventure elicited a mixture of wonder and admiration, which was accompanied by a de facto justification. In a sense the idea was not absolutely new. In the formation process of the Christian-feudal order adventure had been the vital schema within which the seigneurial class had operated. Now, when that order stabilised and other different prospects opened up beside it, the individuals who launched themselves in pursuit of them repeated the same schema, but within a different context. The adventure was no longer to overcome the adversary sword in hand or annihilate infidels. The adventure par excellence began to be that of economic and social advancement, and was open to vast sectors who formed and ordered themselves only on the basis of the results of that adventure.

An adventure was generally what decided the ascent of the great patrician lineages. Extraordinary was that of the Genovese Embriaci, descendants of that William whom Bishop William of Tire^[307] says he was called ‘The Drunkard’ and that, after helping the capture of Jerusalem, he obtained a third of the Syrian city of Gibelet; or that of the Erembalds of Bruges, of servile origins, who by the start of the twelfth century had achieved the highest influence in the county of Flanders.^[308] Success in the conquest of wealth or power meant a jump on the now open social ladder, full of risks, which left open the unknown of the future. It might be consolidated or not, depending on unforeseeable contingencies, and the adventure of consolidation was an extension of the initial adventure. The Embriacis were able to conserve the highest tower in Genova, from which they tightened their grip on power within the city, while the Erembalds succumbed dramatically by attempting a supreme step in their race to the top.

In the search for advancement through the channel of power, the risks and rewards were greater, and the opening that operated in the frames of socio-economic life offered the opportunity to try it out. Maio of Bari or Pier della Vigna sought power at the side of princes who aspired to break up the seigneurial structures that constrained them, and they succumbed in a struggle in which they were simple instruments; but without doubt the occasion had been offered, and the fall left memories of a frustrated fate, after which the possibility of a brilliant advancement was, however, hidden. It was what Friar Elias of Cortona sought when he had in his hands the opportunity to dominate the Franciscan Order, influential and spread across many countries. It was the situations offered by a society open to anyone who was rich in ‘inner gifts’ for an adventure whose outcome would ultimately be due to an unpredictable set of chance circumstances.

This possibility of the adventure, this experience of the execution of a design suggested by a favourable situation and made possible by an individual’s ability to carry it out, prompted a very marked feeling of self-worth in these ‘new men’. Anyone who discovered their immense potential as an individual, alone and with the only strength given them by their ‘inner gifts’, ended up exalting their inner personality, their non-transferable ‘i’. And this elation formed not only an image of the individual as potentiality but as destiny.

It was in action, in a free act, intelligently ordered according to the play of circumstances, that the individual discovered not only the countless gifts he possessed, but also his inner coherence, by virtue of which he fitted in with the whole of creation. Man, said Jean de Meun in the Roman de la Rose,^[309] ‘abounds in all the virtues that God has put in the world, is joined to all the universe and shares in the nature of all things; shares being with the stones, life with the grass, feeling with the beasts; and he can still do much more for he possesses intelligence in common with the angels. He has everything that can be thought: he is a little new world.’ These gifts are not equally distributed. Every individual is a ‘new world’. And in perceiving that dimension, the individual becomes an enigma with regard to his ‘way of life’.

Viewed from outside, this enigma that constituted each individual prompted the yearning to get to the bottom of it. The merchant who argued with his competitor or with a client over the terms of a business deal tried to guess if what prevailed in his interlocutor was cunning or naïveté, quickness or slowness of reasoning, greed or liberality. It is what the mendicant monk, the notary or the judge will do in the nervous atmosphere of the cities. And it is what the painter or sculptor will do, who began increasingly to individualise their figures, like Cimabue or Duccio, like Master Mateo, like the image makers of Naumburg or Bamberg. Features, expressions, attitudes were beginning to be observed carefully; certain meanings were ascribed to certain nose shapes, to a certain kind of looks, to certain positions of the head or hands; and when painting or carving each figure, the skilful observer that there was in each artist strove to make of each one of them an expression of the ‘inner gifts’, of that ‘new world’ that were glimpsed in each individual.

Seen from within, from the intimacy of each of those who made the experience of feeling alone in the face of countless possible prospects, the enigma that was their own life was resolved in a vague hypothesis about their destiny. The idea of chance, blind Fortune, once again dominated it. But this individual who was sure of the ‘inner assets’ they had believed that part of their destiny at least could be directed and steered according to their own designs.

‘I, Sir,’ says a character from the Novellino, ‘am from Italy and a merchant. I am very rich, and the wealth that I have I have not inherited, but have earned it with my effort.’^[310] This pride constitutes a typical feature of the new man. It is the source of that vanity and arrogance of the wealthy patrician who despised those who had not been able to do the same thing as he. And it is basically the same vanity as Abelard’s, the philosopher who thought was the only one; as Suger’s or Elias’s, who sought to marry their names to the durability of stone, as the harsh signore who had achieved the domination of the city, or the eloquent preacher who electrified crowds.

But one could never be sure of what the enigma concealed up to the very moment of death. There were many who lived ad algura, as is told in the Novellino of Messer Imberal del Balzo,^[311] that is, according to the auguries. Astrology and the other occult arts, which promised to reveal the arcane side of the individual destiny, were in demand by all those who perceived the audaciousness of this attempt to build their own destiny according to their ‘inner gifts’, operating on an unforeseeable reality. A mistake might mean the fall, more dreadful if it entailed a return to the abyss from which one had sought to escape. And then this profane man, who I only believed in his own strength, might turn on himself seeking death, ‘creciendo col morirfuggirdisdegno,’ as Dante Alighieri has Pier della Vigna say.^[312]

A prisoner in the contingencies of life the individual who, however, had experienced the possibility of directing his own destiny, very soon clung to his earthly purposes. All his strength rested ultimately on his aptitudes for dealing with such contingencies and concluded by considering himself part of nature. In this respect the ‘new man’, the nascent bourgeois man, also imitated the knight who in the exercise of his virility discovered his vital power and felt like a force of nature. Now, under new conditions, the lone individual struggling to escape from the situation of traditional dependency in order to build his own circumstances also developed an awareness of his vital power, in courage to fight against the elements, against bandits, against rivals, translated into strength of will, capacity for resistance, vigour and cunning. And this vital power he assimilated to a being of nature with immediate obsessive and exclusionary purposes, and with promises of also immediate compensatory enjoyment.

As a being of nature the new man regained a sense of the value of life. As an expression and result of a set of faculties, as well as an expression of a design, life reflected the peculiarity of the human condition. Man possessed all the vices attributed to him by moralists: ‘He is proud, a murderer, a thief, cruel, greedy, greedy, fallacious, desperate, a glutton, back-biting, spiteful, disparaging, incredulous, envious, a liar, a perjurer, a falsifier, boastful, inconstant, shameless, idolatrous, unpleasant, treacherous, hypocritical, lazy and a sodomite.| In short he is so mad and so imbecilic that he is a slave to all the vices and a host to all of them within himself.’^[313] This long list of Juan de Meun’s was like a repertoire of the aptitudes that the ‘new man’ should exercise in his daily struggle for economic and social advancement, but it entailed a repertoire of the immediate pleasures that he promised himself as a reward for his effort. A mixture of good and evil, the human condition triumphed over all, precisely for what it had of nature, as Juan de Meun pointed out recalling the Roman poets.^[314] But this triumph supposed a confrontation with traditional ethical standards, against which the exaltation of pleasure as an end in life, the triumph of the hedonism accompanying the changes operating in the socio-economic order, appeared diabolical.

‘All those alive flee and dodge death,’^[315] acknowledged Juan de Meun, without the hope of eternal bliss being enough to contain that sentiment. It was declared in nonchalant fashion by Sordello of Mantua when he said to the count: ‘You must not require of me to run in search of death [. . .] Passing the sea one earns salvation. But I am not in such a hurry to save myself. I want to reach eternal life as late as it is possible for me to do so.’^[316] And speaking of The Life of the World,Rutebeuf lamented:^[317] ‘Everyone thinks of the body and has no concern for the soul. There never were such great sinners.’ It was without doubt a commonplace of moralists. But the moralists, whatever the model they used to express their feelings, were clearly alluding not to abstract evils but to the specific ways of life that were adopted in relation to the situation of change and to new evident attitudes that accompanied them, which entailed a disturbance of the criteria of value. The same Juan de Meun points out this contradiction, because whereas Reason advised the greedy man to think of the other life, it exalted the humble joy of the collier who worked honestly without thinking of wealth, leapt and danced, and ended up spending everything he had managed to earn in the tavern.^[318]

In this transmutation of norms the example of the powerful exercised no small influence. Whereas the collier gave himself up to drunkenness, giving in to his impulses as everyone did who needed them to brave his individual adventure, the legendary image of Frederick II or Manfred came to stand as a model of a life-style that was always condemned, but that met with more and more tolerance and justification. Villani described Manfred as ‘dissolute and given to every luxury: he was an instrumentalist and a singer; he was happy if he saw around him minstrels, courtiers and beautiful concubines; he dressed in green fabrics; he was very generous and courteous, so that he was much loved and gracious; but his whole life was epicurean, almost without concern either for God or the saints, but only the delight of the body.’^[319]

Even without discarding the sanction, this life-style announced itself with a naturalness that perhaps revealed the nonchalance with which less obligated observers than the moralist judged its adoption by people who did not acknowledge a transcendent mission to their own lives. What could not be reproved was without doubt the joy of being alive, even when it transpired that it sometimes overflowed into such excess. The joy of being alive was but a response to the vital exercise of all the individual’s faculties, applied to the channelling of a personal adventure. Its coarse forms were reprehensible in the light of certain norms that persisted in some measure, but the first signs of more credible forms able to be exercised by the ‘new men’ were beginning to be seen, although they had as a model those that began to be exercised by the seigneurs in response to the incitements of the new socio-economic situation by developing a courtly life-style. Refinement, moderation and subjection to rules were principles that stood against the primary exaltation of people recently attaining wealth and pleasure; but the attitude was the same whatever forms this exaltation took. The important thing was to live, but to live happily, because, Sordello of Mantua said,^[320] living otherwise should not be called living.

An indispensable condition for a happy life seemed to be the leisure, the full-on leisure of the seigneurs and the rich, or at least a long enough pause for leisure to forget everyday concerns. It was a time to alienate oneself. Urban life began to offer all sorts of people the distractions that before seemed reserved for the seigneurs. Conversation itself was a new event in the open environments of cities, small squares and courtyards where the bourgeois exchanged opinions, listened to innocent or shameless stories and found out about strange goings-on in remote locations. The charm of conversation was multiplied in the tavern – the counterpart of the court – where parishioners met to talk, sing, drink and gamble, and occasionally to fight over the throw of the dice, the price of the wine or any trivial thing that might arise in the course of the dialogue. This is what happened in the tavern of the Juego de San Nicolás,^[321] and it is recalled in the vibrant poem kept by the Buranus as follows:

In the tavern when we’re drinking,

though the ground be cold and stinking

down we go and join the action

with the dice and gaming faction.

What goes on inside the salon

where it’s strictly cash per gallon

if you’d like to know, sir, well you

shut your mouth and I shall tell you.^[322]

The poetry is lively. ‘Some play, others drink,’ it says; and it lists the many burlesque reasons to drink declared by the drinkers. But everyone drinks: ladies, seigneurs, knights, clerics, rustics, the wise: ‘a hundred drink, a thousand drink.’

Feeling like a being of nature was to escape the constraints imposed by social life, and in the new circumstances the possibility of the urban leisure offered that luxury to vast sectors. Violent emotions and states of elation were experienced by many, and especially by many in close contact within the urban walls. That sinful experience in the light of the old morality was in fact the justification for a society that was discovering it and that was finding in it an unexpected vital satisfaction. For that reason, wine and drunkenness again had another moment of justification: that of the Archpoet and goliards,^[323] that Primat, author of a treatise on the need not to mix water with wine, which Salimbene incorporates in his Chronicle;^[324] that of the scholar John of Salisbury,^[325] who discoursed on how to mix different varieties of drinks; that of that Morando, a teacher of grammar of Padua, whose poem began as follows: ‘Glorious sweet wine’,^[326] or that of that town crier whom Jean Bodel had say: ‘Wine, wine just opened, aromatic! A wine that has itself drunk slipping and sliding like a squirrel in the forest, without sourness nor stale taste: dry and clear, it runs over its lees, as clear as a sinner’s tear, and lingers on the tongue of the taster: those who are not should not savour it.’^[327]

An urban phenomenon, this elation and justification of drunkenness reveals in this time of change the decision of extensive new social groups to achieve ways of life previously exclusive to the seigneurial classes, leaving aside blatantly traditional norms and values, and claiming their right to enjoy life as beings of nature primarily, until they attained estrangement. And into this trend eroticism irrupted as a profound dimension of life, in which man began to discover and exalt not only the sensual promise of woman, but also the deep values of femininity.

This may perhaps also have been an urban phenomenon. A new system of relations allowed in the new classes an intense exchange between men and women. Incorporated into society and with multiple possibilities to perform an important role in it, women prompted a wave of criticisms and mockeries from moralists and satirists; but the criticisms^[328] reveal above all the depth of the impact of the feminine and the unique process of integrating men and women in feudo-bourgeois society, beginning with the one that occurred in marriage itself and family organisation. As with the human condition itself this presence of the feminine is seen in the perception of flaws. Fickleness and inconstancy, deception and greed, perversity, indiscretion, are vices that moralists attributed to women, but simply as a pejorative way of describing certain forms of feminine behaviour; and feudo-bourgeois society then began to incorporate and retain them as it did so.

Faced with that image, born of the social fact of the inclusion of women in active social life, another idealised image took shape, in which the bourgeois woman – Dante’s Beatrice – would inherit the traits of the noble lady of lyric poetry and the roman courtois. Also in the bourgeois – or rather, patrician – ambit women acquired the characters that Juan de Meun attributes to the Rose in the Roman. Grace, flirtatiousness, sensitivity, elegance, intuition were identified as the counterparts of those vices that moralists attributed to women. And from those virtues love began to be conceived, also inside the picture of the new bourgeois mentality, as an erotic, conventional game steeped in aesthetic elements. The goliard poets, schoolmen of cloister and tavern, idealised the love of virgins and courtesans, furnishing them with the proper framework of a spring nature. But the sensual background was transparent, as it was in the seigneurial lyric.^[329]

‘Woe to you, good love coveted, body well made . . . !’ said Bernat de Ventadorn, and Cercamon sang: ‘May God let me touch her, or see her lie down on the bed.’ This sensuality, so present in Chrétien de Troyes,^[330] appeared with similar characters in poetry; in the scabrous stories of the Novellino or in those collected by Salimbene,^[331] although the contours of social love were generally more accentuated, with its charge of impudence, rudeness and mockery. One thing was clear, and that was the purpose of pursuing physical enjoyment, the ‘medicine’ for the lover’s suffering. And this obsession seemed fair to the individual who thought of themself as a natural being, for whom it was legitimate to govern their conduct and choose their words according to the example of the animals – as proposed in the Bestiaire d’amour^[332] – and who had begun to break, although without admitting to it, the whole system of traditional norms. ‘The lover does not dream of fruit: he seeks only pleasure,’ said Juan de Meun.^[333] And in search of pleasure he could slide towards either venal love^[334] or homosexuality.^[335]

Urban life stimulated unhealthy forms of eroticism, and the moralists saw in it a sufficient and almost necessary cause to relax customs, without a doubt as a result of promiscuity, but certainly not least because of the influence of money. It was the experience of the unhealthy eroticism of the new cities where ‘la cittadinanza, ch’e or mista’^[336] lacked moral sway over the group, that had inspired the idealised image of pure love in the framework of nature. Through the same mechanism of nostalgia and contrasts urban life taught people to contemplate nature. ‘I had the fancy of going out of the town to hear the song of the birds,’ said William of Lorris explaining his poetic dream.^[337] The compact, cluttered city awoke the longing for wide open spaces, silent forests, wild animals. If the Roman de la Rose’s description of landscape is conventional and its vision is sketchy in Duccio di Buoninsegna and Giotto,^[338] it is because its composition is more intellectual that sensible. The natural landscape was a response to the experience of the urban ambit, and although its various elements were perceived by sensibility, its ordering as ‘landscape’ was the result of the application of the principle of spaces delimited to a nature hitherto not observed save as a disorderly and chaotic whole. The most perfect form of this landscape was the orchard – which could be described or painted as the Latin hortus – Deduit’s verger, in which trees there is no shortage of trees brought from Saracen lands.^[339]

By a similar rational effort, nature began to be thought of as an organic whole and as a source of life. Perhaps for the same reason it was thought of as a source of beauty. Within that whole, sensibility could surprise the aesthetic value of each element: perfume, colour, shape, flavour, proportion. The horses of the Bayeux Tapestry or the frescoes of Saint-Savin began to reveal the bold harmony of their movements. Along the same road the human figure acquired an unexpected value. The Eva of the tympanum of Autun Cathedral offered a sensitive nude, with naturalistic attitudes and forms, such as those that were beginning to be shown by the covered figures in both painting and sculpture, beneath the refined folds of the drapery that enveloped and revealed their forms, as in the virgins – foolish or wise – of the portico of Strasbourg Cathedral. And with the search for the juvenile form and the rhythm of the light and graceful the artist set out to respond to the impact of natural beauty, of nature revealed to his eyes as the creator of beauty.

But the artist also felt himself to be a creator of beauty, even though he sought his sources of inspiration in nature. The sculpture, the fresco or the panel, the mosaic, the miniature now tried not to reproduce conventional forms but to transpose the multiple fresh forms suggested by observation and the creative imagination. Attitudes and forms, features and expressions, hand movements sought to elicit the image of a living human being, caught in action, full of nature. When the artist wanted to add something that revealed the way of life he turned to the ancient plastic tradition of drapery, which little by little recovered fluidity and movement. Drapery very soon acquired a deep sensual content, as it no doubt had in rich and noble clothing. Elegance seemed to ennoble life by introducing a subtle aesthetic element into everyday existence. Extreme in its luxury, elegance seemed reprehensible but came to be an ideal constantly pursued by the social sectors that were attaining wealth to the extent that it expressed the design of placing existence within a frame of beauty and dignity. Society – both courtly and bourgeois society – imitated the example of nature and exalted life by savouring aesthetic enjoyment.

A vigorous tradition upheld the image of man as a being of reason, but the new experiences quickly delineated and determined his image as sensible being as well. This image – controversial and risky – derived from the pleasant feeling of embracing nature, from man’s conviction that he was part of nature. It was not a rationally developed conviction but a feeling born of new and profound experiments. And through them he recognised in those who performed them the unmistakable presence of his subjectivity, his inner world, from which sprang not only clear, logical ideas but vehement feelings, intuitions and blind, uncontainable yearnings.

The ‘new world’, the inner gifts, everything that the poets and moralists rediscovered in man, was nothing but the subjectivity that was beginning to shake off restrictive norms and express itself more freely in the heat of new life experiences. And this subjectivity, in which was glimpsed a merging of the rational and the sensible, began to seem more valuable precisely because of what was sensible about it, from which derived what is non-transferrably individual.

They matter little the theoretical schemas developed with elements from diverse origins to explain the essence of subjectivity. Sometimes strangely combined, the Christian theological tradition and the old philosophical tradition only resulted in the reiteration of old doctrines. But the heat of social change new life experiences and developing moral norms opened up the ways for another kind of introspective analysis and untied the knots that contained its expression. The soul was perceived through its predominant qualities and its states, and through them it came to be known empirically, unleashing an unstoppable relish to explore it via the feelings that it externalised.

An intense effort was made by artists to ensure that the features represented precisely and sharply the qualities and states of the soul. The type of Judas demanded an intense exercise in the search for the expression of perfidy; the Last Judgment incited artists to differentiate the those of the blessed and those of the damned; the accomplices of the torment of Christ – Roman soldiers, Jewish, people of the people – drove artists to find the expressive features of a vile cruelty. But a more subtle effort was needed to express specifically human feelings in a language that responded to the everyday experience of grief. Duccio di Buoninsegna and Cimabue did it and triumphed. The expression of the suffering Christ, that of the witnesses of the descent or the death of Mary, that of the adoring monks of the Virgin, display the features of individual beings, not transported to a state of annihilation or ecstasy, but enmired in a deep but bearable sorrow and capable of consolation.^[340] The influence of the direct observation of communicative pain can be seen, which the artist could collect in the daily life of the city and which Giotto faithfully expressed in the faces of the monks surrounding the lifeless body of Saint Francis,^[341] or the carvers of Naumburg in their figures of the Passion.^[342]

More complex was the expression of the state of love. Juan de Meun called it a ‘disease of thought’^[343] and William of Lorris coincided with William of Aquitaine in observing that it possessed sufficient force to alienate the individual and release him from the conventions that tied him to the social world: ‘From a wise man it can make a mad man,’ says the latter, adding that: ‘It can vilify the noblest man and ennoble the vilest’;^[344] and the former said: ‘Love makes seigneurs servants and ladies maids.’^[345] But stranger than this alienation was the confusion of feelings that the poet discovered. ‘My heart does not cease to desire the creature that I love above all,’ said Jaufré Rudel, ‘and I think that loving does deceive me if Greed takes it from me, for the pain that is cured with joy is more poignant than a thorn; for this reason I do not want to be pitied.’^[346] The subject of the description of the amorous sentiment received the aid of the Latin tradition, that can be glimpsed through the goliard poetry – of Marbod of Rennes, Walter of Châtillon – of the De Amore by Andreas Capellanus, of the roman courtois, of William of Lorris, of La vita nuova.^[347] But the curiosity was new and amounted to a discovery.

Perhaps the most unique thing was the discovery of the smile as an expression of a state of mind in which mingled a moderate and lasting joy with some imperturbable dignity, both projecting themselves in some indescribable placidity. Sometimes it appears in the blessed, in the figures of John and Daniel of the Portico of Glory;^[348] sometimes in angels, like that of Reims or that of Bamberg;^[349] sometimes in female figures, such as the virgins of Strasbourg, Countess Matilde in Brunswick or Regelindis in Naumburg.^[350] The smile, especially a woman’s, seems to be accompanied by a physical attitude that corresponds to courtly manners. Placidity is indeed the typical attitude of a superior spirit – a sort of ataraxia – but above all it is the expression of a higher, stable social status, foreign to any competition, finally secure. It is also a strictly human feeling, without extremes and no doubt rather conventional, that is, sincere but liable to externalise itself uniformly in search of reciprocal communication. At once a courtly and bourgeois expression, the smile is contrasted to the grotesque grin, to mystic hieraticism and the rigid rictus of grief. It was the sign of a carefully conquered, moderate and secure pleasure.

The discovery of the smile is related to the unique image of the role of reason that was coming into being. If love is the distinctive sign of man as a being of nature, the reason for this is the legacy of God himself, granted to man to regulate his passions, to save him from madness.^[351] Like the courtly man, the now triumphant bourgeois man flees from excesses, measured his risks, governs his conduct. To this effect reason is the effective instrument. It is necessary to love it, said Juan de Meun,^[352] but it is not enough; it is also necessary to despise the God of love and not to be dragged along by Fortune. This image of a subjectivity fuelled by sensibility and regulated by reason is without doubt a Latin reminiscence; but it is not a simple topic; it is now the proper expression of a sentiment that has gained traction.

Certainly reason for the bourgeois was beginning to be something more than the simple moderating element of his conduct. It was increasingly an instrument of action to operate on reality. Natural reality is tumultuous, but man begins to feel capable of mastering it, to subject to his rules. Perhaps the most daring attempt to dominate reality was the erection of the city, and the ordering of individual and collective life within it. Like the seigneur, the peasant lived in an open ambit and was tied by chance to nature. But the bourgeois delimited his surrounding space, geometrised it, measured it. Between him and the earth he will install the insulating layer of a floor of stone or wood. The square was an open space of limited measures surrounded by houses of regular volumes, prisms placed by plumb-lines. And the city wall drew a circumference or a polygonal around a human group that passed along lines drawn on the ground.

The same rationalising zeal is seen in the attempt to regulate the life of the urban group. The activities were subjected to increasingly accurate, consistent and systematic norms. As non-rational as a twelfth-century charter or a municipal charter may seem, they constitute huge efforts to rationalise collective life, anticipate situations, offer rigid options, establish inescapable consequences of every event and inalienable responsibilities. And a growing tendency to quantify social and economic phenomena began to be noticed, served by rediscovered mathematics and incipient accounting theory. Reason is the part of subjectivity that operates on the outside world, with which nature is altered and governed, with which the future is determined, promoting situations of which it is foreseen that they will determine certain necessary consequences.

The confusion at the prospect of the rich world of subjectivity led to the new man suddenly turning in on himself, on his individual life, moving him away from the path of transcendence at whose limit was eternal salvation: subjectivity invited the exaltation of life, the carpe diem. However, his former transcendent vocation did not completely disappear. The exaltation of life did not erase the hope of eternal life, nor the hope of salvation; but the bourgeois mentality shifted the accent of its concerns slightly and began to relegate that of death and eternal life toward a future time, toward an ‘after’ that almost coincided with the hour of passing. It did not seem necessary to live for death but to live for life and trust in the value of a timely contrition. Through this intellectual mechanism, driven by his condition of a being of nature, his revaluation of sensuality and his rediscovery of subjectivity, the idea of life as religious transcendence lost force and effect. But through the same intellectual mechanism, it did not only gave way to an immanent conception of life, to a basic epicureanism, but offered the prospect of another form of transcendence. This transcendence was perhaps the most profound and unique creation of the bourgeois mentality. Against religious transcendence it set a profane transcendence.

If religious transcendence encouraged a constriction of subjectivity that only left abstract thought free to discover the afterworld, profane transcendence was born of full-blown subjectivity’s urgency to concentrate on the immediate world, on the present and on a short, imaginable and close future, proportionate to the extent of man’s life-time. Religious transcendence offered eternity and the world of the sacred; but profane transcendence offered a historical, human future unfolding in the midst of the earthly world and coherently prolonged in time as far as the imagination could reach. Man wanted to transcend but not through a mysterious leap toward an unknown world, but through the continuity of life perpetuated by the generations of sons and sons of sons. The world of the future towards which the ‘new man’ wanted to transcend was that of the morrow, even when in that morrow he no longer should exist. There would, however, exist his memory, his son, his works and everything in such a world to the one that had been formed by the contour of his existence. Certainly Dante Alighieri accentuated the similarity of the afterworld with the real world almost to the point of identity: only the grey tone of the shadows differentiated them, as well as the immutability of the situations and states of man. Perhaps the bourgeois imagined the world of the dead as an opaque and immutable Florence. But he also imagined his temporal survival in the fickle and bright Florence in which his memory, his son or his works would perpetuate his living presence, not for eternity certainly, but for an imaginable time beyond which the ultimate death of oblivion seemed tolerable. Only later, after this hiatus, did the unimaginable eternity of the reward and the punishment seem to begin.

To transcend within society – the society of the time of life and its prolongation in the time of memory – the new situations offered renewed opportunities. Action was without doubt the most promising path, as it had been for the feudal seigneurs. Like them, the bourgeois sometimes sought the heroic action, adding to it – like them, once again – certain immediate ends. But generally the bourgeois sought the path of economic, political or social action as the opportunities arising in the framework of urban life presented themselves to him. Action could lead to wealth, and this in turn to both personal enjoyment of the goods and to influence, power and prestige, which individualised anyone conquering them within society. If at first, and in the light of traditional opinions, economic action may have appeared despicable, little by little it attained greater dignity, as those who had been successful in it attained dignity. In the meantime, through political action one could in the framework of urban life achieve not just power, but also prestige and sometimes wealth. Within the social group, success removed anyone attaining it from anonymity, and by promoting him to a conspicuous situation assured him a social prestige that acquired the characters of a certain form of transcendence.

Something similar began to happen in the field of knowledge. ‘Those wishing to acquire nobility,’ said Juan de Meun, ‘must give themselves to arms or study.’^[353] Study – and the knowledge that constituted its fruit – brought fame, not only because the learned man’s prestige grew, but also because it had an increasingly far-reaching effect as the curious public surrounding him grew. The master John of Parma, related Salimbene,^[354] possessed innumerable personal and intellectual virtues, but above all preached so fervently that he brought tears to the eyes of many of those who made up his audience; and of the sermon delivered on a certain occasion by Brother Hugo de Dignes he said that it was ‘wonderful, useful, beautiful and pleasant’,^[355] no doubt because it made a strong impression on its listeners. This prestige of the preacher – both of he who possessed a deep knowledge and of he who only used the modest catechetical doctrine – was a new phenomenon, the result of both urban agglomeration as well as the emergence of new criteria of social prestige. The case of Abelard was without doubt the most brilliant, but on a different scale it was repeated in many others.

The old forms of knowledge were not, however, the only ones that began to lend prestige to those engaged in study. Amongst Gautier de Châtillon’s musings in Tanto virilocuturi are the signs of the prestige that legal studies have acquired: ‘“Genres” and “species” have perished forever and have fallen into the infernos. Only legists reign in these centuries.’^[356] Far-reaching indeed was the influence of the jurists. The great master of Bologna, Irnerius, persuaded the Roman people to elect Gregory VIII antipope in 1118,^[357] and other lesser masters persuaded Frederick Barbarossa to make momentous decisions at Roncaglia.^[358] But beyond this kind of influence, they exercised another more extended kind in the daily life of cities, advising councils, magistrates and citizens who had to deal with public or private affairs. And as the law, and administrative and political life became more complex, so the influence of judges, lawyers and notaries grew. Similarly, other new forms of knowledge furnished prestige, fame and influence. Medicine and pharmacy, on the one hand, and mathematics and accounting, on the other, made of those who cultivated them conspicuous figures in society. And certain forms of esoteric knowledge – magic, alchemy, palmistry, astrology – made famous, renowned and feared to he who attained them, like Miguel Scotto, the philosopher deemed astrologer, or like the archbishop of Ravenna who had wanted to learn necromancy in Toledo, or like the great Elias of Cortona, who claimed to meddle in the secrets of alchemy, who recalls Salimbene.^[359] Knowledge of human laws, knowledge of nature and knowledge of occult forces furnished power; but above all they offered the chance to emerge from the anonymous mass, to achieve a leading position, to achieve fame. The learned man successfully perpetuated his memory and lived on after his death. Such was the conviction that Dante lent to Brunetto Latini: ‘Siete raccomandato il mio Tesoro / nel qual io vivo ancora, e più non cheggio.’^[360]

On a smaller scale, aesthetic creation also offered a profane path to transcendence. Erecting a church seemed to be a legitimate and safe means of associating one’s name to a perennial work. Thirteen inscriptions commemorate Suger’s name on the Abbey of Saint-Denis, in whose stained-glass windows his image appears offering up his work, as does that of Enrique degli Scrovegni in the fresco of Giotto’s Last Judgment. Donors came to be associated with the grandeur and durability of the donated work; but so little by little did the architect whose name was engraved in the stone and whose fame ran from town to town while he lived and offered him the possibility of taking on grand and lasting works. The architect Pierre de Montreuil said his epitaph was ‘doctor in stones’, and the name of Jean de Chelles, who worked on the construction of Our Lady of Paris, features in an inscription several meters in length. The condition of image makers began to become brighter still, invited often from very distant cities to work on the works, and whose names, like Master Mateo very soon reached legendary proportions. Bright too was the condition of painters, who little by little saw the value of their crafts rise to such a level of prestige as that of Duccio di Buoninsegna, who wrote at the foot of the Maestà: ‘Oh, Holy Mother of God, be thou the cause of peace for the Sienese and be life to Duccio, for so he painted thee,’ and to whose workshop the whole town went in procession to transport the altarpiece that was to decorate the main altar of the cathedral. In the same way music made famous Leonino and Perotino, the masters of Our Lady of Paris, and poetry brought fame and glory to the Provençal and Sicilian poets, and to that Guido Guinizelli of whose poems Dante said: ‘Those dulcet rhymes which, so long as of our modern tongue fades not, shall make precious the very characters in which they’re writ.’^[361]

This endurance of memory, achievable within a society that was beginning to appreciate new ways of life and consecrate new values, constituted an immediate goal in life. At the time of death, something should be left to perpetuate necessarily the passage through life, a legacy of man to his immediate posterity would make its memory inevitable. The sign of an action, a system of power or an institutional order, a commercial enterprise, a poetic work, could be a legacy that would perpetuate the memory of someone who had carried it out. But it was not the only one possible. A solid fortune or a vigorous political power-base, well established enough for someone who had consolidated them to be able to pass them on to their heirs, were also a legacy that ensured the preservation of memory. And a large, closely-knit family, whose influence was increased by the descendants of the man who had dragged it out of anonymity, meant the creation of an ambit of resonance for the memory of the man who thus transcended towards the world, towards the society of a future time in which was continued the one in which he had lived.

This perpetuation of the memory was like a fight against oblivion. There was at the bottom of it the feeling that oblivion was a second death, easier to avoid than the first, than physical death. Between one and the other was perceived an indeterminable period in the course of which the image of man vanished little by little as he became consubstantial with his children or with his works, so that the second death lacked the drama of the void. The bourgeois, who broke the opposition between the present and eternity by inserting between them the time of memory, sought a way to prolong this, confident that anyone could – in an open society – aspire to that survival that before seemed the exclusive privilege of heroes and saints. Because this vocation was not entirely unusual; what was unusual was the possibility that was offered to these new men who were blazing a trail through social advancement and who, while running their own adventure, were looking for a way to perpetuate themselves in posterity.

The way to achieve this was to give strength to the situation conquered. But it was also necessary to keep the flame of remembrance alight, and this concern began to appear among the new men, imitating the example of kings and seigneurs. The figure of the rich donor begins to be painted or sculpted; the artist paints himself and his friends, sometimes covertly, attributing his appearance to one of the figures in the work; the poet speaks about himself and his poem. Guibert de Nogent, Gerald of Wales, Salimbene di Adam or Abelard pen autobiographies, and there is no lack of merchants who assigned to some of their letters the role of a story of their own work. Finally, the rich, prominently placed tomb or the laudatory epitaph are effective tools to perpetuate the memory of those who have left their lives, leaving also their memory alive.

II THE IMAGE OF SOCIOCULTURAL LIFE

The fluid situation from which this image of man as an individual of complex subjectivity and seeking a profane transcendence also suggested a picture of socio-cultural life that differed from the traditional.

The ambit where that transcendence was sought was profane: a concrete society in which the system of relations between individuals was based on appetites and ambitions, primary tendencies in which the Christian discovered a sinful essence. But the experience of the development of one’s own adventure had taught man that this was the real society, the one within which he should seek his own ends.

When the bourgeois listened to the preacher fulminating against the seven cardinal sins, he heard a negative description of his spontaneous tendencies, those which – perhaps not extreme – shaped his personality and defined his ways of life. The earthly city, the city of the Devil, turned out to be without any doubt his own city, and the bourgeois did not reject or condemn it but decided to accept it and learn to move around in it. Like the image of eternity, the bourgeois also distanced that of the heavenly city from his present.

Both from a practical point of view and from the point of view of the prevailing morality, it seemed be admitted that society was constituted by a group of individuals competing with each other to assert their own personalities, to attain their own individual purposes through their eagerness to stand out from the anonymous mass and through the design to outdo their neighbour in wealth, power and glory. ‘In the changing world [. . .] all become birds of prey and nobody lives if they do not steal,’ said Rutebeuf sorrowfully.^[362] The sum of warring individuals, real society as a whole was like the enemy of every one of its members in particular, or rather the hurdle to be overcome in order to predominate within it. This image of competitive society, a profane society founded on sin, gained momentum with experience, precisely at the same time as it was being described negatively by moralists basing themselves both on biblical texts and the everyday observation of life.

However, the feudo-bourgeois society that was formed in the womb of cities – in the heat of an incipient economic change but subject to the constraints of the still predominant traditional order – tended to be constituted not as a set of individuals but as the juxtaposition of a series of groups. Anyone entering it after having broken off their ties of personal dependency tried to replace the traditional protection that they had lost through an association with their peers. And from this and other mechanisms, as well as from the perpetuation of former situations, came cohesive groups that worked by agreement or opposition.

An open society inasmuch as it developed in the heat of a new market economy, its capacity for openness was limited by the traditional conception of a rigidly hierarchical society. And every time a group attained a certain status, it sought to secure it and at the same time prevent other newcomers attaining and joining it. Individual impetus therefore recognised as a limit and brake this need not to dispense with the support of those who shared the same interests and tendencies, even when competition within the group was ruthless. The new society, which was constituted through the agglutination of individuals threw themselves into the adventure of social advancement and where each of them wanted to succeed and achieve uniqueness and supremacy, was precisely what moderated the tendency to openness and stimulated the formation of groups that channelled and contained individualistic tendencies.

In the urban environment in which the new society – feudo-bourgeois society – developed, there came about a focusing of social life. In it were concentrated actions and reactions, and the various tendencies of the different groups in relation to all life’s problems became apparent. There were, then, occasional groups of opinion, polarised around this or that question. But the groups formed around common economic and social interests acquired a progressive stability; their views acquired coherence in relation to their permanent interests and were passed down from generation to generation through educational action, consolidating certain class mentalities. Within these new classes professional groups with well-defined interests were formed, in both commerce and the liberal arts.

But among all the groups, the one that feudo-bourgeois society contributed to shaping with most precision was the family group. A natural group, it did not exist de facto in the traditional society as a social group, save in the privileged sectors. In the new society, however, and within the city, the members of the rising sectors were also able to form their family as a social group. The possession of an urban plot on which to build a home was a vigorous point of support. The house was the centre of the family, and in it the natural group acquired an ever greater consistency and an increasingly effective capacity for joint action. It was a group of natural, undisputed, stable relations; and thanks to that achieved a perpetuation in time that the system of property ownership and inheritance would consolidate. The nucleus of the family group, marriage, began to be seen as founded on conjugal love, a monogamous love that encompassed the calls of the heart and the senses. There is a significant passage in the Cligès by Chrétien de Troves, where Fenice rejects love in the manner of Isolde. ‘Whoever has the heart has the body,’ she says.^[363] And among the orders of Love Juan de Meun inserts this one: ‘And that thou mayest be a perfect lover, I wish and command that you put your heart in a single place, and that it remain there and that it be abandoned whole and without deception, for I do not like it to be shared.’^[364] This attitude, at once courtly and bourgeois, was opposed to traditional erotic freedom. And the symbolic exaltation of the Holy Family consolidated the archetype of the new bourgeois family group, which drew its strength from the stability and steadfastness of the original constitutive relationship.

Founded on love, marriage was to cement its relationships with mutual respect. The woman was to be faithful and zealous in her duties, but the man was to grant her high status. All the vast anti-female literature, all the satire against marriage, is condensed in the picture of conjugal life painted by Juan de Meun in the Roman de la Rose.^[365] The poet dishes out blame and responsibility, but warns what it is the right path: whether it is followed depends on the family being happy, honest, powerful. And this was the image of the new bourgeois family, a conserver of relations, jealous of the names of progenitors, careful with inherited assets. Educated in that school, children were to perpetuate the memory of their ancestors, the social position and the assets attained. These were the virtues that made the family the most solid of the groups that constituted feudo-bourgeois society.

All groups in this new feudo-bourgeois society, born of the interplay of an open society, grew, then, within certain limits and eventually operated within the plots of the city, that is, of its walled enclosure. Paradoxically, the city was in effect the closed environment of a nascent open society, or rather of a society that was open until it touched the limits of the possibilities allowed, on the one hand, by the surviving schemas of the traditional order and offered, on the other, by the new urban economy. The city was the homeland, with its limitations but also its advantages: a family world, a collective tradition and, above all, a familiar order that constituted a protection and a support. Still divided by factional struggles, the city continued to be the homeland for oppressed groups or outcasts, the bello ovileov’iodormiagnello in Dante’s words,^[366] who made of Farinata a symbol of urban patriotism. The walled city was conceived, in effect, as an ovile, a warm, familiar fold offering protection to anyone who had a legitimate right to benefit from it, and where the new society made the learning of its openness within conventional boundaries. It acquired personality, was idealised and artists began to see it as an almost metaphysical entity in its own right. A reflection of heavenly Jerusalem, the city found a plastic symbol: the wall and towers of churches and palaces: it was a collection of real volumes, as in the baldachins and capitals that represented it,^[367] or a collection of coloured volumes, as in the frescoes in the church of Saint-Savin or the church of the Quattro Coronati in Rome, or by Cimabue, Duccio or Giotto.^[368] But it increasingly looked indispensable to offer as background for any expression of life this new creation of the new society, the city, which had been established within the inevitable framework of its life.

Although the new society was inserted in a new framework, there remained within it many older elements. The new classes were made up of men who sought to smash the traditional order, but only in relation to their individual situations: there was, then, no sudden disappearance of groups or norms or attitudes. But as these new classes developed and their own attitudes and opinion began to weigh heavily, it was noticed that they clashed with other traditional ones, which sometimes endured as simple prejudices, sometimes as a legitimate expression of certain groups.

These conflicts between different systems of views, norms and values were interwoven with the conflicts arising from the intense social mobility triggered by both demographic development and the market economy; and altogether they created the image of a tumultuous society, incapable of finding a stable institutional system to channel the various social groups and different political factions.

Certainly, such were the characters of the new society – more feudo-bourgeois than bourgeois, since the traditional framing survived – until the mid-fourteenth century. During this period, the institutional order in cities was always an emergency system that attempted to reconcile the prevailing situation at each moment with the one prompted by the new groups on the way up. Those who defended the privileges they had already attained opposed those who wanted to share them or attain other new ones. And through these unrelenting struggles –which moralists blamed on the perversity of the citizens and which was simply the expression of social change – each group’s strength was gradually established and a stabilised order drawn which would be lent force at a given time by a dictatorial power able to survive by relying on organised force and the most representative and effective political group.

The political struggles and the examination of their results accentuated the image that profane society obeyed the basic designs of man. It was ambition, greed, pride that moved to men, and such passions that were to be used to dominate society. This pessimistic conception – which would ultimately be codified by Machiavelli on the basis of the experience of the feudo-bourgeois city and the crisis of the communes – took hold, however, not only because of the spectacle of political and social conflicts, but also because of the verification of the crisis in all systems of opinions, standards and values, subjected to permanent confrontation and all weakened by the development of a profound relativism.

Without doubt, the bourgeois classes developed their own system of values. But, in spite of this, they did not deny or disdain the very values of the seigneurial groups, especially those that adopted courtly ways of life. The heroic geste, the magnanimous attitude, courtly conduct, merited the admiration and envy of the new bourgeois, and the patrician sectors sought to imitate the conduct of the seigneurs as far as it was allowed to. But the seigneurs and those who expressed their opinions were unrelenting in their contempt for the new bourgeois. The subject of Renaut of Montauban is significant: dressed as a beggar, he begins to work on the work for Cologne Cathedral, but by a spontaneous movement of his chivalrous spirit does not accept remuneration for his work and is killed by the other building workers; and even more significant is the subject of Hervé de Metz, the son of a merchant and a noblewoman, who inherits from her seigneurial habits that his father cannot understand.^[369] It was the obvious desire to profit that the seigneurs disdained, for, as William of Tire notes,^[370] it weakened the heroic fibre; and this sentiment was deeply rooted in the noble class, which founded its privileges on other aspirations.

This doctrine was answered with an update of the old thesis of natural equality, expounded categorically by Juan de Meun: ‘Princes are no more worthy than any other men that comets should announce their death, for their bodies are worth no more than a ploughman’s, a clerk’s or a squire’s, for I [says Nature] make them all alike, as they appear at birth. Through me they are born equally naked, weak or strong, fat or thin. I put them on an equal footing with respect to the human state. Fortune does the rest.’^[371] On the one hand, the dispute over the value of heroic virtues in relation to moral virtues was left open; on the other, the dispute about the possibility of achieving one or the other whatever one’s social origins. And mixed marriages – usually of daughters of impoverished noblemen to rich merchants – little by little inclined opinion towards the more open thesis, although prejudices long persisted in the more conservative groups. But this path launched the patrician sectors on an imitation increasingly close to seigneurial way of life, which resulted in a growing solidarity between patricians and seigneurs against the lower echelons of the bourgeoisie. Luxury, the ostentation of wealth applied to the uses of the noble life, characterised the powerful patrician.

Conversely, the seigneurial groups advanced in the estimation of the new forms of wealth and the desire to externalise it. It may have been that aggressive exhibitionism – as much as that of the new rich – that prompted the claim to the moral value of poverty, as exalted by Saint Francis. But it was voluntary poverty, as noted intentionally by the Franciscan Salimbene, who asserted that the other one lacked merit.^[372] Madonna Povertà was not, then , an economic symbol but a moral symbol. From a strictly economic and social point of view, poverty, despite the attitude of the mendicants, was considered the worst of all evils. ‘Cursed be the hour in which a poor man was conceived, for he will never be well fed, nor well clothed; nor does any man love or protect him,’ said William of Lorris after describing the representation of poverty on Déduit’s orchard wall.^[373] The spectacle of the new wealth, consisting of money and goods more visible than the soil, and perhaps even more, the spectacle of its acquisition by unusual means and the sudden social advancement of he who obtained them gradually made the idea that society was ultimately divided into rich and poor acceptable.

The perception of this fact implied the revision of many traditional ideas. It entailed postponing other explanatory criteria and adhering to the relationship between economy and society; and not economy in a general sense, but monetised economy, since men ‘are all slaves to their money,’ as Juan de Meun put it.^[374] The author of the Roman de la Rose perceived acutely – and with him many others no doubt – the role money played in the new society. And he bitterly criticised the tendency to of hoard treasure, which he called greed, instead recommending that its circulation be favoured. Only someone who perceived the peculiarity of the dynamics of money could write these words:^[375] ‘Money is good for nothing but spending; people do not understand it and respond that it is good for nothing more but hiding; and they hide so well that neither they neither spend nor give it [. . .] Great harm is done to riches by removing its true nature. Their nature is that they must circulate to help bring relief to the people without being lent at usury. Yet, people, have imprisoned them.’ Even when he introduces some moral elements, Juan de Meun perceives the fundamental features of the monetised economy, already launched, but always contained by the remnants of the defensive attitude with which the urban mentality was born and developed. It was these remnants that the instance of hoarding lodged in the dynamics of money.

But the tendency to hoard was not a trivial fact, nor was it explained only for moral reasons. It appeared when a certain degree of wealth had been attained and its owner deemed it preferable to fix it, because with it also his social status was also fixed. Hoarding seemed to institutionalise the socio-economic level attained and seemed capable of avoiding the ravages of dreaded Fortune. And it is clear that anyone who perceived the dynamics of money glimpsed, at least, its relations with the dynamics of social change.

The restoration of the Roman notion of Fortuna accompanied the development of the monetised economy and the formation of the new society. Every moment the spectacle of individuals, families and lineages that rose from insignificance or mediocrity to wealth or power, and, inversely, that of others who fell into misery and despair from great heights imposed itself on the bourgeois’ consideration. This spectacle was a society undergoing a rapid process of change. The barely glimpsed causes of the sudden changes in the condition of people, nor the relations between groups and classes, and in the permanence of power, were summarised and symbolised in the old Roman symbol of Fortuna, with its underlying principle of absolute chance, mixed with certain moral constraints that vaguely led people to think that the ills unleashed on man can or must have some relationship with his conduct. But the most important thing is that the symbol of Fortuna included a dynamic image of the historical development of society. Juan de Meun highlighted this in a meaningful way when he said that Fortune ‘promises men stability in a changing situation.’^[376] The idea of the immobility of the social order as instituted by Providence was being displaced by the experience of change, which substituted the static order for a dynamic process. The idea is present in historians like Giovanni Villani, poets like Dante Alighieri, mystics like Joachim of Fiore, in whose forma mentis is glimpsed a perception of immediate and flowing time, in the course of which the contingencies of individual and collective life vary.

This perception assumed a vision of history. As in other aspects of the nascent bourgeois mentality, the new historical stance was not radical nor did it adopt the forms of a confrontation with the traditional attitude. Augustinism – like religious significance, to which this attitude was closely linked – was not denied or discussed; it was simply omitted and postponed. But between the present and eternity, historical time – profane transcendence – fed off immediate events and experiences, revealing the permanent mutability of the socio-cultural world. Eternity was not denied, but historical time was recognised as the time of man, the time of earthly life, while eternity was the time of death or, in any event, another life. William of Lorris described historical time very keenly: ‘Such had been the work of Time, which marches on day and night without rest, that time that flees from us and leaves us so stealthily that it seems to endlessly stand still, but which does not stop running, so much so that there can be no thought of the present without a past. Time which always marches on without turning back, like falling water not even a drop of which may return to its source; Time, which nothing can resist, not iron nor any thing however hard it is, for it corrupts it and devours everything; Time, which changes, nourishes and makes every thing grow and wears it all out and rots it all; Time which aged our parents and aged kings and emperors, and shall age us unless death take us beforehand’;^[377] conceived like this, time was the frame of a changing world: a natural world and a socio-cultural world whose duration meant variation, as evidenced by experience as opposed to the strictly intellectual affirmation of duration and immutability.

Undoubtedly providentialist explanations of history were perpetuated, accentuated through popular eschatological versions. But before any theory, before any attempt to rationalise an experience, the experience itself of the historical life gained ground, registered with all the drama bestowed by the personal experience of the changes. The bourgeois of profane transcendence glimpsed a future as open as his present, as haphazard as he was, as undetermined and unpredictable as he was, and so inserted his transcendence in a profane history throughout the time of man.

CHAPTER III

THE NEW IMAGE OF NATURE, KNOWLEDGE AND GOD

The possibilities that unfolded before man decided to enter the play of the monetized economy could only become reality through his evasion of the system of ties of personal dependency that characterized feudal society. But by breaking it, it was necessary to leave rural life and take refuge in cities. The conquest of freedom and the exercise of mercantile or manufacturing activity was, then, the result of a departure from nature; and that estrangement was followed by a modification of its image. Nature ceased to be the atmosphere in which man was immersed to become a world separate from him. From outside Nature, the ‘new man’ began to sample the spectacle that nature offered but also tried to learn its secrets. A new type of knowledge was practised in order to learn about Nature. Removed from it and immersed in a compact society within the city, it altered the image of his relationship with God following the profound experiences that had wrought the changes in hi relations with both the natural and social environment.

I. THE IMAGE OF NATURE

The secular experience of rural life made nature the imperceptible environment in which the existence of the seigneur and the peasant transpired. Nature was creation. It was not a matter of contemplating it or learning about it. It was simply lived. Hostile or friendly, it marked the rhythm of life – of each day, each season, each year – and the condition of its passing. Within a closed world, in which there were few occasions to discover its variety, nature maintained its monotonous uniformity and even more so for the peasant tied to his land who knew only the place where he was born. A repeated experience of its contents ended up blurring its outlines, incorporating it into each man’s vital experience. A singer of man immersed in nature, the epic poet ignored it, too close to his eyes and quite inseparable from the vital attitude of his heroes. From this immersion, by virtue of which man and nature interpenetrated to such a point that they became identical, he escaped through uprooting and transplantation. Both he who changed natural horizon and he who simply abandoned the countryside for the city walls began to take to adopt a different attitude towards the land, forests, animals, rocks or river and sea. As close as all this still was, perhaps a few steps away from the wall or even within it, the elements of nature ceased to be the familiar picture of everyday life, the immediate reference of every hour of the day or every season of the year, the object of the action. Not so much the physical distance as the psychological distancing determined by the independence gained in the face of it, transmuted nature into a world alien to anyone experience it, distinct from them and the object of their contemplation. This dissociation would engender in the ‘new man’, in the bourgeois, a new image of nature.

Perceived as a world beyond, nature offered first and foremost its enchantment – its colours, fragrances, forms, contrasts – prompting an aesthetic emotion that it seemed legitimate enjoy. As it began to cease to be the sine qua non of life, observation became selective. Vast social groups could now escape its rigours: shielding themselves behind the urban wall from the wild beasts, enjoying the warmth of the hearth, organizing the traffic of foodstuffs to overcome temporary shortages, complementing local production with products of distant origin. Contemplated from a window, nature could more easily become a spectacle than living through all its contingencies, like shepherds or peasants. Its enchantment became obvious to the ‘new man’ almost like a revelation, as the source of life that awoke every spring and as a gift for the senses that stimulated his sensuality. Nature began to look not like the condition for our existence but its framework or stage, alien to its actors. Otto of Freising said on one occasion that King Conrad began his campaign ‘when the rigour of the cold winter had lifted, when the plants and flowers were sprouting from the bosom of the earth under the gracious spring rains and the green meadows smiled on the world.’^[378] And Salimbene notes in the margins of a piece of news on some mission entrusted to him: ‘When I left Genoa, there was an almond tree in blossom by the sacristy; in Provence I found the fruits of that tree, large with green husks; I also found large beans though just recently formed in the pods.’^[379] These references belonged to a new, hitherto unusual appreciation of the spectacle of nature.

Without doubt, internal transhumance and long trips to foreign regions contributed to bringing about such a change in attitude. For the traveller, nature stopped displaying that monotonous uniformity that was the face known by the farmer or shepherd; on the contrary, it offered renewed surprises which progressively dispelled the image of a world of supernatural miracles and replaced it with an infinite variety of natural realities. Exotic animals – elephants, lions, camels, leopards, ostriches, parrots^[380] – appeared before many people’s eyes, amazed certainly, but certain of their actual existence; and with that experience, the stories of travellers describing their own amazement at the spectacle of what they had not seen before in their places of origin became more credible.^[381] The world of unreality contained by the traditional image of nature gradually vanished too, but in its stead, there arose a nostalgic feeling that accentuated its idealization. May was the symbol of the effusion of nature, of man’s compenetration with it, of the identification between youth and spring, and of the glorification of love as the culmination of life, as flowed from Raimbaut de Vaqueiras’s tender Kalenda Maya.^[382] Its miracles and mysteries forgotten, the world of unreality vanished, nature took on a poetic dimension through the subtle idealization of its real elements.

Released from constrictions, the sensibility sharpened its perception of real nature, and as it discovered it and appreciated its intrinsic values, it poured it into plastic or poetic creation, stripping it of the traditional symbolic context in pursuit of the faithful reproduction of its form and, more still, of the fluid expression of life. More than the elements – animal, plant or stone – what could be glimpsed behind them began to attract people: life, the forces acting on things, natural phenomena. An image of nature composed of juxtaposed elements was followed by another, organized along the lines of its forces in motion. But this image lacked a wise tradition. It was merely the result of an intuition, and it unleashed an irresistible appetite for knowledge.

II. NATURE AND KNOWLEDGE

The dynamic image of nature was not only, incidentally, the result of a revival and a liberation of sensibility. It was also the result of an immediate need imposed by the new ways of life and action which the new social groups adopted in response to the new circumstances. Everything was new, and even without a conscious design the formidable edifice of traditional notions and prejudices with regard to nature was dropped simply because for being ineffective. The action peremptorily demanded an explanation of each thing, each phenomenon, that might be effective, even when it was not chained within a rational and orderly system. This explanation might be hypothetical, provisional, and was retained as long as its inaccuracy was not verified; and in that case, another probably more approximate one was sought, not on a theoretical basis, but via a modification of working methods depending on what experience advised. Urged on out of necessity, the new classes adopted an empirical attitude towards natural reality.

Without doubt, it was the rapid multiplication of the experience compared to previously ignored aspects of natural reality that determined the adoption of this attitude by social groups otherwise not too committed to the system of traditional notions and prejudices. An unusual activity or a hitherto unknown environment required the adoption of a working hypothesis. Observation was, then, the method adopted to deal with nature by those who stood before it determined to know it operationally in its strict reality.^[383]

Ut vidioculismeis was the formula repeatedly used by Salimbene di Adam to reinforce a surprising assertion that might inspire a certain distrust in the reader.^[384] The reference to a supposedly unknown natural element or phenomenon obliged one to insist repeatedly about its reality in order to avoid its being included in the vast array of the wonderful unreal. The frequenting of hitherto unknown environments and the need to operate on a different reality consolidated the certainty of the variety of nature and sharpened the capacity for observation. What was different could be described as marvellous but, conversely, more credence could be given to the existence of the unreal wonder by trusting that it had directly been observed at some point. Direct observation, that is, individual verification, became the most important of testimonies and led to a certain form of relativism. Jacques de Vitry listed at the end of his account of the marvels of the Orient the authorities on which it was based; but he felt obliged to add that ‘if by chance someone should not wish to place reliance on it, we do not intend to force him to believe’, then introducing himself in a remarkable disquisition about the criteria of truth. ‘All God’s works are admirable,’ he says, ‘and yet the force of custom makes those who very often see the same things not experience any movement of admiration. Perhaps the Cyclops who have only one eye do not experience any less amazement seeing men who have two than we would experience seeing them or seeing men who had three. If we look on the pygmies as dwarves, they for their part would look on us as giants were they to see any of us amongst them; and in the country of giants the largest amongst us would pass for a dwarf. We take the Ethiopians – who are black – for a vilified race; however, amongst them the blackest is considered the most beautiful. In our lands are seen many things at which we do not marvel, but were the peoples of the Orient to hear of them, they would pass for marvellous and would excite their curiosity.’^[385] And summing up his thoughts, he twice repeats that ‘there are marvellous facts that men, however, do not admire when they are accustomed to seeing them frequently.’

This relativism was the result of the extension of knowledge of the world and of observation of the unpredictable diversity of nature. But direct observation seemed the necessary result to bear witness to the actual existence of natural elements or phenomena that were alien to everyday experience. The value of observation was spontaneously appreciated by the settler who had to work in foreign lands, by the sailor who had to range across rarely visited regions, by the craftsman who had to work unusual materials, by the merchant who had to appreciate products that were unfamiliar to him; but it was immediately appreciated by the curious man who claimed to attain a certain knowledge as a substitute for the traditional notions that contained suspicious data of natural unreality.

For scientific knowledge, however, observation soon began to look inadequate. Rigorous minds noticed that it was necessary, moreover, to subject the data that observation offered to more stringent checks. It was, incidentally, what the settler, the sailor, the craftsman or the merchant who had to deal with unexpected situations did spontaneously, if not methodically: by reiterating the observation they repeated or corrected the manoeuvre. But rigorous minds took this norm to even greater extremes and transformed it into a method of knowledge, a scientific method. This was what Petrus Peregrinus de Maricourt did, who used the experimental method for his studies on magnetism and whose recommendations were unequivocal: ‘You must understand,’ he said in the Epistola de Magnete, ‘that the researcher of this subject is obliged to be acquainted with the nature of things and not be ignorant of the celestial motions; and he must also make diligent use of his own hands so that by means of this stone he may demonstrate remarkable effects. For through his own industry he may in a short time be capable of correcting the errors that through natural philosophy and mathematics alone he would never manage to correct if he did not make careful use of his hands.’^[386]

Using one’s hands – as did the settler, the sailor, the craftsman or the trader – meant that the man of knowledge, the new type of investigator who pursued the enigmas of a rediscovered nature, could delve into the secrets of the phenomena he was contemplating and perhaps discover the forces that produced them and the modes of their behaviour. The possibility of repeating natural processes experimentally promised a huge increase in knowledge about nature; that is why Roger Bacon would declare his profound admiration for Petrus Peregrinus, about whom he said: ‘One man I know, and one only, who can be praised for his achievements in this science. He pays no heed to discourses and verbal battles but pursues the works of wisdom and in them quietly puts his trust. What others with great effort strain to see dimly and blindly, like bats at dusk, he looks at in the full light of day, because he is a master of experiment. Through experiment he gains knowledge of things natural, medical, chemical, and indeed of everything in the heavens and on earth. He is ashamed of things of which he is ignorant being known to laymen, old women, soldiers and ploughmen. Therefore he has delved into the labours of those who work metals and minerals of all kinds. He knows everything relating to the art of war, the making of weapons and the hunt. He has delved deep into agriculture, mensuration and farming work. He has always taken note of remedies, predictions and enchantments used by old women, by wizards and magicians, and of the devices and deceptions of conjurers, so that nothing deserving of investigation may escape him and he be in a condition to expose the falsehoods of the charlatans.’^[387]

The use of experimentation was a response to a new dynamic image of nature and the curiosity that image aroused. Human life particularly stirred the thirst for knowledge and, on the basis of very specific hypotheses, unleashed a strong tendency to provoke certain processes in order to establish the conclusions. At the start of the twelfth century Guibert de Nogent recounted a singular episode occurring on the occasion of a deep wound King Baldwin of Jerusalem had received. ‘The doctor who was caring for him,’ he says, ‘knowing that the wound had penetrated very deep within the body, he feared in his foresight that if he were to apply poultices he would only cause external scarring, producing within a deposit of corrupted blood while the skin knitted on the surface. He conceived, then, the admirable plan of performing an experiment to assure himself about the reality of his fears. He therefore asked the king to order – in the same manner and place as his was – a wound in the body of a Saracen whom he held prisoner – for it would have been a crime to propose this test on a Christian – who would be killed after he had received that wound in order for the doctor, upon opening up his body, to be able comfortably to study and recognise with exactitude, by way of comparison, the state of the king’s would within his body.’^[388] The chronicler adds that Baldwin opposed it on pious grounds, and that the doctor then performed the experiment upon a bear. A similar experiment is related by Salimbene,^[389] which Frederick II had performed in order to establish if activity or rest was better for digestion.

The interest in human life stimulated medical studies, which acquired such great importance in the School of Salerno and the University of Montpellier; but experimentation did not prosper as much in this field as in others. Salimbene also relates about Frederick II that he had performed experiments with language and with the bottom of the oceans.^[390] Roger Bacon made important investigations in the field of optics, but it was above all in alchemy that there was most and most far-reaching experimentation. Drawing on a rich Arabic tradition certain procedures were repeated over and again, the purpose of which was to obtain the philosopher’s stone or achieve the transmutation of metals; but the use of chemical media stimulated other collateral research that enabled, for example, the discovery of alcohol and the mineral acids. Both the traditional aims of alchemy – mystical or practical – and the immediate and subsidiary aims, raised the certainty that such a course of experimentation allowed one to attain knowledge of natural processes, while it did not seem possible by other paths. Such was the opinion of Jean de Meun, who explained at length the possibilities offered by this path to knowledge: ‘It is well known, nevertheless, that alchemy is a true art,’ he said, ‘and that anyone who uses it learnedly will perform marvels, for, of whatever species they may be, individual bodies subjected to intelligent preparations are mutable in so many ways that they can change their natures between one another by various transformations, making those changes enter other categories. Do we not see how the master glass-makers transform ferns into ash and glass? And yet glass be not fern, nor fern be glass. When the thunder roars and the lightning flashes, we often see stones fall from the vapours, which nevertheless have nothing of stone. Anyone who understands can know the cause of such changes in matter. They are transmuted species or individuals that are removed from them in both substance and shape, the ferns, ash and glass by the intervention of Art, the stones by Nature. The same could be done with metals if one knew how to subtract from some of them the impurities that sully them and restore to them their pure forms, close in their complexions and closely resembling one another, for they are all of one matter whatever the disposition of their elements: the books of the philosophers tell us indeed that the various classes of metals are born in the mines of sulphur and quicksilver. Anyone capable of preparing the spirits in such a way that they should have the property of entering into bodies and fixing themselves there – so long as they found the bodies well purified and the sulphur, white or red, should not be burning – would bend the metals to his will. For the master alchemists cause fine gold to be born from silver, adding weight and colour with ingredients that cost little, from fine gold they also make precious stones, gleaming and most remarkable; and they divest other metals of their forms to change them into silver by means of white drugs, penetrating and fine. But those who act with sophistry do not do this; though they work all their lives, they will never catch Nature.’^[391]

Even when the symbolic and mystics elements survived intermixed, the development of alchemy, as well as the experimental method applied to other fields from the start of the twelfth century, were inseparable from both the renewed curiosity about nature and the need to develop new techniques.

To the question about the secret of natural processes the experimental method responded by proposing the causal explanations that were beginning to be cherished. Just as some image-makers began to prefer the realistic representation of plants and animals, shunning their conventional and static features, so also some rigorous spirits began to prefer to symbolic and teleological explanations simply naturalist explanations that limited themselves to establishing the immediate causes of phenomena. Juan de Meun mockingly rejects these: ‘It is said that it is the devils with their hooks and ropes, their nails and their claws, that cause such disasters,’ he said, ‘but such absurdities are not worth two radishes; there is no other cause than the storm and the wind that cuts down the wheat, drowns the vines, makes the flowers and the fruits fall from the trees before they are ripe.’^[392] These immediate and natural causes were those that rigorous spirits – who were beginning to form a new image of nature – had to find through the observation of unprejudiced and experiential knowledge. Speaking of optical phenomena Juan de Meun said: ‘They could not believe that these phenomena were true, especially concerning mirrors, whose effects are so diverse, unless they experimented for themselves, on condition that the clerks who practiced this interesting science should want to lend them their instruments.’^[393] Because the important thing to establish the reality of phenomena, that is, to know whether or not they may belong to nature, is to know their causal connection with other phenomena by virtue of which they acquire their position within the total system. ‘Alhazen,’ said Juan de Meun, ‘who was no fool, wrote the treatise on The Book of Optics, a book that the naturalist clerk [the learned man] who wants to know what the rainbow is must consult; he must also have notions of geometry, knowledge of which is necessary for demonstrations of the treatise of The Book of Optics; he may then find the causes and the forces of mirrors, which have a marvellous faculty: the smallest of things, diminutive letters, minute grains of sand, can be seen so large and so thick that someone who looks at them may make them out perfectly distinguish from a distance and count them, which seems incredible to anyone who has not seen it or who does not know the causes.’^[394]

Causes were, then, the data needed to judge the naturalistic character of the phenomenon and the requirement for its inclusion in the world of real nature, despite the fact that it may have seemed amazing or marvellous because of the lack of observation or experiment. In this way, while the world of the marvellous unreal was being rejected, the world of nature was being integrated within an orderly and coherent plan, in which the real marvellous was finding its place. On this path nature became explainable; but by the same movement it was discovered that, being explainable, was susceptible to being dominated, for, knowing its causal ordering, certain effects could be caused at will. Thanks to experimental knowledge and causal explanation, the technical attitude – spontaneous in the ‘new man’ faced with an unprecedented environment – acquired a strong foundation and a vast perspective.

Whatever the religious concern of Roger Bacon may have been, his conviction about the close relations between knowledge of nature and technical action was unequivocal and expressed a concern that, in a non-systematic way, was typical of a vast social sector. The construction of all sorts of mechanisms to deal with the practical needs of both military activity and of manufacturing and trade was a general concern; but Roger Bacon was attracted by the possibility of constructing them using experiment methodically. In a letter in which he meditated on machines that he considered it possible to make, he said: ‘Some people ask which of the two is more powerful: nature or art. In response to this question I would say that, although the nature is powerful and impressive, however, art, using nature as an instrument, has more power than natural virtue, as we see in many things.’^[395] Roger Bacon observed that art, that is technique, instrumentalised the nature that had come to be known and could use it methodically and surely if repeated experiments confirmed the regularity of a certain behaviour. So the prospect of useful achievements for man opened up considerably. ‘There is another alchemy,’ he said, after discussing the speculative, ‘operative and practical, which teaches us how to make the noble metals, colours and many other things better and more abundantly through art than they are by nature. And a science of this kind is more important than anything that went before because it produces highest utilities. Because not only can it produce wealth and many other things for public welfare, but it also teaches us to discover those things that are capable of prolonging human life beyond what nature does.’^[396]

The instrumentalisation of nature means imposing on it certain objectives belonging to man and useful for him, and reordering its forces according to a rational scheme in order for it to comply with them. Those thought this attached a high value to the immediate purposes of life, to the methodical action of man on the environment to dominate it and make use of it, and above all, to the individual, transformed into a demiurge, as it seemed to be given to each the possibility to introduce in nature an order of their own invention. This was, in effect, the image of man and of the life that prevailed in the ‘new man’. However, as the need to dominate nature became prevalent and the methods to achieve this became more efficient, the image of nature conceived as an order with its own laws and its own purposes acquired more precision. If the ‘new man’, the burgher, the urban man, perceived it as an entity alien to him, it was not only because he had succeeded in ceasing to be immersed in it, but also because he had managed to discriminate among his own immediate ends, setting them not only against the purposes of his former warlords, but also against the very purposes of nature and of God. This Promethean rebellion of bourgeois man was not generally explicit in his words, but it was implicit in his actions. With them he effectively defined a new image of nature and of God. And nature took on a personality before him through the same action with which he asserted its independence of it: his immediate goals were not those of nature, but precisely because it had its own goals, its own laws.

Little by little nature began to stop being thought of as a passive and immutable creation. God had imposed on it His ends and His laws, but within them He carried out His work and exercised his power with vast autonomy. Juan de Meun would rigorously define its condition, with almost legal precision, by heading, in the manner of royal ordinances, the sentence pronounced by it: ‘By the authority of Nature, which holds the government of the entire universe as vicar and constable of the emperor eternal, administering all through the influence of the stars; of Nature, which has given birth to and made grow all things from the beginning of the world and has never done anything unnecessarily ’neath the heaven which ceaselessly spins around the earth, both below and above.’^[397] The image of the vast world of creation gave way to the image of a gigantic creative impulse, very quickly hypostasised.

The end of nature itself, its mission, was to ensure the continuity of life. Nature condemns individuals to death, but ensures the continuity of the species: ‘The bodies of the men are corruptible, and to ensure the successive generations, as father and mother disappear, nature wishes their children hasten in their turn to continue the work of life.’^[398] Death is an episode of the individual’s life, but life is eternal, thanks to the care of nature, which has entrusted the perpetuation of the species to love. ‘Nature,’ wrote Frederick II, ‘in her effort to preserve the race through the continuous multiplication of individuals, has decreed that each species of the animal kingdom – whether it move by means of wings or walk on the ground – shall get pleasure from sexual union in order that it instinctively seek to attain that enjoyment.’^[399]

Love is a creator, like nature itself. Juan de Meun puts on the lips of nature a fervent prayer to procreation in order to defeat death the destroyer.^[400] Life constituted for nature an absolute, an end in itself. And once that end has been glimpsed, love, profane love, acquired the dignity of the creative force. It acted on the beasts contemplated by Saint Francis, it acted on men, and it was in the end che move il sole e l’altrestelle.^[401] An uncertainty about the boundaries between the sacred and the profane nestled in the mind of the new man, and he dithered before the powers of nature, which he knew through the senses, and those of God, which he knew through intelligence.

III. RELATIONS BETWEEN MAN AND GOD

After the new experiments, which sparked in the ‘new man’, the urban man, unusual images of society and nature, they both imposed themselves on his mind as terms and condition of your adventure. It was in the heart of a society, of a compact immediately recognisable group, that man fulfilled his destiny; and was by confronting a nature animated by its own plan that he should fulfil it. When he became aware of both terms, he began to imagine God as more remote, as a later instance of the forces – social and natural – that he felt operating immediately on him. In this way society and nature became intermediaries between man and God, works both of the latter, certainly, but endowed with sufficient autonomy for their own dynamics to constitute the immediate conditioning of individual destiny. Freer, with fewer socially dependent relations and more resources in relation to nature, the ‘new man’ saw his immediate responsibility to these two forces grow and felt more hounded by them, to which owed an answer every moment. God, however, began to appear, exercising his vigilance and his judgment from further afield, after the law and after death.

Rather thang a weakening of faith there was a transfer of its object to a more distant sphere. But the intermediaries of God – society and nature – became more significant for man: each served them according to their own image of life, arrived at more freely, according to a wide variety of contradictory stimuli and principles.

Powerfully integrated into society, of which it was almost like the frame or skeleton, the Church demanded from all not only obedience to its authority, but also the public demonstration of faith. It was not, strictly speaking, the universal Church but the local Church that exercised direct surveillance within every social group, town or parish. As society diversified, individual experiences also diversified, and man’s inner autonomy broadened. The surveillance of the outer signs of faith, on the other hand, became easier within compact social groups organized within confined spaces, in which control of the community itself was added to ecclesiastical control. There was, then, with or without a decrease in faith, an increasing development of observance, encouraged no doubt by the social commitments that were part of worship and by the attractions that city life added to religious celebrations. Cathedrals and churches were not only sacred buildings devoted to worship, but also centres for active, diversified social life, the construction costs of which had been footed by almost all citizens and which were the pride of the community as a whole, since their volume and their magnificence externalised their economic strength as much or more than their devotion. Linked to urban activity and public holidays, ritual became an obligation towards society – regardless of the faith each man held in his conscience – constituting a kind of price for the enjoyment of worldly life. ‘The rich man,’ said the Doctrinal Sauvage, ‘may certainly wear beautiful clothes, have numerous servants, be generous and offer festivities to terrorize and humiliate the wicked. But before leaving for the plain or river boar hunt, he must hear mass and ask God for grace. He may go at once about his pleasures, but without forgetting the Holy Church. He must always exalt, elevate and honour it, help the poor and sustain the rich man; never heed dishonest propositions, but rather seek his pleasure in beautiful courtly games, and vilify and loathe all vile sins. The man who should lead such a life until the end of his days may, if God grant him His grace, earn the health of his soul.’^[402]

Society, indeed, had its own indispensable requirements. It forced competition among its members, emphasized the significance of the wealthiest and most powerful, promoted the flaunting of luxury, and thereby incited people to vanity, arrogance, selfishness, greed, sensuality. Strictly speaking, the new bourgeois society was constituted on principles almost incompatible with those of traditional Christian morality; and while there was an arrangement between them, and amid violent outbursts of contradictory epicureanism and religious fervour, the conservation of a form of religiosity whose content varied rapidly and profoundly was entrusted to ritual. It was undermined, above all, by a vigorous naturalism that went beyond the limits of mandatory Christian morality but that received enough social justification through the same ways of life that conventionally accentuated the value of observance and formal religiosity.

For many observance became the sole requirement proposed by the service of God. But for those in whom the Christian feeling was alive, the new ways of life prompted other forms of religious outpouring. For the steadfast vocations, the mendicant orders allowed a consecration to the service of God in which serving one’s peers occupied a privileged place. Sin was manifested every step of the way, and the friar was to recognize its existence and fight against it through indefatigable counsel. Saint Francis reproached the guardian of Monte Casale for his behaviour with the three thieves, ‘telling him that he had behaved cruelly because sinners are better brought back to God with sweetness that with cruel rebuke; therefore our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, whose Gospel we have promised to observe, says that it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick, and that we have not come to call the righteous to repentance but the sinners; and therefore I often ate with them.’^[403]

Life in the convents located within the city – or at the edge of it – put religious men in constant contact with the daily problems of urban life and invited them to fulfil a permanent mission of spiritual and bodily surveillance and relief. More than asceticism, the friar believed he was complying with God by turning himself outward, towards the lives of his fellow human beings who had not chosen holiness but who were to be led to it despite the fact that everyday action also placed them on the brink of sin at every instant. God was everywhere – cum tucte le tue creatures – but He was primarily in man, the most perfect of His works, and in him He must be served. ‘Praised be You, my Lord, through those who give pardon for Your love.’^[404] To forgive was for Saint Francis to understand human weakness, and this job of recovering the sinner was for him without a doubt the highest way of serving God.

Strictly speaking, this conception of the service of God, fulfilled especially through the help provided to the community and to one’s fellow men, entailed the conviction that the link between the Christian and his neighbour was as strong and valuable as the link with God. The latter demanded the achievement of inner perfection, but the former fixed the eminent path to achieve it. The social environment offered the daily experience both of pain, need or sadness, and of sin, error and wickedness. In the compact society of cities that excruciating experience exalted the Christian’s obligations towards his neighbour and led people to think about service to God as mercy and charity rather than as inner perfection. In the cries of the hungry, the sick, the afflicted, the Christian heard a call from God, and the response might not just be prayer, but also fraternal action.

Also serving God was working as His intermediary, teaching and transmitting the divine word. The friar of the urban convents not only did so from the pulpit of the church but in small squares, streets and roads to isolated interlocutors or dense groups that seemed almost like multitudes. In front of these people he began to use a new language, less subtle than the sermons of the Bernardines but more effective. The friar knew that his motley audience of the cities was made up of individuals fashioned by varied experiences; he knew the attractions of sensualism and was not unaware of the penetration of beliefs and principles foreign to Christianity. He therefore began to look to his God more as a God of justice as a God of charity. Every day in his daily preaching he began to appeal to terror, to threaten people with a hell that described in increasingly precise detail until he reached an extreme refinement in the enumeration of punishments awaiting the damned in the next life. And terrified by the wave of unbelief, heresy and sensuality, he believed that God entrusted the containment of evil to his word and his action.

In the letter that Innocent III sent to Christ’s faithful on the occasion of the death of the monk Peter of Castelnau, he said, after inciting them to the struggle, ‘Remember that our Creator had no need of us when He made us, and that, though our service be not necessary to him, as if by that cooperation He would fatigue himself less in the operation of His works and His omnipotence would be less when our assistance is missing, He has accorded us, however, in such a circumstance the opportunity to serve Him and to please Him.’ That occasion was not to be scorned by the Christian, and in the exercise of preaching or holy war he confirmed his dependence on God by acting in His name to in defence of the faith. It might be as Peter de Castelnau himself did it, who ‘worked commendably in the ministry that had been entrusted to him, like one who has learnt what he teaches in the school of Christ; and endowed with words in conformity with the faith, he had means of exhorting following the sound doctrine to he who is within it and to reject the naysayers, always ready to give reasons to those who require it, as a Catholic man, learned in the law and eloquent in language might do.’ Or it might be like those ‘animated by the zeal of the orthodox faith and by avenging the blood of the righteous man who ceases not to scream from the earth to the sky until the God of vengeance descends from heaven upon the earth to the confusion of perverts and perverters, who shall gird themselves in manly fashion and arm themselves against those pestiferous ones who attack all at once truth and peace.’^[405] Very close to their God, those who accepted such missions felt like his voice or his arm.

But not all consented to recognizing this role assumed by Church and believers, and which now took on a more active and militant character. Some rejected the mediating role of the Church by appealing to the evangelical tradition, and dreamt of the new social groups that were forming, especially in the cities, being revitalised with a communitarian religious sentiment like that of the early Christians. William of Nangis reflects very closely the tendency of these groups, who were regarded as heretics, when he describes the beliefs of the group discovered in 1210 in Paris: ‘They said this time was the end of the mysteries of the New Testament, that the times of the Holy Spirit had come, and that confession, baptism, the Eucharist and other sacraments – without which there is no salvation – shall not be used from now on, but that each could save themself if they were inspired by the sole inner grace of the Holy Spirit, without any external action. They elevated the power of charity so high that they claimed that an act which would otherwise have been a sin was not so if it had been performed in a spirit of charity; they therefore gave themselves, in the name of charity, to fornication, adultery and other pleasures of the senses. They promised impunity to the women with whom they sinned and to the simple whom they deceived; and they preached God to them as only good and not as righteous.’^[406]

Without a doubt the marginal groups that arose in the cities tended to be regarded as similar to the communities of which speak the Acts of the Apostles or the Pauline Epistles. Despite persecution and stigma as heretics, they persevered in their tendency to maintain a primary link with God, based not only on the inspiration of the gospel texts, but also on the experience of a community life of mutual surveillance and spontaneous communion in the faith. An elemental force made them reject a transactional religiosity, like the one that declared in his defence the accused of Albigensian: ‘I am not a heretic, for I have a wife, I sleep with her, I have children, I eat meat, I swear and I am a faithful Christian.’^[407]

Little by little a certain tendency to mysticism would insinuate itself, an individualistic attitude that also rejected the Church’s mediating intervention. But in the confusing atmosphere created by the opening of the Romano-Germanic area to multiple external influences, in the beginning a tendency of confrontation between the Christian image of man’s relationship with God and that offered by Judaism and Islam more frequently arose among the disconformists. The Old Testament began to impregnate certain moral norms appropriate for the new ways of life, and Islam more explicitly recognized the value of sensuality: but it might just have been the attraction of the exotic that started a movement of apostasy which led some to foreign religions. Ralph Glaber speaks of a Count of Sens, and Guibert de Nogent of a Count of Soissons, both Judaisers;^[408] James of Aragon tells in his chronicle that one of his vassals said one day: ‘I inform you that Gil of Alagon, whom they called by another name Mahomet, has twice sent me a message telling me that he wanted to speak with me [. . .] And he again appeared the next morning, telling us all Gil of Alagon had told him, who had before been Christian and a knight and then had become a Saracen.’^[409] And more indignant still, Joinville recounts his surprise at the penetration of certain religious ideas: ‘I have seen in this country, after I returned from overseas,’ he says, ‘some disloyal Christians who uphold the law of the Bedouin and say that none may die other than in his day; and their belief is so disloyal that it is worth as much as saying that God has no power to help us. For those who would serve God would be mad if we did not think that He has the power to prolong our lives and to deliver us evil.’^[410] Certainly, it was a momentous decision to choose between a god of charity and a god of justice, or between a god who judges man according to his works and one that grants life with an irreversible fate.

Perhaps because of the relativism provoked by the confrontation of different beliefs, all of which claimed to constitute the absolute truth, or perhaps because of the influence of certain Latin authors, little by little there dawned a radical atheism. William of Tyre recounts a dramatic conversation that he held in the Holy Land with King Amaury of Jerusalem, whom he admired. ‘He loved,’ he says, ‘to talk with wise and enlightened men who had news of distant countries and about the customs of foreign nations.’ One day when he was sick and conversing with the bishop, he posed a fundamental question to him: ‘I ask myself if there was, independently of the doctrine of the Savior and the saints who had followed Christ – a doctrine he doubted not – some means of establishing by evident and unimpeachable arguments the proof of a future resurrection.’ The bishop was shocked ‘when he saw that an orthodox prince and a descendant of orthodox princes could have such doubts about something as certain and doubt in this way in the depths of his conscience’ and began to argue in order to instil in him a definitive conviction. At the end of the exchange, Amaury stated: ‘This solution pleases me most exceedingly, and thou hast delivered my heart from all its doubts.’^[411]

Amaury’s doubt emerged no doubt in many minds and not all succeeded in overcoming it. William of Nangis remarks on an express declaration by Maurice, Bishop of Paris, when he died in 1196, saying: ‘As in his time many people doubted the resurrection of the dead’;^[412] and Rigord records the same news with the same remark.^[413] Salimbene recalls the case of Gregorius Romanus, Archbishop of Parma, which on dying rejected the sacraments and declared ‘that he believed not in the least in that faith [. . .] and that he had accepted the archbishopric for the riches and honours’;^[414] and in another passage he tells that Uberto Pellavicino, Lord of Parma, rejected the conversion even at the time of his death.^[415] These attitudes characterized those called Epicureans, who, said Villani, abounded in Florence in the early twelfth century.

Dante anathematised them in Convivio, saying that ‘of all bestialities, the more stupid, vile and harmful is the one that thinks there is no other life after this one.’^[416] And when in the Commedia he described the sixth circle, where stood

con Epicuro tutt’isuoiproduttiseguaci

chel’animacol corpo morta fanno

he had Farinata say more than a thousand lay with him

qua dentroe’l secondo Federico

e’l Cardinale; e di li altri mi taccio.^[417]

Without suspecting it, certainly, the ‘new man’ created around himself a profane environment. Some took their naturalism to extremes and denied the existence of God. But it was not the most frequent thing. A vague, diffuse fear led most to avoid such grave decisions and simply to take a passive attitude, as if God were very far away. The important thing was to divest earthly life of the restrictions entailed by his immediate presence. Only actively religious spirits resisted this tendency stirred up by the new ways of life.

---

Notes

^ 1. Josiah Cox Russell, British Medieval Population; Josiah Cox Russell, Late Ancient and Medieval Population; Ferdinand Lot, L’État des paroisses et des feux de 1328.

^ 2. Ricordano Malespini, Cronica, 104; Giovanni Villani, Cronica, IV, x–xiv.

^ 3. Des ordonnances des rois de France, XI, 324.

^ 4. Suger, Vita Ludovici Regis VI, II and XXI; Guillaume de Poitiers, GestaGuillelmi Ducis.

^ 5. Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, 20.

^ 6. Guibert de Nogent, De vita sua, III, x.

^ 7. Ordericus Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, VIII.

^ 8. Guibert de Nogent, De vita sua, III, ii.

^ 9. Jacques de Vitry, History Orientalis, II, ii.

^ 10. Salimbene di Adam, Cronica, I, 244 ff.; Giovanni Villani, Cronica, VII, liv.

^ 11. Otto von Freising, Gesta Friderici Imperatoris, II, xxiii and xiii.

^ 12. Giovanni Villani, Cronica, IV, xix .

^ 13. AnnualGandenses, Frantz Funck-Brentano (Ed.), 36; Giovanni Villani, Cronica, VIII, LVI.

^ 14. Giovanni Villani, Cronica, V, XII.

^ 15. Constitutio de Feudis, 1037 (Conrad II); 1136 (Lothar III); 1158 (Frederick I), cf. Otto von Freising, Gesta FridericiImperatoris, IV, x; Usatges de Barcelona;Privilegi General de Catalunya.

^ 16. L’ancien coutumier de Champagne, XXXVI.

^ 17. Thomas Madox, Formulareanglicarum, 417, cf. Austin Lane Poole, Obligations of Society in the XII and XIII Centuries, 31.

^ 18. Historia Compostelana, I, chap. 100, 2.

^ 19. Galbert de Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bon, comte de Flandre (1127–1128), chap, II.

^ 20. Hugues de Poitiers, Historia Vizeliacensismonasterii.

^ 21. Fuero de Leon, XXI and XXII; Carta de fuero a los moradores de Santiago de 16 de diciembre de 1105, in Antonio López Ferreiro, Historia de la Iglesia de Santiago de Compostela, III, Appendix XIX, 61; Historia Compostelana, I, 27; Florence: Act of 6 August 1289, in Pasquale Villari, I primiduesecolidellastoria di Firenze, 290.

^ 22. Charters of Lorris-in-Gatinais and Beaumont-en-Argonne, in Léopold Delisle, Catalogue des actes de Philippe Auguste.

^ 23. Galbert de Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bon, comte de Flandre (1127–1128), chaps. II and VI.

^ 24. Leges Henrici Primi,77, I, 2, cf. Austin Lane Poole, Obligations of Society in the XII and XIII Centuries, 21.

^ 25. L’ancien coutumier de Champagne, VI and LVIII.

^ 26. Galbert de Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bon, comte de Flandre (1127–1128), chaps. II and VI; Suger, Vita Ludovici Regis VI.

^ 27. Cf. Marc Bloch, ‘Un problème d’histoire comparée: la ministérialité en France et en Allemagne’, in Revue historique de droit français et etranger, 1928.

^ 28. Cf. Richard Koebner, ‘The Settlement and Colonization of Europe’, in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. I.

^ 29. Hugues de Poitiers, Historia Vizeliacensismonasterii, III.

^ 30. Primera crónicaanónima de Sahagún, 38.

^ 31. Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Henrici Regis Secundi and Gesta Regis Ricardi, 1169–1192; Rigord, Chronique, yr. 1183–1198; Guillaume le Breton, Chronique yr. 1183–1204; cf. Jacques Boussard, ‘Les Mercenaires au XIIe siècle : Henri II Plantegenet et les origines de l’armée de métier’, in Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des chartes, CVI, 1947.

^ 32. Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla,‘Magnus Erlingson’, XXXVI ff.

^ 33. Otto von Freising, Gesta Friderici Imperatoris, II, xl.

^ 34. Heinrici Chronicon Lyvoniae, II, ii, 2.

^ 35. Reginaldus, Libellus de vita et miraculis Sancti Godrici, heremitae de Finchale, Joseph Stevenson (Ed.), 25; cf. Walther Vogel, Ein seefahrender Kaufmann um 1100, in HansischeGeschichtsblätter, vol. 39, 1912.

^ 36. Cf. Charles Petit-Dutaillis, Les communes françaises, 117.

^ 37. Primera crónica anónima de Sahagún, 13 and 31.

^ 38. Hugues de Poitiers, Historia Vizeliacensismonasterii, III.

^ 39. Hugues de Poitiers, Historia Vizeliacensismonasterii, III.

^ 40. Les Établissements de Saint Quentin, 4 and 28, Girl (Ed.); cf. Pierre Vaillant. ‘Étude d’histoire urbaine : Grenoble et ses libertés (1226–1349)’, in Annales de l’Université de Grenoble, XIV, 1937.

^ 41. Salimbene di Adam, Cronica, I, 317, 339, 419; II, 921.

^ 42. Galbert de Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bon, comte de Flandre (1127–1128), chaps. II and XII.

^ 43. Salimbene di Adam, Cronica, II, 16.

^ 44. L’ancien coutumier de Champagne,LV.

^ 45. Dino Compagni, Cronica, I, 13.

^ 46. Historia Compostelana, I, 64, 1.

^ 47. GestaEpiscoporumCameracensium, Smet (Ed.), 122; cf. Henri Pirenne, Villes, marchés et marchands au Moyen Âge, 117.

^ 48. Hugues de Poitiers, Historia Vizeliacensismonasterii, IV.

^ 49. Salimbene di Adam, Cronica, II, 20.

^ 50. Giovanni Villani, Cronica, VIII, xxxviii.

^ 51. Giovanni Villani, Cronica, IV, x–xiv.

^ 52. Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia, ‘Paradiso’, XVI.

^ 53. James William Francis Hill, Medieval Lincoln, Appendix V; Doris Mary Stenton, English Society in the Middle Ages,168–169.

^ 54. Nibelungenlied, XVII, 1036–1037.

^ 55. Salimbene di Adam, Cronica, II, 147.

^ 56. Chrétien de Troyes, Yvain ou le Chevalier au Lion, Paphilet (Ed.), 246–247.

^ 57. Historia Compostelana, I, chap. 108, 2; cf. Otto von Freising, GestaFridericiImperatoris, IV, xiii.

^ 58. Hughes de Poitiers, Historia Vizeliacensismonasterii, III.

^ 59. Hughes de Poitiers, Historia Vizeliacensismonasterii, III.

^ 60. Guillaume de Tyr, Historia rerum in partibus transmarinisgestarum, XV yr. 1138.

^ 61. Galbert de Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bon, comte de Flandre, XXI.

^ 62. Guibert de Nogent, De vita sua, III, xi.

^ 63. San Pablo, Epístola a los Romanos, XIII; San Pedro, I Epístola a los Romanos, II,13–18.

^ 64. Otto von Freising, Gesta Friderici Imperatoris, III, xxix.

^ 65. Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, II, 25; Edith Ennen, Frübgeschichte der europäischen Stadt, 223 ff.

^ 66. Guillaume de Tyr, Historia rerum in partibus transmarinisgestarum, V.

^ 67. Galbert de Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bon, comte de Flandre, VI.

^ 68. Guibert de Nogent, De vita sua, III, vi.

^ 69. Georges Espinas, La vie urbaine de Douai au Moyen Âge. Piècesjustificatives,41.

^ 70. Gesta episcoporumCameracensium, Gesta Gherardi II, chap. 2.

^ 71. Les Établissements de Saint-Quentin, 2.

^ 72. Historia Compostelana, I, 110.

^ 73. ‘Charte de Aire’, in Ordonnances des rois de France, XII, 563.

^ 74. Georges Espinas and Henri Pirenne, Les coutumes de la gilde marchando de Saint-Omer; Edith Ennen, Frühgeschichte der europaischen Stadt, 270 ff.; Franz Petri, ‘Die Anfänge des mittelalterlichen Städtewesens in den Niederlarden und dem angrenzenden Frankreich’, in Theodor Mayer (Ed.), Studienzu den Anfängen des europäischenStädtewesens, 1958.

^ 75. Léopold Delisle, Catalogue des actes de Philippe-Auguste; Henri-François Delaborde and Élie Berger, Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste.

^ 76. ‘Fuero de León’, Tomás Muñoz y Romero (Ed.), Colección de fueros municipales y cartas pueblas, 1847.

^ 77. ‘Crónica de la población de Ávila’, Manuel Gómez Moreno (Ed.), Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, vol. 113, 21.

^ 78. Fuero de Jaca, José María Ramos Loscertales (Ed.), Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español, V, 410.

^ 79. Tomás Muñoz y Romero, Colección de fueros municipales y cartas pueblas, 363.

^ 80. Heinrici Chronicon Lyvoniae, III, iv–v.

^ 81. Cf. notes 67–71 of Chap. II.

^ 82. Recueil des actes of Henri II roi d’Angleterre et Duc de Normandie, Léopold Delisle and Élie Berger (Eds.), LXXI, CCXCV and DXL.

^ 83. Victor-Louis Bourrilly, Essai sur l’histoire politique de la commune de Marseille : des origines à la victoire de Charles d’Anjou, 1264, Pièces justificatives, XI, XIII. XIV, XVII.

^ 84. Guibert de Nogent, De vita sua, III, viii.

^ 85. Aubri de Troisfontaines, Chronica, 329.

^ 86. Jean Richard, Les ducs de Bourgogne et la formation du duché du XIe au XIVe siècle, 341.

^ 87. Johann Friedrich Böhmer, RegestaImperii, 4890.

^ 88. Léopold Delisle and Élie Berger, Recueil des actes de Henri II; Élie Berger and Henri-François Delaborde, Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste Roi de France.

^ 89. Landulphus Senior, Mediolanensis Historia, II, 10.

^ 90. Donizo, Vita Mathildis, I, xi.

^ 91. Wipo, Gesta ChuonradiImperatoris., XXXIV.

^ 92. Landulphus Senior, Mediolanensis Historia, III, 5–29.

^ 93. Lambert of Hersfeld, Annales, 150.

^ 94. Yves of Chartres, Correspondence, 77.

^ 95. Galbert de Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bon, comte de Flandre, XX.

^ 96. Guibert de Nogent, De vita sua, III, viii.

^ 97. Cf. Eduardo de Hinojosa, Luchas por la emancipación civil y política, in Estudios sobre la historia del derecho español.

^ 98. Hughes de Poitiers, Historia Vizeliacensismonasterii, passim.

^ 99. I Crónica anónima de Sahagún, passim.

^ 100. Hughes de Poitiers, Historia Vizeliacensismonasterii, III.

^ 101. Galbert de Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bon, comte de Flandre, XX.

^ 102. Hughes de Poitiers, Historia Vizeliacensismonasterii, passim.

^ 103. Historia Compostelana, I, 111, 2.

^ 104. Cf. Charles Petit-Dutaillis, Les communes françaises, 60.

^ 105. I Crónicaanónima de Sahagún, 33.

^ 106. Cf. First part, chap. III, iii.

^ 107. Guibert de Nogent, De vita sua, III, viii.

^ 108. Guibert de Nogent, De vita sua, III, xi.

^ 109. Otto von Freising, Gesta Friderici Imperatoris, IV, v.

^ 110. Jacques de Vitry, Sermo II ad burguenses, in Arthur Giry, Documents sur les relations de la Royauté avec les villes en France, I, 59.

^ 111. Otto von Freising, Gesta FridericiImperatoris, II, xiii; Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, I, 424.

^ 112. Hughes de Poitiers, Historia Vizeliacensismonasterii, III.

^ 113. Otto von Freising, Gesta FridericiImperatoris, IV, i–vii; xxiii–xxxiii.

^ 114. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, Inferno, X, V. 26.

^ 115. Giovanni Villani, Nuovacronica, VI, lxxxi.

^ 116. Giovanni Villani, Nuovacronica, VIII, lviii.

^ 117. Giovanni Villani, Nuovacronica, VIII, lv.

^ 118. Dino Compagni, Cronica, I, 22.

^ 119. Jean de Hocsem, La chronique de Jean de Hocsem, Godefroid Kurth (Ed.), 333–4.

^ 120. Cf. Fernand Vercauteren, Luttes sociales à Liège, 35.

^ 121. Philippe de Beaumanoir, Coutumes de Beauvaisis, Amédée Salmon (Ed.), 266.

^ 122. Cf. John Richard Green, A Short History of the English People, chap. IV, 4.

^ 123. Philippe Mousket, Chronique rimée, l. 24.741 ff.

^ 124. Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, II, 117–118.

^ 125. Guillaume de Nangis, Chronicon, yr. 1251.

^ 126. Annales Gandenses, Frantz Funck Brentano (Ed.), 18.

^ 127. Vincent de Beauvais, Speculum historiale, 1, XXX, chap. CXXXVII; cf. Enquête sur les troubles de Beauvais, 1235, in Arthur Giry, Documents sur les relations de la royauté avec les villes en France, 70–81.

^ 128. Siete Partidas, Law II, title VII, section V.

^ 129. Jean de Hocsem, La chronique de Jean de Hocsem, Godefroid Kurth (Ed.), 280 ff.

^ 130. Cf. Henri Pirenne, Histoire de Belgique, I, 378.

^ 131. Giovanni Villani, Nuovacronica, VIII, i.

^ 132. Chronique Artésienne, Frantz Funck Brentano (Ed.), 40–63; Annales Gandenses, Frantz Funck Brentano (Ed.), 24–42.

^ 133. Philippe de Beaumanoir, Coutumes de Beauvaisis.

^ 134. Jean de Hocsem, La chronique de Jean de Hocsem, Godefroid Kurth (Ed.), 337.

^ 135. Giovanni Villani, Nuovacronica, VIII, 1, lv.

^ 136. Giovanni Villani, Nuovacronica, VIII, i.

^ 137. Annales Gandenses, Frantz Funck Brentano (Ed.), 27.

^ 138. Giovanni Villani, Nuovacronica, VIII, i.

^ 139. Giovanni Villani, Nuovacronica, VIII, lvi.

^ 140. Chronique Artésienne, Frantz Funck Brentano (Ed.), 38.

^ 141. Annales Gandenses, Frantz Funck Brentano (Ed.), 36: Giovanni Villani, Nuovacronica, VIII, lvi.

^ 142. Guillaume de Nangis, Chronicon, yr. 1292.

^ 143. Chronique Artésienne, Frantz Funck Brentano (Ed.), 36; Guillaume de Nangis, Chronicon, yr. 1302.

^ 144. Giovanni Villani, Nuovacronica, VII, cxxxii.

^ 145. Cf. Jean Lestocquoy, Les villes de Flandre et d’Italie sous le gouvernement des patriciens, XIe-XVe siècles, 142–3.

^ 146. Annales Gandenses, Frantz Funck Brentano (Ed.), 17–31.

^ 147. Giovanni Villani, Nuovacronica, VIII, i; cf. Gaetano Salvemini, Magnati e popolani in Firenze, 189.

^ 148. Giovanni Villani, Nuovacronica, VII, lxxix.

^ 149. Cf. Fernand Vercauteren, Luttes sociales à Liège, 71–3.

^ 150. Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, I, 501.

^ 151. Rigord, Chronique, yr. 1195.

^ 152. Guillaume le Breton, Chronique, yr. 1195.

^ 153. Guillaume le Breton, Chronique, yr. 1214.

^ 154. Hughes de Poitiers, HistoryVizeliacensismonasterii, III.

^ 155. Guillaume de Nangis, Chronicon, yr. 1199.

^ 156. Matthaeus Parisiensis, Chronica Majora, II, 627; IV, 590.

^ 157. Gonzalo de Berceo, Milagros de Nuestra Sennora, stanzas 47, 48, 160,236, 281, 330, 352, 413.

^ 158. Chrétien de Troyes, Érec et Énide, l. 2320 ff.

^ 159. Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval, l. 5721–44.

^ 160. Gui de Bourgogne, 1, 3462 ff.

^ 161. Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube, cf: Joseph Anglade, Les Troubadours, 281.

^ 162. Ibn Gubayr, Rahlat ‘al Kinâni, 3 and 6, in Michele Amari, Biblioteca Arabo-Sicula, vol. I.

^ 163. Gui de Bourgogne, l. 1378.

^ 164. Guillaume de Tyr, Historia rerum in partibus transmarinisgestarum, L, V, XIX and XX.

^ 165. Villehardouin, De la conqueste de Constantinople, LXII.

^ 166. Villehardouin, De la conqueste de Constantinople, XXVI, XL and LV; Robert de Clari, La conquête de Constantinople, LXXXII ff., XCI, XCII.

^ 167. Brunetto Latini, Li Livres doutresor, III, ii, chap. I.

^ 168. Rupert von Deutz, In incendiooppidiTuitti, Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologia Latina, 170, VIII-XII.

^ 169. Genesis, IV, 17.

^ 170. Gui de Bourgogne, l. 4292 ff.

^ 171. Richer, Historiarumlibri V, III, 103.

^ 172. Crónica de Alfonso III, second draft, Zacarías García Villada (Ed.), 25; Widukind, RerumgestarumSaxonicorum, I, C, xxxv: Thietmar, Chronicon, 1, 25, 18.

^ 173. Guillaume de Nangis, Chroniconabbreviatum regum Francorum, yr. 1180.

^ 174. Cf. Caroline Shillaber, ‘Edward I, Builder of Towns’, in Speculum, vol. XXII, 1947.

^ 175. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, yrs. 901–924.

^ 176. Primera Crónica General de España, 802–966.

^ 177. Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, I, 477.

^ 178. HeinriciChroniconLyvoniae, III, viii, 1.

^ 179. Cronica fiorentina compilatanelsecolo XIII (Pseudo Brunetto Latini), anni mclviii, in Pascuale Villari, I primiduesecolidellastoriadi Firenze.

^ 180. Vita Sancti Wiberti, M. G. H., Script., IV, 225.

^ 181. I Crónica anónima de Sahagún, 18.

^ 182. HenriciChroniconLyvoniae, I, i, 6.

^ 183. Primera Crónica General de España, yr. 1127–1129.

^ 184. Guillaume le Breton, La Philippide, I; II; Chronique, yr. 1213.

^ 185. William of Malmesbury, De gestispontificum Anglorum., 140; cf. Austin Lane Poole, From Domesday Book to Magna Carta, 39; William Fitzstephen, Description of London; cf. Frank Merry Stenton, Norman London, 25–32.

^ 186. Giovanni Villani, Cronica, IV, xviii; VII, lxxxiv; XI, xciv.

^ 187. Martino da Canale, Cronique des Venetiens, II.

^ 188. Galbert de Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bon, III; Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, II, vi; William Fitzstephen, Description of London.

^ 189. William Fitzstephen, Description of London.

^ 190. Bonvesin della Riva, De magnalibusurbisMediolani, cf. Robert S. López, Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World, 69, 17.

^ 191. Coutumes de la Gilde Marchande de Saint-Omer, 4–6, 15, 17, 25 and 27, Georges Espinas and Henri Pirenne (Eds.), in Le Moyen Âge, XIV, 1901.

^ 192. Galbert de Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bon, comte de Flandre, XV; William Fitzstephen, Description of London; Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, 11, 106 ff.; 118 ff.; Jaime I, Crónica, CLII; Établissements de Saint-Quentin, 15; Guillaume le Breton, Chronique, yr. 1214; Giovanni Villani, Cronica, VII, lxxxix and cxxxii.

^ 193. Lambert de Hersfeld, Annales, Oswald Holder-Egger (Ed.), 187; cf. Henri Pirenne, ‘Villes, marchés et marchands au Moyen Âge’, in Les villes el les institutions urbaines. Alean, 117.

^ 194. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, Paradiso, XV, 97 ff.

^ 195. Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, I, 317, 339, 419; II, 399.

^ 196. Établissements de Saint-Quentin, 28 and 4; cf. Arthur Giry, Étude sur les origines de la commune de Saint-Quentin.

^ 197. Fuero de Oviedo, yr. 1145, Aureliano Fernández Guerra y Orbe (Ed.), 133.

^ 198. Établissements de Rouen, 30; cf. Arthur Giry, Les Établissements de Rouen, II.

^ 199. Carta de Arras, 1194 and 1211, art. 41; cf. Eugène François Joseph Tailliar, Recueil d’actes des XIIe et XIIIe siècles en langue romane wallonne du Nord de la France, no. 11.

^ 200. Carta de Lincoln, c: 1160; cf. William Stubbs, Select Charters and Other Illustrations of English Constitutional History from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Edward the First, 156.

^ 201. Fuero de Toledo, 1118; cf. Tomás Muñoz y Romero, Colección de fueros municipales y Cartas pueblos, I, 363.

^ 202. Fuero de Pamplona, 1129; cf. Tomás Muñoz y Romero, Colección de fueros municipales y Cartas pueblos, I, 478; Fuero de Jaca,c. 1063; cf. José María Ramos Loscertales, Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español,V, 410–11.

^ 203. Carta de Saint-Omer, 1127, art. 9; cf. Georges Espinas, ‘Le privilige de Saint-Omer de 1127’, in Revue du Nord, no. 29, 1947.

^ 204. Fuero de Fresnillo, 1104, art. 8; cf. Eduardo de Hinojosa, Documentos para la historia de las instituciones de León y Castilla,doc. no. XXIX.

^ 205. Établissements de Rouen, art. 38.

^ 206. Établissements de Saint-Quentin, art. 80.

^ 207. Établissements de Rouen, art. 30.

^ 208. Carta de Arras, 1194 and 1211, art. 36; Établissements de Rouen, art. 26.

^ 209. Chroniques des comtes d‘Anjou, 234; Flach, Les origines de l’ancienne France, II, 170; Cartas de Lorris, 1155; cf. Ordonnances des Rois de France,Appendix, vol. XI, 200.

^ 210. Marc Bloch, La formation des liens de dépendance, 421 ff.

^ 211. Fuero de Castrojeriz, 974; cf. Tomás Muñoz y Romero, Colección de fueros municipales y Cartas pueblos, I, 37–38.

^ 212. Fuero de Fresnillo, 1104, art. 15.

^ 213. Carta de Laon, 1128; cf. Ordonnances des Rois de France, Appendix, vol. XI, 185.

^ 214. Privilegio de población de Barbastro, 1100; cf. Tomás Muñoz y Romero, Tomás Muñoz y Romero, Colección de fueros municipales y Cartas pueblos, I, 355.

^ 215. Carta de Londres, 1131; cf. Adolphus Ballard and James Tait, British Borough Charters, 220.

^ 216. Carta de Nieuport (Sandeshoveta), 1168; cf. Henri Pirenne, La Question des jurés dans les villes flamandes; Carta de Saint-Omer, 1127, arts. 5–7.

^ 217. Carta de libertad de la ciudad de Lübeck, 1226.

^ 218. Ordenanza de Alfonso, conde de Toulouse, 1141; cf. Raymond Limouzin-Lamothe, La commune de Toulouse et les sources de son histoire (1120-1249). Bibliographie critique de l’histoire municipale de Toulouse des origines à 1789, doc. I.

^ 219. Carta de Noyon, 1181, art. 2; cf. Élie Berger and Henri-François Delaborde (Eds.), Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste, roi de France, no. 43.

^ 220. Fuero de Cuenca, I, 6; cf. Rafael de Ureña y Smenjaud, Fuero de Cuenca, 118.

^ 221. Fuero de Belorado, 1116; cf. Tomás Muñoz y Romero, Colección de fueros municipales y Cartas pueblos, I, 411.

^ 222. Carta de Laon, 1128, art. 18.

^ 223. Carta de Abbeville, 1184; art. 32; cf. , Clovis Brunel (Ed.), Recueil des actes des comtes de Pontieu (1026-1279), no. 109; Carta Magna inglesa, 1215, art. 14.

^ 224. Carta Magna inglesa, 1215, arts. 14–16.

^ 225. Carta de libertades de Huy, 1066; cf. Émile Fairon, Charles confisquées aux bonnes villes du pays de Liège, 447 ff.

^ 226. Carta de Laon, 1128, art. 9.

^ 227. Carta de Dreux, 1180, cf. André Duchesne, Histoire généalogique de la maison royale de Dreux, Preuves, 237.

^ 228. Établissements de Saint-Quentin, art. 24.

^ 229. Carta de Dreux,1180; Carta Magna inglesa,arts. 38–39.

^ 230. Établissements du comte Raimond V et du Conseil de la Commune (de Toulouse) réglant, 1181; cf. Raymond Limouzin-Lamothe, La commune de Toulouse et les sources de son histoire (1120-1249), doc. VI.

^ 231. Carta de libertad de la ciudad de Lübeck, 1226.

^ 232. Carta de Saint-Omer, 1127, art. 14.

^ 233. Carta de libertades de Huy, 1066.

^ 234. Carta de Laon, 1128, art. 1.

^ 235. Établissements de Saint-Quentin,art. 6.

^ 236. Fuero de Daroca, 1142; cf. Tomás Muñoz y Romero, Colección de fueros municipales y Cartas pueblos, I, 534 ff.

^ 237. Decretos de León,c. 1188 (o Carta Magna leonesa); cf. Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz (Ed.), Cuadernos de Historia de España,Buenos Aires, IX, 1948, 147.

^ 238. Établissements de Rouen,art. 18.

^ 239. Decretos de León,1188.

^ 240. Carta de Saint-Omer,1127, art. 1; Carta Magna Inglesa,1215, Arts. 48–49.

^ 241. Carta de Londres, 1131.

^ 242. Carta Magna inglesa, 1215, arts. 22–24, 59 and 60.

^ 243. Carta Magna inglesa, 1215; art. 49.

^ 244. Établissements de Rouen, arts. 54–55.

^ 245. Établissements de Saint-Quentin, art. 27.

^ 246. Carta de Newcastle-upon-Tyne, cf. William Stubbs, Select Charters and Other Illustrations of English Constitutional History from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Edward the First, 111.

^ 247. Carta de Laon, 1128, art. 2.

^ 248. Établissements de Rouen, arts. 24–25.

^ 249. Établissements de Saint-Quentin, arts. 11 and 5.

^ 250. Établissements de Saint-Quentin, art. 32.

^ 251. Carta de Londres, 1131; Carta de Newcastle-upon-Tyne; Carla de Laon,128, art. 19.

^ 252. Coutumes de la Gilde Marchande de Saint-Omer, art. 15.

^ 253. Florencia: Provisioni, Reg. II, a. c. 175–177; cf. Pascuale Villari, I primiduesecolidellastoria di Firenze, 293; Carta de Laon, 1128, art. 20; Carta Magna inglesa, 1215, arts. 27, 28 and 48.

^ 254. Carta Magna inglesa, 1215, art. 47; Decretos de León, c. 1188; Fuero de Daroca, 1142; Carta de libertades de Huy, 1066, arts. 11–12; Fuero de Fresnillo, 1104; Carta de Londres, 1131; Carta de Newcastle-upon Tyne.

^ 255. Fuero de Daroca,1142; Carta de Laon, 1128, art. 7; Établissements de Rouen, art. 10; Établissements de Saint-Quentin, art. 18; Decretos de León, c. 1188; Établissements du Conseil de la Commune (de Toulouse), 1152; c. Raymond Limouzin-Lamothe, La commune de Toulouse et les sources de son histoire (1120-1249). , Cartulaire, V.

^ 256. Établissement du Conseil de la Commune (de Toulouse), 1152; Établissements de Rouen, arts. 22, 26, 27; Carta de Arras, 1194 and 1211, 34–35; Carta Magna inglesa, 1215, arts. 12–13.

^ 257. Établissements de Saint-Quentin, art. 19; Établissements de Rouen, arts. 14–16; Carta de Laon, 1128, art. 2.

^ 258. Fuero de Fresnillo, 1104, art. 9; Fuero de Daroca, 1142, 534; Carta de Laon, 1128, arts. 4 and 6; Carta de Arras, 1194 and 1211, art. 1 ff.; Établissements de Saint-Quentin, arts. 16–17; Établissements de Rouen, arts. 11–12.

^ 259. Fuero de Daroca,1142, 534.

^ 260. Établissements de Saint-Quentin, art. 13.

^ 261. Fuero de Daroca, 1142, 534.

^ 262. Établissements de Saint-Quentin, art 6.

^ 263. Carta de Saint-Omer,1127, art. 8.

^ 264. Carta Magna inglesa, 1215, art. 50.

^ 265. Decretos de León,c. 1188.

^ 266. Établissements de Saint-Quentin; art. 9; Florencia: Ordinamenti di Giustizia, 1293, heading 6.

^ 267. Fuero de Daroca,1142, 534.

^ 268. Carta de Dreux,1180.

^ 269. Carta de libertades de Huy,1066.

^ 270. Carta de Lorris-en-Gatinais, 1155, art. 3.

^ 271. Carta de Poitiers, 1222; cf. Charles Petit-Dutaillis, Les Communes françaises, caractères et évolution des origines au XVIIIe siècle,109.

^ 272. Fuero de Daroca, 1142, 534.

^ 273. Fuero de Fresnillo, 1104, art. 2.

^ 274. Carta de libertades de Huy, 1066.

^ 275. Carta de Noyon,1181, art. 2.

^ 276. Établissements de Saint-Quentin, art. 31.

^ 277. Établissements de Rouen, arts. 28–29.

^ 278. Carta de Aire, 1188, art. 2; cf. Ordonnances des rois de France, XII, 563–4.

^ 279. Établissements de Saint Quentin, att. 33.

^ 280. Fuero de Fresnillo, 1104, art. 6.

^ 281. Landulphus Sancti Pauli, Historia Mediolanensis,2.

^ 282. Landulphus Sancti Pauli, Historia Mediolanensis, 22.

^ 283. Carta de Laon, 1128, art. 15.

^ 284. Fuero de Toledo,1118.

^ 285. Gislebert de Mons, ChroniconHononiense, Wilhelmi Arndt (Ed.), 78.

^ 286. Abel Lefranc, Histoire de la ville de Noyon. Pièces justificatives, nos. 2 and 7.

^ 287. Brunetto Latini, Li Livres dou Tresor, III, ii, 1.

^ 288. Otto von Freising, Gesta Friderici Imperatoris, II, xv ff.

^ 289. Carta de Dreux, 1180.

^ 290. Pascual Galindo Romeo, Tuy en la baja Edad Media, doc. no. XI.

^ 291. Galbert de Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bon, XII and XX.

^ 292. Landulphus Sancti Pauli, Historia Mediolanensis, 2, 22, 34, 44.

^ 293. Cf. Victor Louis Bourrilly, La commune de Marseille, Pièces justificatives, no. XXII; Statuti di Bologna, 1288, II, heading VIII.

^ 294. Établissements de Saint-Quentin, arts. 2, 9, 12, 17, 22, 27, 29; 30, 33; Établissements de Rouen, arts. 2–4, 6–8, 19–20, 42, 54 and 55.

^ 295. Giovanni Villani, Cronica, V, xxxii.

^ 296. Carta de Arras, 1194, art. 47; Georges Espinas, La vie urbaine au Mojen Âge,vol. III, Pièce justificative no. 31.

^ 297. Philippe de Beaumanoir, Coutumes de Beauvaisis.

^ 298. Giovanni Villani, Cronica, VI, xxxix.

^ 299. Carta de Londres, 1190; Fuero de Fresnillo, 1104, art. 12; Fuero de Llanes, art. 41; Établissements de Rouen, art. I; Carta de Bordeaux, 1224.

^ 300. Statuti di Bologna, 1288, I; heading i ff; Statuti del Comune di Padova del secolo XII all’anno 1285, I; Giovanni Villani, Cronica, V. xxxii.

^ 301. Giovanni Villani, Cronica, VIII, i.

^ 302. Rigord, Chronique, yr. 1203; text of the convention, art. 14; yr. 1206, text of the convention, art. 10.

^ 303. Ordonnance de Philippe le Bel sur les bourgeoisies, 1287, in Arthur Giry, Documents sur les relations de la royauté avec les villes en France de 1180 à 1314, XLVII.

^ 304. Decretos de León (‘Carta Magna leonesa’), c. 1188.

^ 305. Guillaume de Nangis, Chronicon, yr. 1301.

^ 306. Jean de Meun. Roman de la Rose, l. 5320–5336.

^ 307. Guillaume de Tyr, Historia rerum in partibus transmarinisgestarum, VIII, yr. 1099.

^ 308. Galbert de Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bon, comte de Flandre, passim.

^ 309. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 19041–19053.

^ 310. Novellino, VIII.

^ 311. Novellino, XXXIII.

^ 312. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ‘Inferno’, XIII. l. 71.

^ 313. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, l. 19225 ff.

^ 314. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, l. 13936 ff.

^ 315. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, l. 15943–4.

^ 316. Sordello de Mantua, A Carlos de Anjou, cf. José Coll y Vehi, La sátiraprovenzal, 38.

^ 317. Rutebeuf, De la vie dou monde,ll. 20–21.

^ 318. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 5041 ff.

^ 319. Giovanni Villani, Cronica,VI, xlvi.

^ 320. Sordello de Mantua, Fragmento, cf. Cesare de Lollis, Vie et poésie de Sordello di Goïto.

^ 321. Jean Bodel, Le jeu de Saint Nicolas, scenes IV and XVI.

^ 322. ‘In taberna quando sumus’, in Les poésies des goliards, Olga Dobiache-Rojdestvensky (Ed.), 202.

^ 323. Archipoeta de Colonia, ‘Aestuans intrinsecus’, in Les poésies des goliards, Olga Dobiache-Rojdestvensky (Ed.), 189.

^ 324. IncipittractatusPrimatis de non miscendaaquavino, cf. Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, Ferdinando Bernini (Ed.), II, 97.

^ 325. The Letters of John of Salisbury, W.J. Millor, S.J, and Harold Edgeworth Butler (Eds.), I. Letters 33, 35 and 110.

^ 326. Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, I, 313.

^ 327. Jean Bodel, Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas, scene XV.

^ 328. Yves de Chartres, Correspondance, Dom Jean Leclerq (Ed.), I, Letter 15; Peire de Bussignac, ‘Chanson’, cf. François Just Marie Raynouard, Choix des poésies des troubadours, IV; Cerverí de Girona, ‘Chanson’, cf. Manuel Milá y Fontanals (Ed.), Trovadores en España; Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, I, 91, 112, 381; II, 32 ff.; Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 16.295 ff.

^ 329. Guillaume IX, due d’Aquitaine, ‘Pus vezem de novelh florir’; ‘Ab la dolchor del temps novel’; Marcabrú, ‘L’autrier jost’una sebissa’; ‘A la fontana del vergier’; Jaufré Rudel, ‘Quan lo rossinbols el folhos’; ‘Lanquan li jors lone en may’; Bernart de Ventadorn, ‘Anc no gardei sazo ni mes’; ‘Can vei la lauzeta mover’; Gautier de Châtillon, ‘Sole regente lora’; Anónimo, ‘Omnia sol temperat’, cf. Carmina Burana.

^ 330. Chrétien de Troyes, Érec et Énide.

^ 331. Novellino, XLII, LVII, LXII; Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, II, 67–71.

^ 332. Richard de Fournival, Le Bestiaire d’amour, passim.

^ 333. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 4387–88.

^ 334. Rigord, Chronique, yr. 1198; Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, I, vi–vii; Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 4557 ff; 5149 ff.

^ 335. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, l. 19.629; Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ‘Inferno’, XV.

^ 336. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ‘Paradiso’, XVI, l. 49.

^ 337. Guillaume de Lorris, Roman de la Rose, l. 94 ff.

^ 338. Duccio di Buoninsegna, Details from La Maestà: La captura de Cristo; Las santas mujeres junto al sepulcro; Noli me tangere; Giotto, El milagro del sediento; San Francisco predica a las tórtolas; La vuelta de San Joaquín.

^ 339. Guillaume de Lorris, Roman de la Rose, ll. 592–4.

^ 340. Duccio de Buoninsegna, Descendimiento de la cruz (reverso de la Maestà); La muerte de María (del coronamiento de la Maestà); Madonna de los Franciscanos; Cimabue, Crucifijo de San Domenico, Arezzo.

^ 341. Giotto, La comprobación de los estigmas, San Francisco, Assisi. The same subject in a version twenty-five years later in the Capilla Bardi, Santa Croce, Florence.

^ 342. Figures on the ambo of Naumburg Cathedral.

^ 343. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 4377–8.

^ 344. Guillaume IX, duc d’Aquitaine, ‘Mout jauzens me preno en amar’.

^ 345. Guillaume de Lorris, Roman de la Rose, ll. 870–1.

^ 346. Jaufré Rudel, ‘Quan lo rius de la fontana’.

^ 347. Cf. also Bernart de Ventadorn, ‘Tent ai me cor ple de joya’.

^ 348. Master Mateo, The Portico of Glory, Santiago de Compostela Cathedral.

^ 349. Groups of the Annunciation in Reims and Bamberg Cathedrals.

^ 350. Tomb of Henry the Lion and his wife Matilde, in Saint Blasius Cathedral, Brunswick. Figure of Regelindis in the choir of Naumburg Cathedral.

^ 351. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 2989 ff.

^ 352. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 6872–4.

^ 353. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 18677–84.

^ 354. Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, I, 432.

^ 355. Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, I, 364.

^ 356. Gautier de Châtillon, Tanto viro locuturi, cf. Olga Dobiache-Rojdestvensky, 90 ff.

^ 357. Landulphus Sancti Pauli, Historia Mediolanensis, 40.

^ 358. Otto von Freising, Gesta FridericiImperatoris, IV, vi; Novellino, XXIV.

^ 359. Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, I, 233 and 512; II, 49

^ 360. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ‘Inferno’, XV, 119–20.

^ 361. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ‘Purgatorio’, XXVI, 112–14.

^ 362. Rutebeuf, De l’estat du Monde, ll. 1–10.

^ 363. Chrétien de Troyes, Cligés, ll. 3150–63; 5250.

^ 364. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 2239–44.

^ 365. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 8455 ff.

^ 366. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ‘Paradiso’, XXV.

^ 367. Baldachins in the cathedrals of Bamberg (south-east portal), Strasbourg (transept) and Naumburg (west part of the choir); also the ambo in Chartres Cathedral, conserved in the Louvre, representing Matthew the Apostle, among many others examples.

^ 368. Scenes of the drunkenness of Noah and the torture of Saint-Savin in the frescoes of the Church of Saint-Savin (Vienne, France); frescoes of the story of Saint Sylvester in the Church of the Santi Quattro Coronati; Cimabue, Los cuatro evangelistas and the Visión de los cuatro vientos in the Upper Basilica of Assisi; Duccio di Buoninsegna, Sobreel camino de Emmaus, La entrada en Jerusalén and La tentación de Cristo en on the verso of the Maestà; Giotto, La expulsión de losdiblos de Arezzo in the Church of Saint Francis, Assisi.

^ 369. Cf. Martí de Riquer i Morera, Los cantares de gestafranceses, 292.

^ 370. Guillaume de Tyr, Historia rerum in partibus trasmarinisgestarum, XIX

^ 371. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 18.589 ff.

^ 372. Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, I, 72.

^ 373. Guillaume de Lorris, Roman de la Rose, ll. 458 ff.

^ 374. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 5158–62.

^ 375. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 5167 ff.

^ 376. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 4857–8.

^ 377. Guillaume de Lorris, Román de la Rose, l. 361 ff.

^ 378. Otto von Freising, Gesta FridericiImperatoris,I, xlvi.

^ 379. Salimbene di Adam, Cronica, Ferdinando Bernini (Ed.), I, 465.

^ 380. Otto von Freising, Gesta FridericiImperatoris, II, xvi; Salimbene di Adam, Cronica, Ferdinando Bernini (Ed.), I, 129 and 131; Rigord, Chronique, yr. 1183; La Cronica fiorentina compilatanelsecolo XIII, (Pseudo Brunetto Latini), Pascuale Villari (Ed.), 539.

^ 381. Guillaume de Tyr, Historia rerum in partibus transmarinisgestarum, XIX, yr. 1167.

^ 382. Ch. Carl August Friedrich Mahn, Die Werke der Troubadours in provenzalischerSprache, I;Salimbene di Adam, Cronica, II, 45.

^ 383. Giraldus Cambrensis, DescriptioKambriae, I, i, ii, vii et al.

^ 384. Salimbene di Adam, Cronica, I, 55, 129, 231, 239, 311 et al.

^ 385. Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis,I.

^ 386. Petrus Peregrinus Maricurtensis, De Magnete, Gustav Hellman (Ed.), Neudrücke von SchriftertundKartenüberMeteorologieundErdmagnetismus, X.

^ 387. Roger Bacon, Opus Tertium.

^ 388. Guibert de Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos, VII.

^ 389. Guibert de Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos, VII.

^ 390. Salimbene di Adam, Cronica, I, 508.

^ 391. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 16083 ff.

^ 392. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 17905 ff.

^ 393. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 18279 ff.

^ 394. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 18034 ff.

^ 395. Roger Bacon, Epístola de secretisoperibus, 551.

^ 396. Roger Bacon, Opus Tertium, 12.

^ 397. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 19505 ff; 16.780 ff.

^ 398. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 4403 ff.

^ 399. Frederick II, De arte venandi cum avibus,I, xxiii.

^ 400. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 19687 ff.

^ 401. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ‘Paradiso’, XXXIII, l. 145.

^ 402. Le Doctrinal Sauvage, in fine.

^ 403. I fioretti di San Francesco, XXVI.

^ 404. Saint Francis, Il canticodelsole.

^ 405. Pierre des Vaulx-de-Cernay, Historia Albigensis, VIII.

^ 406. Guillaume de Nangis, Chronicon, yr. 1210.

^ 407. Guilhem Pelhisso, Chronicon, cf. Célestin Douais, Sources de l’Inquisition dans le Midi de la France, 93.

^ 408. Raoul Glaber, Histoires, III, vi; Guibert de Nogent. De vita sua, II, v and III, xvii.

^ 409. Jaime I, Crónica, LXIX.

^ 410. Jean de Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, LI.

^ 411. Guillaume de Tyr, Historia rerum in partibus transmarinisgestarum, XIX, yr. 1163.

^ 412. Guillaume de Nangis, Chronicon, yr. 1196.

^ 413. Rigord, Chronique, yr. 1183.

^ 414. Salimbene di Adam, Cronica, I, 96.

^ 415. Salimbene di Adam,Cronica,II, 165 and 167.

^ 416. Dante Alighieri, Convivio, II, viii.

^ 417. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ‘Inferno’, X.