Introduction to Medieval

Europe 300–1500

Introduction to Medieval Europe 300–1500 provides a comprehensive survey of this complex and varied
formative period of European history, covering themes as diverse as barbarian migrations, the impact
of Christianisation, the formation of nations and states, the emergence of an expansionist commercial
economy, the growth of cities, the Crusades, the effects of plague, and the intellectual and cultural life
of the Middle Ages. The book explores the driving forces behind the formation of medieval society
and the directions in which it developed and changed. In doing this, the authors cover a wide geo-
graphic expanse, including Western interactions with the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic World.
This third edition contains a wealth of new features within the book and on the free-to-access
companion website that help to bring this fascinating era to life, including:

In the book:

■■ A number of new maps and images to further understanding the period

■■ Clear signposting and extended discussions of key topics such as feudalism and gender
■■ Expanded geographic coverage into Eastern Europe and the Middle East

On the companion website:

■■ An updated, comparative and interactive timeline, highlighting surprising synchronicities in

medieval history, and annotated links to useful websites
■■ A list of movies, television series and novels related to the Middle Ages, accompanied by intro-
ductions and commentaries
■■ Assignable discussion questions and the maps, plates, figures and tables from the book available
to download and use in the classroom

Clear and stimulating, the third edition of Introduction to Medieval Europe is the ideal companion to
studying Europe in the Middle Ages at undergraduate level.

Wim Blockmans is Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at the University of Leiden.

Peter Hoppenbrouwers is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Leiden.

Praise for previous editions

‘Introduction to Medieval Europe provides an excellent over- of materials and an extended treatment of the period
view into the fascinating world of the Middle Ages. It along sensible thematic and chronological lines, this
covers issues such as mentalities of men and women as well work will continue to reign among the leading intro-
as giving an insight into the world of medieval politics. ductory surveys on the medieval world.’
Included is a thought-provoking chapter on continuities Kriston Rennie, University of Queensland, Australia
which provides a new framework for the understanding of
a world distant to us both in time and place.’ ‘In the crowded field of historical surveys of medieval
Thomas Småberg, Malmö University, Sweden Europe, Blockmans and Hoppenbrouwers have man-
aged to produce something distinctive and original.
‘This is an extraordinarily wide-ranging introduction, Their book gives a clear, well-written overview of the
covering Europe in its broadest sense from the British political, social, economic and artistic developments
Isles to Turkey. It not only explains the political, intel- in these important centuries with helpful explanations
lectual and religious developments that occurred of technical terms and good suggested further reading.
between the late Roman period and the Reformation Eastern Europe is given full weight and thoughtful illus-
but it also gives an insight into what life must have trations give valuable insights into a culture more visual
been like for most people. An essential first port of call than literate. But more than this the authors demon-
for anyone wishing to understand the Middle Ages.’ strate why medieval Europeans deserve to be studied,
Jonathan Harris, Royal Holloway University, UK their influence on later times and different places, how
many of our own preoccupations derive from theirs.
‘The particular strength of this new edition of Introduction Blockmans and Hoppenbrouwers make the European
to Medieval Europe 300–1550 is the authors’ ability to Middle Ages not just fascinating, but relevant as well.’
trace the development and transformation over time of Andrew Roach, University of Glasgow, UK
large scale social, economic, and religious structures and
mentalities. How did pagans become Christians? How ‘This is a work that helps its reader to grasp the defining
did slaves and peasants become serfs? How did armed contours of medieval history, without being subjected
horsemen become knights? Few if any other textbooks to a whirlwind of narrative detail. It is refreshing in its
at this level can offer students such a sure guide along pan-European scope, bringing Lithuania to stand along-
the path to understanding how the outlines of medieval side France, and in its effective location of key issues in
society took shape.’ broader frameworks of change and continuity. Most of
Sean Field, University of Vermont, USA all, it treats the alterity of the Middle Ages on its own
terms – and explains just what it is that makes under-
‘This commendably clear and concise overview of the standing that fundamentally different world quite so
medieval period should be essential reading for all stu- interesting and worthwhile.’
dents coming to the subject for the first time. The coverage Stephen Mossman, University of Manchester, UK
of social, economic and intellectual themes is particularly
strong. Readers will appreciate the profusion of maps, ‘Blockmans and Hoppenbrouwers’ Introduction to Medieval
diagrams and other illustrations which buttress the text. Europe has established itself as the classic survey in English
Simon Barton, University of Exeter, UK on the Latin West in the Middle Ages. The second edition
is even more commendable: the book’s unique European
‘In their new edition on the Middle Ages, Blockmans perspective has been improved by situating the Latin
and Hoppenbrouwers offer a rich, accessible, and West within neighbouring cultures and suggesting new
valuable resource for students and lecturers of medi- ways of integrating European historiography. This is an
eval history alike. With its expanded list of tables, indispensable starting point for students, scholars and,
figures, illustrations, color maps, primary source boxes, indeed, for any audience that wishes to familiarise itself
and annotated bibliographies, this revised text is a with the essential European dimension of the history of
must-have for anyone interested in the formation of the Latin West between 300 and 1500.’
pre-modern Europe. Through a careful re-organization Martial Staub, University of Sheffield, UK
Introduction to
Medieval Europe
300–1500
Third Edition

Wim Blockmans and

Peter Hoppenbrouwers
Third edition published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Wim Blockmans and Peter Hoppenbrouwers
The right of Wim Blockmans and Peter Hoppenbrouwers to be identified
as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Prometheus in 2002 in the Dutch language as
Eeuwen des Onderscheids: Een geschiedenis van middeleeuws Europa
English translation, Introduction to Medieval Europe 300–1550 first
published in 2007 by Routledge
Second edition published by Routledge 2014
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN: 978-1-138-21438-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-21439-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-10455-3 (ebk)

Typeset in Stone Serif

by Keystroke, Neville Lodge, Tettenhall, Wolverhampton

Visit the companion website at

www.routledge.com/cw/blockmans
Contents

List of illustrations ix The survival of the Roman Empire in

List of boxes xiii the East 43
Illustration acknowledgements xv Points to remember 48
Suggestions for further reading 49
Introduction 1
The Middle Ages as a period in 2 The establishment of two world
European history 1 religions: Christianity and Islam 50
From scarcity to hegemony 7 The Christian Church in the transition
Medievalism 9 from Antiquity to the Middle Ages 50
The book’s arrangement 11 The relationship between emperor
and pope 54
Material wealth, accumulation and
Part I: The early Middle Ages,
distribution 55
300–1000 13
Church organisation 57
1 The end of the Roman Empire Monasticism 62
in the West 15 Orthodoxy and heterodoxy 64
Governing an empire 17 Saints and miracles 69
Taxation and fiscal policy 21 Spreading the faith 71
The Roman army and the frontier 22 The Arab conquests and the
Economic structure and prosperity 23 establishment of Islam 80
The barbarian world of the North 24 Points to remember 86
The collapse of the Roman order in Suggestions for further reading 86
the West 28
The later Migration Period 33 3 The powerful and the poor:
Migrations and ethnogenesis 34 society and economy in the
The barbarian kingdoms in the West 35 Frankish kingdoms and beyond 88
Balance: the end of Roman Warlords and landlords 89
civilisation? 41 Trade and gift-exchange 99

v
 CONTE NT S

Early medieval politics: the Carolingian Points to remember 257

core 104 Suggestions for further reading 257
Dynamic peripheries 117
Points to remember 124 8 Thinking about man and the
Suggestions for further reading 125 world 259
The medieval view of the world and
mankind 259
Part II: The central Middle Ages,
The higher education programme of
1000–1300 127
Late Antiquity and its survival in the
4 Early kingdoms and early Middle Ages 269
principalities 129 The formation of universities 279
Charlemagne’s legacy 129 The humanism of the late Middle Ages 291
The making of England 147 Points to remember 297
Iberia 153 Suggestions for further reading 298
The institutionalisation of the state 157
Points to remember 163 9 Towns and the urbanisation of
Suggestions for further reading 163 medieval society 299
The phenomenon of the pre-industrial
5 Accelerated growth 164 town 299
Population growth 164 The beginnings of urban society 304
Volume and nature of agricultural Autonomy and liberty 306
production 165 Urban society and economy in the later
New types of local lordship 169 Middle Ages 319
Knights and peasants: image and reality 178 Points to remember 325
Points to remember 187 Suggestions for further reading 325
Suggestions for further reading 188

Part IV: The late Middle Ages,

6 Religious reform and renewal 189
1300–1500 327
Aspirations to reform 189
The papal monarchy 196 10 Between crisis and contraction:
Reformation and renewal in monastic population, economy and society 329
life 198 War, famine and pestilence 329
The faithful become visible 206 Demographic decline and economic
Points to remember 216 development 337
Suggestions for further reading 217 Characteristics of late medieval society 343
Social contrasts and social conflicts 348
Points to remember 357
Part III: Expansion and maturation,
Suggestions for further reading 357
1000–1500 219
7 The beginnings of European 11 The consolidation of states 359
expansion 221 From suzerainty to sovereignty 359
The West becomes more aggressive 221 The course of events 362
Clashes of civilisations: crusaders, Driving forces in the formation of
Muslims and Mongols 223 states 381
Take-off to a commercial revolution 237 State institutions and social order 385

vi
 C ONTE NTS

Points to remember 398 Epilogue 423

Suggestions for further reading 398 Acceleration 424
The medieval roots of modern culture 427
12 Crisis in the Church and the
reorientation of the faithful 399
Timeline 432
Who leads Christendom? 399
Glossary 443
The popes in Avignon and the
Bibliography of secondary literature 450
bureaucratisation of the Curia 405
Index 475
The Great Schism and the conciliar
movement 406
Religious life 407
Points to remember 420
Suggestions for further reading 421

vii
Illustrations

Plates 6.3 St Francis supports the Church:

fresco by Giotto 204
0.1 The oldest known independent map 7.1 Depiction of the cruel habits of Tartars
of Europe, from around 1121 6 in a western chronicle 223
1.1 Statue of the tetrarchs, 300–315 ce 15 7.2 The fortress of Krak des Chevaliers,
1.2 Detail from the Peutinger Table 16 Syria 229
1.3 Seigneur Julius mosaic 22 7.3 Earthenware representing travellers
1.4 Arles arena, sixteenth century 42 on the Silk Road 243
2.1 Book of Kells 64 7.4 The drapery market at Bologna in the
2.2 Augustin, The Two Cities 66 fifteenth century 254
3.1 The symbolic sealing of a contract 8.1 Mappa mundi 260
between king and vassal 114 8.2 Title page of Margarita Philosophica 274
3.2 Viking burial ship 120 8.3 Astronomical clock 295
3.3 Moorish stronghold and city walls, 9.1 Ypres drapers’ hall and belfry 307
Obidos, Portugal 122 9.2 Good Government, City Hall, Siena 312
4.1 Silvester, bishop of Rome, baptises 9.3 Towers in San Gimignano, Tuscany 313
Emperor Constantine 139 9.4 Venice as the largest and wealthiest
4.2 Harold swears his oath as successor medieval metropolis 317
to Edward the Confessor, Bayeux 10.1 Mural painting depicting the danse
Tapestry 147 macabre 337
4.3 The murder of Thomas Becket 150 10.2 Rebel peasants 350
4.4 The castle of Montsó 155 10.3 Distribution of bread to the poor 355
5.1 Enamelled altar showing the parable 11.1 James I, count of Barcelona and king
of the vineyard 171 of Aragon, oversees justice 385
5.2 Girding on a knight’s sword 179 11.2 Ceremonial session of the two Houses
6.1 The abbey of Cluny 199 of Parliament in 1523 395
6.2 The forge at the abbey of Fontenay, 12.1 Statue of Pope Boniface VIII 400
Burgundy 201 12.2 Altarpiece by Rogier van der Weyden 403

ix
 ILLUSTRAT IONS

12.3 The Well of Life 410

Tables
12.4 Episodes from the lives of hermits, Fra
Angelico 412 9.1 Estimated population of Europe,
12.5 Purgatory 414 in millions 300
12.6 A view of hell, fresco, Orvieto 9.2 Urban population by size of towns 300
cathedral 419 9.3 Division of occupations in Florence,
Pisa and the small towns of Tuscany 320
10.1 Stratification of the nobility in
Unnumbered plates England according to income tax
demands in 1436 344
Suevi skull 26 11.1 State expenditure, c.1500 397
Ivory diptych at Monza 30
Sutton Hoo 73
Jelling rune stones 79 Maps
Jelling site reconstruction 79
Burial with master and slave from 1.1 The late Roman Empire, c.350 ce 20
Stengrade, Denmark 96 1.2 Major movements of militarised
Lord of rings: three gold bracteates 103 barbarian groups around 400 ce 32
Reliquary depicting Charlemagne 1.3 Barbarian kingdoms in the West,
conquering Pamplona from Santiago c.525 ce 37
de Compostela 123 1.4 The Byzantine Empire, c.700 and
Altar frontal, Nidaros cathedral, Norway 158 c.1025 48
Medieval ploughs 166 2.1 The beginnings of the Papal State,
Man with wounds 265 700–800 56
The Triumph of Death 332 2.2 The rise of the Arab Empire, 632–733 81
Christine de Pizan writing in her study 347 3.1 Charlemagne’s empire 109
Karlstein Castle, Czech Republic, exterior 368 3.2 Tripartition of Charlemagne’s empire
at the Treaty of Verdun, 843 117
3.3 Anglo-Saxon England, c.800 119
Figures 4.1 The (German) Roman Empire, 1030 131
4.2 The kingdom of France in the year
3.1 Non-commercial transactions in the 1000 143
early Middle Ages through reciprocity 4.3 The Angevin Empire, 1150–1200 146
and redistribution 100 4.4 The Reconquista (Reconquest) in the
3.2 Family tree of the Carolingian dynasty 107 thirteenth century 156
4.1 Family tree of the emperors and kings 5.1 Possessions of the lordship of Talmont
of the (German) Roman Empire 132 (Poitou) 177
4.2 Kings of France, 987–1285 145 6.1 Density of houses of mendicant
4.3 Kings of England, 1066–1272 148 orders (Franciscans and Dominicans)
7.1 Deficits on the balance of payments in about 1300 205
between European regions in the 7.1 The empires of the Fatimids and the
fourteenth century 254 Seljuk Turks after 1071 225
11.1 Kings of France, 1285–1547 362 7.2 Crusader states in about 1150 228
11.2 Kings of England, 1272–1547 366 7.3 The Mamluk Sultanate, 1250–1517, and
11.3 Kings of Germany, 1273–1531 366 the Mongol Il-Khanate, 1256–1335 240

x
 I L L U STR ATI ONS

7.4 The Mongol khanates, 1256– 11.1 The kingdom of France in the second
fourteenth century 240 stage of the Hundred Years War, 1428 364
7.5 Fair cycles in north-western Europe in 11.2 Territorial basis of the main princely
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries 248 houses in the Holy Roman Empire in
8.1 European universities in the late the fourteenth century 365
Middle Ages 283 11.3 Eastern Europe around 1450 373
10.1 The spread of the Black Death 334 11.4 The Byzantine Empire, 1350 378
10.2 Lost villages 339 11.5 The rise of the Ottoman Empire 379

xi
Boxes

1.1 Hairstyle as an ethnic marker? 6.2 Hundreds of exemplary stories 212

The Suevian knot 26 7.1 Legal protection of foreign traders 231
1.2 A Vandal saves Rome: Flavius Stilicho 7.2 Cultural exchanges 234
(c.365–408) 30 7.3 A Florentine merchant’s manual 243
1.3 Roman law 45 8.1 Advances in medicine? Human
2.1 Constantine: the careful construction dissection and surgery in the Middle
of image 52 Ages 263
2.2 Conversion as a double insurance 73 8.2 Religious restraints on scientific
2.3 A pagan shrine supplanted: from vé to progress 267
church in Jelling 78 8.3 ‘This is my body’: learned discussion
3.1 Master and slave even until death 96 about transubstantiation in the
3.2 Lords of rings 103 Eucharist 276
3.3 Brunhild 105 8.4 Making sense of the world through
3.4 St James of Compostela 123 concepts: logic, metaphysics and the
4.1 Popular sovereignty in Flanders in status of universals 278
the year 1128 144 9.1 The ‘peace’ of Valenciennes 308
4.2 The king and the law in the Magna 10.1 The Triumph of Death 332
Carta, 1215 152 10.2 A woman fights back with the pen:
4.3 A cathedral for a royal saint 158 the life and works of Christine de
5.1 The medieval plough 166 Pizan (1364–c.1430) 347
5.2 The Lordship of Talmont in the 11.1 Charles IV, a cultured emperor 368
County of Poitou 177 12.1 Indulgences and the indulgence trade 417
6.1 The Donatio Constantini 193

xiii
Illustration
acknowledgements

Plates 4.1 Silvester, bishop of Rome, baptises

Emperor Constantine. © The Art Archive/
1.1 Statue of the Tetrarchs, 300–315 ce. Alamy.
© 2013 Photo Scala, Florence. 4.2 Harold swears his oath as successor to
1.2 Detail from the Peutinger Table. Edward the Confessor, Bayeux Tapestry.
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. © akg-images/Erich Lessing.
324, Segm. IV. 4.3 Murder of Thomas Becket. © The British
1.3 Seigneur Julius mosaic. © 2013 DeAgostini Library Board.
Picture Library/Scala, Florence. 4.4 The castle of Montsó. © imagebroker/
1.4 Arles arena, sixteenth century. © 2013 Alamy.
Photo The Print Collector/Heritage- 5.1 Enamelled altar showing the parable
Images/Scala, Florence. of the vineyard. © 2013 Photo Scala,
2.1 Book of Kells. © The Board of Trinity Florence – courtesy of the Ministero
College, Dublin, Ireland/The Bridgeman Beni e Att. Culturali.
Art Library. 5.2 Girding on a knight’s sword. © The British
2.2 Augustin, La Cité de Dieu. © Museum Library Board.
Meermanno. 6.1 The abbey of Cluny. Photo © Tallandier/
3.1 The symbolic sealing of a contract Bridgeman Images.
between king and vassal. Archives Départ. 6.2 The forge at the abbey of Fontenay,
Des Pyrénées-Orientales, Perpignan, Burgundy. © Ian Dagnall/Alamy.
France/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art 6.3 St Francis supports the Church: fresco by
Library. Giotto. © 2013 Photo Scala, Florence.
3.2 Viking burial ship. © Werner Forman 7.1 Depiction of the cruel habits of Tartars
Archive/Viking Ship Museum, in a Western chronicle. © Master and
Bygdoy. Fellows of Corpus Christi College,
3.3 Moorish stronghold and city walls, Cambridge.
Obidos, Portugal. © Photolocation 3/ 7.2 The fortress Krak des Chevaliers, Syria.
Alamy. © Grzegorz Japol – Fotolia.com.

xv
 ILLUSTRAT ION A C KNO WLEDGEMENT S

7.3 Earthenware representing travellers on the 12.2 Altarpiece by Rogier van der Weyden.
Silk Road. © Images & Stories/Alamy. Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten,
7.4 The drapery market at Bologna in the Antwerp, Belgium. © Lukas – Art in
fifteenth century. © Roger-Viollet/Topfoto. Flanders VZW / Photo: Hugo Maertens/
8.1 Mappa mundi, Hereford cathedral. Bridgeman Images.
© akgimages/North Wind Picture 12.3 Well of Life. Narodni Galerie, Prague,
Archives. Czech Republic/Photo. © Tarker/
8.2 Title page of Margarita Philosophica. Bridgeman Images.
© akgimages. 12.4 Episodes from the lives of hermits, Fra
8.3 Astronomical clock. © De Agostini Picture Angelico. © 2013 The Museum of Fine
Library/A. Dagli Orti/The Bridgeman Art Arts, Budapest/Scala, Florence.
Library. 12.5 Purgatory. © Musée Condé, Chantilly,
9.1 Ypres drapers’ hall and belfry. France/The Bridgeman Art Library.
© incamerastock/Alamy. 12.6 A view of hell, fresco, Orvieto cathedral.
9.2 Fresco from the meeting room of the © Alessandro Vinnini/Corbis via Getty
Council of Nine Governors, Siena. © 2013 Images.
Photo Scala, Florence.
9.3 Towers in San Gimignano, Tuscany.
© bluejayphoto/iStock. Unnumbered plates
9.4 Venice as the largest and wealthiest
medieval metropolis. Venice 1565, by Suevi skull. © Stiftung Schleswig-Holsteinische
Bolognino Zaltieri. akg-images/ullstein Landesmuseen Schloss Gottorf, Schleswig.
bild.
Ivory diptych at Monza. © 2013 White Images/
10.1 Mural painting depicting the danse maca-
Scala, Florence.
bre. © Artaud Frère, Rue de la Métallurgie,
44470 Carquefou- Nantes, France. Yvan Sutton Hoo. © The Trustees of the British
Travert/akg-images. Museum.
10.2 Rebel peasants. © Private Collection/ a. Jelling rune stones. © Tim Graham/Getty Images.
Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman Art
Library. b. Jelling site reconstruction adapted from and
10.3 Distribution of bread to the poor. © 2013 by courtesy of Archaeologist Mads Dengsø Jessen
DeAgostini Picture Library/Scala, Florence. and Archaeologist Peter Jensen (3D Repository)
11.1 Jaume I, count of Barcelona and king of Reconstruction and JP Graphics: Gert Gram.
Aragon, oversees justice. © The J. Paul Burial with master and slave from Stengrade,
Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Ms Ludwig Denmark, from p. 55, The Vikings, Else Roesdahl,
XIV 6 fol. 72v. translated by Susan M. Margeson and Kirsten
11.2 Ceremonial session of the two Houses of Williams, Allen Lane, Penguin Books 1992.
Parliament in 1523. The Royal Collection. © Else Roesdahl 1987. This translation © Susan
© 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II/ M. Margeson and Kirsten Williams, 1991.
The Bridgeman Art Library.
Lord of rings: three gold bracteates. © National
12.1 Statue of Pope Boniface VIII, c.1300
Museum of Denmark.
on show on the façade of the Palazzo
Pubblico of Bologna, Museo Civico Reliquary depicting Charlemagne conquering
Medievale. © Museo Civico Medievale, Pamplona from Santiago de Compostela. © 2013
Bologna, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. DeAgostini Picture Library/Scala, Florence.

xvi
 I L L U STR ATI ON A C K NOWL E DGE ME NTS

Altar frontal, Nidaros cathedral, Norway. © akgimages/ The Triumph of Death © The Dictionary of Art,
Interfoto. 34 vols, Oxford: OUP, 2003.

Medieval ploughs. © Musée de la Tapisserie, Bayeux, Christine de Pizan writing in her study, Oeuvres
France/With special authorisation of the city of offered to Queen Isabeau in 1407, London, British
Bayeux/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library. Library. © The British Library Board.

Man with wounds from the surgical manual, Karlstein Castle, exterior. © Siloto/Alamy.
Surgical Treatment for Blows, Stab and Gunshot

Wounds. From Shipperges, p. 115. Wellcome Library,

London.

xvii
 Introduction

The Middle Ages as a period ■■ the Christian religion informed practically

every aspect of daily life
in European history ■■ most people did not have any formal educa-
Try to imagine a world in which: tion, and probably could not even read or write.

■■ population density at its highest level was Welcome to the Middle Ages! The Middle Ages are
less than that of present-day Russia, without not just any part of world history taking place in
the latter’s infrastructure any part of the globe. According to long-accepted
■■ medical knowledge was appalling, which agreement among historians, taken over in stand-
meant that most people died young and had ard university curricula and standard textbooks
to live with serious physical suffering all over the world, the Middle Ages are a period
■■ people, consequently, lived under a demo- in Europe’s past that roughly covers the millen-
graphic ‘high-pressure’ regime, which means nium between 500 and 1500 ce. Nowadays, the
that only by maximising fertility they were term ‘medieval’, with ‘feudal’ used as a regular
able to keep ahead of mortality alternative, often represents something backward
■■ there was an abundance of young people and barbaric, which then is contrasted with more
■■ infrastructure (roads, bridges) and means of splendid cultures that preceded and followed the
transportation were of poor quality, hence, Middle Ages. Where did such ideas come from?
few people ever travelled far – hence, geo-
graphical scope and mental outlook of most
people were narrow The terms ‘Middle Ages’,
■■ economic production was overwhelmingly ‘humanism’ and ‘Renaissance’
agricultural, hence, most people were peasants
who lived in small villages In fourteenth-century Italy, poets and scholars
■■ technological development and mechanisa- who considered themselves humanists, that is,
tion of human labour were very limited lovers of Greek and Roman Antiquity, for the

1
 INTR ODU C T IO N

first time expressed the belief that they were at From the seventeenth century onwards, there
the threshold of a new era of intellectual bril- was a renewed interest in the medieval period in
liance that would stand out sharply against the Catholic countries, in particular, and there were
darkness of preceding centuries. The term tene- even specific institutes founded to study the
brae (‘darkness’) came from the pen of Francesco Middle Ages. By contrast, in most of the Protestant
Petrarca (Petrarch) (1304–1374), the famous world, the Middle Ages were rather disregarded
poet who spoke of the interim period between as an academic subject, so that emphasis instead
classical Antiquity and his own time as media could be placed on all the good that had been
tempestas, media aetas, media tempora (‘the period achieved since the Reformation. The religious
in-between’) – all terms with a decidedly negative divisions between intellectuals from the early
connotation. For intellectuals after Petrarch, this modern ages thus perpetuated for ideological rea-
‘middle period’ was nothing but an unfortunate sons the dividing line in history that humanists
intermezzo that was on the verge of finally turn- had drawn primarily on the basis of cultural-
ing into a new golden age, inspired by classical historical (literary, artistic) considerations.
culture. The expression medium aevum (‘Middle In the course of the nineteenth century,
Age’) was given official status much later, in 1678 historical studies developed into a scholarly
to be precise, when Lord Du Cange published discipline. As more university professorships
his two-volume Glossarium of Latin words used were introduced which continued accepting the
in that period that deviated from their classical humanist dividing line just discussed, newly
meaning. Several decades later the German pro- founded learned societies and professional jour-
fessor of history Kristoph Keller (Christophorus nals followed, and medieval history developed
Cellarius) presented the first academic textbook into a distinctive historical specialism, with its
on the history of the Middle Ages under the title own research agenda and its own methodol-
Historia Medii Aevi (‘History of the Middle Age’). ogy. Sometimes they were supported by national
It covered the period from Emperor Constantine governments with national agendas. The awe-
the Great (306–337) to the Fall of Constantinople inspiring source text edition project known as
(1453). Soon, this became generally accepted the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (‘Monuments
practice in university courses on history. of German History’), still very much alive, was a
Since ‘Middle Ages’ is a humanist construct, co-initiative of Freiherr Vom Stein (1757–1831),
the success of the concept is no doubt connected a Prussian state minister in the confused years
to the strong development of the system of Latin of the Napoleonic wars. Initially, the aim of his
schools and grammar schools for secondary edu- private academic enterprise was to find support
cation. This was where humanistic ideas fully in the Germanic medieval past for the German
came into their own, since the study of the clas- nobility’s political importance, but soon after
sical languages, Latin and Greek, formed the basis Stein’s death the revived Prussian state started to
of the curriculum. It was hoped that through the fund the Monumenta, with different ideological
study of the biographies of famous men and of intentions in mind. The sources of medieval his-
the history of ancient culture, including poetry tory should disclose the original character and
and rhetoric, new generations would be elevated rationale of the German nation, destined to be
to the idealised image of the heroes of Antiquity. restored in all its glory (under Prussian leadership,
Besides, until well into the nineteenth century, of course). An equally ambitious, state-sponsored
Latin remained the language of university educa- project, although with a less overtly nationalist
tion, so that every intellectual was immersed in objective, was the Rolls Series, initiated in the
the bath of Antiquity by an active knowledge of 1850s. It was aimed at publishing new, schol-
its most important cultural carrier. arly reliable editions of all ‘the chronicles and

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memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during about Italian culture in the late Middle Ages –
the Middle Ages’. the increased appreciation for individual human
In consolidating this situation, in which achievement – to a key element in the process
medieval history had carved out a field for itself, of revolutionary change that he detected. Since,
Jacob Burckhardt’s Die Kultur der Renaissance in Burckhardt’s view has been criticised and quali-
Italien (‘The Civilisation of the Renaissance in fied from various angles. According to The Dutch
Italy’) played a key role. The phenomenal suc- historian Johan Huizinga, in his Waning of the
cess of this book, which appeared in 1860, can be Middle Ages (1919), the courtly culture of the Low
explained by the elegance with which the author Countries and northern France in the fifteenth
re-formulated the historical myth imposed upon century revealed a nostalgia for the more recent
everyone who had enjoyed more than just an past, rather than an aversion to it, or than a nos-
elementary education: the myth that a few gen- talgia that reached back to classical Antiquity – the
erations of Italian intellectuals and artists had nostalgia that pervaded the Italian Renaissance.
– through a truly cultural revolution – freed Other critics pointed to a number of ‘renaissances
Europe from the stifling bonds of a society that before the Renaissance’ that had similar human-
was all oriented towards collectivity and in ist features as the Italian Renaissance. The most
which every aspect of life on earth was focused important were the Carolingian Renaissance and
on life after death. ‘Renaissance’ literally means the twelfth-century Renaissance.
‘rebirth’, and that rebirth refers to the restoration As for the religious Reformation of the first half
of ancient ideas and ideals as these were evoked of the sixteenth century, the other main marker
in imitations of classical literature or of (suppos- of the early modern age, we shall demonstrate
edly) classical forms and models in buildings, that from a theological and institutional point of
paintings and sculptures. Actually, the first one view, it did almost naturally follow from a long
to use the term Renaissance in that sense, the series of reform movements that began in the
Florentine painter and architect Giorgio Vasari eleventh century. Its defining function is thus as
(1511–1574), explicitly indicated his visionary debatable as that of the terms ‘Renaissance’ and
predecessor, Giotto di Bondone (c.1267–1337) as ‘humanism’. Nevertheless, the educational estab-
the uncontested harbinger of this classicist move- lishment in Protestant countries subsequently
ment. Compared with the loaded concept of promoted the Middle Ages in stark contrast to
‘Renaissance’, ‘humanism’ seems more neutral later times, in order to stress its singularity.
and therefore easier to deal with. Strictly speak-
ing, humanism refers to a philological procedure
consisting of two parts: on the one hand, of The Middle Ages: continuity
attempts to unearth more ancient texts by inten- and change; sub-periodisation;
sive research in libraries; and on the other hand, types of medieval societies
of philological efforts to establish a version of
those texts that resembles the original as closely Now that we know where the term ‘Middle Ages’
as possible. In addition to this, however, human- comes from, and why it has remained in use in
ism, as its name betrays, has a more general and history books and history lessons, the question
certainly vaguer meaning – that of an intellectual arises whether there is any point in continuing
search more focused on the ‘human factor’ and of to use it other than for didactic convenience. Are
greater interest in the human individual and his we still convinced that the changes that took
intentions and emotions. place in European society in the decades around
Burckhardt concentrated chiefly on this second 1500 were fundamental enough to justify a fun-
meaning and elevated one subjective observation damental fault line in history? In the 1970s there

3
 INTR ODU C T IO N

was a tendency to answer that question in the Besides, static features are not making history;
negative by pointing out that the basic economic history by definition is a process of continuity and
and social realities, including most people’s liv- change in time. What changes within the chrono-
ing conditions, did not alter substantially before logical boundaries of the Middle Ages have been
the Industrial Revolution, as sustained economic so fundamental that all aspects of society were
growth remained out of reach. But the logical affected by them? Among such transformations
conclusion to carve out a new era in history, the we mention the following:
Pre-industrial Age, encompassing the centuries
between 1000 and 1800, somehow never made ■■ the weakening and disappearance of the
it, maybe because of an unwillingness to accept Roman Empire in the West, with its central-
economic processes as the principal determining ised imperial bureaucracy, its homogenous
factor in history. Neither did attempts at spreading administrative structure centred on civitates,
out late Antiquity over the fifth to ninth centuries and its subordinate system of production
as a long-winded Transformation of the Roman and distribution
World. Most specialists stick to the idea that indis- ■■ the constitution of Christendom as the
putable continuities, especially in the East where overriding religious and ideological super-
the Roman Empire formally continued to exist structure of European society
until 1453, were more than adequately counter- ■■ relatively large-scale migrations of multi-
balanced by sweeping changes in the social and ethnic barbarian groups, followed by the
economic order as well as in politics and religious formation of proto-national ‘regnal commu-
culture to justify the start of a new historical era. nities’ (Reynolds) within the former frontiers
So, in a way, the Middle Ages have made a of the western Roman Empire
come back in professional history. It was accom- ■■ enlargement of agricultural production within
panied by new research, clearly inspired by social the framework of various types of aristocratic
anthropology and cultural history, to redefine the large landownership, which preconditioned
individual, distinctive character of the medieval long-term population growth and urbanisation
period. At the same time it has remained impor- on a wide scale, supported by commercialisa-
tant to stress how much modern Europe owes tion and economic expansion, partly along
to its medieval past. So many institutions and capitalist lines
ideas that are generally regarded as essential to ■■ the development of regular long-distance
both the structure of modern European societies overseas trade reaching out to North Africa
and the mental outlook of European people go and Asia
back to the formative centuries before 1500 – ■■ the virtual disappearance of slavery of
think of parliaments, corporations, universities, Christians in Christian society, and other
local communal self-government, the separation forms of unfree personal status in the most
of secular state and organised religion, and capi- urbanised regions, which
talist enterprise. In our book we have tried to do ■■ allowed the emergence of the commoner,
justice to both viewpoints: on the one hand, to the ordinary free man in possession of basic
accentuate the medieval world’s otherness and rights in towns, villages and states, the cor-
singularity; on the other hand, to describe that nerstone of late medieval society in the West
same world as our ancestors’ time-space, while ■■ the evolution of dynastic monarchies based
avoiding teleological fallacy – the world in which on personal bounds into a wide variety of
we live and the life that we cherish were not pre- institutionalised states
destined by its medieval past; but it would have ■■ the rationalisation and partial secularisation
looked quite different. of the world view and the view of mankind

4
 INTR ODU C TI ON

■■ the development of an individualised spir- With the current trend towards globalisation it
ituality, also among the great masses of the is not easy for us to realise that until the eight-
faithful eenth century the horizon of most Europeans did
■■ successive revolutionary changes in written not extend beyond the place where they lived or
communication in the twelfth and fifteenth the region where they were born. This does not
centuries. mean that nobody ever travelled, or that there
was no mobility, or that there were no large-scale
We agree with the defenders of the concept of migrations; it was just that these were relatively
pre-industrial societies that after the sixteenth uncommon. Normally, people remained for the
century until the Industrial Revolution there most part tied to a particular area; this naturally
were quantitative but not qualitative changes in resulted in considerable differences in economic
these transformations. The distinction between development and cultural outlook.
the late Middle Ages and early modern history Major coordinating intellectual, constitutional
does not rest on fundamental differences accord- or religious constructions, such as the Church,
ing to type of society nor on radical breaks in kingship and state, with which we are nowa-
social developments. Major processes, such as days familiar, or which a highly developed elite
urbanisation and the secularisation of the world devised at the time, were far removed from eve-
view, ran a continuous course from the eleventh ryday experience at the local and regional level.
century to the end of the Ancien Régime, or even This was certainly a hindrance to the efforts at
until now. Much of what is new, ‘modern’, in the unification made by the higher political authori-
Early Modern Period goes back to the later Middle ties. For us as historians, the same local diversity
Ages. and changeability make it extremely problematic
In short: in this book we use the term ‘Middle to write a comprehensive cultural history of the
Ages’ both for pragmatic reasons and because Middle Ages that would cover all of Europe over
we think it has intrinsic merit in the sense that more than a thousand years. This has not pre-
the millennium between 500 and 1500 contains vented us, however, from clarifying important
enough distinctive and interesting processes of cultural phenomena in the successive politi-
historical change to set it off against the period cal, socio-economic and religious chapters that
that preceded it and against the period that are the backbone of this book. In that respect,
followed. culture, in its broadest sense of those variegated
channels through which people give symbolic
meaning to existence, has been provided for.
Cultural diversity
Europe’s geographical variety and its relative lack Which Europe?
of large open plains is a natural phenomenon
that has most certainly contributed to the long As we mentioned in the beginning, the histori-
survival of widely differing cultural niches. Even cal term ‘Middle Ages’ by definition only has
in the twentieth century, despite the strongly meaning in a European context, so there is no
homogenising effects of Church and state insti- point in accusing medievalists of a Eurocentric
tutions, the transport revolution and the mass bias. Neither are we enthusiastic about the idea
media, we can identify a multitude of regional – often enough aired – to export the medieval
cultures that are apparent in their own organisa- label to areas outside Europe (‘medieval China’,
tion of material life, in their own customs and ‘medieval Islam’). Yet we also have to admit that
concepts, and in their own languages or dialects. the geographically defined continent of Europe

5
 INTR ODU C T IO N

PLATE 0.1 The oldest known independent map of Europe, drawn around 1121 by Lambert, canon in Saint-
Omer, in his richly illustrated encyclopaedia Liber Floridus. Europe is seen as a quarter of the world. According
to classical, Mappa Mundi representation the upper half of the inhabited world was taken in by Asia; the fourth
quarter by the third continent, Africa. The Danube, the Rhine and the Rhône can be distinguished, as well as
the Alps and the Pyrenees as boundaries to the Italian and Iberian peninsulas; Rome is marked with a cross
on a major building. Empirical data are ordered within an overall idealistic world view, from the Huns and
Germanic peoples top left, to Greece, Germany and Gaul, all with their regions.

6
 INTR ODU C TI ON

does not provide in all respects the most appro- would emulate with greater success, though with
priate spatial framework for our considerations. resources not much technically improved, 201
For the clerical literate elite in the medieval years later.
period itself the demarcation of their world lay A comparable expansive core lay at the other
naturally at the frontiers of Christendom, which extreme of the continent – that of the Vikings.
had run over to Asia and Africa. At the same time, The lead that early medieval Scandinavia had
even in the fourteenth century the Christian mis- acquired in a number of respects compared
sion had not yet reached all the lands that make to eastern and north-west Europe resulted in
part of the European continent. It means that we remarkable journeys of discovery to all corners
shall have to assume expansive core areas which of the world, in commercial ties with Byzantium
in some way or other asserted their superiority, and central Asia, and in the settlement of its
often through conquest but also through peace- people in Iceland, Greenland, North America,
ful cultural transfer. It also means that those core Russia, Britain, Ireland and Normandy. From the
areas will get more attention than the (shrinking) eleventh century, however, the expansion stag-
peripheries. nated. Its demographic potential was apparently
Seen from this perspective there can be no exhausted, and its technical advantage had been
doubt about the head start enjoyed by the matched. The northern (and later Norman) ele-
Mediterranean world. Even after the decline of ments were assimilated into the diverse receiving
the Roman Empire, the losses caused by the bar- cultures without leaving any dominant trace.
barian invasions and the disruption that may at By contrast, the Mediterranean expansion that,
first have been created by the Arab conquests, viewed economically, continued until the six-
there was still considerably more wealth and teenth century shows that it was based on far
potential for development available in southern firmer foundations.
Europe than in the north. These were nourished The Europe that we shall study, therefore, cor-
by the sustained economic and cultural exchanges responds only partially with the geographical
that were springing up between Christians and concept of the continent. On the one hand we see
Muslims in the Middle East, Iberia, Sicily and large areas on its western, northern and, in partic-
southern Italy. By presenting the Mediterranean ular, eastern peripheries that were only late and
area as an economic and cultural zone of con- superficially integrated into the developments in
tact and transit we prevent medieval Europe from the south and west (Christianisation, expansion
turning in on itself, so to speak. and intensification of agriculture, commerciali-
From the thirteenth century onwards more sation, urban growth, consolidation of states).
and more Europeans crossed the frontiers of the On the other hand, we can not entirely under-
continent of Europe. Overland journeys were stand the dynamism emanating from southern
made all over Asia to examine the possibilities Europe without seeing it in relation to relatively
for direct commercial links with China and India advanced regions outside Europe, especially in
and, of course, for the further propagation of the North Africa, the Middle East and central Asia.
Catholic faith. In 1291 two Genoese brothers by
the melodious name of Vivaldi sailed through the
Straits of Gibraltar, ‘westwards to India’. It is not From scarcity to hegemony
known whether they found America, or indeed
any other part of the world, for nothing more was No clairvoyant making a prediction in 1400 about
heard of them. But their brave initiative sprang which part of the world would dominate in the
from a tremendous drive for expansion, which future would ever have mentioned Europe. The
their fellow townsman, Christopher Columbus, continent had just lost one-third of its population

7
 INTR ODU C T IO N

through a succession of plague epidemics, its reli- goods were established in foreign ports. If there
gious leaders were involved in painful schisms, were ever to be a dominant world power it would
the Ottoman Turks were trampling over the have to be China – that is what any sensible per-
remains of the Byzantine Empire in the Balkans, son must have thought in 1400. Yet things turned
the kings in the West were at war with each other out differently: eventually, between 1000 and
and exhausting their resources, and peasants and 1900, Europe moved from its backward position
townspeople were rising up in great numbers to the forefront.
against the lords who oppressed them. In what way was Europe different from its emi-
The clairvoyant would more probably have nent precursors? The distinction lies in the strong
named the Turkic-Mongol conqueror Timur the drive for expansion to other parts of the world.
Lame, Tamerlane, as the future world leader. First and foremost, Europe gained an essential
In the preceding years, Timur had established technical advantage over the rest of the world in
his iron authority over the enormous region the fourteenth century through the development
stretching from the Caucasus to the Indus. He of firearms. Advances in shipbuilding and naviga-
had conquered great cities like Baghdad, Edessa, tional techniques brought possibilities of sailing
Isphahan, Ankara, Aleppo, Damascus and Delhi. the oceans on an unprecedented scale. The key
Perhaps our clairvoyant would have foretold the question, then, is how this technical lead was
sudden death of this despot in 1405, after he had managed once it had been achieved.
set his eyes on China. The seer may well have con- The most important difference between
sidered the flourishing dynasties in the Muslim Europe, China and all the other highly developed
sultanates of Granada, Egypt and Tunis, but he regions of the world lies in the fact that there was
would have hesitated, for they were quarrelling no unitary authoritative structure in Europe. At
among themselves and were thus not very stable, the beginning of the fifteenth century Chinese
despite the glories of their courts and mosques. voyages of discovery along the coast of East Africa
He might have expected the Ottoman power could easily have meant that not Vasco da Gama
to expand further into the Balkans and central but a Chinese admiral, Zheng He, had by 1435
Europe, and to conquer Syria and Egypt, but in already sailed round the Cape of Good Hope.
his days all this was still speculative. But in 1434 the Chinese imperial court decreed
In the end, however, he must have chosen for that no more exploratory expeditions should
the Chinese Empire, consolidated as an adminis- be undertaken. The capital of the Ming dynasty
trative structure since the second century bce. Did it had just been moved to Beijing so that the threat
not encompass an area as large as western Europe, from the Mongols in the north could be better
cities with several hundred thousand inhabit- resisted. The capital’s food supply was ensured by
ants, a very productive agriculture and a highly the completion of the Grand Canal, some 1,500
developed administrative system? The Chinese kilometres in length, which was opened in 1411
had for centuries surpassed the Europeans with and connected the old capital, Hangzhou, with
their technical and organisational capacities; long Tianjin near Beijing. This achievement required
before 1300 they already had iron tempered with a gigantic undertaking by a state that could estab-
coke, gunpowder, the ship’s compass, the rudder, lish priorities in its territory and for a population
and printed paper money issued in the emperor’s that was as large as Europe’s.
name. They undertook journeys of discovery and No single European body had at its disposal
commercial expeditions along the coast of India the possibilities of organising such an enormous
as far as East Africa. There was busy shipping in concentration of resources to implement state
the China Sea and the Bay of Bengal; large num- decisions or completely suppress commercial
bers of Chinese traders dealing in high-quality initiatives. There would always be another leader

8
 INTR ODU C TI ON

ready to venture an experiment. The dozens of Church created the unique situation which
kingdoms, hundreds of autonomous principali- gave rise to commercial capitalism. This largely
ties, prince bishoprics, city states and free peasant autonomous method of organising trade is aimed
republics, all of which governed small parts of primarily at making as large a profit as possible,
Europe, found themselves in a constant state through a constant search for the most lucrative
of rivalry, and often at full-blown war. Moreover, combinations of production factors, for meth-
no single political unit was able to establish its ods of risk-reduction, and for the reinvestment
authority permanently. Despite all the resulting of profits in further expansion. Other motives –
devastation, the attempts to expand the means political, ethical and religious – were subordinated
of exercising power were a stimulus to innova- to these goals. It grew into a dynamic market sys-
tion. The Chinese Empire, on the other hand, tem that was not limited to a particular area of
was mainly occupied in preserving its internal authority but everywhere seized the opportunity
stability. Surely, this did not preclude growth, to pursue profits. This exercise of power in the
but it was focused on internal production and political, legal, religious and economic field gave
marketing. Agricultural land was expanded merchants and entrepreneurs in Europe chances
through reclamation, and natural resources were that elsewhere were often frustrated by authori-
exploited further. China’s future would lay in tarian religious and secular rulers. And for the
the north-west, in the vast expanses of Xinjang, same reasons Europe was more open to foreign
bordering the Mongolian steppe. Sea-borne innovations than any other culture.
trade and industrial production were no longer
favoured. Imperial rule was not restricted to the
political sphere. It also controlled religion and Medievalism
the economy, so that it resembled a totalitarian
system. ‘Medievalism’ is currently used as a conceptual
In Europe, by contrast, the religious and politi- shorthand for all sorts of conscious references
cal spheres became more clearly separated in the to the Middle Ages in modern culture, includ-
later Middle Ages. Before then popes and emper- ing popular culture. Medievalism in that sense
ors had struggled in vain to achieve supremacy, originated in the early nineteenth century, when
thus only proving that a truly universal European ideologies again started to play an important part
power did not exist. A relatively autonomous in the view of the past. If, in the period of clas-
third power appeared in some regions during sicism, the medieval cathedrals and monasteries
the Middle Ages, that of the towns. Towns in had been allowed to fall into disrepair or even
Europe, unlike those in other parts of the world, to be destroyed on purpose, as happened during
enjoyed an administrative and legal autonomy the French Revolution, from the 1820s it again
that expanded as the towns grew and local rulers became fashionable to build in the Gothic style
became relatively weaker. This enabled commer- and even to try to improve upon medieval build-
cial and industrial enterprise to grow without ers. In France, the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc
insurmountable restrictions being imposed by (1814–1879) got involved in a great number of
Church or secular authorities. They often threw the most influential restoration projects, such as
up obstacles and tried to take as large a share as those of the church at Vézelay in Burgundy – one
possible of the profits from trade. If they went too of the points of departure of the First Crusade
far, however, capital would take flight to a safer – the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, the royal
place where it could then grow further. basilica of Saint-Denis north of Paris and the
In this way the segmentation of power over medieval city of Carcassonne in the Languedoc.
a variety of political units and an independent In his view, restoration meant ‘to re-establish a

9
 INTR ODU C T IO N

building to a finished state which may in fact a more traditional Byzantine-Romanesque style.
never have actually existed at any given time’. After completion of the central dome in 1909 the
This vision was strongly opposed by the vision- sponsors suddenly decided to change to a high
ary art critic and draughtsman John Ruskin gothic French-styled design. As it was opened in
(1819–1900). For Ruskin, restoration implied the 1941, the nave was one of the largest in the world.
preservation of the status quo at the time of his However, up to the present day, the cathedral
intervention. He also propagated that, in design- remains unfinished with two half-grown spires
ing new buildings, the neo-Gothic style should in the west front and a strange unachieved mish-
not be the preserve of Catholic churches but mash in the crossing. To make the situation look
also be applied in Protestant and secular archi- even more medieval, between 1922 and 1930
tecture. His ideas received warm support from, the huge Riverside Church, a refined imitation
among others, the famous restoration architect of the cathedral of Chartres, arose on a gorgeous
Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811–1878), who was site just a few blocks further. In this curious duel
in charge of the restoration of the marvellous fought by means of medieval symbolism in the
abbey of Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire – until then most modern city of the world, the sponsor-
today the fitting location for an annual medieval ship of John D. Rockefeller Jr. proved far more
festival. effective than the believers’ donations to Saint
The highest stone towers built in Europe in John the Divine.
the nineteenth century were those of the Gothic In literature, Romantic authors like Walter
Revival cathedrals in Ulm and Cologne. The Scott, Heinrich Heine and Victor Hugo seized
newly built Houses of Parliament in London and eagerly upon medieval stories to present the
Budapest are neo-Gothic gems, as are the town greatness of a medieval past, in contrast to the
halls of Vienna and Munich. The past was thus rationalism of the Enlightenment and the French
coloured according to the preferences of the fol- revolutionaries. Projected into this past were
lowing centuries. In these cases, choosing for the conservative values such as kingship, Church
Gothic style meant a reference to the medieval ori- and nobility, and a corporative social order,
gins of parliamentarianism and civic rights with but also liberal ones such as civic freedom and
the aim of enhancing the prestige of the newly national character, depending on what was
emerging constitutional, liberal and national required. Musicians used the newly edited medi-
states. After having been neglected or even exe- eval sources as basic material for the scenarios of
crated for centuries, the Middle Ages – that is, the widely applauded operas. Giuseppe Verdi (1813–
image constructed of them – were now extolled. 1901) was the most influential Italian composer
The idealistic representation of the Middle who systematically chose historic themes to dis-
Ages found its clearest expression in the archi- seminate a nationalistic message in his divided
tecture of churches. Until deep into the twentieth country, of which the northern provinces were
century, entirely new buildings were erected in under Austrian rule until 1866. Many of his ope-
neo-Romanesque or neo-Gothic style, to enhance ras dealt with medieval themes, from his very first
the particularity of churches in a modernist one, Oberto, conte di Bonifacio (1837–1838) to his
environment. In midtown New York, the har- last one, Falstaff (1889–1893). His contemporary
moniously neo-Gothic Catholic Saint Patrick’s Richard Wagner (1813–1883) used various Norse
cathedral was built between 1858 and 1865; the sagas as well as the epic poem Das Nibelungenlied
spires were finished in 1888. Right in that year, as the basis for his series of operas, Der Ring des
the Episcopal diocese of New York was planning Nibelungen (‘The Ring of [the] Nibelung’).
its new cathedral, Saint John the Divine. This The medieval inspiration continued to function
building was to arise sixty blocks farther north in during the twentieth century in various popular

10
 INTR ODU C TI ON

domains. The Oxford professor in English litera-

The book’s arrangement
ture, J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973), was a specialist
in early Germanic literature and mythology, espe- In our presentation of medieval history in this
cially the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf. Here (as well book, the transformations that we listed in the
as in Wagner’s operas) he found inspiration for his beginning are important themes, although for the
best-selling novels The Hobbit (1937) and, espe- sake of clear arrangement we chose to start from
cially, The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), which the traditional tripartition early Middle Ages (cov-
has become one of the most widely read books ering the years 300–1000), central Middle Ages
on earth. Recently, both were turned into block- (1000–1300) and late Middle Ages (1300–1500).
buster movies and mega-selling computer games. Within each part there are chapters on political,
Meanwhile, Beowulf itself provided the mate- economic and social, and religious and cultural
rial for several movies, as did other heroes and aspects. We have opted for a periodisation in
heroines from medieval history, legendary (King which emphasis is placed on transitions rather
Arthur, Robin Hood) or real (Alexander Nevskij, than sharp breaks, on processes of far-reaching
William Wallace, Jeanne d’Arc, King Henry II and change within which elements of the old soci-
Eleanore of Aquitaine, Chinggis Khan). Each time ety exist alongside the new. Three themes that
again, historical novels and historical movies on overlapped the latter two sub-periods (together
the Middle Ages prove that the medieval period the second half of the Middle Ages), namely the
is a great purveyor of base material for fascinating start of European expansion, the astonishing
fiction, but also that medieval history – like all his- intellectual accomplishments, and urbanisation
tory – can be easily abused to support nationalistic and the constitution of urban society are treated
claims. in separate chapters between the central and late
Middle Ages parts. This gives a total number of
twelve chapters, which coincides with twelve
course weeks in many academic history curricula.

11
Part I
The early Middle
Ages, 300–1000
1 The end of the Roman
Empire in the West

Every day, one of the most powerful images of

Late Antiquity is passed almost unnoticed by
thousands of tourists strolling around on Venice’s
San Marco Square. It is the Philadelphion (lit.
‘brotherly love’), the reddish porphyry statue of
the tetrarchy, the ‘college of the four rulers’, that
was cut for the Emperor Diocletian’s palace at
Nicomedia (Asia Minor). In 293, Diocletian had
decided that the Roman Empire had become too
big and too complex to be ruled by one man
alone. He made a division in two parts, East and
West, each to be ruled by two emperors: one
with the superior rank of augustus, the other with
the lower rank of caesar. Diocletian understood
that such a rule by four could only work if the
tetrarchs would be strongly committed to each
other and their common cause. Therefore, as first
augustus of the East, he gave his daughter in mar-
riage to his caesar, Galerius, while his colleague
in the West, Maximian, did the same honour to
his caesar, Constantius Chlorus. This close, yet
hierarchical, bond between the four tetrarchs is
perfectly expressed in the Philadelphion. Each of
the two augusti clasps his arm protectively around PLATE 1.1 Statue of the tetrarchs, 300–315 ce.

15
PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

his junior co-emperor, like a father does to a son. been retreated, still was impressive. It measured
The caesars are indeed represented as young about 4.5 million square kilometres, extending
men – which neither of the two in reality was over more than thirty present-day states. To get
at that time. All four are look-alikes, a purpose- from one end to the other took an average travel-
ful similitudo (‘similarity’) that stresses the unity ler almost three months over land, even if he had
and harmony, the strength and determination made use of the network of paved roads with a
of the imperial junta. total length of around 90,000 kilometres. There
With the installation of the tetrarchy, Diocletian were 50–60 million inhabitants belonging to
intended to firmly restore peace, unity and prosper- many races and speaking many languages, but
ity to the Roman Empire after decades of turmoil all considered to be Roman citizens – provided
and civil war. The third century, in particular its they were free persons – since 212. Between 10
middle part, had been beset with all sorts of crises: and 20 per cent of them lived in cities, the largest
large-scale barbarian invasions, renewed Persian of which were metropolises of more than 100,000
attacks on the eastern border, mutinies in the inhabitants – Rome still being on top with an
army, followed by an avalanche of military coups, estimated population of more than half a million.
massive fall in population, economic decline, The entire Roman army was about that size too,
impoverishment of the countryside, widespread while between 25,000 and 35,000 state officials
epidemic disease, rampant inflation following the were on the state’s payroll – very few people to
virtual collapse of the imperial silver coinage. control and defend a territory and a population
So, the task imposed upon the four rulers was of such a size. That is why modern historians
immense. By the beginning of the fourth century are quite divided over the usefulness and the
the Roman Empire, although borders had already effects of the tetrarchy’s crisis management.

PLATE 1.2 ‘All roads lead to Rome.’ Detail from the Peutinger Table, a copy of a third-century Roman map
of roads and watercourses, named after the humanist Conrad Peutinger. Towns and rivers are particularly
recognisable.

16
 ThE E ND Of ThE ROMA N E M pI R E I N T hE W E ST 1 CHAPTER

There are those who say that during, if not the upper echelons of imperial administration.
already before, the crisis of the third century the The number of senators was more than dou-
Roman Empire went into steep demographic bled in the course of the fourth century until it
and economic decline, never to find its way back reached about 2,000 at the accession of Emperor
again. Others argue that, after decline, real recov- Theodosius in 378.
ery followed; that there is no reason to think that Because all state officials had to be rewarded
the Age of Constantine, in terms of population for their services, the process of bureaucratisa-
size and prosperity, was inferior to the Age of tion opened the way not only to some measure
Augustus. of administrative sophistication and efficiency,
but also to extensive job-hunting, power-broking,
leapfrogging and corruption. On paper, everything
Governing an empire was neatly, almost militaristically, organised. In
real life things were slightly different. Although lip
Government structure and service was paid to professional competence based
bureaucracy on formal training, more often family connec-
tions, family networking, seniority, money and,
To cope with the problems, Diocletian took a in particular, imperial discretion determined who
number of measures in addition to the introduc- could enter civil service or who was promoted.
tion of collegiate imperial government. He carried The only thing the emperor could do against the
through an administrative reorganisation under excrescences of this type of bureaucratisation was
which the Empire was divided into two halves, to limit the tenure of high officials to prevent
four prefectures (e.g. Gaul, including Britain and them from building up local clienteles.
Iberia), fourteen dioceses (e.g. Egypt) and 114
provinces (e.g. Africa). Each province was sub-
divided into civitates or (local) districts, which Emperor and court
consisted of an urban centre (sometimes also
called civitas, although more usually municipium, The emperor and his court were at the top of gov-
urbs or oppidum) and a rural territory (ager) that ernment. This summit was quadrupled under the
could extend over hundreds of square kilometres. tetrarchy, but soon the tetrarchy and its under-
In addition, there were the two urban prefectures lying aim of non-hereditary collegiate rule proved
of Rome and Constantinople. to be an anomaly. It hardly survived the volun-
Furthermore, a first attempt was made to codify tary retirements of Diocletian and Maximian
Roman law; the tax system was streamlined and in 305, mainly because, predictably, most of
tax collection more rigidly organised; monetary the augusti and caesars appointed wanted to be
reforms were undertaken and prices were set at succeeded by their sons or favourites, and most
a maximum by law; conformity to state religion were not prepared to share power with others.
was demanded of all citizens. All these measures The project ended in 324, when Constantine, son
betray Diocletian’s deeper concerns: to provide for of Constantius Chlorus, finally had his last rival
law and order; to secure the state’s tax income; to killed, and became the sole ruler of the Roman
contain economic vagaries; to enforce religiously Empire. When soon afterwards he considered re-
sanctioned loyalty to the state. To manage this installing tetrachical government, it was meant to
state intervention on every hierarchical level, be strictly a family business to be run by his four
the imperial bureaucracy was vastly extended sons. This plan failed even before it was executed
and members of the senatorial order were more because of violent competition among the (half-)
often than before appointed to high offices in brothers, and it all ended in monarchy again,

17
PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

first of Constantine’s third son, Constantius II emperor’s inner household); their influence was
(337–361), and then of his nephew Julian (361– difficult to measure. Others, in particular scions
363), the last emperor of Constantine’s dynasty. of powerful families, were attached to the emper-
When two years later a high-ranking officer, or’s court on purpose, to spend considerable time
Valentinian, was declared emperor by the army, under the eyes of the ruler and the handful of high
he was pressed to share imperial power with his court officials who surrounded him. It happened
brother, Valens. This arrangement set the model to Constantine who, as a young man, spent many
for dyarchy rather than tetrarchy, and would lead years at the court of Diocletian in Nicomedia.
to the final division of the Roman Empire in an The enormous expansion of imperial bureau-
eastern and a western half. Valentinian also stood cracy further down also created problems for the
at the base of the last great imperial dynasty of emperors, who found themselves caught between
Antiquity, known as the Valentinian-Theodosian their desire for autocratic rule and the necessity
dynasty. It produced emperors without interrup- to delegate. Roman emperors could not make
tion, in the male and female line, until 455. use of Orwellian means of mind control; on the
The emperor’s power could well be described contrary, they always ran the risk of getting mis-
as absolute. Long before they converted to informed or of being kept ignorant. Despite the
Christianity, Roman emperors enjoyed a semi- Empire’s excellent diplomatic and postal service
divine status, and long afterwards they continued (the cursus publicus), and a sophisticated system
to promote themselves as the embodiment of of so-called agents in rebus (about 1,200 messen-
eternal law and divine providence, if not as gers with special instructions who roamed about
the personal vicegerents of Christ on earth. in the Empire and acted as the emperor’s eyes
Constantius II used to sign imperial ordinances and ears), the impact of orders given by the court
with ‘My Eternity’. His public appearances were could easily peter out with the increase of the vast
choreographed with precision, and soaked with distances they had to travel. Even the symboli-
elaborate, orientalising ceremonies of sanctity. cal omnipresence of the emperor in statues and
Everything around the emperor was sacred, even on coins, or in the use of his names and titles in
the stables where his horses were kept. All such documents and inscriptions, could not alter that.
lofty rituals were intended to distance ruler from The emperor always had to reckon with autono-
his subjects. In reality, the emperor’s position was mist tendencies among far-away administrators
more ambivalent. He was seen both as a demi-god who could easily fall prey to local interests. The
and as the primus inter pares among the Roman real art of governing the Roman Empire, besides
citizens. This meant that no emperor could get controlling the army, was to forge ‘a working
away with disregarding his ordinary subjects alto- relationship between key members of the depart-
gether. Carefully staged ‘baths in the crowd’ were ments of central government and key figures
made part of imperial ceremonies, and, besides in the revenue-producing local communities’
instilling awe and terror, emperors had to display (Heather 2005).
a willingness to grant clemency and favours. This
meant that the imperial court attracted a cease-
less flow of petitioners and embassies, usually Local government
with the express purpose of redressing decisions
taken on a local level. Local government was concentrated in the
When not campaigning, the emperor was urban centres of the civitates, and was led by a
permanently surrounded by a swarm of women city council or curia. Its members, called curi-
(empresses, princesses, mistresses), friends, eunuchs ales or decuriones, were invariably recruited from
and other members of the sacrum cubiculum (the the prosperous local elite. They did not just serve

18
 ThE E ND Of ThE ROMA N E M pI R E I N T hE W E ST 1 CHAPTER

as councillors out of an unselfish commitment of the theatre, the cruelty of the amphitheatre,
to the public cause, but also to exhibit their the atrocity of the arena and the luxury of the
respectability and gain the opportunity to move games’ – which also suggests that all these attrac-
up in the expanding state bureaucracy, at which tions were still available in southern Spain at
many succeeded. In local affairs, city councils that time. So, this point should not be pushed
could operate with a large degree of autonomy, too far. Moreover, enormous amounts of money,
also thanks to its own revenues from local taxes confiscated from funds related to the old public
and civic estates, ranging from shops to farms cults, were spent on the building of churches that
and grazing lands in the countryside. But the still looked very much like pagan basilicas. The
councils did play a leading part in the governance other factor seems to have been more ponderous,
of the Empire as well. They organised the assess- and is related to the steady disappearance of the
ment and collection of direct state taxes (see pp. classical city councils during the fourth century.
21–22), provided for law courts and were respon- There were a number of reasons for this. One was
sible for the upkeep of public infrastructure a growing interest among urban elites to acquire
(roads, bridges, aqueducts) and the maintenance positions in the imperial bureaucracy or the
of the cursus publicus within their district’s terri- clerical hierarchy of the Christian Church, rather
tory. In the countryside, villages had headmen than in local city government. It seems that the
and, increasingly, local clergy and monks for con- position of curialis had become less attractive
tacts with the authorities, but they rarely seem to mainly because Diocletian’s fiscal reforms had
have acquired administrative autonomy. made local tax collection less lucrative and more
Quite apart from the perquisites of all such risky. In the other direction, city politics started
administrative duties, many curiales were pre- to get more and more dominated by another kind
pared to pay out of their own pockets for games, of people, the ultra-rich honorati (‘honourable
shows and free opening hours in the public baths men’), most often wealthy landowners from the
or to sponsor the embellishment of their beloved senatorial order. In city governments they saw
town with forums, temples, statues, basilicas, their interests represented by new types of offi-
arches, porticoes, baths, circuses, theatres or cials who were appointed from above and who
amphitheatres. Monuments of this kind, and had titles such as defensor, protector, curator or,
the ceremonies, rituals and entertainments that most importantly, comes (civitatis). They would
were staged there, went to the heart of both civi- preside over city councils and courts of justice,
lised Roman lifestyle and the deeply felt need to and as a rule were assisted in the exercise of their
openly express loyalty to the Roman order and its duties by the local bishop, who as the leader of
first protector, the emperor. the Christian community of a civitas, demanded
The loss of this monumental splendour, and a say in its politics.
the ‘disappearance of comfort’ (Ward-Perkins All these developments diminished the politi-
2005) that inevitably went with it, can only partly cal and social importance of the old-style curiales.
be blamed on the barbarian invasions, although Although the emperors have tried to stop this
these certainly did not help with their preserva- process by passing imperial edicts in which
tion. There were two more important factors. curial duties were made obligatory for wealthy
One was the advance of Christianity with its anti- citizens, or, at a later stage, decurion status was
secular cultural ideals. Christian leaders strongly made hereditary, these did have little effect on the
opposed pagan luxury and pagan entertainment. ground. The outcome was not just exchanging
Bishop Isidore of Seville, in the early seventh cen- one oligarchy for another. Unlike the old curiae,
tury, warned his flock that they should stay away the new governing elites were not constitution-
from ‘the madness of the circus, the immorality ally defined, and their members did not recognise

19
MAP 1.1 The late Roman Empire, c.350 ce
 ThE E ND Of ThE ROMA N E M pI R E I N T hE W E ST 1 CHAPTER

a collective responsibility for their administrative synchronised. This meant that every five years
dealings, let alone accept any financial liability. In – in 312 prolonged to every fifteen years – new
short, the breakdown of the old-style city councils censuses were conducted and a new indiction was
meant the disappearance of a type of corporate established on the basis of census data. Until far
government of well-to-do citizens, bound by a into the Middle Ages the late Roman indiction
collective commitment to their city and the state, as a fifteen-year period was used in the dating of
which for centuries had been the cornerstone of charters, although its connection with taxation
Roman power and Roman civilisation. It was also had long gone lost.
the kiss of death for the ‘competitive munifi- Two aims of Diocletian’s tax reforms had been
cence’ (Liebeschuetz 2001) that had ensured the reduction of the tax burden and greater equality
monumental grandeur of so many Roman cities. in tax liability (Diocletian had printed AEQUITAS
[‘equality’] on his coins), but two others were
uniformity and simplicity. Because the latter two
Taxation and fiscal policy led to more efficient tax collection, widespread
dissatisfaction sprang up. Diocletian and succes-
If the higher purpose of the Roman state was to sors countered this by taking legal measures to
provide its citizens with peace, legal certainty, make hereditary the status of three social classes
justice and prosperity, the most important that were closely involved in the taxation pro-
means that stood at its disposal to reach – and cess. In addition to the curiales as tax collectors,
secure – these goals were taxation and the army. these were the corporati (members of the urban
It has been calculated that about 5 per cent of corpora, the Roman precursors of the medieval
the Empire’s GNP went to tax payments (normal trade and craft guilds), and the so-called coloni
for developed pre-industrial states or underdevel- (peasants who were settled on the estates of large
oped modern countries), and that well over half landowners) as sizeable groups of taxpayers that
of the total tax revenues were spent on the army. could be registered relatively easily. However, in
So, the Empire’s survival crucially depended on the longer term, such measures did not work for
the smooth running of the fiscal machinery. lack of control.
Diocletian carried through a number of drastic Typically, the iugatio-capitatio, if paid in kind
reforms of the two general flat taxes that already (which was perfectly acceptable), was often
existed and which brought in the bulk of the referred to as annona, which was actually the
tax revenues, that is to say, the iugatio or land tax word for the steady supply of grain and other
(from iuger, the standard area measure) and the basic foodstuffs from the Empire’s three major
capitatio or poll tax/head tax (from caput, ‘head’). ‘granaries’ – the provinces of Egypt and Africa
First, he joined these two taxes together into one (present-day Tunisia), and the isle of Sicily –
undivided tax, known as iugatio-capitatio or (in to the two major receivers of state benefit in
Greek) syntheleia. Second, he standardised and kind: the army and the proletariats of Rome
refined the assessment basis. Third, he stand- and Constantinople. The annona is the fore-
ardised to five years the time interval between most example of the heavy involvement of the
the censuses that were conducted to assess Roman state in the Roman economy – another
individual taxpayers’ tax liability. Fourth, he one would be state control over (physical) mar-
introduced the so-called indiction (from indictio kets. Specialists are divided as to whether this
or ‘notification’), to be understood as the public was a curse or a blessing for the private sector
announcement of the total amount of taxes that of the Roman economy. Adherents of the curse
each province had to pay yearly. Fifth, he had the point out that both the establishment of produc-
reassessment intervals of indiction and census tion and distribution systems by the state and

21
PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

over-regulation dislocated the market and stifled

The Roman army and the
economic initiative. Supporters of the blessing,
such as David Mattingly, argue that ‘trade under
frontier
state contract’ generated certain economies of Roman rule rested on military power. In the later
scale by ‘cross-subsidizing the transport of other Roman period the army’s role became even more
commodities and [by] stimulating demand in pronounced. Whereas for a long time Roman
civil markets’. In favour of the latter opinion is emperors had first of all been civilians who, at
the reintroduction of a strong standardised gold best, had revealed themselves as competent lead-
coin under Diocletian (the solidus). Gold coins ers of military campaigns, in the third century
were used in the state’s payments to the military, this was turned around: most of the many emper-
but also probably in dealings between the state ors from that period started as career generals and
and private long-distance wholesale trade. took imperial power thanks to army backing. This
Collapse of the annona – for whatever rea- military competence of emperors, and their per-
sons – had two major consequences: the existing sonal involvement in army operations, would
size of armies was endangered and the viability only recede after the death of Theodosius the
of the Empire’s two metropolises ceased. When Great in 395. He was succeeded by his two sons,
this happened, Rome’s population dropped very Arcadius, emperor of the East, and Honorius,
quickly, from around half a million by about 400 emperor of the West, who were notoriously
to no more than 30,000–50,000 by the middle of unsoldierly figures. It may be no coincidence that
the sixth century. The turning point had been the during their reign the Roman Empire reeled in
conquest of the African province by the Vandals, the East, and fell in the West.
in the 430s. The conquest of Egypt by the Arabs During the late imperial period, the Roman
two hundred years later had less dramatic effects army underwent a number of fundamental
on the population size of Constantinople because changes. First of all, towards the end of the third
that city also had access to the rich arable lands century the Romans chose no longer to defend
of the Black Sea area. the Empire at its frontiers with legions stretched

PLATE 1.3 Rural scenes around a

North African villa, c.400, depicted on
the so-called Seigneur Julius mosaic.

22
 ThE E ND Of ThE ROMA N E M pI R E I N T hE W E ST 1 CHAPTER

along the whole length of the limes or border. the legions did not change, the consequence
This gave rise to a growing imbalance between was that a growing number of soldiers had to
border troops (limitanei, ripenses) and mobile field be recruited abroad, among foreigners, whom
armies (comitatenses), stationed in large garrison the Romans, with a mixture of contempt and
towns a good distance from the limes. The big- disapproval, called ‘barbarians’. This certainly
gest advantage was a greatly improved utilisation fitted into a long tradition that went back to the
of the field armies’ radius of action, both against glorious days of the Republic, but now the barba-
incursions from outside and against internal risation of the army went much further in two,
unrest or rebellion. The disadvantage was that related, respects. First, foreign soldiers in the late
the border could be more easily penetrated, cer- imperial period were employed in all kinds of
tainly by small raiding parties. The Romans tried army units, and, second, more than before they
to overcome the problem by forming human succeeded in working their way up to the high-
buffer zones of groups of barbarians who were est military ranks. Many generals who played
allowed to settle inside the limes in thinly popu- key roles in the dramatic events of ‘the period
lated areas. In exchange, they had to defend these of migrations’ were themselves of foreign extrac-
areas as Roman allies. This happened on a small tion or else second-generation immigrants. If we
scale until about halfway through the fourth cen- count the Isaurians of Asia Minor as ‘barbarians’
tury. After that, so-called foedera (lit. ‘treaties’; – as many contemporary authors did – then for
singular form is foedus) were regularly concluded the first time in 474 a barbarian general, Zeno,
with sizeable groups of barbarians who formally became emperor (in the East). He managed
submitted but then acquired allied status for lim- to stay in power for seventeen years. Antipathy to
ited periods of time or for specific campaigns, in barbarian immigration and the barbarisation of
which they could operate fairly independently the army was greater in the East than in the West,
under their own chiefs. At a later stage foedus and concentrated in the upper echelons of the
came simply to mean a mercenary’s contract, civil administration into which far fewer barbar-
without any formal submission. Moreover, these ians had penetrated. Referring to the dominant
new contracts entitled the foederati to standard position of Gothic mercenaries and their power-
military payment. In order to secure this pay- ful commanders in the military defence of Greece
ment, their leaders tried to obtain a high Roman and Asia Minor by the end of the fourth century,
military rank. One warlord who operated in this Senator Synesius of Cyrene called it ‘folly to use
way in the later years of the western Empire was wolves as watchdogs’.
Childeric, the father of the Frankish king Clovis.
Childeric called himself rex (king), but in addi-
tion bore the Roman rank of magister militum Economic structure and
(general). prosperity
The growing importance of foedera for
maintaining Roman order was not an isolated The willingness of thousands of foreigners, espe-
phenomenon, and that brings us to our second cially from the north, to join the Roman army
point: the increase in the Roman army’s size, certainly had an economic background as well.
from an estimated 375,000 at the beginning of It is tempting to draw a comparison between
the third century to around half a million in the Roman limes in the north and the Mexican–
the middle of the fourth century. Because the American border of today. In both situations,
Empire’s population during the same period more a substantial difference in prosperity on either
likely shrank than grew, and the willingness of side of the border set in motion similar push-
Roman (male) citizens to sign up for service in and-pull factors. Mexicans are drawn into the

23
PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

United States by the existence of a large demand oil and garum – fish-sauce, Antiquity’s ketchup)
for cheap labour, and they are ‘pushed’ out of as well as standardised non-food products (such
Mexico by the poverty, insecurity and violence, as pottery) to mass markets that could be remote
largely caused by competition between gangs over from the production areas. This would have been
the domination of the extremely lucrative drugs impossible without a relatively large degree of
market that caters for users in the United States. interregional ‘connectivity’, which was much fur-
Similarly, in the later Roman period, barbarians thered not only by the Empire’s natural advantage
from the north were drawn in massive numbers of being draped around a gigantic water highway
into the Roman Empire by the existence of a large (the Mediterranean) and its superb network of
demand for soldiers, and they were ‘pushed’ out roads, but also by at least three other factors:
of their native countries by poverty and vio- long-lasting internal peace, legal certainty in
lence, caused by competition between warlords doing business and a constantly large demand
over the profits of the raiding and trading over from cities and army. This cannot but have fur-
the border – or of the wheeling and dealing with ther stimulated efficiency, specialisation and the
Roman authorities, who in their relations with expansion of employment in supplier companies
barbarians used clever divide-and-rule diplomacy, (think of the mass production of packing mate-
and quickly changed alliances. Political unrest rial, such as amphoras), in transport (ships, carts,
in the most densely populated area of the limes, pack animals), in finishing, brokerage and retail-
the upper and middle Rhine and the upper and ing, in construction works, etc. It also obliges us
middle Danube, was thus fed gradually over the to a readjustment of the traditional picture of
centuries. It resulted in a regular regrouping of Roman cities as merely ‘consumer cities’, inhab-
the barbarian confederations outside the borders ited by wealthy and idle people living of their
of the Empire, in a growing migration pressure, private means. On the contrary, many cities must
and often in violent raids too. The massive ‘ritual have been bustling with commercial and manu-
dumps’ of hundreds of weapons (whose bearers facturing activities. The only downside of this
had been killed in battle or ritually executed) in high degree of commercialisation and specialisa-
the peat bogs of Jutland and Schleswig-Holstein tion was that it made regional economies, whose
provide grim evidence of the endemic raiding prosperity depended on exports, vulnerable to
and warfare in the northern border regions of reductions of demand in distant markets as a
the Roman Empire. They show better than any- consequence of circumstances over which they
thing else how in the first centuries ce a society had no hold.
of peaceful farmers increasingly became a society
geared to war.
The deeper cause of all this, the big differ- The barbarian world of
ence in prosperity on both sides of the border, the North
is the best proof of the Roman Empire’s unri-
valled economic success. Still this requires some By contrast, the rural society and agrarian econ-
explanation because, at first sight, the economic omy of the people living in the densely forested
basis of the Empire was not unlike that of the plains and mountain chains that extended north
northern barbarian world: both were overwhelm- of the Roman Empire were much simpler. They
ingly rural and in both, agriculture was by far the mostly consisted of peasants who practised
most important sector of economic production. subsistence agriculture and who lived in small
The big achievement of the Roman economy has villages controlled by native warrior aristocracies.
been its ability to find an outlet for low-value/ The degree of commercialisation was low – but
high-quality non-staple food (such as wine, olive probably significantly higher near the Roman

24
 ThE E ND Of ThE ROMA N E M pI R E I N T hE W E ST 1 CHAPTER

frontier than further away from it – and, even if with the vast area in which Germanic languages
the names and locations of some market places were spoken, or had once been spoken, provided
beyond the frontier are known, settlements that German nationalism under the Nazi regime with
could be called towns must have been rare. dangerous ‘historical’ claims to Lebensraum far
In Late Antiquity, the northern frontier (out- beyond the German borders. The perceived pan-
side Britain) by and large coincided with the Celtic and pan-Slav cultures have been similarly
courses of the rivers Rhine and Danube. Ancient exploited, except for prestigious exhibitions, for
geographers roughly divided the barbarians who nationalistic purposes.
lived there into Celts and Germans; only in the Latin authors called the subdivisions of
sixth century the Slavs would be added as a third Germans, Celts and Slavs populi or gentes, which
category. What was meant with these names, and modern scholars translate as peoples, nations or
what type of subcategories they covered, changed tribes. This also leads to confusion, for the mean-
over time. While Greek and Roman authors ings such terms have in modern social sciences
from the first century bce, on vague grounds and or in common parlance do not necessarily coin-
with little consistency, started to distinguish cide with the meanings that the original classical
‘Germans’ from ‘Celts’, it was Julius Caesar who words had in their time. For instance, in modern
invented a homeland for the former. Caesar anthropology ‘a people’ is an ethnic group, to be
wanted to separate by a forbidding physical bor- defined as an enduring community with its own
derline – the mighty river Rhine – one group of culture. An essential feature is that its members
barbarians, the Gauls (Celts), from another, even are conscious of their collective identity. This
more ferocious group, the Germans. Caesar’s consciousness is expressed in its own proper
Germany was subsequently immortalised on name or ethnonym, and in the awareness of a
the marble map of the world that was commis- shared past (real or not) and a common destiny.
sioned by the Roman general Marcus Vipsanius But because of this subjective and constructiv-
Agrippa (d. 12 bce) as the area enclosed by the ist character of ethnicity, it is hardly possible
northern seas and the rivers Rhine, Danube and to determine whether named barbarian groups
Vistula. This would also provide the geographi- in Late Antiquity actually were ‘peoples’ in
cal framework for Germania, the standard text the modern anthropological sense. People in the
on the northern barbarians in later Antiquity, past are only comprehensible to archaeologists,
which was written shortly before the year 100 ce historians and linguists in so far as their doings
by the senator and historian Publius Cornelius have materialised in objects, texts or linguistic
Tacitus. Quite confusingly, with the develop- remnants. Moreover, as the story of the ‘Suevian
ment of comparative linguistics in the eighteenth knot’ shows (see Box 1.1), it is not always sim-
century, the classical ethnographic indications ple to establish to what extent and under which
‘Celts’, ‘Germans’ and ‘Slavs’ were maintained circumstances such remnants ‘produced’ ethnic
and reused as labels for the classification of North meaning.
European language groups that all belonged to The word ‘tribe’ should be avoided outright,
the same, Indo-European, language family. Then, as this is a term modern anthropologists apply
rather precipitately, archaeologists turned these to small egalitarian communities in which an
linguistic families into ‘cultures’, which does not economic basis for elite domination is still lack-
make much sense scientifically. Certainly with ing. As far as we are able to tell, most barbarian
respect to Germany, also the name of a modern groups at the time of the migrations did not cor-
state, confusion was now complete, but not in a respond to this definition. They were at least one
harmless way. The equating of modern Germany rung higher on the ladder of societal complexity,
with either classical ethnographic Germania or that of chiefdoms. Chiefdoms are characterised

25
PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

BOX 1.1 HAIRSTYLE AS AN ETHNIC MARKER?

THE SUEVIAN KNOT
Classical writers often clearly attributed typical
external features to certain barbarian ‘peoples’, as
the following fragment from Chapter 38 of Tacitus’
Germania shows:

Now it is time to speak of the Suebi, who unlike

the Chatti or Tencteri do not constitute an indi-
vidual tribe: they occupy the greater part of
Germania, divided among nations with names of
their own, although all are called Suebi in com-
mon. It is characteristic of the tribe to dress their
hair on the side and bind it up tight in a knot. This
distinguishes the Suebi from the other Germani,
and their free-born from their slaves. Among
other tribes, whether through some kinship with
the Suebi or, as often happens, through imitation, this also occurs, but infrequently and only
in youth, whereas among the Suebi it continues until the hair turns grey; they draw back their
bristling hair and often tie it on the very top of their heads. The leading men have an even
more ornate style.

Images of barbarian warriors on triumphal columns and the discovery of a skull with the hair
preserved in a peat bog in Schleswig-Holstein confirm the accuracy of Tacitus’s description. Yet
specialists hesitate to see a Suevian in every description, image or discovery of a head with a
hair-knot. Tacitus’s text gives reason enough for such caution. Historical-ethnographic research
reinforces this. It teaches us that clothing, tattoos and hairstyles were sometimes intended as
ethnic distinctions, but they may also indicate age, social status or political persuasion or, trivi-
ally enough, may just have been in fashion at the time. All these functions then are also subject to
changes in time and geographical space. So it may very well be that the hairstyle that was per-
haps typical for the Suevi of the first century later spread to other barbarian groupings outside
the Roman Empire or even – why not? – to the Romans themselves. There are striking examples
of the ‘barbarian look’ being adopted in the Roman Empire. In the fifth and sixth centuries it was
fashionable for young men in Constantinople to wear their hair in the Persian or Avar mode: the
hair was shaved high at the front and allowed to hang in thin strands to below the shoulder at
the back. It is doubtful whether all Persians and Huns wore their hair in this way. According to the
Greek Priscus, who visited the court of Attila as a diplomat, the khan of the Huns wore his hair
short, more in the style of the Romans.

Source: The passage from Germania is taken from the English translation, with introduction and commentary by J.B.
Rives (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), p. 92. For discussion on hairstyle as an ethnic marker at the time of the peo-
ples’ migrations see Walter Pohl,‘Telling the difference: signs of ethnic identity’ in Walter Pohl and Helmut Reimitz
(eds), Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 17–69.

26
 ThE E ND Of ThE ROMA N E M pI R E I N T hE W E ST 1 CHAPTER

by the formation of local elites, in this case war- the reinforcement of Gothic power north of the
rior aristocracies, who are able to use force when Danube led to them probing Roman strength by
necessary to defend their position of power. To way of attacks and invasions in Greece and Asia
achieve this they must have at their disposal Minor around the middle of the third century.
armed followers and allies whose loyalty can be The Roman Empire was not the only opponent
ensured through material favours. This again pre- the Goths had to deal with. Their geographical
supposes a steady supply of either war booty or location meant that the Gothic kingdoms were
agricultural surpluses that will reach the hands the neighbours of nomads living in the vast
of the leaders and will be converted into pres- steppe area that stretched from the Danube delta
tige goods (weapons, jewels, horses) valued by to the Altaic mountains, and that some of them
their warriors or allies. Roman sources use the occupied land that was suitable for nomadic
term comitatus to denote the armed retinues of herding. It put them in a dangerous – because
barbarian warlords, but the modern German competitive – position.
translation Gefolgschaft is more popular. The In Late Antiquity, the nomads of the Pontic-
rise of Gefolgschaften fits perfectly in the process Caspian steppe, known under collective names
of the militarisation of the northern barbarian as Scythians, Sarmatians and Alans, spoke Indo-
world just described. European languages that were related to Iranian,
One cluster of barbarian peoples may have which means that they had been ‘native’ to the
reached a stage of societal complexity beyond area for a long time. This quickly changed around
that of chiefdom: the early state. They were the middle of the fourth century, when new
known under the umbrella name of ‘Goths’. In groups of nomads from further east, who spoke
the third and fourth centuries they had formed Altaic languages of the Turkic or Mongol type,
a number of stable kingdoms north of the lower penetrated, and soon dominated, the western
reaches of the Danube, the Dniester and the steppes. This was a momentous, if not revolution-
Dniepr, an area, covered by the present-day ary, development in world history, with major
states of Romania, Moldova and Ukraine. It still consequences for what happened in central Asia
is a matter of heated debate whether these Goths and the Middle East, and also central and eastern
originated from Scandinavia, as historians in the Europe, during the medieval period. While the
sixth century started to tell, or whether Gothic relationships of the ‘Iranic’ steppe nomads with
identity was entirely the product of confederative sedentary empires in central Asia and Europe
unification of kingdoms or chiefdoms north of always had been generally peaceful, and never
the lower Danube and along the north-western led to serious attacks on, let alone to long-term
shores of the Black Sea at the beginning of the occupation of, territory that belonged to such
third century ce. Whatever the case, there is no empires, this would alter completely when Turkic-
doubt that the Goths spoke a Germanic language, Mongol nomads took over the western steppes.
whose grammar and vocabulary are well known On the whole, they were far more aggressive in
thanks to fragments of a Gothic Bible that had their contacts with the sedentary world, and
been translated from the Greek by a missionary their aggression often paid off because of their
known as Ulfilas (or Wulfila in Gothic) around the capacity to build up large confederations, which
middle of the fourth century. From the moment sometimes developed state-like features, under
the Goths appeared in Roman history, they had strong leaders from powerful aristocratic clans.
an ambiguous relationship with the Empire. On Under such circumstances nomadic forces could
the one hand, we see many Goths take service in turn into redoubtable fighting machines, which
the Roman army, and make money and if possible made optimal use of the nomads’ superior horse-
a career in the Roman empire; on the other hand, manship and competence in the martial arts,

27
PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

especially their extreme agility and their ability descendants of King Priam had hauled in another
to fire arrows from horseback. The results were Trojan horse. Partly, this was their own fault.
impressive. Shortly after 1500, the entire Middle Local Roman authorities who had to deal with
East, including Egypt, as well as Afghanistan, the stream of refugees were not up to the task.
Pakistan and northern India were ruled by dynas- Because of their bad treatment the Goths rose
ties that originated from Turkic-Mongol steppe in revolt and soundly defeated the army of the
nomads, while two kingdoms in south-east eastern emperor Valens at Adrianople (present-
Europe (Hungary and Bulgaria) also had nomadic day Edirne) in 378. From that point on, the East
origins. More than a thousand years earlier, the had a ‘Gothic problem’: what to do with a large
first nomadic confederation of Turkic-Mongol and coherent group of refugees that had its own,
origins had expanded its power over the west- fearsome, army? For decades, politicians and
ern steppes and seriously threatened stability imperial authorities in Constantinople remained
in the adjacent polities, the Gothic kingdoms to indecisive about the best solution: give the Goths
start with. These were the Huns, bipedes bestiae land to settle in a remote border area or make use
(‘two-legged beasts’), according to one Roman of their military abilities and offer them foedera?
historian. Far more than the Donau crossing or the battle
of Adrianople, the fact that the Gothic problem,
which was a problem of the East, was not resolved
The collapse of the Roman became decisive in setting in motion a series of
order in the West tragic events.
The start of these events has to be placed in
In 376 a large group of Tervingi, a major subdivi- 394, when Emperor Theodosius the Great gained
sion of the Goths who lived north of the lower victory over a usurper in the West mainly thanks
Danube, asked Roman authorities in Thrace for to Gothic troops. But because he did not suffi-
permission to cross the Danube and enter the ciently compensate the heavy losses his Goths
Empire’s territory. The traditional story is that had suffered, this led to long-lasting resentment.
they were fleeing the Huns who, after their sudden The Gothic mercenaries found a new leader in
appearance on the western steppes, had attacked Alaric, a young man of noble birth. After Alaric
the Goths and caused such panic among them had invaded Greece and ransacked Athens, his
that the Goths, in great fear, had turned to flight Gothic army settled in Epirus, right on the bor-
in huge numbers. On further consideration, a der of the eastern and western empires. Emperor
connection between the ‘invasion of the Huns’ in Arcadius, Theodosius’s son and successor in the
the Pontic steppes and the ‘flight of the Goths’ is East, then pacified the Goths by granting them
less straightforward, if only because the kingdom the status of foederati and awarding Alaric the title
of the Tervingi did not border the Pontic steppe of general. But when the payments that went with
directly. Besides, at that point in time, the Huns this status stopped being made, Alaric decided
may already have been active there for several not to invade Greece once again, because at that
decades. More likely, therefore, is that the admis- moment anti-Gothic sentiments in the East had
sion of large numbers of Goths into the Empire risen to fever pitch and ended in a frightful day
was the result of peace negotiations with impe- of reckoning in the streets of Constantinople.
rial authorities that had been going on ever since Under these circumstances, Alaric thought it
369, when the Tervingian Goths had been finally wiser to attack Italy, the heart of the western
defeated by the Romans after a protracted war. Empire. With that action, which took place in
With hindsight one could say that, by allowing 401–402, Alaric exported the ‘Gothic problem’,
the Goths to cross the Danube, the self-declared which had emerged in the East and until then

28
 ThE E ND Of ThE ROMA N E M pI R E I N T hE W E ST 1 CHAPTER

had stayed there, to the West. This would become so was led by a Gothic chieftain called Radagaïs.
a crucial element in the fall of the Roman Empire He forced himself into Italy from the north-
in the West. east at the end of the year 405. To confront the
Once in Italy, the Gothic army was defeated invaders, Stilicho had to move troops from the
twice by Flavius Stilicho, the commander-in-chief Rhine frontier to Italy, and although Stilicho
of the western armies, but Stilicho omitted to fin- once again triumphed on the battlefield, there
ish the job and put an end to Gothic military was little he could do when in the last days of
adventures. Probably, the generalissimo had a hid- the year 406, the second confederation that had
den agenda: with the aid of Alaric’s mercenaries been built up in central Europe crossed the fro-
he hoped to acquire a firm foothold in the Balkans zen Rhine near Mainz. It consisted of three main
from which to expand his influence to the East. ethnic components – Vandals, Suevi and Alans
Whatever he had in mind, history would prove – but is generally known as the Vandal confedera-
the consequences disastrous. With Alaric still alive tion or Vandal army. In the following years, this
and active in the Balkans, Stilicho had to face the Vandal army would traverse Gaul from north to
outcome of another event of major significance, south relatively unhindered, wreaking havoc and
which took place in central Europe. The Huns, destruction. It crossed the Pyrenees in 409 to take
masters of the Pontic steppe for decades, now, possession of large parts of the Iberian peninsula
shortly after 400, expanded their power over during the decades that followed. The chaos that
the semi-steppe lands of the Carpathian Basin was caused in Gaul by the Vandal invasion led
(the Hungarian Alföld or puszta), which was to various revolts and coup d’états by ambitious
only separated from the two Roman provinces generals and senators in the north-western prov-
of Pannonia by the Danube river. This was the inces. One of its results was the total withdrawal
only region in the western part of the European of Roman troops from Britain.
continent suitable to a nomadic way of life, and On top of all this, the untimely death of the
therefore was often chosen as a basis of operation eastern emperor, Arcadius, in 408 led to a nasty
by nomads from the Pontic steppe who wanted power struggle in Italy between Stilicho and
to intensify their contacts (commercial and war- Arcadius’s brother Honorius, the emperor in the
like) with the European sedentary world. It was West. Both hoped to reap profit from the precari-
no accident that the expansion of Hunnic power ous situation in Constantinople. Neither would
over the Alföld coincided with the rise of auto- succeed but in the process Honorius had Stilicho
cratic rulership within the Hunnic confederation. murdered (see Box 1.2). Many of Stilicho’s loyal
The arrival of the Huns in central Europe must troops, for fear of being massacred, fled to the
have caused major distress among the popula- Balkans and joined the army of Alaric. Soon after,
tions that were living in this area. Many were Alaric invaded Italy once more, where he tried to
resigned to their fate, or allied themselves with wring major benefits – again, the rank of general
their new masters, which added to existing ten- for himself, land on the Balkans for his soldiers
sions in the area. Others – in particular war bands – from Honorius, who had entrenched himself
under local leaders – must have decided to move in his impenetrable capital, Ravenna. Because of
away in a western or southern direction, caus- Honorius’s repeated refusal to give in, Alaric laid
ing further turmoil when they invaded lands siege to Rome several times. In August 410, the
that were not uninhabited, and threatening the city was captured and sacked for three days, an
Roman frontier. The final result was the forma- event that came as a shock at the time. Among
tion of two large multi-ethnic confederations of the spoils was Honorius’s elder half-sister, Galla
barbarian warriors and their families that were Placidia, who later would marry Alaric’s succes-
keen to invade the Roman Empire. The first to do sor, Athaulf. On his way to his next target, the

29
PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

BOX 1.2 A VANDAL SAVES ROME: FLAVIUS

STILICHO (c.365–408)
The ivory diptych in the cathedral treasure of
Monza shows Flavius Stilicho (c.365–408) in
military dress with his wife Serena and their
son Eucherius on his left. The panel was made
in 396, or shortly afterwards, on the occasion
of the appointment of the minor Eucherius to a
high public office.
As the son of a Vandal king, Stilicho was
called semibarbarus (half-barbarian). Under
Emperor Theodosius he had a brilliant mili-
tary career which ended in his appointment as
commander-in-chief (magister utriusque mili-
tiae) of the Roman legions in the West. Stilicho
was a prop and stay to Theodosius. His consort
Serena was a niece of Theodosius, who had
adopted her as his daughter and entrusted his
youngest son, Honorius, to her care. Before this
Theodosius had ‘recommended’ (commendati) to Stilicho Honorius and his older brother Arcadius,
who would succeed him as emperors of the western and eastern parts of the Empire respec-
tively. This is why Arcadius and Honorius are depicted on Stilicho’s shield. Stilicho allied himself
even more closely to the imperial family by marrying off his daughter Maria to Honorius, while
he intended his son Eucherius to wed Honorius’s sister Galla Placidia. Through all these alli-
ances Stilicho felt not only connected to the imperial family by right and reason, he clearly also
cherished imperial ambitions for his own son.
From the imperial palace in Ravenna, Stilicho played a tragic key role in a crucial episode in
Roman history.When Stilicho refused to transfer the provinces of Illyria and Africa from the western
to the eastern empire, Arcadius sent Alaric and his Gothic army to Italy. Stilicho defeated Alaric a
number of times, and it remains a mystery why he allowed the Gothic army to remain intact. Shortly
afterwards, the large-scale invasion of Italy by a new Gothic confederation led by Radagaïs obliged
Stilicho to pull his troops out of Gaul in 406. Although Radagaïs’s army was crushed at Fiesole, Gaul
was weakened militarily and the great coalition of Vandals, Suevi and Alans, which had crossed over
the frozen Rhine near Mainz towards the end of 406, could thrust deep into Gaul without meeting
much opposition. Both events seriously weakened the Roman grip on the West.
Vague plans to reunite both parts of the empire after the death of Arcadius in 408 led to Stilicho’s
downfall, because Honorius suspected Stilicho of wanting to put his own son, Eucherius, on the
throne in Constantinople. The rebellion of a Roman army which had been brought together in
Pavia in the summer of 408 in preparation for an expedition to Gaul brought discredit to Stilicho.
He sought refuge in Ravenna where he and his followers were brutally murdered on Honorius’s
orders.

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 ThE E ND Of ThE ROMA N E M pI R E I N T hE W E ST 1 CHAPTER

Claudian, an Egyptian-born poet and protégé of Stilicho’s wife, sang the praises of Stilicho in
countless panegyrics. He gave Stilicho his image as saviour of Rome: restituit Stilico cunctos tibi,
Roma, triumphos (‘Stilicho has given all your triumphs back to you, Rome’), runs one of his verses.
After the death of Claudian in 404, Stilicho had a collection made of all the poems eulogising
himself; they were an important means of propaganda for the general.

Sources: Santo Mazzarino, Stilicone. La crisi imperiale dopo Teodosio (Rome: Signorelli, 1942); Alan Cameron,
Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970).

rich isle of Sicily, Alaric died in Calabria in 411. One other sign was the withdrawal of the
The Gothic army then turned on its heels. After Roman legions from Spain at about the same
having been deployed by the Roman authorities time as the (Visi)Goths arrived in Aquitania. The
as foederati in Spain, the Goths were assigned power vacuum left behind gave the Vandal army
the province of Aquitania to settle, where in 418 the opportunity to partition Iberia among its
they created their own kingdom with the city of various ethnic sections. This did not go without
Toulouse as its capital. To distinguish the Goths continual struggles, in which the Visigoths inter-
that settled in Aquitaine from the Goths that vened as well. Visigothic power in Spain would
were living in the East or in the Hunnic Empire, only expand after 429, when allegedly 80,000
modern authors call the former Visigoths or Vandals and Alans – men, women and children –
Western Goths, the latter Ostrogoths or Eastern crossed the straits separating Europe from Africa
Goths, although these names were only intro- on the invitation of a rebel Roman general.
duced much later, in the second half of the sixth Within ten years they ruled as lord and master
century by Jordanes, who wrote the first history in North Africa. The power of this hundred-year
of the Goths. Vandal-Alan empire was concentrated in the old
The Gothic settlement in Aquitaine can be Punic capital, Carthage, close to modern Tunis.
seen as the conclusion of a double helix of events Of all the significant movements of barbarians
which we have no trouble in calling the fall of the that took place in the so-called Migration Period
Roman Empire in the West: one that started with between the middle of the fourth and the mid-
Alaric’s first departure for Italy, the other with the dle of the sixth centuries, the ‘epic journeys’ of
Hunnic conquest of the Alföld. Its essence was the Gothic and Vandal armies just described still
the loss of control over the Roman frontier in the form the episodes that most fire the imagination.
north by the imperial government in the West, In fact they were exceptional. The wanderings of
followed by the collapse of central authority over the Gothic army did not even follow an invasion
large parts of the western Empire (including their into the Roman Empire, but were movements
tax flows). As a consequence, a number of auton- that started and ended inside the Empire. Also
omous ‘states-within-the state’ emerged, some a sort of journey was made by the Burgundians.
under the leadership of Roman generals or sena- In the first quarter of the fifth century these bar-
tors, others ruled by barbarian kings. By 420 this barians originating from central Europe created
process had reached an unstoppable momentum; a legendary kingdom along the middle Rhine,
even to contemporary observers its irreversibil- near to where Mainz and Worms are situated.
ity must have been clear: at least in the West, Apparently this was soon seen as a threat to
the Roman Empire was gone, and it would not Roman authority because other foederati were
return. sent to deal with them, first the Visigoths, then

31
MAP 1.2 Major movements of militarised barbarian groups around 400 ce
 ThE E ND Of ThE ROMA N E M pI R E I N T hE W E ST 1 CHAPTER

the Huns. The confrontation between Huns and the Picts, in the hands of Angles, Saxons, Jutes
Burgundians must have left a deep impression for and Frisians from the continental North Sea
it provided source material for one of the great coastal areas. This change of power went all but
medieval epic texts, the Nibelungenlied, which peacefully, and large groups of native Britons fled
was first written down in lower Austria in about from South-England to the continent, where they
1200. With their power in the middle Rhine area gave their name to Brittany.
broken, the Burgundians started drifting again. In New, dramatic, changes threatened to occur
443, within the framework of new foederati agree- in the West, when Hunnic power reached its
ments, Flavius Aetius, the commander of the zenith under Attila, who was sole khan of the
remaining Roman legions in the West, gave them Huns between 444/445 and his death in 453. At
permission to settle in the middle Rhône region first, Attila seemed to be satisfied with following
and around Lake Geneva. From there they took an outer frontier strategy that was solely directed
control of the low, north-western part of present- at the eastern Empire. This meant that he did not
day Switzerland. In 534, this second kingdom of aspire to conquer Roman territory, but to black-
Burgundy was conquered by the Franks. mail the imperial authorities in Constantinople
into paying him large amounts of gold under
threat of invasion, which was indeed carried out
The later Migration Period on several occasions. Attila initially limited his
interference with politics in the western Empire
Most migratory movements in the Migration to offering his warriors for hire as mercenaries,
Period did not have this character of a journey preferably on the basis of foederati agreements.
that lasted for years. The Alamans, together with Hunnic military assistance was often invoked by
the Franks, both vague ethnic indicators anyway, the western emperor’s court at Ravenna, which
provide a good example of northern barbarians around the middle of the fifth century was dom-
who took decades, if not centuries, to gradu- inated by top-ranking general Flavius Aetius.
ally extend their area of settlement from over In his youth, Aetius had spent many years as a
the Rhine frontier into the Empire. This process hostage at the Hunnic court, which gave him
cannot be followed precisely but it must have easy access to leading Huns. In spite of that, in
been aimed both at colonisation by peasant set- 451, for reasons that are not entirely clear, Attila
tlers and at territorial power by leading warlords decided to invade the western Empire to plun-
among them, who at times operated as Roman der northern Gaul. He was met by Aetius and
foederati. By the end of the Migration Period his Visigothic allies near Châlons sur Marne, at
the Alamans were named as the inhabitants a place called the Catalaunian Fields. Here, one
of the upper Rhine area and the adjoining part of the legendary battles of Late Antiquity took
of modern South-Germany. The Salian Franks place. Its outcome, after a day of fierce fighting,
had become the masters of present-day northern was a draw. One year later, Attila tried his luck
France by the third quarter of the fifth century. again, this time to invade Italy. He was stopped
The migrations of north German and south by famine and malaria, which disrupted the logis-
Scandinavian barbarians to England were halfway tics of his operation. Attila returned to the Alföld,
between outright invasion and the colonisation where ‘the scourge of God’ died in 453. After his
of a neighbouring region. The real settlement of death, none of his many sons succeeded in being
these groups dates from the beginning of the fifth recognised as sole ruler. In no time at all, Hunnic
century when the Romans withdrew their regular power collapsed.
troops from England and left the defence against A completely new phase in the history of the
barbarians from Ireland and Scotland, including migrations was ushered in when, in 476, there

33
PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

was no further appointment of a separate emperor the Gepids, at that time the most powerful people
for the western part of the Empire and power was in the area. It is possible that as a consequence
taken by Odoacer, a general of barbarian origins, of this treaty the Lombards departed for Italy en
who did not style himself emperor but rex gen- masse immediately after their total victory over
tium (‘king of [both] peoples’, i.e. Romans and the Gepids.
barbarians). This situation again confirmed the Within a few years the Lombards had sub-
fiction of a Roman Empire undivided, with a jected large parts of Italy, though not all the
sole emperor in Constantinople. The holder of territories adjoined each other. In fact three cen-
that highest office, Zeno (474–491), seized the tres of power were created: in the north Friuli, the
opportunity to turn fiction into reality and to Po Valley (which would be called Lombardy after
restore effective Roman authority in the West, the Lombards), and Tuscia (Tuscany), with Pavia
beginning with Italy and Rome itself. Zeno clev- as the royal seat; and in the Apennines the two
erly persuaded Theoderic the Amal, the leader ‘dukedoms’, or vicegerencies, of Spoleto and
of rebellious Ostrogothic troops, stationed near Benevento. The rest of the peninsula remained
Constantinople, to undertake a campaign of con- in Byzantine hands.
quest in Italy. Theoderic’s expedition, carried out The final phase of the period of migrations
in 488–489, became a complete success. He took began shortly after the Lombard invasion in Italy
Ravenna, and killed Odoacer with his own hands. and was similarly connected to the expansion
Then, however, instead of returning Italy as a of the Avar power and the weak defence of the
province to his principal, Theoderic established European part of the Byzantine Empire. In about
his own Ostrogothic kingdom. 570 Slavic-speaking groups under the control of
Although Theoderic (493–526) did his utmost the Avars from the region of the lower Danube
to make it look as if the emperor in Constantinople attacked Greece and the Balkans. Originally
had delegated this royal authority to him, his de marauding raids, these incursions continued at
facto independence and the growing power of his frequent intervals for about fifty years and gradu-
kingdom made further East Roman intervention ally acquired the nature of aggressive migrations
in Italy inevitable. This resulted in the devastating with the aim of permanent settlement. The Slavs
Gothic wars (535–554). Among the barbarian foed- were given every opportunity for this since the
erati employed by the Byzantine authorities during Byzantines had long neglected the Danube bor-
this conflict were the Langobards, or Lombards. der while they were entangled in exhausting wars
Yet the major invasion of Italy by a large Lombard against the Persians in the East. In the circum-
army in 568 was not the result of a direct request stances the emperors could do little but accept the
from the emperor in Constantinople. The back- situation and implement a policy of accommoda-
ground to the incursion remains something of a tion. This included sending missionaries to the
mystery but was connected with the appearance Slav communities in Byzantine territory. In the
of a new confederation of nomads in the Pontic course of the seventh century Byzantine policies
steppes and the Alföld. These Avars most probably became far more aggressive, leading to a series of
originated from the Far East and were a remnant wars of submission and the deportation of large
of the Joujan, who in this period lost their pre- numbers of Slavs to the interior of Asia Minor.
dominant position on the Mongolian steppes to a
new strong power in central Eurasia: the Göktürk
or ‘Blue Turks’. The Lombards, whose homelands Migrations and ethnogenesis
were in present-day Hungary and Slovenia, had
apparently concluded a treaty of non-aggression The major barbarian groups involved in the
with the Avars, only to then begin a war against events of the Migration Period were invariably

34
 ThE E ND Of ThE ROMA N E M pI R E I N T hE W E ST 1 CHAPTER

provided with general labels such as Franks,

The barbarian kingdoms in
Alamans, Goths or Huns.
Most of these names were ethnic umbrella
the West
terms that were used for the sake of convenience. Whoever compares the map of Europe in about
When sources sometimes go into more detail 200 with one of about 500 cannot fail to be
about, for instance, the actual composition of bar- impressed at the successes achieved by the bar-
barian armies, it appears that most of them must barians. Where once the Romans held sway from
have been multi-ethnic confederations, that con- the Irish Sea in the north-west to the mouth of
stantly changed composition, because, as time the Danube in the south-east, barbarian king-
went on, many must have left or died, while, doms had now been established throughout
vice versa, numbers were replenished with new western and southern Europe. Kingship thus
allies. The Langobard army that invaded Italy in became the dominant form of government in the
568 was described as a multitudo vulgi promiscui Middle Ages. With respect to its continuity two
(‘a multitude of mixed people[s]’), among whom tendencies can be discerned: one to hereditary
were mentioned, in addition to the Lombards succession and the formation of a dynasty, the
themselves, Saxons, Gepids, Bulgars, Sarmatians, other to election by the most important aristo-
Pannonians, Suevi and Noricans. However, if such crats. Neither principle was applied in its purest
highly dynamic, multi-ethnic confederations form; there was always a mixture. The Visigoths
lasted long enough, they could grow into new mostly held to the electoral system, the Franks to
peoples, each with their own new identity, which that of hereditary succession through one family.
for a more or less significant part was grafted on to The view that kingdoms could be divided up was
the culture of the dominant – often name-giving never entertained either. A reign was shared on
– group within the original confederation. This occasion, for example between father and son,
presupposes that elements of that culture were or between two brothers, but mostly that did not
consciously perpetuated by a ‘tradition-carrying lead to a division of the territory. The Frankish
kernel’ over a long period of time. The classic exam- Merovingians form an exception in this respect.
ple of this process of ethnogenesis (‘procreation Between the sixth and the eighth centuries there
of a people’) is presented by the Goths. According were normally two or three Frankish kingdoms
to modern analysts, there will have been little side by side, often ruled by brothers.
genetic, or even linguistic, agreement between the The Roman contribution to the ‘production’ of
Tervingian Goths who left their homelands in the barbarian kingdoms in the Migration Period can-
lower Danube region in 375 and the Visigoths who not be underestimated. Barbarian leaders looked
established the Toulousan kingdom almost half a up to the Roman Empire and saw Roman recogni-
century later. But the Gothic name had remained, tion as a clear legitimisation of their own power.
and for many specialists in Migration Period his- Some even tried to link themselves with the impe-
tory this proves that at least the kings of Toulouse rial family through marriage. Kings like Theoderic
and their aristocratic followers ‘for ancestral, the Amal, Sigismund of Burgundia and Clovis con-
social and military reasons [still] thought of them- tinually showed that in their own perception they
selves as Goths’ (Harries 1994). Similar processes of were part of the Roman order. Although boasting
ethnogenesis must also have been at work within of descending from an age-old Gothic royal family,
the other types of barbarian migrations that we the Amals, Theoderic repeatedly called his Italian
distinguished earlier. kingdom res publica Romana (‘a Roman state’) and
condescendingly addressed his fellow-princes as
barbarians. Sigismund spoke of himself as a ‘sol-
dier of the emperor’. After his victories over the

35
PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

Visigoths in 507 and 508 Clovis held triumphal Africa and of the Ostrogoths in Italy were more
feasts at which, following old Roman custom, he short-lived. The first was conquered by the Franks
dressed in purple. And even a century and a half in 534, as we have already seen. The second was
later the Visigothic king of Spain, Recceswinth recovered by the emperor in Constantinople
(653–672), seems to have consciously modelled after a brief campaign in 533, about a hundred
himself on his great idol, Emperor Justinian. years after the Vandal confederation had crossed
In addition to a Roman-imperial one, most into North Africa and taken possession of its rich
barbarian kingdoms immediately acquired a grain-producing coastal lands. Various eastern
Christian patina. Kings were gladly seen as shep- Roman emperors had tried to drive the Vandals
herds to whom their people were entrusted as a out of their African province in the second half of
flock of sheep. The most important duty of the the fifth century, but in vain, because the Vandals
king was to protect his subjects from the sins succeeded in becoming a formidable sea power.
endangering the eternal salvation of their souls. Quite a lot is known about the government of
Unlike the clergy, who shared this main task, the the Ostrogoths over Italy thanks to the Variae, a
king could – or even had to – act firmly if neces- collection of state papers, edited by Cassiodorus,
sary. Of course the king himself ideally was the a son of the Roman governor of Sicily and
very model of Christian virtue, a true princeps Calabria in the later years of Odoacer’s rule.
religiosus (religious prince). Cassiodorus held the important post of chan-
The most extensive of the new barbarian king- cellor a number of times under Theoderic the
doms was without doubt that of the Visigoths. At Great (493–526) and his immediate successors.
the end of the fifth century their power stretched From the Variae it appears that Theoderic did his
from the Loire in the north and the Rhône in utmost to operate a dictatorial government over
the east to the southernmost tip of the Iberian Italy, closely modelled on the Roman pattern.
peninsula. Only after the Visigoths had been The cooperation of the Roman aristocracy, tried
forced to give up the greater part of South Gaul and tested in classical officialdom, was essential
following their crushing defeat by Clovis near in this. In return, Theoderic protected Italy by
Vouillé in 507 did they really manage to consoli- taking the two open land approaches to the pen-
date their control over the whole of the Iberian insula – West Pannonia (modern Slovenia) in the
peninsula. Apart from the military successes of east and Provence in the west. He also attempted
King Leovigild (569–586), this was mainly due to wrestle Spain from the Visigoths. Theoderic’s
to the conversion of his son Reccared (586–601) kingdom collapsed soon after he died during the
from Arianism to Catholicism. These two fac- disastrous ‘Gothic wars’ with the east Roman
tors caused the process of political, social and emperor.
cultural integration between the descendants The Lombard invasion that followed would
of the barbarian invaders and the native Ibero- not have improved the situation for quite a
Roman population to gain momentum. In 711 while. Still, for centuries the Lombards had lived
the Gothic kingdom in Spain came to an abrupt near the Pannonian frontier, and must have been
end. A large Muslim army under the command quite familiar with Roman culture long before
of Tariq ibn Zeyad crossed over from Morocco 568. They merged with the Italian population,
(‘Gibraltar’ comes from djebel al’Tariq, ‘Tariq’s because by no means all Lombards were Arians
mountain’) and beat the Spaniards near Medina (just as by no means all Italians were orthodox).
Sidonia. Within a few years the greater part of the A visible proof of successful integration can be
peninsula was in Muslim hands. seen in the spread and persistence of Lombardic
The kingdoms of the Burgundians in the names while, conversely, Lombard as a spoken
Rhône valley and Savoy, of the Vandals in North language rapidly gave way to proto-Italian. There

36
MAP 1.3 Barbarian kingdoms in the West, c.525 ce
PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

is admiration for the legislative activities of the The picture that we have of Great Britain in
Lombard kings, and even if one always has to about 500 is very diffuse. The groups of Angles
look through the idealised image and ideologi- and Saxons who had come to England as foed-
cal charge presented by early medieval law codes, erati at the beginning of the fifth century had
they also reflect the desire of the new rulers to settled there permanently and interbred with the
enlarge the legal security of their subjects, much Roman-British population. The invaders were so
after Roman example. Finally, the Lombards dominant that they were able to impose their
were able to maintain an urban society in north own language. Even so, large parts of Great Britain
Italy even though they did not have an urban remained outside the reach of Anglo-Saxon settle-
background themselves. The Lombard territo- ment, and this explains why the Celtic language
ries were governed from the urban centres of the has been preserved in Cornwall, Wales and (parts
old civitates by dukes who were assisted by offi- of) Scotland. In the part of England under the
cials named gastalds, and, on the local level, by control of the continental barbarians many small
sculdais (Latin: sculteti). ‘kingdoms’ (or chiefdoms?) were created, which
No less astonishing than the rapid fall of the were constantly at war with each other. They
kingdom of the Ostrogoths was the rapid rise of eventually grew into seven larger units: Essex,
the kingdom of the Salian Franks. During the fifth Sussex and Wessex – the kingdoms of the East,
century there had been various Frankish warlords South and West Saxons respectively – Kent, East
between Cologne and Paris who assumed the title Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria. Of these seven,
of ‘king’, but their authority did not stretch far. Mercia – which we must place in the present-day
Among them was Childeric, whose power base Midlands – was by and large the most important
was in Tournai, but who often operated far beyond during the early Middle Ages. This meant that
and in the service of the Romans. After Childeric’s for longer periods some or all of the six other
death in 481, his son Clovis extended his power kingdoms recognised the supremacy of Mercia,
in the north of Gaul, but his major successes came at least in name. The best-known king of Mercia
later in life. After his defeat of the Visigoths in 507 is Offa (757–796), whose name lives on in the
he took possession of Aquitaine. Then followed new coins he had minted, in the customary laws
merciless campaigns in which he eliminated a num- (dooms) that he had collected and recorded and
ber of rival kingdoms in the Rhineland, including in the impressive earthwork (Offa’s Dyke) that he
that of the Ripuarian Franks around Cologne. The apparently had built, either as a defence or simply
kingdom of the Burgundians was annexed under as a marker, on the border between Mercia and
Clovis’s successors. Other neighbours were forced Wales, for a distance of more than 110 kilome-
to accept a satellite status, such as the kingdoms of tres. Offa maintained regular diplomatic contact
the Alamans (on the upper Rhine), the Bavarii (cf. with the court of Charlemagne, which indicates
Bavaria) and the Thuringi (cf. Thuringia). This was that Anglo-Saxon England was by no means
accompanied by the appointment of a Frankish or isolated from the continent.
a native duke or governor. Sometimes the depend-
ence was limited to the payment of annual tribute
as a sort of recognition of Frankish overlordship. The nature of barbarian
In other regions, such as Brittany, Frisia (the North settlement
Sea coastal fringes of the present-day Netherlands
and Germany), Gascony (the French Basque coun- Whether they had entered the Roman Empire
try), but actually also Aquitaine, short phases of as peasant colonists or as war bands in search of
strong Frankish influence alternated with longer booty or employment as mercenaries, the barbar-
periods of virtual autonomy. ian newcomers were small minorities – anywhere

38
 ThE E ND Of ThE ROMA N E M pI R E I N T hE W E ST 1 CHAPTER

between one and ten per cent of the total native born, is the most problematic, since it requires the
populations, depending on the type of migra- use of separate law codes for all recognised ethnic
tion. Burgundian law had a fitting name for the communities within one state. The impression is
Burgundian immigrants: faramanni, ‘[fellow] trav- that although barbarian rulers were not in favour
ellers’. At times the newcomers formed such a of legal segregation, they had to accept a dual
small group that they could not immediately hold legal system in the beginning because those seek-
effective control over the territory they claimed ing justice appealed to their own traditional legal
to have subjected. They entrenched themselves rules: the barbarian newcomers to their custom-
in central strongholds, whence in the early years ary law, the native Romans to written Roman law.
they terrorised the native large landowners. In The practical solutions that were found to cope
areas where the Roman taxation system was still with the problem this posed to the administra-
functioning, barbarian newcomers, during the tion of justice implied that native populations
earliest stage of settlement, may have satisfied were granted personal law rights when dealing
themselves with the appropriation of shares in with private law cases in which both parties were
the tax revenue. But the general impression is ‘Roman’ (native), while the ‘barbarian’ law of the
certainly that the leaders soon started to take pos- new rulers was given territorial validity in dealing
session of land, that is, estates belonging to the with criminal cases as well as with private law-
fisc (imperial lands) or to great senatorial families suits in which at least one party was ‘barbarian’
owning land all over the Empire, to start with. For (allochtonous).
the mass of the native peasants – whether of free The problem gradually faded as the different
or unfree status – not much will have changed. population groups increasingly mixed. This mix-
ing could only have been prevented by a rigid
enforcement of a ban on mixed marriages. Such
Segregation or integration? a ban did exist in Visigothic Spain in the first
half of the sixth century, but it was only in that
It has long been thought that the barbarian place and at that time, and the background is
minorities did everything in their power to keep obscure. More in general, the opposition between
themselves separate from the native population Arians and Catholics remained real for the long-
in order to limit the number of people that could est amount of time in Spain – until Reccared’s
share in the advantages of their newly won posi- conversion in 589. In other barbarian kingdoms
tion. Segregation could have happened in four it either did not exist at all (in Frankish Gaul
ways: by forbidding mixed marriages, by closing since Clovis), or it did not run along the dividing
the army (and the use of weapons) to natives, line between barbarian newcomers and native
by introducing the principle of personal ethnic populations (in Ostrogothic Italy), or it was insig-
law and by consciously adhering to Arianism, a nificant. The Lombard rulers in Italy, for example,
heretical movement inside Christianity. In recent never made an issue of religious convictions.
times there has been serious doubt, not only All in all, the evidence for a consciously sought
about the feasibility of implementing strict seg- segregation is meagre. Only for a short time after
regation on an ethnic, functional and religious gaining power in a particular region was segrega-
basis, but also about the will of barbarian kings tion sometimes an option, but this was dictated
to remain separate. by the barbarian leaders’ desire to guarantee mate-
Of the methods of segregation just mentioned, rial rewards for their warriors and to put matters
personal ethnic law – the principle of treating on a permanent basis, not by a deliberate policy
each individual in a polity according to the (cus- of apartheid. Ethnic sentiments were only played
tomary) law of the ethnic group in which he is to in specific circumstances. Justinian’s wars of

39
PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

reconquest (see pp. 43–44), in particular, brought creation of a new consciousness of supra-local
about that barbarian kings turned away from the solidarity, of the idea that natives and newcom-
labels ‘Roman’ and ‘Catholic’ and preferred to pro- ers together formed one people. Where this
file themselves as non-Roman (Gothic, Vandal) consciousness was strongly politicised – which in
Arians. The Gothic wars in Italy are testimony this context means closely linked with kingship –
to the fact that such attempts at politicisation we can talk of proto-nation formation. Visigothic
of ethnicity did not stick. To most inhabitants Spain is an early example of this: here, in sev-
of Italy, loyalties connected to their own local- enth-century literary and legal sources, rex, gens
ity or local social position weighed heavier than et patria Gothorum becomes the standard formula
the feeling to be a ‘Roman’ or a ‘Goth’; parts of to refer to the ‘king, people and homeland of
their identity that were switched on and off, or the Spaniards’, regardless of their ethnic origins.
swapped at convenience. On the other hand, the Some decades later the Roman name ‘Hispani’
evidence for integration is stronger and more replaced the word ‘Gothi’ for Spaniards, while
plentiful. Archaeologically, it is difficult to dis- henceforth ‘Gothi’ was mainly used to refer back
tinguish between barbarian invaders and native to the historical barbarians who had conquered
populations soon after the arrival of the former, Spain in a past that was almost mythical even at
which points to a rapid acculturation. Also, in that time.
many places, the barbarians abandoned their own In other barbarian kingdoms it was the name
language rapidly and easily: the Visigoths and of the invaders that persisted as a proto-national
Suebes in the Iberian peninsula, the Burgundians point of reference. Such was the case in Burgundia
in Savoy and Provence, the Franks in Gaul and and Francia, the kingdoms of the Burgundians and
the Lombards in Italy all gave up their Germanic Franks, and eventually also in Anglia, the collec-
languages for regional Romance languages, tive name for the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons
just as the Avars and the Bulgarians exchanged in England. At the same time, Burgundians, Franks
their Altaic languages for Slavic ones. Only the and Angles became the usual names for all the
Germanic invaders in England, the Franks in the inhabitants, whether their origin was barbarian/
area between the lower Rhine and Northern Gaul, foreign or native. This re-branding of old names
the Alamans in the upper Rhine area and lower was even linked to the conscious presentation of
Switzerland, Slavic settlers on the Balkans and, at the new Franks and Angles as a chosen ‘people’
a later stage, the Magyars in Hungary, all immi- or ‘race’, comparable to the Jewish people from
grants, succeeded in making their language the Exodus or the Trojan wandering refugees after the
dominant one in regions which were once for fall of their city: they were seen as a large pseudo-
some length of time part of the Roman Empire. family with a shared past, its own identity and a
In the Alps interesting mixing zones emerged, common destiny within the framework of either
where two languages continued to exist side by secular Roman or Christian salvation history.
side. The durability of this form of integration can When considering this type of proto-nation
be seen in the fact that the linguistic boundaries formation in the early Middle Ages we must, of
of Europe today essentially date back to those course, expel any notion of modern national con-
outlined above. sciousness, hence the prefix ‘proto’. We just do
not know how deep feelings ran that were aired
in lofty and learned writings destined for the
Proto-nation formation king and the social elite. Neither did the barbar-
ian kings possess the military or communications
Outside Italy integration between foreign minor- facilities to fully and continuously control the
ities and native majorities contributed to the vast territories over which their power extended

40
 ThE E ND Of ThE ROMA N E M pI R E I N T hE W E ST 1 CHAPTER

in name. For this reason, whether they liked it The second aside is prompted by the consid-
or not, they always had to accept a large degree eration that loss of luxury and monumentality
of local and regional autonomy. Under weak does not say all about average human well-being
kings or in peripheral regions, there were plenty on a more elementary level. It was not all roses
of opportunities to strengthen old regional in the Roman world, and indeed proportionally
traditions. more people may have been better fed in the
early Middle Ages than they had been during the
later Roman Empire. And third, neither did the
Balance: the end of Roman demise of conveniences and comfort imply the
civilisation? death of Roman civilisation in terms of ideals and
ideas. On the contrary, in a sense, Rome’s appeal
Did the fall of the Roman Empire in the West also proved to be eternal. Throughout the Middle
mark the end of Roman civilisation in the West? Ages, and long after, Roman ideas on government
One is easily inclined to think it did because and law, on science and literature continued to
archaeology does not lie. What could better illus- exert a compelling force on the imagination
trate the end of a civilisation than the astounding and activities of the upper strata of society in
impoverishment of its material culture? Nothing western Europe. Every ruler who felt in any way
crafted in the sixth and seventh centuries could superior to his rivals, from the barbarian kings
equal the superb urban planning and construc- of the early Middle Ages through Charlemagne,
tion of roads, harbours, aqueducts and drains of Frederick II, Charles V, Napoleon and Mussolini,
the Roman age; nothing compares to the mag- adorned himself with the symbols of the Roman
nificent public and private buildings of that time, emperors. But there is more to it than that. The
to their refined house design, their decorations, sheer fact that today we know so much more of
their utensils, their tableware. Typically, none of Roman history than of any other ancient civili-
the new ‘capitals’ of the barbarian kingdoms that sation in the world is proof of an avid interest
took shape in the course of the fifth and sixth cen- of generations of inquisitive men in the Middle
turies (Toulouse, Paris, Toledo, Pavia) succeeded Ages, who thought it worthwhile to copy and
in coming anywhere near the exterior splendour study, again and again, the intellectual legacy of
and the high level of public conveniences of the ‘the Greeks and the Romans’. Most of them were
old Roman capitals. monks or clergy, that is to say, they belonged to
Yet, there are three asides to be made here. the Christian Church. Seen from that perspective
The first is that this impoverishment of material one could say that the Church took responsibility
culture cannot have been caused by barbarian for the preservation of classical culture, and it did
invasions alone. Barbarian settlement was not by so largely because the Church itself was an impor-
definition a ‘bad thing’, as is demonstrated by tant relic of that culture. That also explains its use
the flourishing of the agrarian economy in the of all the instruments that were indispensable for
African province under Vandal rule. Moreover, a the conservation of secular public authority: the
certain decline in public building is also observa- art of writing, a universal language, profession-
ble in those regions of the eastern Empire that did alism in administration and written law, and a
not suffer at all from barbarian invasions, such as stable organisation with fixed territorial divisions
Syria and Egypt. So, apparently, there were other (see Chapter 2).
factors at stake. We already pointed out two: the However, these three asides being made, there
disappearance of classical city councils, respon- is no escape from the conclusion that the rift
sible for public infrastructure and building, and between the classical civilisation of Late Antiquity
the penetration of world-averse Christian ethics. and the world of barbarian kingdoms in the West

41
PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

was far more fundamental than the transition seem to have grown and flourished as never
from east Roman to Greek-Byzantine in the East, before. It even led to a certain monumentalisa-
or even than the transition from Greek-Byzantine tion of the countryside, because many wealthy
to Arab in those parts of the eastern Empire that landowners had splendid rural villas built, and
were lost to the Arab-Muslim conquerors around in addition invested some of their wealth in
the middle of the seventh century (see Chapter churches and monasteries.
2). Decisive in the end were the disintegration Conversely, population decline in the West
of Roman government and the downturn of the was more lasting and more far-reaching. An
landowning elite, which, voluntarily or under extreme example is the countryside surrounding
constraint, had to make room for martial new- the city of Rome, which was depopulated almost
comers. Both had a destructive effect on the strong as fast as the city’s population size went down.
administrative links – including a regular tax flow The political chaos and the lengthy loss of public
– that had always existed between countryside government at the local level led to a more radi-
and town. cal type of economic and social ruralisation than
Under these circumstances phenomena that arose in the East. No later than the fifth century
occurred both in the East and the West, such as large agricultural estates, latifundia, encompass-
demographic crises and a certain tendency to ing hundreds of hectares, formed the heart of
ruralisation, had a far bigger impact in the West society in the former western Empire. The old
than they had in the East. For example, after the senatorial class had used its political clout to
eastern Mediterranean had been hit by two natu- obtain fiscal privileges for itself. Senatorial estates
ral disasters in succession – the catastrophic crop enjoyed a status of immunity, where the power
failures in two consecutive years following the of the dwindling state could not reach. The great
tremendous eruption of the Krakatoa volcano on landowners, with their large numbers of depend-
the isle of Java in March 535 and the outbreak of ent peasants, could defend themselves better in
a lethal plague epidemic in 542 – demographic times of uncertainty and danger than ordinary,
recovery must have been remarkable. Especially self-employed individuals. They assumed mili-
in Syria and Egypt, both agriculture and villages tary styles and their central buildings became

PLATE 1.4 In the late Empire and

the early Middle Ages, Roman cities
lost their function and shrank to small
dimensions. This implied a shift of the
dwellers’ cultural preferences and
the magnificent ancient buildings fell
into ruin. Typically, the arena in Arles
became filled with medieval houses,
as shown in this woodcut from the
sixteenth century.

42
 ThE E ND Of ThE ROMA N E M pI R E I N T hE W E ST 1 CHAPTER

fortresses, and in this way they were able to urban culture – palaces, forums, statues, baths, the-
organise an armed defence against roving gangs. atres, racecourses – were enlarged and improved.
Lack of safety persuaded many originally free The ceremonial heart of the city lay directly on the
peasant smallholders to place themselves under Bosporus: it was formed by the great imperial pal-
the protection of these powerful landlords. ace, the racecourse (Hippodrome), the two main
Sometimes this happened by way of a formal churches of the Holy Apostles and Saint Eirene,
transaction known as precaria (lit. ‘request’), in the large forum of Constantine and the most
which the peasant relinquished his land and paid important government buildings, including the
a fee in recognition to the landlord. In return he Silention basilica, the superb hall of the imperial
retained the right to use the land. Many others palace in which the emperors made their solemn
acquired the status of colonus, which tied them to pronouncements. The population increase of
a piece of land that the landowner allowed them Constantinople was contrary to the depopulation
to work in exchange for part of the produce and of Rome. While Rome must have had just under
often also specified services. So we can see how, in 500,000 inhabitants in about 400, by the mid-
the West, economic and social relationships that dle of the sixth century there were no more than
were created out of the ruins of the late Empire 30,000 left. Constantinople, with an estimated
would become characteristic features of the early population size of 250,000 in Theodosius’s time,
Middle Ages (see Chapter 3). had by then grown into a metropolis of about half
a million people. This number dropped later and
Constantinople was never as populous as Rome
The survival of the Roman had been during the Principate, but throughout
Empire in the East the Middle Ages it remained by far the largest city
in Europe.
In 324, Emperor Constantine had Byzantium,
the unassuming capital of his only remaining
rival, Licinius, razed to the ground and then Justinian
measured anew and rebuilt stone by stone. The
inauguration ceremony presented this rebuilding After 476 the eastern Roman emperors laid claim
symbolically as the refounding of Rome, although to the recovery and restoration of the Empire, ren-
now a manifestly Christian Rome. Byzantium’s ovatio imperii, from Byzantium and with authority
strategic location midway between the Rhine and over Rome. The man who really gave shape to this
the Euphrates, and on the narrow passage that was Justinian (527–565), an ambitious and zeal-
connected Europe and Asia, the Mediterranean ous character from a family of upstart peasants.
Sea to the Black Sea, made it more suitable than His policy of renewal had three cornerstones: the
Rome as a centre of government. That is why recovery of the regions which had been lost; the
Constantine moved his court to Byzantium, soon clarification and codification of Roman law; and
called Constantinople (‘Constantine’s city’). the establishment of orthodox religious unity. In
The emperors of the fourth century did every- the beginning this policy proved to be very suc-
thing possible to give their new capital some of cessful, but in about 550 it started to go wrong
the aura of Rome. Constantine himself and his and the gulf between ideal and reality widened.
son Constantius II (337–361) started an ambitious Justinian tackled the wars of reconquest
programme of construction in which monumen- shrewdly. In order to avoid a war on two fronts
tal Christian buildings had a central place right he first of all negotiated a long-term truce with
from the beginning, but at the same time the pub- the Sassanian rulers of Persia, the most formida-
lic amenities that were so characteristic of Roman ble of the enemies of the eastern Roman Empire.

43
PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

Then an expeditionary force successfully attacked Corpus Iuris Civilis made him more than just a
the lands of the Vandals in North Africa. But the virtuous emperor who took seriously his royal
restoration of Roman authority in the area would responsibility to dispense justice. This self-same
prove to be as ephemeral as Vandal lordship had administrative act linked him directly with the
been. Muslim advance brought the Tripoli region deep-rooted foundations of Roman authority. Yet,
(Libya) under Arab control in 647. By 670 the whereas its predecessor, the Codex Theodosianus of
whole of North Africa was in Arab hands. about 440, was widely used in the barbarian West,
Furthermore, while Justinian’s armies gained the Corpus Iuris Civilis proved to be less usable in
a firm foothold on the east coast of Spain, the the East, because fewer and fewer people, intel-
emperor underestimated the strength of the lectuals included, spoke or wrote Latin. Although
kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy. Two exhaust- its rulers and inhabitants persisted in referring to
ing wars of attrition, which started in 535 and themselves as Romaioi (Romans), and Arabs and
together would last for almost twenty years, Turks similarly still spoke of Rum, the Byzantine
plunged Italy into acute misery. To make mat- Empire was rapidly becoming Hellenised. Not
ters worse, the greater part of the territorial gains until the end of the ninth century did a more-
made by the Byzantines were nullified through or-less complete Greek translation of the Corpus
the Lombard invasion of 568. What, for the time Iuris Civilis appear.
being, was left of Byzantine possessions in Italy The third aspect of Justinian’s renovatio imperii,
comprised a number of important coastal cit- the establishment of religious unity, likewise
ies (Venice, Bari, Amalfi, Naples); the islands of appealed to a long Roman tradition, the inter-
Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica; parts of Apulia and weaving of state affairs and (state) religion. In
Calabria, and the wider surroundings of Rome that tradition, the emperor also was the religious
and Ravenna that were interconnected by a terri- leader. Since Constantine, this had meant that
torial corridor through the Apennine mountains. it was the emperor’s duty to lead the Christian
Ravenna became the seat of the Byzantine gov- Church and to defend it from internal and exter-
ernor or exarch, who was only driven out by the nal enemies. In this way the expedition against
Lombards in the middle of the eighth century. the Vandals was consciously promoted as a holy
Taken together, Justinian’s attempts to restore war against heretics because the Vandals were
Roman rule in the West by military means can Arians, and Arianism had been decreed a her-
only be seen as a failure. Besides, they were esy (see Chapter 2). To crown his solidarity with
extremely costly, and this compelled Justinian the Christian faith, and as an expression of his
to substantially lower the pay of the regular bor- primacy in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, he had
der troops – allegedly 225,000 men. Henceforth, the Church of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia
these soldiers had to rely more on what the land in Greek) in Constantinople rebuilt after a fire
attached to their units produced. into the largest and most majestic church in
The second cornerstone of the imperial res- Christendom.
toration, the clarification and codification of
Roman law, was far more successful and lasted
considerably longer (see Box 1.3). Even if in Late Implosion and consolidation
Antiquity it was no longer the ‘people of Rome’,
represented by the Senate, but the emperor, who Justinian’s successful policy of recovery started
‘by God’s grace’ was considered to be the only to get stuck even before the middle of the sixth
source of justice and law, Justinian chose to century. In 541–542, the Mediterranean area was
anchor his project in what was called the ‘hon- hit heavily by an outbreak of bubonic plague,
ourable authority of tradition’. That is why the the first known pandemic of that sort in the

44
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BOX 1.3 ROMAN LAW

The actual work on Justinian’s codification was carried out by a special commission consisting of
jurists attached to the royal court or to one of the two most renowned schools of law in the Empire,
at Beirut and Constantinople. The work was completed within six years (528–534). In its entirety it
was known as Corpus Iuris Civilis (‘Body of Civil Law’), but in fact it was made up of three very dif-
ferent parts. The Codex Justinianus contains all the imperial edicts from Hadrian (117–134) until the
year 533. This part was intended to replace older, less complete compilations such as the Codex
Theodosianus which dated from about 440. A separate supplement, the Novellae constitutiones,
known as Novellae, with additions from after 533, appeared later. The largest part of the Corpus
is formed by the Digesta (Pandectès in Greek), an extensive selection of legal commentaries by
thirty-nine well-known Roman lawyers from the Roman imperial age. The last part, although more
modest in size, was perhaps the most influential. It is called Institutiones and was intended as a
manual for law students or as a reference book for practising lawyers. Institutiones looks most like
a statute book, a systematic survey of rules of law, which actually are concerned solely with private
law. The speed with which a codification of laws of such high quality was compiled is proof that
the government apparatus of the eastern Empire set great store by a legal training. From the late
Middle Ages onwards the Corpus Iuris Civilis would be a major influence on legal concepts and
procedural law in the West, on canon law to start with.
As far as private law was concerned Roman law offered many ways of enabling individuals to
secure property rights, to dispose of possessions by testament, to enter freely into contracts, and
by which the rights of women and minors were protected. The Codex Justinianus recognised the
statute of the legal person through which collectivities (universitates in Latin), such as guilds and
local communities, were able to assert their rights. Civil and criminal procedures were laid down
precisely, so that individual litigants could appeal to them, even against the power of the state.
On the other hand, during the compilation many centuries-old provisions were revised in light
of the new relationships in the eastern Empire where the emperor and his officials exerted sov-
ereign power over legislation, the administration of justice, government, tax law and the conduct
of war. In Justinian’s Corpus Iuris Civilis we find the principles that ‘the ruler is not bound by the
law’ and that ‘what pleases the ruler has the force of law’, to which later monarchs with absolutist
tendencies gladly appealed.

Sources: Peter G. Stein, Roman Law in European History (Cambridge: CUP, 1999); James A. Brundage, The
Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession: Canonists, Civilians, and Courts (Chicago/London: The University of
Chicago Press, 2008), ch. 1.

history of the West. At the eastern frontier, the this new iron yoke, large groups of Slavic refugees
traditional Persian enemy pushed forward once penetrated into the Balkans and northern Greece,
more. The North again had to deal with nomadic where they permanently settled.
invasions from the western steppe: first from the The Byzantine answer to these external threats
Avars, then from the Bulgars. They subjected vari- met with varying degrees of success. The rule of
ous Slavic peoples living in the Lower and Middle Emperor Heraclius I (610–641) can be called tragic
Danube area. In their attempts to escape from in that respect. In 615–616 Heraclius was close to

45
PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

a total surrender to Shah Khusro of the Persian A fifth theme was similar to a marine corps and
Empire. But in the following decade, thanks to was based in naval units in the Aegean Sea. At a
cutting costs and taxing wealth on an unprece- later stage, additional themes were established to
dented scale, and after having found a new ally in protect the remaining Byzantine regions in the
the Göktürk masters of the central-Asian steppes, western part of the Mediterranean. The continu-
Heraclius turned the tide and gained a spectacu- ing threat from the Arabs, who in 717–718 laid
lar victory over the Sassanians in 627. Less than siege to Constantinople itself, and from domes-
ten years later, Fortune’s wheel swung back again. tic conspiracies against the emperor, persuaded
This time the Byzantines suffered a humiliating Constantine V (741–775) to create six elite units
defeat at the hands of the Arabs (636). Syria and of special forces, known as tagmata, which were
Palestine were lost forever, and Egypt followed well paid and closely linked to the emperor. They
shortly after Heraclius’s death. consisted of 18,000 men – on paper anyway –
Demographic crisis and loss of territory had many of them cavalry. This meant that in times
serious consequences for the Byzantine econ- of crisis the emperor would be much better pre-
omy and society, and for the administrative and pared. Very soon, however, a new danger loomed
military organisation of the Empire. During the on the horizon: the tagmata commanders deter-
seventh century the Byzantine economy showed mined who would become emperor. The solution
clear signs of contraction. For that reason, the to this problem was the formation, in the course
army and bureaucracy were drastically reduced of the ninth century, of an imperial bodyguard of
in size: the army from a total of some 330,000 handpicked men, some of them barbarians.
men in the days of Justinian to an estimated Before the year 1000 the theme armies, in their
80,000 in about 740, the central civil service in old form, had had their day. After that, in newly
Constantinople from 2,500 at the beginning of conquered regions, purely military districts were
the sixth century to just 600 in the eighth cen- established with their own troops, whose strategoi
tury. Furthermore, a number of important reforms (commanders) were directly responsible to the
in taxation, military organisation and imperial emperor. These new-style themes, however, were
bureaucracy were implemented under Heraclius considerably smaller than the old ones.
and his grandson and successor, Constans II
(641–668). In rural areas responsibility for the
payment of taxes came to rest directly on farm- Renewed expansion
ing communities and their leaders. The new taxes
were paid mostly in gold. In this way the vital For the time being, military successes were small,
monetary link between the subjects/taxpayers such as the reconquest, shortly after 800, of the
on the one hand and (professional) soldiers and western part of the Peloponnese, which had
public servants on the other could remain intact. been thoroughly ‘Slavicised’ during the preced-
In the same period the army was completely ing two centuries. After the repossession entire
remodelled. Since the days of Diocletian and Slav communities were deported and replaced
Constantine, the soldiers, partly conscripts, by indigenous Greeks. Further expansion even
partly professionals, had been divided over field in Greece was mainly precluded by the rising
army units and stationary frontier troops. Now, power of the Bulgars, originally Turkic steppe
in agreement with the dimensions of a much nomads who had invaded the lower Danube
smaller empire, a new division was made in four region around 665 and established an autono-
large army corps or themes, all of which were mous khanate. This new Bulgarian state steadily
stationed in Asia Minor, the largest and richest expanded southwards and westwards until at its
region that the Byzantine Empire still possessed. largest it encompassed not only modern Bulgaria

46
 ThE E ND Of ThE ROMA N E M pI R E I N T hE W E ST 1 CHAPTER

but also all of Macedonia and major parts of These arrangements had a good and a bad
present-day Serbia and Albania. The Bulgarian side. Lekapenos, Phocas and Tzimisces were all
capital, Pliska, was built far south of the Danube very capable soldiers who, thanks to their posi-
on former Byzantine territory. tion, could pursue their military ambitions.
It was not until the end of the ninth century Lekapenos put heavy pressure on the Bulgarian
that the tide began to turn: although most of Empire which had flourished remarkably under
Sicily had fallen to the Muslims, the Byzantine the powerful khan Symeon (893–927) and his
position in mainland Italy and Anatolia was successors. Phocas annexed Cilicia (the south-
strengthened. The major conquests that fol- eastern corner of Asia Minor), Armenia and the
lowed in the tenth century were in part made islands of Crete and Cyprus, and through his
possible by the weakening of Byzantium’s tradi- conquest of Antioch acquired a bridgehead in
tional enemies (notably the Muslim rulers in the northern Syria. Tzimisces chased the Russians out
Middle East) and in part the result of reasonable of Bulgaria, started to occupy Bulgarian Thrace
political stability in Byzantium itself. An effective and reduced the Arab emirates of Aleppo and
balance was found between hereditary monarchy Mosul in the north of Mesopotamia to Byzantine
and army intervention in matters of state, an vassal states. The downside of the generals’ high-
almost unavoidable feature of a relatively cen- handed actions was that rivalry and self-interest
tralised state which made high demands on the all too easily resulted in internal squabbles. This
army. This balance meant that the highest mili- is what happened after the death of Tzimisces in
tary commanders showed restraint in ‘correcting’ 976. Thirteen years of civil war followed, which
weak emperors or filling power vacuums, nota- only came to an end when the young Basil II
bly created when an emperor died and before his finally managed to take control. The alliance that
son had attained his majority, but at the same Basil forged with Vladimir, the Russian ruler of
time they kept a finger on the pulse. This turned Kiev, was of particular importance in this struggle
the court into a shadow world where behind the for power.
fairy-tale scene the air was thick with plots and On the military front Basil scored many suc-
the protagonists regularly disappeared into the cesses. He completed the conquest of Bulgaria,
wings. with a cruelty that exceeded even the norms of
Throughout the tenth century there were really the time, earning him the soubriquet ‘the slayer
only two emperors: Constantine VII (913–959) of the Bulgars’. The small Christian kingdoms to
and his grandson Basil II (963–1025). The former the south of the Caucasus, such as Georgia, were
reigned first under the regency of the Patriarch brought under Byzantine rule more or less by force.
of Constantinople, and then under that of his And, lastly, Basil strengthened the Byzantine pres-
mother, the courtesan Zoë, ‘of the coal-black eyes’ ence in southern Italy. Only his efforts to recover
(Karbonopsina). After that, for nearly twenty-five Sicily from the Muslims came to nothing.
years, he had to put up with the career general The renewed Byzantine expansion was accom-
Romanos Lekapenos as co-emperor beside him. panied by the strengthening of the army, and
To distinguish him from Lekapenos, Constantine in particular of the tactical importance of the
was given the surname Porphyrogenitus (‘he who cavalry. Cavalry units were more heavily armed
was born to the purple’, i.e. the purple curtains of and were given more important offensive duties,
the imperial childbed) meaning that he was the while the infantry was trained to protect the cav-
lawful hereditary monarch. Under Basil II the gen- alry from counter-attack by taking up a square
erals Phocas and Tzimisces forced their way one formation on the battlefield. These army reforms
after the other – and after the latter had had the went hand in hand with legislation on recruit-
former liquidated – into the role of co-emperor. ment and costs. Basil introduced the principle of

47
PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

MAP 1.4 The Byzantine Empire, c.700 and c.1025

subsidiary fiscal solidarity. This meant that larger Points to remember

landowners were obliged to take on the fiscal
responsibilities (not the land) of small farmers ■■ The fact that the Roman Empire collapsed in
in the same village who were in financial dif- the West at the beginning of the fifth century
ficulties. The maintenance costs of the heavily was rather coincidental; ironically, the direct
armed cavalrymen, who had to have more than problems that caused the fall of the Empire
one horse each at their disposal and who needed in the West originated in the East.
costly weapons and equipment, were appor- ■■ The ‘fall’ of the Roman Empire in the West
tioned over certain pieces of land. The owners has to be understood as the collapse of Roman
of that land were then jointly responsible for the government structure at local and provincial
maintenance of one cavalryman. levels, and especially of its sophisticated tax
When Basil II died in 1025 Byzantium was system. The main catalysts were the lengthy
once again a major power. The Empire was cer- ‘journeys’ of the Gothic and Vandal armies,
tainly twice as large as it had been in the eighth and the expansion of Hunnic power over
century. Basil reigned supreme from the Straits of central Europe during the first two decades
Messina to the east coast of the Black Sea. of the fifth century.
■■ The groups of ‘barbarians’ (foreigners) that were
most dramatically involved in the so-called

48
 ThE E ND Of ThE ROMA N E M pI R E I N T hE W E ST 1 CHAPTER

Migration Period had in common that they defined rather by military and political leadership
were multi-ethnic war bands that preferred than by ethnicity, their proper place in Late Antique
history, with surprising new attention to the role
to operate as Roman federate allies (foederati),
played by the Huns.
because that ensured them of pay. Kim, Hyun Jin (2016), The Huns (London/New York:
■■ Everywhere, the barbarian invaders or Routledge). The latest update on the Huns, and their
immigrants were tiny minorities that in the crucial part in the events of the Migration Period.
longer run were forced to integrate into the The author rehabilitates an old idea that had been
native populations. Historians of that time rejected in post-war historiography, that is to say
that the Huns were an offshoot of the Xiongnu,
sometimes presented this process of integra-
a confederacy of pre-Mongolian steppe tribes that
tion as the creation of a new people with a constituted a powerful steppe empire to the north
double origin, one native-Roman, the other of China during the Han dynasty.
foreign-barbarian. Liebeschuetz, J.H.W.G. (2001), The Decline and Fall of
■■ The fall of the Roman Empire in the West the Roman City (Oxford/New York: OUP). Masterly
analysis of arguably the most important aspect
also meant the end of Roman civilisation,
of the transformation of the Roman world: the
especially in terms of loss of high-quality decline and transformation of the classical Roman
material prosperity and of a predominantly city (civitas), of civic government, and of the ide-
secular world view. als of citizenship and civic culture that were closely
■■ The Roman Empire fell, yet survived: in the connected with them.
West as a guiding political ideal and a cul- Pohl, Walter and Helmut Reimitz (eds) (1998), Strategies
of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities,
tural model, in the East in reality, although
300–800 (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers).
with a profoundly changed appearance as to Volume with excellent articles on the ethnic factor
its size, ethnic composition, language and in the ‘barbarian migrations’ of the Migration Period
cultural orientation. For that reason, it is bet- and the constitution of regnal communities after
ter to speak of the (Greek-)Byzantine Empire the Migration Period, with much attention given to
constructivist and historical-legalist positions.
after the sixth century.
Sarris, Peter (2011), Empires of Faith: The Fall of Rome to
the Rise of Islam, 500–700 (Oxford: OUP). In spite of
its title this book offers more of a comprehensive
Suggestions for further treatment of what happened in the territories of the

reading western and eastern Roman empires respectively

and its neighbours (such as the Persians) between
500 and 700 than a comparison between the post-
Heather, Peter (2005), The Fall of the Roman Empire:
Roman world in the West and the rise of Islam in
A New History of Rome and the Barbarians (Oxford:
the East.
OUP). Detailed but balanced narrative of the
Migration Period which awards barbarian groups,

49
 2 The establishment of
two world religions:
Christianity and Islam

The Christian Church in the Greek), the saviour of the people of Israel prom-
ised to the Jews, but even the son made flesh of
transition from Antiquity to the only God. His resurrection from death on the
the Middle Ages cross opened, for the faithful, the way to their
own victory over death and to eternal salvation.
Late Antiquity was a time of great religious
ferment. Many people turned away from the fos- Yet, this sort of conviction was by no means
silised worship of the innumerable gods of the unique at the time. What made Christianity so
classical Greco-Roman and eastern pantheons. different was its universal appeal and its ethics.
They sought contact with the philosophical cur- The ethics were based on a virtuous command-
rents which inclined towards the belief in one ment to unselfish love of one’s neighbour (caritas),
divine power, such as Neoplatonism, or with especially the weaker members of society, for
mystical sects which guaranteed personal contact which nothing should be expected in return. The
with a humane deity. Those religions that brought universal appeal of the early Christian Church
a message of individual salvation and rebirth after is expressed in the adjective ‘catholic’, coming
death were especially popular. That message was from the Greek word for ‘general’. The Church
– and is – central to the Christian religion, which was thus in principle open to everyone, what-
originated as a Jewish sect. For Christians, Jesus ever their sex, origin and legal status. This ideal
of Nazareth, who had lived in Palestine under the of ‘Catholicism’ probably stemmed from the
rule of the emperors Augustus and Tiberius, was fact that the earliest Christian communities were
not only the Messiah (lit. ‘anointed’, christos in rooted in the urban middle classes; enlargement

50
 T h E ESTAb L I Sh ME NT Of TWO WOR L D R E L I GI ONS: C h R I STI A NI T y A ND I SL A M 2 CHAPTER

of their recruitment base meant reaching out to eventually turn again to God. Until that time
both the wealthy and the poor, and to all sorts of came, the Jews who lived among Christians could
people, independent of their ethnic background. hold up a negative mirror, so to speak. Systematic
The only other ancient religion with universal persecution of the Jews was only very sporadic in
pretensions was Judaism itself. In the struggle for the early Middle Ages; it occurred in Visigothic
followers Christianity scored an important victory Spain in the first half of the seventh century.
even before the fourth century, when it appro- Under the emperor Justinian, pagans, Jews and
priated the most important collection of Jewish other religious minorities were under constant
religious texts. These texts, tanach in Hebrew, deal pressure to convert. Heraclius made baptism even
with the relationship between Jahweh, the one forcible after his conquest of Jerusalem. In the
true God, and the people of Israel. It was trans- Carolingian Empire the Jews were placed under
lated into Greek during the third century bce and the direct protection (tuitio) of the king.
was then known as the Septuagint, but we always Whether the Christians would have managed
refer to it as the ‘Old Testament’. At the same to become the dominant religious group inside
time a new, supplementary written tradition took the Roman Empire through their own efforts,
shape, built up around the four Gospels, reports we shall never know. Constantine’s mysteri-
of the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth ous conversion on the eve of the battle of the
that were written down within a few generations Milvian Bridge (312) – a year after Christianity
of his death. Together with a selection of let- had officially been tolerated – instantly altered
ters and accounts of the activities of his most everything, however half-hearted it may appear
important followers, the apostles, and with an in our eyes. Politically speaking, it was very clever
enigmatic vision of the end of the world, the of Constantine to proceed with such caution. He
‘Apocalypse’ or ‘Revelation’ of John of Patmos, did not want to offend Italy’s powerful senato-
the Gospels form the ‘New Testament’ – in other rial elite under any circumstances. So while he
words the New Covenant of God with the new favoured the Church on the one hand, on the
Israel, the Christian Church. The claim behind other he remained openly associated with the old
this was clear: God’s chosen people were no state religion which focused on the worship of
longer the Jews but the Christians. the invincible sun god (Sol Invictus). The assimi-
The Jews, on the other hand, were harassed by lation of this god with Christ can still be seen
the Roman authorities from the beginning of the in our Christmas, for 25 December counted as
third century, although they had long enjoyed the birthday of the Unconquered Sun. In the year
legal privileges. This took on more discrimina- 321 Constantine also introduced the ‘venerable
tory forms after Christianity had been officially day of the Sun’ (Sunday) as a compulsory, weekly
permitted in 311. Jews were not allowed to day of rest. Outside the Church the emperor
marry Christians, for example, nor could they never showed himself as a Christian prince. For
keep Christian slaves. All over the Empire, many his entire life Constantine remained katechumen,
synagogues were destroyed. In the early Middle a Christian-in-preparation. He was only baptised
Ages further anti-Judaism was held in check by on his deathbed.
an attitude that can best be described as one of The religious sympathies of Constantine’s
repressive, strictly limited toleration. This was successors also fluctuated; Christianity did
based on the ideas of Paul the Apostle and lead- not become the state religion until the reign
ing Church Fathers such as Augustine and Pope of Theodosius I (379–395). The whole process
Gregory the Great. They were convinced that was not without consequences. The number of
through their treatment of Christ the Jews had Christians rose rapidly in the fourth century:
followed the path of evil, but that they would from 5–10 per cent of the total population of the

51
PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

BOX 2.1 CONSTANTINE: THE CAREFUL

CONSTRUCTION OF IMAGE
It is difficult to get through to the real historical figure of Emperor Constantine. This is for two
major reasons. One is the fact that of his two biographers, one, Eusebius of Caesarea, who met the
emperor on several occasions in person, was as fanatic a pro-Constantinian Christian as the other,
Eunapius, a contemporary – and admirer – of Emperor Julian, was an anti-Constantinian pagan.
Whereas Eusebius presents Constantine as a perfect, saintly ruler, to Eunapius he was an evilm-
inded loser. The second reason is Constantine himself, who, in whatever light he is placed, must
have been a shrewd and calculating politician, who cared very much about his ‘image’. This repeat-
edly led to historical fact-bending. For example, Constantine demonstrably lied about his age after
he had come to power and set himself up as the leader of the Christian community, in order to avoid
being held in any way responsible for, or seen as approving of, the ‘Great Persecution’ of Christians
that was launched by Emperor Diocletian in 302–303, when Constantine (who by then was already
in his thirties) had stayed at Diocletian’s court awaiting his appointment as caesar.
Constantine’s modern biographer, Timothy Barnes, has uncovered a number of other deliber-
ate distortions of historical truth, instigated by Constantine, that reveal the emperor’s ruthlessness.
His official rehabilitation of Emperor Maximian hides the fact that he actually had forced him to
commit suicide in 310. Maximian’s son, Maxentius, was denounced for his hatred of Christians and
for moral depravity, while in fact he had been quite tolerant towards Christians. The famous bat-
tle of the Milvian Bridge at the gates of Rome on 28 October 312 in which Maxentius was beaten
and killed was upgraded from a minor military engagement with a certain outcome to a major
and decisive clash. In the same vein, Licinius, augustus of the East (308–324) and Constantine’s
last rival in his struggle for supreme rule, was depicted as a persecutor of Christians, which gave
Constantine a casus belli to finally defeat and depose his colleague in 324. In reality, Constantine
had been trying to discard Licinius long before and not primarily out of religious motives.
Furthermore, in 326, Constantine, possibly on the instigation of his second wife, Fausta, had his
eldest son by his first marriage, the caesar Crispus, tried and promptly executed, and then erased
from official history. When the falsity of her accusations came to light, Fausta may have killed her-
self in desperation, but it was rumoured that Constantine was behind his consort’s death as well.
Constantine’s conversion to Christianity remains notoriously obscure; from early on Christian
authors connected this to a dream that Constantine had on the eve of the battle at the Milvian
Bridge. In this dream, (the Christian) God had promised Constantine victory if he would fight
under the sign of the cross. More plausibly, as the German historian Peter Weiss has argued,
Constantine witnessed a solar halo when marching his legions south in the neighbourhood of a
famous temple of the sun god Apollo at Grand in the Vosges hills near Toul. Solar halos can produce
all kinds of cross-shaped reflections within a circle of light. Such an experience better explains why
for the rest of his life Constantine kept mixing up in his mind the figures of Christ and Late Antique
representations of the ‘eternal sun’ – among whom was Apollo. This has had momentous repercus-
sions until today, because, in the West, Sunday, as the ‘day of the lord’, is considered a day of rest
and one of the most important holidays on the calendar, Christmas, is celebrated on 25 December
because under Constantine it was determined that Christ had been born on the day on which in Late

52
 T h E ESTAb L I Sh ME NT Of TWO WOR L D R E L I GI ONS: C h R I STI A NI T y A ND I SL A M 2 CHAPTER

Antiquity the yearly rebirth of the Unconquered Sun was celebrated. Until that time, early Christian
communities had celebrated the birth of Christ on Epiphany – the recognition of the child Jesus as
God by the Magi (6 January).
Constantine remains an enigmatic figure. He was the only one who left the deadly snakepit of the
tetrarchy alive and unscathed. By implication he was a ruthless man who, if necessary, showed no
mercy, not even towards his closest family. Constantine’s Christianity may be tinged with doubt; he
certainly was no saint – and has never been recognised as such.

Source: Timothy Barnes, Constantine: Dynasty, Religion and Power in the Later Roman Empire (Malden MA/Oxford:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) (Blackwell Ancient Lives).

Roman Empire in around 300, to an estimated authorities, which reached its miserable nadir in
50 per cent in about 400. The success also had the East in the second half of the sixth century
a downside. The once suspect, closed, regularly under Emperor Justinian and his successors.
persecuted sect emerged in the fourth century as Various reasons have been advanced to explain
an aggressive and triumphalist movement with a this remarkable change of mood. The ever broader
militant side and a growing intolerance towards support from secular authorities which soon
other faiths. Throughout the fourth century there turned into openly favouring Christians whereas
still was massive opposition to Christianity. The non-Christians were excluded from government
Christians tried to overcome this resistance by office generated a triumphalist attitude among
using every possible means of persuasion, from members of the Christian elite. They started to call
kindness to force. The latter could include verbal themselves militantes pro Deo (‘those who want to
aggression, intimidation or ridiculing heathen fight for God’). More harmless but even so quite
customs, but the Christians did not shrink from activist was the qualification filii ecclesiae (‘sons of
using crude physical violence against heathen the church’) attached to motivated Christians in
shrines, including the famous temples of Serapis general who were convinced that God required
in Alexandria and of Zeus Marnas in Gaza. Such more of them than just quiet prayer. In their view,
targeted and humiliating destruction was cer- the Church was still under threat, and not surpris-
tainly intended to convince non-Christians that ingly an important ingredient of the new mood
their gods were non-gods. Why otherwise would was an obsession with pollution and purity; as
they allow the violent desecration of their holy we shall see, it completely permeated the rapid
places? It was a fairly successful ploy which was expansion of the Church in Roman Africa.
later enthusiastically copied by missionaries The success of Christianity was further
operating in the heathen world of the northern strengthened by three more institutional fac-
barbarians. The fury of the Christian aggression tors which determined the direction in which
increased under Theodosius, and now intoler- the Christian Church would develop in the fol-
ance did not stop at material damage. Soon lowing centuries: first, the leading role that the
after 400 the first heathen martyrs fell: one of emperor and the bishop of Rome (the pope) each
them was the Alexandrian philosopher Hypatia, demanded for himself; second, the rapidly grow-
who was stoned to death by Christians for her ing wealth of the Church; and, finally, its tight
Neoplatonist ideas – even though the Christian organisation in bishoprics, grafted on to the
religion was itself permeated with them. All this basic units of civil government of Late Antiquity,
inevitably ended in active persecution by state the civitates.

53
PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

The relationship between fifth century Gelasius I (492–496) formulated an

apparent compromise, known as the ‘doctrine
emperor and pope of the two swords’. It connects the underlying
According to both Judeo-Christian and Islamic idea of a clear division of powers, each of which
tradition all legitimate authority derives directly would operate autonomously in its own sphere –
from God, and so the highest office-holder is dualism – with the conviction that, in the final
answerable to God alone. One calls this belief analysis, spiritual authority was superior to secu-
theocratic. In the Latin-Christian Middle Ages lar power, because ‘at the Last Judgment it [would
the theocratic idea of authority was behind three be] the task of the priests to render account for
different perceptions about the relationship the behaviour of kings’. This addition would give
between worldly power and spiritual authority. radical popes in the eleventh and twelfth centu-
In the caesaropapist perception, which fitted ries a basis for a hierocratic reinterpretation of the
perfectly with the ancient Roman view of emper- doctrine of the two swords.
orship, the highest secular ruler was ex officio the In the West the struggle for the highest power
head of the Church. In contrast the hierocratic in the world had an entirely different, ‘more
view attributed a universal primacy to the highest actual’ character than in the East. There, the
spiritual authority on earth, in this case the pope. conflict came to a head in an unequal strug-
A compromise was formed by dualism, which gle between the emperor and the patriarch of
considered secular power and spiritual authority Constantinople; in the West, in a titanic battle
as two separate, autonomous spheres. between (German) emperor and pope. When the
Constantine and Theodosius, and their suc- emperor of Constantinople lost effective control
cessors as emperors of the Roman or Byzantine over Rome and central Italy at the beginning of
Empire, always considered themselves the undis- the eighth century it also signified the end of his
puted leaders of the Christian Church. They did authority over the pope. Three matters further
not think of themselves as just ordinary, secular deepened the rift between emperor and pope at
people, but as sacral beings, earthly extensions of the time. First, the Byzantine encroachment on
the divine king in heaven. Their task was thus not the Roman Church’s considerable possessions in
only to lead the Church and defend it from exter- southern Italy and Sicily; second, the preference
nal enemies, but also to guard the contents of of a number of stubborn emperors for icono-
religious doctrine. As early as 314 – two years after clasm, an obnoxious heresy (see pp. 68–69) in
his conversion – Constantine had called a council the eyes of the popes; and third, the threat to the
in Arles to pass judgement on the North African interests of the Church of Rome in central Italy
Donatists. The beliefs of the barbarian kings in from the Lombards, against which the emperor
the West in fact did not differ fundamentally could not offer sufficient protection.
from those of the emperor in Constantinople. For all these reasons the popes went in search
They too looked upon themselves as rex et sacer- of a new ally and protector, and this they found
dos (‘king and priest’), as leaders of the Christian in about 750 in the Franks. First, Pope Zacharias
community, who were intermediaries between (741–752) recognised the Carolingian mayor of
clergy and people, and whose authority originated the palace (maior domus), Pippin the Short,
directly from God. as the lawful successor to the Merovingian king-
Although the caesaropapist position was also doms. A few years later Pippin intervened in Italy
brought up openly for discussion by other bish- in favour of the pope (see Chapter 3). The most
ops, including Ambrose of Milan (374–397), it significant, direct result of this was the formal
was the popes as bishops of Rome who quickly recognition by the Franks of what the popes for
took the lead in the matter. At the end of the some decades had called res publica Sancti Petri

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 T h E ESTAb L I Sh ME NT Of TWO WOR L D R E L I GI ONS: C h R I STI A NI T y A ND I SL A M 2 CHAPTER

(lit. ‘the state of Saint Peter’) and which, for the Recently, the ancient historian Peter Brown
sake of convenience, we shall call the Papal State. (2012) has stressed the novelty of this arrange-
This had for a long time been only vaguely defined, ment, which linked together the sometimes
and was actually a conglomerate of lordship rights incredibly huge private fortunes of wealthy bene-
around the two territorial cores on which the factors, the care of the poor and the fate of the
Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna was originally soul. While alive, Jesus had warned the rich that
based – the regions round Rome (Latium) and ‘it [would be] easier for a camel to go through
Ravenna (Romagna and the Anconan Marches), the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter
which were linked to each other by a narrow the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 19:24). Now,
corridor through the Apennines. With the coro- wealthy people started to see ostentatiously
nation of Charlemagne in 800, the popes ended giving away all that they owned, and turning
their practice to date all their documents sent abstemious, as an escape route away from eternal
to western bishops and rulers by the regal year damnation. The major object of this explosion of
of the emperor in Constantinople, which had charity was not so much the poor in general as
been the last symbolic recognition by the popes the ‘holy poor’, that is to say, the monks, whose
of their former lord and master. austere and ascetic lifestyle seemed to come clos-
The alliance between the pope and the est to the life that Jesus and his apostles had led.
Carolingians most certainly contributed to the In the end, every gift to the Church was techni-
growing alienation between the Church in the East cally seen as a gift to the poor and therefore a
and in the West, although questions of dogma were gift to Christ.
always the root cause of real schisms. However, With its wealth the Christian Church held
after every schism the dialogue was renewed. a key position in the social redistribution of
Attempts to reunite the Churches of the East and income through different forms of social charity
West very nearly succeeded in 1450, but the Fall of (care of the poor, the sick, widows and orphans).
Constantinople three years later put an end to all Its wealth thus gave the Church not only politi-
illusions. cal power but, more especially, moral authority
in broad (under)layers of the populations of
the great cities of Late Antiquity. The diaconiae
Material wealth, (‘deaconries’) are a good example; these were
accumulation and established by the popes in Rome and other large
distribution cities, such as Ravenna and Naples, when the
authority of Byzantium was failing. They were
A second factor in the success of the Christian sort of welfare centres, staffed by monks, where
Church was doubtless its enormous wealth, the needy could get bread and a bath.
which accumulated rapidly in the centuries fol- When we talk about the wealth of the Church
lowing Constantine’s conversion. In the Byzantine we must remember that the Catholic Church as
Empire the Church in its entirety was probably an umbrella association of believers did not have
richer than the state as early as the sixth century. a central treasury. Its wealth was in the hands
The rapid increase in wealth at that time was in of the separate institutions that constituted the
part thanks to the appropriation of the riches Church – bishoprics, parish churches, monas-
from pagan shrines, and in part thanks to rich teries and so forth. The further growth of this
gifts from emperors and prosperous individuals multiple institutional capital came from two
who believed that the uncertain fate of their soul directions. The most important of these was the
after death would be helped by their good works ceaseless flow of gifts from members of the aris-
in their lifetime. tocracy. They very soon took to building a church

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PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

MAP 2.1 The beginnings of the

Papal State, 700–800

or monastery on their own land out of their own Ages, is known as the ‘proprietary church sys-
pocket, preferably provided with rich altar plate tem’. Already pope Gelasius I (492–496) spoke
and real relics. They arranged the appointment out against its proliferation in Italy, but this
of a priest or abbot or abbess themselves. And of proved to be of no avail. Because people of aris-
course they were keen to be buried there, so that tocratic origin filled all the important positions
after death they would be close to the saint to in it, the early medieval Church has often been
whom their church was dedicated and whose called ‘a Church of and mostly for the aristocracy’
holy relics were supposed to radiate favourably. If (Fletcher 1997).
they had founded a monastery, the monks living The motives behind the foundation of pro-
there were expected to commemorate them in prietary churches or monasteries were many and
their prayers which were thought to be answered varied. First and foremost, this generous action
by God willingly thanks to the purity of their life- assured the founders of the salvation of their soul.
style. This phenomenon of private foundation, The possession of a church or a monastery also gave
which was very widespread in the early Middle them prestige, and not infrequently it generated

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 T h E ESTAb L I Sh ME NT Of TWO WOR L D R E L I GI ONS: C h R I STI A NI T y A ND I SL A M 2 CHAPTER

income for them. Moreover, the proprietary organisation had its origins in the fact that the
church system enabled aristocratic families to Christian Church had a professional, hierarchi-
keep family property undivided and out of the cally organised clergy, clerus, (lit. ‘the elected
eager hands of kings by attaching it to a religious ones’) early on. Its primary task was to lead the
foundation they owned. ‘flock’ of believers along the dangerous narrow
The wealth of the Church was also fed from path to eternal salvation. In the early Middle Ages
below, or rather by the peasantry. This took the clergy had no fewer than eight levels of holy
place through the levying of tithes, a sort of orders: four lower ones, of which that of exorcist
tax on agricultural produce, based on the Old (expeller of evil spirits) was surely the oddest, and
Testament commandment to make a yearly gift four higher ones: subdeacon, deacon, priest and
of one-tenth of all the yields of the land to God. bishop. In the higher orders originally only the
Exhortations to pay the tithe appear in council bishops had doctrinal authority, which means
resolutions as early as the sixth century, but the the competence to explain the teachings of the
tithe only became compulsory in (Christian) Church. Only bishops and priests were allowed
Europe generally in the course of the ninth and to administer the sacraments; the deacons and
tenth centuries. At the same time it was given subdeacons could only assist them.
a more specific allocation. Normally one-quarter A person who wanted to enter the clergy first
was for the bishop and the remaining three- had to shave the crown of his head (tonsure).
quarters went to the maintenance of the (parish) Then he had a sort of candidate status, during
clergy, the local poor and the church building. which period he fell directly under the authority
Now and then this development encountered of the bishop. Like the ordained clergy, the can-
fierce opposition, not only from the peasants, didate enjoyed all the privileges belonging to the
but also from influential clerics such as Alcuin of clerical state. The most important of these were
York, Charlemagne’s advisor, who in about 800 the privilegium fori and the privilegium immunitatis.
openly opined that ‘it was better to neglect the The first meant that clerics did not have to obey a
tithe than to lose the faith’. Alcuin’s fears were summons to a secular court of law and only had
not ungrounded. The introduction of the tithe to answer for their (criminal) deeds to a Church
undermined the already precarious rural life of court. The second brought with it exemption
the early Middle Ages considerably, especially as from every fiscal or military obligation in the
most of the tithes did not end up in the hands of public domain. Although both privileges dated
the groups for which they were intended. Usually from the fourth century they were only described
the noble owners of churches and monaster- with legal precision in the twelfth century, when
ies appropriated the largest share of the tithes canon law was finally systematised.
connected to them. A fundamental task of the higher clergy was,
as we have said, the administration of the sacra-
ments. By sacraments we mean the visible signs,
Church organisation established by Christ himself, of the personal
bond between God and the faithful. Since the
The clergy and its tasks twelfth century it has been generally accepted
that this sacramental bond signifies the bestowal
By Late Antiquity, the Christian Church was of God’s grace. The number of sacraments was
excellently organised, and this would remain so then also fixed at seven. The most important ones
during the early Middle Ages when public admin- are the Eucharist, baptism and confession.
istration shrank so severely that it barely provided The Eucharist, meaning ‘thanksgiving’ and
reference points beyond the local ones. The good often also called the ‘holy mass’, is the collective

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PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

commemoration by a Church community of became the task of the father confessor to help
the last supper that Christ shared with his apos- the sinner disclose his sins by asking direct ques-
tles shortly before his redeeming crucifixion. In tions. This gave the confession the character of a
time, the mass was sometimes given a utilitarian systematic soul-searching, which had to bring the
character when it was offered to ask for a special sinner not only to an admission of what he had
favour – a good harvest or a fruitful marriage, for done wrong but, more importantly, to an under-
example. Baptism was the ‘sacrament of initia- standing of his sins, and thus to repentance.
tion’ that was consciously presented as a rebirth, Higher-ranking ordained clerics had to be
where the baptismal waters washed away the new well informed about the complicated rituals and
Christian’s original sin with which mankind had formulas surrounding the sacraments as well
been burdened since Adam, the first man, had as about the Church ceremonies in which they
fallen from grace. Because every sin committed took place. These can be summarised under the
after baptism could only be atoned for by very term ‘liturgy’, from the Greek leitourgia, meaning
strict penance, many aspiring Christians waited ‘service’. Priests and bishops also had to be able
to be baptised until they were on their death- to explain Bible texts in a discourse or sermon
bed. In the early Middle Ages the reasoning was during the service, which meant that higher-
reversed and it became customary for babies to ranking clerics had to be better educated than
be baptised shortly after birth so that the powers the lower-ranking, although our expectations
of evil could not take hold over them. At first the of their education should not be too high. This
confession of faith was made by the parents, but is obvious from the complaints made about the
for practical reasons it was soon done by spon- level of the clergy at ecclesiastical councils and in
sors or godparents, usually close relatives or social programmes for reform. St Boniface, the famous
relations – godparenthood became the ideal missionary and archbishop of Mainz (674–754),
means to reinforce social bonds within small- once grumbled about priests in Bavaria who
scale communities. Sponsors are first mentioned uttered the baptismal formula thus: baptizo te in
in the sermons of Caesarius of Arles in the first nomine patria et filia (‘I baptise you in name: the
half of the sixth century. fatherland and the daughter’) instead of the cor-
These changes in the sacrament of baptism rect in nomine patris et filii [et spiritus sancti] (‘in
prompted changes in the way in which the sacra- the name of the Father, the Son [and the Holy
ment of penance – better known as the confession Ghost]’).
– was administered. Every grave sin committed The overall impression we receive of the early
after baptism required expiation through Christ. medieval clergy is quite ambiguous, however. On
This was the purpose of confession. It began the one hand it was a long time before the high
with the confession of guilt by the sinner, and moral demands made of the clergy were taken
was followed by forgiveness (absolution) and seriously. In Late Antiquity discussion about
the imposition of a penalty (penance) by the moral standards centred on the celibacy of the
administrator of the sacrament. In the beginning higher-ranking clerics, who, after all, performed
confession and penance took place in public, sacred acts, and in the view of Late Antiquity
and the penalties imposed were extremely heavy. had therefore to be pure, undefiled by sexuality.
Under the influence of monastic practice public Some, like Augustine, wanted to go further and
confession was gradually replaced by private, pleaded for the celibacy of the clergy in general.
aural confession. Here the repentant, obedient In practice that proved not to be feasible. Even
‘son’ whispered his sin in the ear of his ‘father’ in the deeply Christian eastern Roman Empire
confessor; the penance imposed remained secret. of Justinian, only bishops had to live in celibacy;
Sometime after the eleventh century it also married men could be ordained as priests, but

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unmarried priests, once ordained, could not then usually coincided with those of the civitas, the
marry. In the West all the rules were far slacker. basic unit of Roman civil administration, which
It was not until the great movement for reform should be seen as an urban core with a surround-
in the eleventh century that the guidelines were ing (rural) district. Accordingly, the density of
sharpened (see Chapter 6). Clerical celibacy did bishoprics in the Mediterranean region was far
then, finally, become the rule in the West; not in greater than in western Europe, where civitates
the East. dating from Roman times were smaller and had
On the other hand, the shining example often disappeared. Overall, there may have been
of Augustine, who led a communal life with around 2,000 bishoprics in the late Empire. The
the priests and deacons attached to his cathe- popes showed restraint in increasing that num-
dral church at Hippo Regius, was followed on ber, because the Council of Sardica had decided
a wide scale. The extension of liturgical tasks, in 343 that only cities of some importance could
with choral prayer in particular, and the grad- be an episcopal see, ‘lest the name of a bishop
ual Christianisation of the countryside required and his authority be taken too lightly’. In the
increasing numbers of clerics in higher orders. fourth century, most bishops were recruited
Many of them lived together in communities or from the municipal elites of the Roman Empire,
monasteria that were set up around cathedrals and which implied a high social status, wealth, a thor-
other important places of worship, ranging from ough education and administrative experience.
churches provided with baptisteries and churches Members of the senatorial class – the absolute
where important relics were kept to churches top level of Late Antique society – were more
with hospitia, shelters for travellers, pilgrims, reluctant to take up the office of bishop, with the
invalids and otherwise destitute people, attached exception of Gaul.
to them. They were then known as ‘canonical With their great authority the bishops fulfilled
clerics’, or simply ‘canons’, because they were a key function in the transition from Antiquity to
deemed to abide strictly by the Church’s rules of the Middle Ages in two respects. They represented
conduct (canones). Yet, their way of life differed the Christian Church and its values at the local
from that of monks in several essential points; and regional level and they made an important
canons did not take monastic vows and they were contribution to secular public administration.
allowed to have personal possessions. Evidently The emperor Constantine allowed bishops to
this created difficulties in differentiating between preside over civil lawsuits, and he acknowledged
canons and monks, and in distinguishing canoni- by law their notarial authority as trustworthy per-
cal monasteries from monasteries of monks. This, sons who were entitled to witness the liberation
and the prejudice that many canons lived too of slaves, to organise the care for orphans and to
unruly lives, gave rise to a reform movement in take part in the distribution of imperial subsidies
the Carolingian period which set both objections to the poor. By using Latin, an archaic language
right (see p. 61). spoken in the streets but used only by the clergy,
in standardised procedures of writing, enriched
by the legal traditions of the ancient world, bish-
Church hierarchy: episcopate ops and their servants were the true heirs of the
and diocese Roman professional bureaucracy. As dignitaries of
the Church they had five important tasks:
The bishops were undoubtedly the pivot on
which the organisation of the Church revolved. ■■ They guarded orthodoxy and correct reli-
Their jurisdiction was called a ‘diocese’ or bish- gious practice. To that aim, they actively
opric. In Late Antiquity the borders of a diocese exercised doctrinal authority by preaching,

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PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

taking part in synods and sometimes by writ- Another hierarchic layer had been formed
ing scholarly Bible interpretations or treatises above the metropolitans, that of the patriarchs
on Christian doctrine or morality. or ‘arch-fathers’, the honorary title which was
■■ Bishops ensured that Church rules and orders used during the Council of Nicaea (325) for the
were applied correctly and, when necessary, bishops of the four most important cities of the
issued new regulations. Christian Roman Empire – Rome, Constantinople,
■■ Bishops ordained clerics and had immediate Alexandria and Antioch; in 451 Jerusalem was
supervision over the clergy and monasteries added to these. In time, the inevitable struggle
in their dioceses. for the highest place broke out between the patri-
■■ Bishops administered justice: ratione personae archs of Rome and Constantinople. The patriarch
(‘because of the [status of the] person’) over of Rome – the pope – won the struggle with flying
members of the clergy, and ratione materiae colours. Apart from Rome’s enormous prestige
(‘because of the [nature of the] matter’) over the victory was mainly due to the special place
Church affairs, beliefs and Christian moral- that the Eternal City occupied in Christian sacred
ity (including everything related to marriage history. Had not Peter, the principal apostle, to
and sexuality). From Late Antiquity officials whom Christ himself – according to the Gospel of
with the title of ‘archdeacon’ (‘arch’ comes St Matthew (16:18–19) – had said ‘Thou art Peter,
from the Greek prefix archi-, meaning ‘first’ and upon this rock (petros in Greek means ‘stone’
or ‘most important’) took the place of the or ‘rock’) I will build my church’, died a martyr’s
bishops in their judicial function. death in Rome? And was it not written in the
■■ Bishops administered the property attached same text that Christ had given Peter ‘the keys of
to the bishopric, but were also expected to be the kingdom of heaven’, and that whatever Peter
generous in the distribution of charity. arranged on earth should so prevail in heaven?
By now consistently presenting Peter as the first
bishop of Rome and themselves as his successors,
Metropolitans and archbishops, powerful popes such as Damasus I (366–384) and
patriarchs and pope Leo the Great (440–461) were able to establish
the primacy of Rome over the Christian Church.
The idea that bishops of large cities had a higher In the Byzantine Empire, the emperors main-
status than others was already prevalent in the tained their superior, caesaropapist position
fourth century. They were called metropolitans. vis-à-vis the patriarch of Constantinople, just as it
During the seventh and eighth centuries the met- had always been since Late Antiquity. Nepotism,
ropolitan gradually lost status to the archbishop. in the literal sense, frequently led to the appoint-
Originally this was an honorary title given by ment of the emperor’s cousin as patriarch, and
popes to bishops with a special, important assign- the heads of new dynasties Basil I (867–886)
ment not without its dangers – that of spreading and Romanos I (920–944) even appointed their
the Christian faith among the heathen. The first to sons. In the tenth century, the emperor granted
receive this title was Augustine, a monk sent from the new diocese of Bulgaria the right to elect its
Rome to England in 597 to convert the Anglo- own primate without interference of the patri-
Saxons. He became archbishop of Canterbury. arch of Constantinople. The right to appoint its
More than a century later the first Anglo-Saxon own head initiated the tradition in the eastern
missionaries on the continent likewise received Church of national patriarchates, which marks
the archiepiscopal dignity. Under Charlemagne a clear difference with the Roman Church in the
archbishoprics increasingly began to resemble West.
Church provinces comprising various dioceses.

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Parishes constitutional status: the nature of God was

defined as the Holy Trinity (the father, the Son
In the early Middle Ages the organisation of the and the Holy Ghost) and the unity of the Church
Church was not yet crystallised below the level of was formulated as ‘one, holy, catholic and apos-
the bishoprics. In those few cities of any size with tolic’. Nicaea was a town in Asia Minor where
a busy Church life, such as Rome, districts with initially many such ecumenical councils took
their own church and their own priests came into place. From the sixth century they were more
existence quite early on. Normally we call these often held in Constantinople, generally in the
constituent parts of bishoprics ‘parishes’. The imperial palace. The first general Church council
formation of parishes in the country was a very to be held in the Lateran in Rome was that of 649.
gradual development, more or less simultaneous This was also the first council convened by the
with the further expansion of the Christian faith pope and not by the emperor. The second council
over rural areas (paganus, lit. ‘country-dweller’, at Nicaea in 787 was the last attended by bishops
was for a long time synonymous with ‘heathen’). from both the East and the West.
In Gaul, for example, the first country parishes, The custom of regularly calling regional synods
served by their own permanent, resident priests, was continued in the new barbarian kingdoms
came into being in the course of the fifth cen- in the West. It was the kings who organised the
tury; by 600 their number would have totalled meetings and who were committed to executing
two hundred. It was not until the ninth century the decisions reached. Normally, practical matters
that Gaul, by then often referred to as ‘Francia’, concerning Church discipline and organisation
had a cohesive network of country parishes. came up for discussion, far more often than ques-
tions of dogma. In the Carolingian Empire in
particular synods were used to enforce reforms
Church councils of the clergy and the monasteries. Between the
Concilium Germanicum of 742, conducted by
The Catholic Church was probably the first that ‘indefatigable quibbler’ Boniface, archbishop
organisation in the West to have a real conference of Mainz, and the great reforms of 816–817 under
culture, and this, too, contributed to its internal the rule of Emperor Louis the Pious, it seemed as
unity. In the early Christian period the bishops if a permanent reformation was taking place in
regularly met to discuss matters of faith and organ- the Frankish Church. The two most important
isation. The tradition became firmly rooted under targets were the monasteries of monks, which
Constantine and his successors. The emperors, time and again were told that they must adopt
who continued to see themselves as the supreme the Benedictine Rule, and the canonical clergy,
heads of Christianity, convened meetings of bish- who were also exhorted to follow well-defined
ops on several occasions, which were known as rules, preferably in the context of a formal asso-
‘synods’ or ‘councils’. They were often regional ciation or ‘chapter’. Laypeople did not escape
meetings, but sometimes the bishops from all over the reforming zeal either. On several occasions
the Empire were invited; this was then called an new rules relating to marriage and divorce were
‘ecumenical council’, from the Greek oikoumenè, formulated. What is particularly striking in all
meaning ‘the whole (civilised) world’. These ecu- this is that the Carolingian rulers also prom-
menical councils took important decisions both ulgated measures for Church reform through
on doctrine and ethics, which had a major influ- capitularies, ordinary edicts issued by the secular
ence on the further development of the Church. administration.
The Council of Nicaea of 325 saw the establish-
ment of the creed that would acquire an almost

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PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

Monasticism and intellectual training also had the effect that

monastic ideals and rules became the standard
It has been suggested, and not without reason, against which all society was measured. In this
that in the early Middle Ages it was the monks, connection the religious historian R.A. Markus
not popes and bishops, who were the most has spoken of a gradual ‘de-secularisation’ of
important role models in Christianity. The roots western culture as a result of the suffocating influ-
of Christian monasticism reach back to the third ence of the monastic ideals of world renunciation,
century at least. At that time there were believers spiritual contemplation and sexual abstinence.
in Egypt and Syria who had completely with- Originally the Church authorities looked
drawn from the world in order to concentrate on upon monks as neither clerics nor ordinary lay-
the spiritual and the divine, hoping in this way to people. For Augustine, both clerics and monks
bring about their own personal salvation and that were servants of God and therefore deserved the
of their fellow Christians. Some of these ‘monks’ same legal status and treatment. This view led to
sought their asceticism in solitude (the Greek the convergence of clerics and monks into one
monachos, lit. ‘living alone’); others gave form clerical estate, a tendency which was reinforced
to their ideal in small, like-minded communi- when many monks were eventually ordained as
ties; while still others preferred a middle ground. clerics and monasteries were often given tasks
Probably the most spectacular ostentation of the in the field of spiritual care. The position of
first type of piety was given by Simeon Stylites women was still complicated; they could not
(‘the [saint] man on the column’) (c.390–459), enter the priesthood but were allowed to become
who stood in prayer for thirty-seven years on top nuns or (monastic) canonesses, at first only when
of a 60-foot column of an old pagan temple near advanced in years, later at marriageable age. They
the main road from Antioch to the Euphrates. were given a special ordination and enjoyed the
Due to the wide renown of this heroic feat, same legal privileges as clerics and monks.
Simeon’s self-chosen desert soon dissolved into In the first centuries of the Middle Ages
the spectacle of crowds of admirers who paid a monasticism was far from being organised and
visit to receive the holy man’s blessings and, by well structured. It embraced a motley collection
doing that, may have viewed him as a vital link of stylites, herbivores, obscure sects with strange
between the world of the old gods now gone and names such as ‘Those who never sleep’, as well as
the new faith that had been imposed upon them. communities of more than a thousand members,
The second model, which for convenience we and all of which were difficult to regulate. For
will call the monastic life, prevailed in the West, rural people, in particular, monks formed an alter-
although the first form never quite disappeared. native source of spiritual authority over which
In part the monastic life fitted in with the ancient the Church had little control. As the communal
(Stoic) ideal of achieving wisdom and spiritual free- form gradually began to predominate some sort
dom by disengaging from material and physical of order came into being. Specifically the Church
needs. Apart from that it clearly had its own char- tried to provide rules for monastic communities
acter, linked to Christian values. By abandoning the or to grant official authority to those rules already
world and worldly things monks considered them- in existence. The foundation of new communi-
selves the only Christians capable of preserving the ties and the appointment of abbots were also
grace-giving action of the sacraments of the Church made subject to the approval of the bishops.
– baptism, in particular – during life. Ordinary A considerable number of monastic rules have
believers lapsed immediately into new sins. survived. In the West, especially, these resembled
The growing significance of monasteries and precepts or sets of instructions. Matters such as
the monastic way of life for early medieval culture obedience to the abbot, communal activities

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such as prayer, eating and fasting, and accepta- Next, Church reformers, such as Boniface and
ble conduct were described clearly and precisely. Chrodegang of Metz, working in the Frankish
But there was great diversity because influences Empire in the eighth century, pressured monastic
were felt from many directions. In Gaul/Francia, communities into following the regula Benedicti.
where more than two hundred new monasteries The Rule was also introduced fairly generally out-
were founded in the seventh century alone, we side the Frankish Empire. This does not mean that
can distinguish several great monastic traditions the monasteries that followed the Benedictine
side by side. Rule as yet formed an ‘order’ in the sense of a
The most influential was that of the Benedictines. congregation with a coordinating organisation.
They took their name from Benedict of Norcia Monastic orders in that sense only came into
(c.485–c.560), the founder of three monasteries in existence in the eleventh century.
Italy, including that of Monte Cassino, high on its Typical of a second important monastic tra-
ridge between Rome and Naples. The Benedictine dition in the West (Irish monasticism) was the
Rule is in fact no more than an adaptation of an peregrinatio, which literally means a ‘stay in for-
extensive and rather strict monastic rule com- eign parts’ or ‘exile’. Instead of remaining inside
posed at the beginning of the sixth century by a the monastic community Irish monks went out
man whom we only know as Magister, the mas- into the wider world to preach Christianity and
ter. Benedict toned it down somewhat. His monks to found new monasteries. In this way they
were not allowed personal belongings. They were gave tangible form to the metaphor that, for
not permitted to leave the monastery (the rule of a real Christian, life on earth is no more than a
‘permanency of residence’). They must live chaste sojourn among strangers, an exile that will only
lives and obey the abbot, the head of the monas- end with the beginning of eternal life. Besides,
tic community, unconditionally. Obedience was leaving one’s own community voluntarily could
seen as a religious exercise, an exercise in absolute be interpreted as choosing social death for the
compliance with God’s will, as Christ had com- sake of one’s faith, thus as a form of martyrdom.
plied. This was even harder for the monks and Along the way the Irish monks founded monastic
nuns of the early Middle Ages, most of whom communities where possible, naturally in remote
were members of aristocratic families accustomed places that were difficult to reach, like Iona and
to command rather than to obey. The abbot was Lindisfarne, situated respectively on islands off
enjoined to observe moderation in asserting his the west coast of Scotland and the east coast of
authority and to listen to what his ‘brothers’ had England.
to say. The Irish monks wandered around the con-
In general the Benedictine Rule can be summed tinent too. In about 590 Columbanus, a monk
up in the double command to ‘work and pray’ – from the monastery of Bangor (not far from
although that prayer was also called work, the modern Belfast) arrived in Gaul. In the follow-
doing of God’s work (opus Dei). The Master had ing years he journeyed through the Vosges and
laid down a strict daily routine, which Benedict northern Italy, founding the renowned abbeys of
refined into a set programme of singing and read- Luxueil and Bobbio. His immediate involvement
ing at fixed times (the hours). The other forms of in the establishment of other monasteries cannot
work soon came to imply intellectual work only, always be proved, but there is no doubt about
studying or writing or teaching. the Irish influence on Frankish monasticism. It
Benedict’s Rule owed its enormous popular- ensured, amongst other things, that cloistered
ity to support from two sides. First, in about 600 communities were no longer generally situated
Pope Gregory the Great showed himself to be a in or near urban settlements, but often far away
tireless propagandist of Benedict’s life and works. in desolate areas.

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PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

PLATE 2.1 The winged symbols of the

Four Evangelists mark the introductory
page to the Gospel of St Matthew in the
Book of Kells. This is the most brilliantly
illuminated Celtic manuscript, created
in around 800 in the abbey of Iona
(western Scotland) and in the Irish
Kells, to which monastery the monks
had fled from Viking raids. Ten of its
340 folios are full-page pictures in
vibrant colours, combining Christian
iconography with swirling motifs and
interlacing patterns in the insular
tradition. These recur in the interlinear
ornamentation and the decorated
initials. In addition to the Latin texts
of the four Gospels, the manuscript
contains tables of concordances
between the Gospels and summaries of
their narratives. The book illustrates the
riches of Irish monastic life.

The practice of the monastic rules was a fairly esteem. Examples include the monasteries and
casual affair, for monasteries formed part of the ascetic communities concentrated on the penin-
aristocratic world. This meant, for example, that sula of Mount Athos in northern Greece. In 883,
visitors came and went freely, that monasteries the Byzantine emperor Basil I granted them total
often accommodated important guests and their immunity from the intervention of military or
retinues, and that monks and abbots sometimes civil officials, and even the peasants and shep-
surrendered cheerfully to worldly pleasures, such herds living in the neighbourhood had to keep
as hunting. In the early Middle Ages monaster- their distance from the monks. In return, the
ies were also used as prisons to confine – either monks ‘[would] pray for the emperor and the
temporarily or permanently – important officials whole world’. Until the present day, the Mount’s
and noble spouses who had fallen from favour, immunity is constitutionally guaranteed.
unwanted pretenders to a throne, deposed kings
or others who might be considered a danger to
the state. Orthodoxy and heterodoxy
Exceptions can be found especially in the East,
where monasteries that were strictly secluded One of the most important tasks of the councils
from the outside world were always held in high was to decide what exactly Christian doctrine

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should contain. There was no discussion about the pope only ‘gave law’ in reaction to explicit
the sacred texts on which it had to be based. First questions put to him. To issue general, anticipa-
of all there was the Bible: but how should what tory rulings in the modern sense of the word has
was written in the Bible be understood? A con- remained the prerogative of ecumenical councils.
temporary of Jesus himself, a Jewish philosopher Of the four Latin Church Fathers it was
by the name of Philo who lived in Alexandria, Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) – Saint Augustine
had indicated that the Bible should be inter- – bishop of Hippo Regius (present-day Annaba
preted on three different levels: historical, moral in Algeria), who undoubtedly had the most far-
and allegorical. This view was later accepted by reaching influence on the intellectual culture of
the early Christians, but of course it did not make the Middle Ages. After the Bible his work – almost
Bible exegesis any easier, if only because for them 240 tracts and countless letters and sermons – was
there were two sets of texts, the Old and the New the most widely read, cited and commented-
Testament. Church leaders, who enjoyed an on text material in the Middle Ages. His most
exceptional reputation for explaining the Bible famous works are Confessiones (‘Confessions’) and
and the will of God expressed in it, were quickly De civitate Dei (‘On the City of God’). The former
seen as authorities, as a source of religious doc- is not so much an autobiography as a uniquely
trine. They were honoured with the title Fathers of frank account of Augustine’s long search for
the Church, and the Greek and Roman churches the one true God. One half of De civitate Dei is
each had their own roll. In the Roman Church a lengthy theological proof of the superiority of
this had four names. The saintly bishops of Milan Christianity over both Neoplatonism and the
and Hippo Regius (Ambrose and Augustine), and old Roman state religion; the other half tells the
Jerome, were more or less contemporaries, living story of Christianity as a spiritual community. As
in about 400. Two centuries separated them from a leitmotiv Augustine uses the image of two cities
the fourth, the only pope in the illustrious com- over which mankind is divided: the earthly city
pany, Gregory the Great (590–604). Jerome, an (civitas terrena) represents the leaning towards
Istrian who settled in Palestine, produced a new the ungodly world, selfishness, materialism and
Latin translation of the Old and New Testaments disdain for God; on the other hand, the city of
with the help of Greek and Hebrew text material. God (civitas Dei) stands for what is good, selfless
This translation is known in the various surviving and spiritual, in short for the true love of the
early medieval editions as the ‘Vulgate’. It was to true God. The first city cannot simply be identi-
remain the standard Bible text until the end of fied with the secular state or with the heathen
the Middle Ages. world, or the second with the people of Israel and
Besides the Bible and the works of the Church later the Christian Church. When the Church
Fathers the reports (acta) and decisions (canons) was faced with a great influx of believers after
of the ecumenical councils were given the status Constantine’s conversion, it became by defini-
of authoritative texts early on. Finally, there is tion a ‘mixed body’. For Augustine, the ‘city of
the interesting question of the extent to which God’ is therefore a city in the making, whose true,
pronouncements of the pope in Rome had doctri- legitimate citizens will only emerge triumphantly
nal authority (in other words, were by definition after the Last Judgement.
orthodox). This was not yet the case in the early The most influential Father of the eastern
Middle Ages, as is evident from the infamous con- Church was John Chrysostom (c.349–407), who
demnation of Honorius I at the sixth ecumenical was born in Antioch. As a young man, he became
council, held at Constantinople in 680. In the a hermit. For two years, he never lay down and
course of time the pope’s competence to create he scarcely slept with the sole purpose being to
binding rules was generally accepted, although memorise the whole Bible. His ascetic lifestyle did

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PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

PLATE 2.2 Miniature painting depicting the two cities, in a manuscript of Augustine’s The City of God, in a
French translation, composed in Paris c.1475–1480. On top, God and Mary sit enthroned in the heavenly city
that is walled; they are surrounded by saints, and seven saintly ladies are guiding as many exemplary men
towards the gate. The earthly city is also walled, and around it seven devils are dancing, representing the
capital sins. The latter are divided in seven city wards, each with their virtuous opposite. From the top right
clockwise: voluptuousness, gluttony, greed, laziness, quarrelling, jealousy and pride.

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 T h E ESTAb L I Sh ME NT Of TWO WOR L D R E L I GI ONS: C h R I STI A NI T y A ND I SL A M 2 CHAPTER

not lead to a life in seclusion. Chrysostom means that quarrels abounded, certainly in the eastern
‘the golden mouthed’ in Greek, which refers to Church with its long tradition of rational philoso-
John’s great qualities as a rhetorician. Many of his phy, borrowed from the Greeks, which attempted
homilies or sermons have been written down by to define absolutely everything, including the
assistants and disseminated. In them he attempts indefinable.
to explain the Bible to a lay public, and also as a The pre-eminent example of the indefin-
practical guide to leading a Christian life. But as able, the subject of passionate discussion in the
a priest in Antioch, a hotspot of worldly tempta- East, was the nature of God. From the outset
tion, John also fulminated against the tendency Christianity was presented as a monotheistic
of Christians to participate in pagan amusements religion; there was just one God, who in the New
such as horse races and theatre, or in Jewish fes- Testament is manifest in three forms: Father, Son
tivals and observances. In 398 he was elevated (Jesus Christ) and Holy Ghost. What exactly was
to the position of archbishop of Constantinople. the relationship between the three? Christ was
In that capacity, he harmonised the Eucharistic especially difficult to fathom, because according
liturgy, which became the standard in the eastern to the Bible he was the word of the Father made
Christian churches until the present day. He also ‘flesh’ – so a human being. Some thought that
set out to reform the clergy. However, his own Christ had just one divine nature. Those believ-
firm attitude and sober lifestyle were unwelcome ers were called the Monophysites (mono-physis
at the imperial court and among the high clergy, means ‘one nature’). On the other hand, the
who could not cope with a hermit who loudly Nestorians, followers from Nestorius, patriarch of
aired admonitions such as ‘Of all wild animals, Constantinople between 428 and 431, believed
none can be found as harmful as women.’ In that Christ was two persons with two separate
403, the archbishop was exiled, despite popu- natures, one heavenly/divine, the other earthly/
lar protest and the occurrence of an earthquake, human. Even more subtle was Arianism, a doc-
which was immediately seen as the sign of God’s trine named after Arius, an Alexandrian priest
displeasure. who lived at the beginning of the fourth century.
The relative openness with which the early He recognised the divine nature of Christ, but
medieval Church discussed the content of its doc- did not consider him equal to God the Father
trine also had its dangers. It exposed all the deep because the Father had created the Son and must,
internal differences of opinion which threat- therefore, have more substance. At the Council
ened the unity of the Church. The Greek word of Chalcedon (451), none of these views was
for heresy literally means ‘choice’; and, indeed, accepted as orthodox; orthodoxy was – and is –
in any religion attempts to formulate dogmas the dogma of the ‘holy trinity’, the ‘three-in-one’:
– doctrines which, once accepted, are inviola- God is three godlike persons who are identical
ble – demand that choices be made, and, as a in their essence, but of whom one – Christ – has
result, the denunciation as heresy of the rejected two natures, one divine and one human, which,
options. According to Augustine heretici (here- however, are undivided.
tics) could therefore never be heathens. Heretics In the end, several of these heterodoxies
were Christians who resisted the correct dogma. would survive for many centuries as the stand-
Late Antiquity was teeming with heretics. At the ard beliefs of Christian minorities spread over
beginning of the fifth century Epiphanius, bishop Asia and Africa, such as the Monophysite com-
of Cyprus, drew up a list of 80 heresies that he munities in Armenia, Syria and Egypt (where the
expressly repudiated. His colleague Philastrius, Coptic Church originated), and the Nestorians in
bishop of Brescia, came to almost twice that Iran and central Asia.
number in about the same period! No wonder

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PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

The heterodoxies of Donatus taking initiatives to improve living conditions

for those who were less well off by voluntarily
and Pelagius
renouncing their wealth – a free choice to do
What we probably find more attractive nowa- good! Economic and social inequality, accord-
days are two heresies about which we know a lot ing to Pelagius and his followers, was the cause
from the writings of Augustine, who fiercely chal- of poverty: ‘get rid of the rich and poverty will
lenged both of them: Donatism and Pelagianism. vanish’ was one of their slogans. In Augustine’s
In Donatism – the movement was inspired by view so much responsibility for mankind went
the bishop Donatus of Carthage (c.350) – the too far. Since the Fall mankind had been tainted
idea of purity was central. Bishops and priests with original sin, which baptism washed away
who had forsaken their faith in the last great only temporarily. When the sick had been healed
persecutions under Diocletian were considered by a physician, could they not fall sick again?
unclean. Sacraments administered by them were In everyday life every person’s will was fettered
of no value. The true Church was a community by selfishness, intemperance and pride. ‘Get rid
of untainted people, of saints; the self-appointed of pride, and wealth will do no harm’ was his
Catholic Church was in fact the ‘synagogue of answer to the Pelagian slogan. For Augustine,
Satan’. divine mercy was not then the gift of moral free-
Contrary to this, Augustine always defended dom, but liberation from the chains of sinfulness.
the view that the Church derived its sanctity An important question, then, is on whom
from the intrinsic value of the sacraments, and God confers grace, and whether God has made
not from the moral qualities of the clergy who his choice beforehand. On this point Augustine
administered them. More in general, he wanted wanted to believe the seemingly impossible: that
the earthly Church to be open for everyone who absolute divine predestination and human free
wanted to believe. Therefore, the ecclesiastical will existed side by side. The dogma of an abso-
community was of necessity a reflection of earthly lute predestination, which preordained many to
society in all its imperfections. For Augustine the evil and to eternal damnation, was rejected at
Church contained ‘both the corn and the chaff’. the Synod of Orange in 529 as being a ‘fatalis-
They would only be separated on God’s threshing tic conviction’. After that, the belief that in his
floor at the Last Judgement. predestination God had already taken man’s
Augustine was drawn into discussion with the individual conduct into account came to prevail.
Pelagians by one of his correspondents. Pelagius
was a British monk who had gone to Rome at
the end of the fourth century, where he achieved The iconoclast controversy
guru status in the highest circles. Pelagius and
he differed especially in their view of the scope Some heterodox beliefs continued to exist
of man’s free will and of divine grace. The monk because rulers were openly sympathetic to them.
argued that through God’s grace every individ- Constantine’s son and successor, Constantius
ual was free to choose between good and evil, II (337–361), supported Arianism, whereas
between ‘a new life in Christ’ and the rejection Justinian’s wife, Theodora, was in favour of
thereof – with all the resulting implications. It Monophysitism. But by far the fullest imperial
is fair to say that Pelagius, like a socialist avant support was given to the last, great heterodoxy
la lettre, fully recognised that someone’s freedom of the early Middle Ages, iconoclasm (‘[the]
of choice could be severely curtailed by social destruction of images’). Since the end of the
circumstances. Hence his appeal to the elite to sixth century the fast-growing popularity of the
combine their pursuit of moral refinement with devotion to icons and relics in the Byzantine

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Empire had roused the opposition of conserva- letter to the bishop of Marseille, ‘what the image
tive Christian communities in Syria and Anatolia, is for the illiterate . . . for in the image even the
where the making of images of God and the saints ignorant can see what they must imitate’.
was seen as an infringement of the second of the
Ten Commandments.
This view was reinforced by the enormous Saints and miracles
success of Islam, which also forbade images of
God and the prophets. For the deeply Christian The early Christian Church owed a significant
Byzantine Empire, the enormous losses of terri- part of its strength and authority to the fact that
tory to the Arab conquerors of the Middle East it had been regularly persecuted and there had
appeared as the loss of God’s benevolence – just been many martyrs, determined witnesses who
as the repulsion of the Arab fleet that attacked had shown their willingness to die for their faith
Constantinople in 717 thanks to the deployment (martyr literally means ‘witness’). From the begin-
of ‘Greek fire’ (an explosive mixture of petroleum ning the martyrs had been venerated as saints,
and potassium) was interpreted as the return of and their deaths were annually commemorated
divine support. The new emperor, Leo III (717– at their graves. When Christianity was elevated
741), used this sign to motivate and unify his to become a state religion this veneration only
beleaguered subjects, and then also permitted the increased. Believers saw the holy martyrs as
bishops to destroy images in their churches out symbols of already-won victories of the spirit
of fear that God may again desert his flock if they over the body, of courage over fear and, above
continued their idolatry. all, of life over death. The mortal remains of the
From that point on, the question of devotion martyrs were a means of coming into personal
to images was one that divided the Byzantine contact with the divine, who might respond by
Empire for almost a century and a half, from working miracles through his saints. And if the
the beginning of the eighth century to the mid- morally perfect part of the earthly existence of
dle of the ninth century. Iconoclasm was the these saints could not be exactly imitated it still
orthodoxy for two rather long periods: the first served as an ethical guideline. When in time it
between 730 and 780 under the rule of the suc- became impossible to build every church over a
cessful Anatolian general, Leo the Isaurian, and martyr’s grave, the solution was either to venerate
his son, Constantine V, ‘with-the-shit name’ the saint through a painted or sculptured image
(Kopronymos), as his opponents called him; or to distribute the saint in parts. The first martyr
the second between 813 and 843. In the latter to be ‘dismantled’ in this way was St Stephen,
period, successive patriarchs convincingly argued who was stoned to death soon after the cruci-
in favour of the worshipping of images as being fixion of Christ in Jerusalem, and whose grave
definitely orthodox. After that the Byzantines was discovered in 415. Soon there was a buoyant
renounced iconoclasm for good. In the medieval market for relics (the tangible physical remains
West neither iconoclasm nor its counterpart ever or personal possessions of a saint), and we know
caught on. Roman opinion has always been that a that important monasteries in the Frankish king-
distinction should be made between the pictorial doms, such as those at Saint Riquier, Sens and
representation and the person represented. The Chelles, treasured hundreds of relics, all carefully
latter could be worshipped, but not the former. documented, and ranging from scraps of the robe
The portrayal of saints had first and foremost a of the Virgin Mary, pieces of Jesus’s crib, and all
didactic purpose in a world where few people sorts of body parts of any one of the apostles to
could read and write: ‘The written word is for the leftovers of manna from the exodus of the Jewish
literate’, Pope Gregory the Great once wrote in a people out of Egypt.

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At the beginning of the fourth century, when saints in dreams) and showed their special rela-
the persecutions had come to an end, the ques- tionship with him by performing miracles,
tion arose of how members of the Christian which were all the more convincing when they
community should then make their mark in surpassed the laws of nature. Miracles – or more
order to be recognised as ‘saintly’. The ambi- probably tales of miracles – which proved the
tions in this direction of one specific group, the omnipotence of the Christian God could be
monks, who considered themselves model wit- used as propaganda in spreading the faith, even
nesses of the faith were never generally accepted. though missionaries realised that it was better
In the end the practice developed in the East was not to exaggerate. Adam of Bremen, who wrote a
very different from that in the West. In the East history of the archbishopric of Bremen-Hamburg
a reputation for exceptional virtue was sufficient in the eleventh century, in looking back to the
for a person to be recognised as a saint; social Christianisation of the area, dryly observed that
background played no part. In the West, on the heathens too could create the illusion of a won-
other hand, it was mainly abbots, bishops and der. Was not the conversion of a pagan soul to
devout ladies of aristocratic origin to whom this the Christian faith the only miracle that really
honour fell. It was generously allocated by the mattered?
local Church communities and bishops, without For less sophisticated people, miracles facili-
any authorisation from a general council or pope. tated the transition from animistic and magic
The strict procedure of canonisation, as it is beliefs to the Christian faith with its highly
still practised today, was only fully developed in abstract theology. Miracles and visions became
the pontificate of Gregory IX (1227–1241). fixed ingredients in the biographies or vitae of
In the early medieval West, the veneration saints. These were always written in Latin from
of saints was further promoted by the fact that which we may infer that they were intended
Christ was still primarily associated with his divine primarily for a public of clerics and monks.
nature. In this way the role of saints as mediators Nevertheless, vitae form an important literary
between a highly exalted, inaccessible God and genre with a fairly fixed pattern. A model was
ordinary believers grew. Because saints were sup- supplied by Sulpicius Severus who shortly after
posed to go directly to Heaven, where they were 400 wrote the much admired vita of Martin of
sitting at the right hand of God, they were prefer- Tours (316–397), a soldier from Pannonia who
ential advocates for the prayers of the faithful. Such had become a monk after his retirement in Gaul
mediation was seen not just in the area of spiritual and then was elected bishop of Tours. Lives such
support, but more especially for the acquisition of as the one of Martin presented saints as inspired,
physical and material assistance. There were even charismatic men and women of God, who led
some rather comical rituals in which images of exemplary lives and, if necessary, could bring
saints were punished like naughty dolls if they about God’s miraculous intervention. A central
failed to deliver. At other times devout donors did point is often formed by the conversion (lit.
not hesitate to take back their offerings in anger ‘turning round’) of the protagonist who, after an
when the hoped-for divine intervention did not originally sinful life, receives a sign from God,
take place. Seen from this perspective, early medi- repents and thereafter offers his life to the service
eval hagiolatry formed a perfect link with the sort of God. Compilations of saints’ lives were rapidly
of barter relationships that were characteristic for produced, and bishops and priests could draw
the functioning of aristocratic networks in the upon them when preparing edifying sermons.
early Middle Ages (see Chapter 3). The ‘Book of Lives of the Saints’, a collection put
Real saints had contact with God through together by Gregory, bishop of Tours (539–594),
visions (just like ordinary believers could meet enjoyed wide popularity in the early Middle Ages.

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Spreading the faith half-legendary St Patrick, who was born in the

north of Britannia and was abducted and sold
Missions and conversion as a slave by Irish marauders when a young boy.
After six years he escaped and came into contact
Christianity is a religion that has always aimed with Christianity in Gaul. Eventually he returned
at expansion, at converting others who do not to the ‘island at the end of the world’ to bring
yet share the true faith. This missionary urge the new faith to his former captors. Whether the
is anchored in the Gospels. According to St story is true or not, in the early Middle Ages
Matthew, Jesus of Nazareth sent his twelve dis- the Christian faith and Church organisation in
ciples out as apostles or ‘missionaries’ with the Ireland took on their own, fascinating forms
words, ‘And as ye go, preach, saying, “The king- which were closely connected to the numerous
dom of heaven is at hand”’ (Matthew 10:7). The clan-kingdoms of Ireland’s characteristic social
task of conversion was thus clearly connected and political structure. The strict ascetic monas-
with the expectation that the end of time was ticism caught on, and instead of bishoprics, it
close by. Jesus added threatening words that cast was the monasteries that became the centres of
an ominous shadow over how conversion to Church life. One consequence of this was that
Christianity would take place: ‘But whosoever abbots, not bishops, emerged as the real leaders
shall deny me before men, him will I also deny in the early Irish Church. Irish bishops generally
before my Father who is in heaven.’ And, ‘Think lived as monks in monasteries, where they were
not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came subject to the authority of the abbots.
not to send peace, but the sword.’ Elsewhere, the barbarian invasions caused a
Until 311 this missionary zeal was not so temporary retreat of Christianity. We see this in
urgent. Only later, when Christians were allowed fairly large towns on or close to the limes, border
to express their faith openly, did the mission forts on the Rhine-Moselle-Meuse frontier such as
become serious. In the view of Augustine it was Cologne, Mainz, Trier and Tongeren/Maastricht.
explicitly not to be limited to the civilised world As early as the fourth century these were home
of the Roman Empire. The heathen barbarians to a Christian community with its own bishop,
beyond the borders should also learn to know the but they would disappear for a long period from
Truth. At the same time Augustine was against the beginning of the fifth century. In spite of
forceful conversion. A firm hand could only be this, most barbarian immigrants converted to
used to return heretics and schismatics to the Christianity amazingly quickly – the Goths even
bosom of Mother Church; the unbelievers had before 400 – although it was often to the unor-
to be persuaded. thodox Arian faith. The fact that Clovis, king
But how should these things be accom- of the Franks, converted to Catholicism in the
plished? Bishops were appointed to Christian beginning of the sixth century, is seen by many,
communities outside the limes only at their own even today, as an example of astonishing politi-
request. This must have happened in the area of cal insight, although little is known about his
the Goths to the north of the Black Sea and in motives. Clovis may well have realised that it
modern-day Armenia and Georgia (in the begin- would be impossible to rule Gaul without the sup-
ning of the fourth century, the king of Armenia port of the Gallo-Roman senatorial elite. While
would become the first head of state to convert to Clovis’s arch-enemies, the Visigoths in Aquitaine,
Christianity), but also in far-flung regions such as were Arians, the Gallo-Roman elite was Catholic –
Yemen and Ethiopia. anti-Arian – and they controlled the allocation of
Better known is the case of Ireland, where con- the bishoprics that were so important for the civil
version must have started in about 450 by the administration. Moreover, Clovis’s baptism added

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a quasi-magic divine dimension to his ‘hail’, the Dagobert I (623–639) into the Basque country
key to victory for barbarian warlords. And indeed, and over the Danube into the Slav lands as a mis-
Clovis became associated with a god whose suc- sionary. Barely a century later the renewed drive
cess had been abundantly proven. In at least one for expansion under the Pippinid or Carolingian
respect Clovis’s conversion to Catholicism was mayors of the palace led to a harsh policy of
tied closely to Gefolgschafts-thinking: all warriors systematic, military subjection and forced con-
of a lord’s retinue were expected to follow the versions. The first victims were the Frisians and
example of their leader. Conversion was not just Saxons living north and east of the Rhine.
an individual act of faith, but a collective action Here the work of conversion was undertaken
within a system of clientage. One variant of this by Anglo-Saxon monks. Like the Irish they had a
was that individual converts considered that their missionary zeal and were surely still aware of their
entire household had been converted. This meant ethnic proximity to the inhabitants of the North
that thousands of slaves and serfs were automati- Sea lands. Willibrord, the ‘apostle of the Frisians’
cally counted as Christians after the conversion (658–739), concentrated on the coastal areas of
of their aristocratic masters or after they had been the northern Netherlands. He immediately tied
handed over to a Church institution. Whatever his fate as missionary to that of the Pippinid
they or the ‘ordinary free Frank’ might have rulers, who wanted to subdue the Frisians by
thought about Christianity had nothing to do force of arms. Willibrord sought authorisation
with it. With the baptism of Clovis the Franks from the pope, and was appointed archbishop
had become Catholic – in the eyes of many mod- of the Frisians with Utrecht as his seat. After
ern historians too! Excavations of early medieval repeated attempts by the Frisians to turn the tide,
burial grounds and saints’ lives show how gradual their resistance was finally broken by Charles
the Christianisation of Frankish Gallo-Roman Martel.
society took hold. Even 150 years after Clovis’s The conversion of the Saxons followed a
death, missionaries were still active in the area similar pattern. The chief initiator was Winfrid,
close to the late king’s centre of power at Tournai. a monk from near Southampton, who is better
This pattern of conversion of an elite followed known as St Boniface. He, too, carried out his
by a far more gradual, general conversion to missionary work with a papal mandate as well as
Christianity was often repeated in the barbarian under the special protection of the Franks. In 745
kingdoms of the early Middle Ages and occupied the pope appointed him archbishop of Mainz, in
several centuries. Kings and their aristocratic elites the area east of the middle Rhine, where he had
opted for Christianity out of political opportun- already been active for years, and where in 744
ism when they were in danger of succumbing to he had founded the monastery of Fulda on land
hostile, external pressures or when they wanted donated to him by Carloman, son of Charles
to make advantageous alliances. Conversion thus Martel. The Carolingians sometimes delayed the
began as often with diplomatic negotiations – not mission work, however, and as Boniface could
infrequently after a defeat on the battlefield – as do nothing without the military support of
with the work of missionaries. the Franks, the mission in Saxony did not pro-
It was more alarming when military con- gress. How superficially the new faith penetrated
quest and missionary zeal went hand in hand. In becomes apparent from a depressingly long list of
particular, the missions of conversion from the thirty superstitions and heathen practices which
Frankish kingdoms were accompanied by brute was drawn up in those years by a person close
force aimed at expanding Frankish authority. An to the archbishop. The latter had more success
alarming portent can be found in the vita of St in Bavaria. In the end, the tireless Boniface was
Amandus, who followed the Frankish armies of killed by robbers in 754, at the age of eighty,

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BOX 2.2 CONVERSION AS A DOUBLE

INSURANCE
Anglo-Saxon England became acquainted with
Christianity from two directions: from the south
(Kent), through the Roman mission of Augustine
of Canterbury; and from the north, through the
missionary activities of Irish monks. The history
of this process presents numerous examples of
conversions connected with the hope of success
in wars. It did not always immediately produce
sincere Christians, as the example of Redwald,
king of East Anglia shows. According to the
Anglo-Saxon historian and monk, the Venerable
Bede (c. 672–735), after his conversion Redwald
continued to worship the old gods, a double
insurance policy often pursued at that time. It
made it possible to postpone making a definite
choice until one’s deathbed, and sometimes the
old gods were given the benefit of the doubt.
The discovery of Redwald’s grave at Sutton Hoo
has provided dazzling proof of this. As was the custom among many heathen barbarians in the
north, Redwald had all his belongings buried with him, a treasure of inconceivable wealth, piled
up in a fully rigged wooden ship. No true Christian would have done that, because he lived in
the certainty that his body had no further value after death and thus would not need sustenance.
A true Christian would have found it more prudent to aid the salvation of his own soul by leaving
money or goods to a church, monastery or the poor. We should be careful, however, with such
generalising interpretations; giving burial gifts remained common practice in aristocratic circles
until the eighth century, and the Church was not against it in principle. Burial gifts were perhaps
a reflection of social prestige rather than of conceptions of life after death.

Source: Tom Williamson, Sutton Hoo and its Landscape: The Context of the Monuments (Oxford: Windgather Press,
2008).

while travelling on official business in the north of Paderborn. After they had been subjected
of Frisia, which was still half-pagan. the Saxons promised to convert to Christianity.
The recalcitrant Saxons were only really ‘con- However, they soon started to rebel, spurred on
verted’ when Charlemagne decided to subdue by a new leader, Widukind. When Widukind was
them by military means soon after he became defeated, Charlemagne spared his life on condition
king. Originally this seemed an easy undertaking, that he consented to be baptised. Charlemagne
because after a couple of campaigns he advanced himself stood as godfather at the baptismal font;
into the Saxon heartland at the source of the this was not out of kindness, but a public ges-
Lippe where he set up the royal residence (palts) ture to make it clear that Widukind could count

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PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

on his special protection and would be, at the many generations, his descendants held the com-
same time, entirely at the king’s ‘fatherly’ mercy. bined positions of abbot of Werden and bishop of
There are many similar examples, especially in Münster and Halberstadt.
Anglo-Saxon England, where royal godfathers The first attempts to convert Scandinavia to
were quite common. Charlemagne’s son, Louis Christianity date from the reign of Louis the
the Pious, was godfather at the baptism of the Pious, who sent missionaries to Denmark and
claimant to the Danish throne, Harald Klak, in Sweden. The newly established double arch-
826, and the Byzantine emperor Michael III stood bishopric of Bremen-Hamburg was the base of
godfather to Boris, khan of the Bulgars in 865. operations, but the campaign soon foundered.
Further rebellions followed in Saxony, and This is not surprising as it was precisely at this
these long hindered the missionary work. For the time that the Vikings set out on their maraud-
first time there were signs that the aristocracy’s ing expeditions in western Europe. The earliest
switch to Christianity did not automatically missions to the Danes should be seen partly in
cause the widespread baptism of the ordinary this context. The Carolingians probably hoped to
free people – quite the contrary. The conversion avert the threat of Viking attacks by intervening
of the elite was apparently seen as an expression in the domestic politics of the Viking kings. It did
of a pro-Frankish policy, and thus as a betrayal of not bring them much success. It was not until the
the Saxon cause. Altogether several decades went tenth century that new attempts would be made
by before Christianity made much headway in to bring Christianity to Scandinavia and to those
Saxony. It raised the question in Church circles groups of Vikings who had settled in Francia,
of whether the use of force was expedient in England and Ireland.
spreading the true faith. Important advisors to The definitive conversion of Scandinavia itself
Charlemagne, such as Alcuin of York, were ada- was driven by the new fervour of the German kings
mantly against it. In Alcuin’s view the acceptance of the Ottonian dynasty. The king of Denmark
of Christianity must be born of an inner convic- converted in about 960. In the eleventh century
tion; force and violence were entirely wrong. This his grandson, Canute, was already reputed to be
standpoint became official Carolingian policy the ideal Christian monarch. In Denmark, by
after the subjection of the Avars in the years after far the most powerful of the Scandinavian king-
796. Consequently, the Avars were not converted doms, Christianity survived above all because the
to Christianity very quickly. kings saw that their conversion brought them
Another strategy often used, and which was impressive military and political success, such as
applied in Saxony as well as in Bavaria and the conquest of England. Naturally they attrib-
Carinthia (regions where Christianity had been uted this to the good fortune which Christ had
introduced in the eighth century), was to use brought them, the ‘luck of the white Christ’. In
native-born missionaries, often the sons of noble- Denmark there soon developed a Danish aristo-
men who had been sent to Francia as hostages. cratic proprietary church system, based entirely
The important monastery of Corvey, on the on the German model.
upper Weser, for example, was founded by Saxon The spread of Christianity in Scandinavia,
missionaries who had been brought up in the just as everywhere else in Europe, showed a con-
Neustrian abbey of Corbie (Corvey means ‘new siderable delay between the conversion of kings
Corbie’). Another missionary to the Saxons and and aristocratic elites on the one hand – for
Frisians, Liudger, was a Frisian by birth who had Norwegians and Swedes alike dating from about
been educated in Utrecht and York. In 805 he 1000 – and the conversion of the common people
became the first bishop of Münster and was the on the other. Heathen rituals were held at the
forefather of a remarkable ‘priestly dynasty’. For great pre-Christian shrine of Uppsala until well

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into the twelfth century. They did not stop until of the first Bohemian princes is shrouded in leg-
1164 when the bishop of Sigtuna moved his seat end, but can safely be placed at the beginning of
to Uppsala and was promoted to archbishop. By the tenth century: the bishopric of Prague was
then Christianity had penetrated into the remot- established before 967. The conversion of Poland
est corners of medieval Europe. The first bishopric was undertaken from Bohemia, a major role being
in Iceland, Skálaholt, was established around played by the first non-German bishop of Prague,
the middle of the eleventh century. Greenland Vojtech-Adalbert. This eccentric character spent
followed soon after 1125. more time in Italy than Bohemia, much to the
The same German fervour that initiated the displeasure of his ecclesiastical superior, and per-
permanent process of the conversion of Denmark ished while preaching among the Prussians, a
should also be seen behind the Christianisation of Baltic people. Just a few years later he was revered
the Wends, the common collective name for the as a holy martyr in Gniezno, the centre of the first
Slavic-speaking peoples east of the Elbe. This did Polish archbishopric created under the common
not happen under the guidance of native kings impulse of Pope Silvester II and Emperor Otto III.
but rather followed the pattern of the conver- During missionary work among the south-
sion of the Franks and Saxons: a joint missionary ern Slavonic peoples in the second half of the
offensive with attempts at military subjection. ninth century another problem arose: competi-
Ironically enough the Saxons played an impor- tion between the Carolingian and the Byzantine
tant role in this. They suffered a major reverse Empire. In the struggle for power that ensued
when the Wends rebelled in 983 and Hamburg after Charlemagne’s destruction of the king-
was reduced to ashes. It would be nearly two dom of the Avars, two key players, the prince of
centuries before the Wends finally accepted Moravia and the khan of Bulgaria, tried to gain
Christianity. A combination of three factors support sometimes from the Eastern Franks,
proved to be decisive for the final success: crusade, sometimes from Constantinople. Religious con-
colonisation and the foundation of monasteries. version was always a condition of support. Two
When, in 1147, the aristocracies of Saxony and Byzantine missionaries, the brothers Cyril and
Denmark appeared unwilling to take part in the Methodius from Thessaloniki, had the lead on
second crusade to the Holy Land as long as the the Eastern Franks in the decades after 860, not
heathens were still in their own back yard, so to only because they spoke the Slav language (the
speak, Pope Eugene III labelled as crusades what in Eastern Frankish missionaries working in the area
fact were nothing more than marauding raids into generally did so too) but also because they were
Slavonic territory. At the same time the German the first to put the spoken language of the Slavs
colonisation of thinly populated areas to the east into ‘cyrillic’ writing. In that way the Bible and
of the Weser, Elbe and Oder got under way, and other essential liturgical texts could be written
the Wendish frontier became studded with mon- in Slavonic. This considerably improved the mis-
asteries, belonging in particular to the new, highly sionaries’ means of communication. The rival
motivated new monastic orders of the Cistercians Eastern Frankish missionaries found that a Bible
and Premonstratensians (see Chapter 6). in the vernacular bordered on heresy. The quar-
From the very beginning the situation in rel ended in compromise: the pope approved the
the central Slavonic region was quite different. use of Slavonic as a language of the Church, the
Unlike the politically divided north, two large ter- Church of Bulgaria came under the authority of
ritorial principalities, Bohemia and Poland, had the patriarch of Constantinople, and the Church
been established there quite early on. German of Moravia and Pannonia (coinciding with the
influence was strong but no attempt was made at modern states of Slovakia and Hungary) under
political and military subjugation. The conversion Rome.

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PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

Missionaries from the West did not at once wanted. In spite of the successes of the military
gain from this arrangement because soon after 900 Teutonic Order, however, which extended its vio-
Moravia and Pannonia were overrun by the pagan lent activities into the Baltic region after 1230,
Magyars. When the Magyars were Christianised the the indigenous rulers did not allow themselves
whole story was repeated. The first Magyar rulers to be completely overwhelmed. Just as every-
to convert were baptised in Constantinople, a logi- where else at an earlier stage, Christianity could
cal consequence of the anti-Bulgarian alliance they not triumph here until the indigenous aristoc-
had made with the Byzantines in about 950. For racy showed themselves prepared, for whatever
similar reasons the princes of the Russian Empire reasons, to be receptive to the new faith.
of Kiev followed in the wake of the Greek Church.
However, it was the German kings who subdued
the Magyars in battle, after which Hungary finally Christianisation and syncretism
came into the Latin-Roman Church. Just as had
happened in Norway and Denmark, the appeal of The centuries-long monopoly of Christian his-
Christianity in Hungary was consciously enlarged torians on the historiography of the Middle
by making one of their own kings a saint. In Ages created an erroneous picture of the
Hungary that happened immediately with the first Christianisation of Europe, which needs to be
Catholic Magyar prince, Waik, who received the adjusted. Not only did the conversion process
baptismal name of Stephen and had the odour of take place more slowly than is often thought,
saintliness about him throughout his life. He was it also worked out imperfectly. In this connec-
venerated everywhere very soon after his death in tion it is useful to make a distinction between
1038. delayed social and delayed mental penetration.
Thus by about the middle of the eleventh By the former we mean that Christianity reached
century, more than eight hundred years after the masses later than the elites; by the latter,
the conversion of Constantine, almost all that the faith of the believers was for a long
Europe, or at least its ruling elites, had con- time superficial and directed towards externals.
verted to Christianity. Just two different groups Internalisation required intensive pastoral sup-
of peoples living along the southern and eastern port, which for a long time was either absent or
shores of the Baltic Sea were still unconverted: of a dubious quality. The first hesitant attempts
the Balts who included Prussians, Latvians and to raise the consciousness of ordinary believers
Lithuanians, and the Estonians and Finns. Other date from the Carolingian period and were aimed
missionaries followed Adalbert of Prague, but mainly at moral improvement, less at religious
met with equally little success in the inaccessible instruction. Similar initiatives were also seen
region of impenetrable forests on the south-east- outside the Carolingian Empire, in the England
ern shores of the Baltic Sea. Not until well into the of Alfred the Great (871–899) and the Asturias of
fourteenth century could Christianity take root Alfonso III (866–910).
in the Baltic lands, but the laborious attempts One of the first obstacles was that almost all
at conversion had been given a cruel charter in texts essential for a deeper knowledge of the faith
1171 with the papal of the bull, Non parum ani- – foremost the Bible – were written in Latin. In
mus noster. In this bull the pope determined that Anglo-Saxon England text material in the ver-
the struggle against the heathens in the north nacular became sparsely available in the second
would forever be on an equal footing with the half of the seventh century; in the Carolingian
struggle against the Muslims. From that point on, Empire that did not happen until after 800.
the nobility of western Europe were licensed to A famous early example of an edifying text in the
hunt down the Balts wherever and whenever they vernacular is the Heliand, an epic story of the life

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of Christ in Old High German, which dates from influence of cultural anthropology and compara-
between 825 and 850. Yet the Church continued tive religious studies, a history of Christianity
to use predominantly Latin until the thirteenth approached purely and simply from a Christian
century. perspective is considered to be a pointless exer-
No wonder, then, that generations of mission- cise. Current interpretations rather depart from
aries, village priests and bishops failed to root out the concept of syncretism, the functional
pre-Christian practices. They certainly tried hard fusion of old and new religious representations.
enough. One favoured method was the merci- The designation of time – a religiously loaded
less destruction of cult places, such as the Irminsul subject – provides a good example. Throughout
(lit. ‘Pillar of the firmament’), the great holy tree Europe the designation of the days of the week
of the Saxons, which must have stood in a for- and the months of the year are of pre-Christian
est near Ober-Marsberg in Westphalia, before origin. Only our calendar of years and holidays
Charlemagne had it pulled down in 772. The has been completely Christianised, with certain
Church always had a rather ambivalent attitude to notable exceptions including Christmas (already
the use of force to spread Christianity. The advice mentioned), and the midwinter and midsummer
that Gregory the Great gave to his missionaries in celebrations. The midwinter feast was a barbarian
England in 601 is typical: destroy the images in hea- adaptation of the Roman feast of Saturnalia (the
then shrines, but convert the shrines themselves feast of Saturn, the god of seed-time), which in
into churches. One of Gregory’s successors, Pope turn was of Etruscan origin. The pagan midsum-
Boniface IV (608–615), himself set a good example mer feast was given a Christian make-over as the
by rededicating the famous Pantheon in Rome as feast day of St John the Baptist (24 June), but it
the church that it still is today: Santa Maria Rotonda. is still abundantly celebrated in its pre-Christian
Charlemagne was buried in an antique sarcophagus form in unimpeachably Christian countries such
with an image of the Rape of Proserpina, who was as Norway and Sweden.
now seen as a Christian symbol for the hope of A second aspect of syncretism relates to the
resurrection. Countless missionaries and temporal tolerated identification of heathen gods and prac-
rulers copied these illustrious examples, also out- tices with Christian saints and rites. In Brittany
side the early Roman Empire, where church density the exceptional devotion to St Anne appears to
was far lower. The cathedral of Uppsala in Sweden date directly from the Celtic or even pre-Celtic
stands on the site of an important pre-Christian worship of a ‘mother goddess of the earth’ called
shrine, and that of Vilnius in Lithuania had a hea- Ane. In the same region, until well into the nine-
then predecessor that was probably built as late as teenth century, mothers of twins directed their
the first half of the fourteenth century. prayers to St Gwen Teirbron, a Celtic fertility god-
The cultic reuse of these holy places proved dess whose likeness, to the discomfort of many
that the superiority of the Christian God could a village priest, was conspicuous for the three
be shown, and at the same time it could be prominently displayed breasts. Finally, a certain
seen as a token of respect for the losers. The degree of religious ambiguity was accepted for a
latter was all the more important because pre- long time. Christian Anglo-Saxon kings contin-
Christian shrines fulfilled a central function in ued to trace their ancestry back to Woden – until
ancestor-worship and were, therefore, an essen- the eighth century when someone hit on the bril-
tial identity-defining element in local or regional liant idea of dropping Woden’s divine status and
communities. The vé at Jelling in Denmark (see tracing his ancestry back to Adam, the first man.
Box 2.3) shows how complicated the interpre- At different locations in Scandinavia soapstone
tation of such rededication can be. It is for this moulds have been found in which both a crucifix
reason that in recent years, particularly under the and a Thor-hammer could be cast.

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PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

BOX 2.3 A PAGAN SHRINE SUPPLANTED:

FROM VÉ TO CHURCH IN JELLING
One of the most interesting archaeological sites in Denmark is in the little town of Jelling in Jutland.
In the middle of a large open space are two man-made mounds of about 11 metres high with a
small whitewashed church in between them. In the tenth century Jelling was the residence of at
least two kings of Denmark: Gorm the Elder (d.940) and his son, Harald Bluetooth (c.935–987).
The runic inscriptions on two richly decorated (and once coloured) granite stones standing near
the church attest to this. On the smallest is written: king gorm placed this commemorative stone here in
remembrance of his wife thyra, the grace of denmark (‘Danabod’, the oldest reference to Denmark in

Denmark itself). The inscription on the larger stone reads: king harald placed this monument here in
memory of his father gorm and his mother thyra, the harald who united all denmark and norway and who

made the danes christians. There is no reason to doubt the veracity of these short statements. We

know from another source that Harald Bluetooth’s authority stretched over a large part of modern
Denmark, and that he moved his permanent residence from Jelling to Roskilde. It has also been
established that Harald was baptised by a German missionary called Popo. The decorated figures
on the large stone at Jelling depict a Christ triumphant who has defeated (heathen) Evil in the
form of two intertwined monsters.
In the first ‘national’ history of Denmark, the chronicle of Saxo Grammaticus which was com-
pleted in about 1200, it was already assumed that the two mounds at Jelling were indeed the graves
of Gorm and Thyra. Archaeological excavations to verify the assumption did not take place until
the nineteenth century. Then it was found that one mound contained the remnants of an empty
wooden double grave and the other mound . . . nothing at all. At least, that was what was believed
for almost a century. Then, in 1941, new excavations brought to light the remains of a platform
constructed of wooden posts, which had possibly once served as the base of a watchtower. Even more
sensational were the findings from the excavations under the little Romanesque church in Jelling,
which must have been built in about 1100. Under the church appeared to be the remains of no fewer
than three earlier wooden churches, the oldest of which dates from the time of Harald Bluetooth.
A burial chamber was revealed under the choir, containing the skeleton of a man of about fifty years of
age. It was concluded from the rather disorderly position of the skeleton that this had been a reburial.
It is generally assumed that Gorm’s body was moved from his pagan grave in the hill to the Christian
church after the conversion of his son Harald. But where is Thyra? This is one of the riddles that Jelling
poses. The other relates to the discovery of a large triangular space, bounded by large stones and
situated partly under the church and partly under the graveless mound. There is no doubt that this
is the remains of a pre-Christian place of worship, or vé. Its exact function and its relationship to the
burial grounds, which are also pre-Christian, still remain a mystery. The last excavations took place
in 2006; these uncovered the remnants of a palisade and of a large ship burial. The Jelling memorial
has been on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites for many years.

Sources: Johannes Brøndsted, The Vikings (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), pp. 293–297; Leif Ingvorsen, Jelling
in the Viking Age (Jelling n.d.); image a. Image of the jelling rune stones © Tim Graham/Getty Images; image
b. Reconstruction of the Jelling site adapted from and by courtesy of Archaeologist Mads Dengsø Jessen and
Archaeologist Peter Jensen (3D Repository) Reconstruction and JP Graphics: Gert Gram.

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 T h E ESTAb L I Sh ME NT Of TWO WOR L D R E L I GI ONS: C h R I STI A NI T y A ND I SL A M 2 CHAPTER

a. Jelling rune stones, Tim

Graham/Getty Images.

b. Impression of the fortified sacred site (vé) of Jelling around the year 1000. The site’s central struc-
ture was a 350 metre long ship-shape, bounded by marker stones. In the middle is Thyra’s Høy (‘The
mound of Thyra’), 8.5 metres high. It contains the burial chamber of Thyra, wife of King Gorm the Old.
To the south is Gorms Høy (‘The mound of Gorm’), 11 metres high, but lacking a burial chamber. In
between, although closer to Thyra’s Høy, is the wooden church, built by Gorm and Thyra’s son, King
Harald Bluetooth († ad 987). This probably is where King Gorm was buried. The church was replaced
around 1100 by a Romanesque masonry church. The Jelling site perfectly illustrates the Christian
takeover of the pre-Christian Viking/Saxon ship burial tradition.

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PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

Similar processes of syncretism were facilitated and became Allah’s Prophet. This caused tension
because many early medieval Christian practices in Mecca, and Mohammed and his followers fled
were soaked in magic. Who cared about the differ- northwards to Medina, an event which marks the
ence between the healing effects of holy relics or beginning of the Islamic era (622). Seven years
of talismans and amulets? Valuable caskets have later he returned to Mecca and assumed power.
been excavated in which they were kept side by Support for him grew rapidly all over south and
side. Certainly the parish priest, with whom the west Arabia. Under his first successors (caliphs)
majority of believers came into contact, worked the authority of Mecca expanded with incredible
in this semi-magical world. Only with the pur- speed. It was first directed at the north and east
suit of the ideals of the eleventh-century Reform of the Arabian peninsula and the neighbouring
movement were the priests forced to follow the desert regions between the ‘fertile crescent’ where
Church’s moral line; their duties were increas- many Arab Bedouin roamed about. In the year
ingly limited to administering the sacraments 637 the Byzantines and Persians suffered humili-
and hearing simple catechisms (see Chapter 6). ating defeats against Arab armies at the Yarmuk
Only then did Catholic priests become ‘sacra- river (south of Damascus) and al-Qaddisya (near
mental priests’ more than local sorcerers. Even Kufa on the Euphrates) respectively. This opened
after that, the Church was only partially success- the way for the Arab conquest of Palestine, Syria
ful in reaching the masses and impressing upon and Iraq. A few years later the Byzantines were
them its dogmas, moral precepts and rituals. Long easily driven out of Egypt. Raids and expeditions
after the Middle Ages Argus-eyed priests gazed in into Iran and North Africa were undertaken
puzzlement at the veneration of a holy greyhound from these new bases. Within a hundred years
near Lyons, of a hunting goddess with bear claws of Mohammed’s death, Arab power stretched
instead of hands in the Dolomites, bulls offered from Spain in the west to the Indus delta and
in sacrifice in Scotland and numerous pilgrimages Kyrgyzstan in the east, where in 751 the Arab con-
to holy wells, streams, lakes, trees and forests in querors met with, and defeated, an advance army
Wales and Cornwall, all barely understood wit- of the Chinese Tang emperor. Shortly after 660
nesses to a world that had gone, but also silent the Arab capital had been moved from Mecca to
protests against an invader, against a strange Damascus, the seat of the caliphs of the Umayyad
religion that had been imposed from outside. family. This move was of enormous importance
for Arabic culture, which was now exposed to
considerable Syrian and Persian influences.
The Arab conquests and the Along with the Arab conquests went the
establishment of Islam spread of Islam, Muhammad’s new religion,
which literally means ‘subjection [to the will of
At about the same time as the Lombards entered God]’. In comparison with the slow penetration
Italy and groups of Slavs swarmed over the of Christianity in Europe during the early Middle
Balkans, Mohammed (c.570–632) was born in Ages, Islam was disseminated extremely rapidly.
Mecca on the west of the Arabian peninsula. That difference is only in part attributable to the
Almost everything we know of him we know faiths’ content, as they share three important
from Arabic tradition, which was only writ- dogmas with the Jewish religion:
ten down a century after the Prophet’s death.
According to this far from unprejudiced tradi- ■■ belief in one (male) God, knowledge of whom
tion, in later life Mohammed had visions in can only be obtained through revelation in a
which God (Allah) revealed his will to him. On holy book;
Allah’s orders Mohammed spread the revelation ■■ belief in a life after death, after a final judge-

80
MAP 2.2 The rise of the Arab Empire, 632–733
PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

ment where God separates the good from the and polygamy, the children of female slaves grew
bad; and up in an entirely Arab and Muslim environment.
■■ the conviction that the profession of the true Nevertheless, the Arabs had no choice but to tol-
faith contributes to individual salvation in erate to some extent and within narrow limits
the life hereafter. the existing religions in their conquered territo-
ries. Even under this ‘sort of religious and social
Also, in all three religions faith contains not only apartheid’ (Peter Brown), Christians enjoyed a
metaphysical ideas but a clear view of life and better position under Muslim rule than Muslims
the world as well. (Orthodox) Jews and Muslims did in the Christian world. In medieval Europe,
go furthest in this: for them, all of life – internal Christians did not see Islam as a new religion but as
and external, private and public – is impregnated a reprehensible aberration of their own faith. This
with religion, and ethical precepts and courses negative perception later expanded: then ‘the sect
of action for individual dealings in the political, of Mohammed’ was not just seen as a heresy, but
economic and social fields are borrowed from also as a punishment from God, a terrible affliction
religion. Strictly speaking, Islam makes no dis- which, through their own fault, Christians had to
tinction between secular and religious law: Islam suffer in the long progress to the Last Judgement.
has only sharia, the body of regulations for living, From the very beginning Islam had its own
held to be in accordance with God’s will. Islam holy book, the Qur’an (Qur’ân means ‘what has
similarly makes no distinction, at least in theory, been recited’), the record of Allah’s revelation to
between secular and spiritual authority. In the the Prophet Mohammed. According to the Arab
early Middle Ages the caliph, as direct successor of tradition the text of the Qur’an was laid down in
the Prophet, was both head of state and leader of its present, definitive form around 650. Several
the Islamic religious community (umma in Arabic, of the 114 chapters or suras stress that Allah
compare with the Christian ecclesia). The umma revealed himself to Mohammed in Arabic. For
dwelt in the ‘House of Islam’ (Dar al-Islam) which orthodox Muslims this meant until recently that
was rigidly divided from the hostile outside world, the Qur’an could only be read, listened to, recited
the ‘House of War’ (Dar al-Harb). Thus Islam created and reproduced in Arabic. This resulted in a wide
for the first time in Arab society a focus of strong dissemination of Arabic as a ‘higher’ language in
loyalty above and beyond the clan or the grouping lands where Arabic was not and is not spoken at all.
of kinship. Without this new bond the spectacular The Qur’an was translated into Latin shortly before
Arab conquests would have been inconceivable. 1150. Not much later, Peter the Venerable, abbot
Because of the similarities between the three of the famous Benedictine abbey at Cluny, prided
monotheistic religions, Jews and Christians – the himself on the fact that he had read the Qur’an,
‘peoples of the Book’ as they were often called – and during the late Middle Ages there was for some
were generally tolerated in the Islamic world. There time a centre for Qur’anic studies in Barcelona. Of
was little pressure to immediate conversion – from course, this was not entirely out of purely academic
that perspective the high-speed spread of Islam in interest but rather under the motto, ‘know your
the trail of Arab conquests is as illusionary as the enemy so that you can better fight him’.
Christianisation of barbarian Europe. Islam was the In addition to the Qur’an, Islam recognises
religion of only a tiny minority in the Near East. In various other sources of religious authority.
the cities, the Muslim communities were dwarfed The most important of these form the so-called
by the civilian populations among whom they Hadith texts (hadith means ‘tradition’), a body of
lived as dominant military elite. The Arab leaders sayings and deeds ascribed to the Prophet him-
imported slaves on a massive scale, especially from self. They were collected and memorised during
central Asia. Thanks to the practice of concubinage his lifetime by the ‘Companions’, the people

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close to him. Then for centuries they were passed made between sacrosanct dogmas and religious
down by word of mouth in unbroken chains precepts on the one hand and adaptable rules for
(asānı̄d or sanad) from generation to generation, moral living and social intercourse on the other.
so that there were eventually tens of thousands
of hadith in circulation. In about 850 two revised
compilations were put into writing, quite inde- Dar al-Islam
pendently of each other, which since then have
become the standard corpus. Taken together the Despite its emphasis on tradition, universality,
hadith comprise the sunnat al-Nabi (‘customs of comprehensiveness and ethical pragmatism,
the Prophet’), soenna for short, whence derives Islam has not succeeded in keeping Dar al-Islam
‘Sunni’ for those who hold to the soenna. one and undivided. The most important split
Unlike Catholic Christianity Islam does not dates from the problematical years following the
have a hierarchic clergy. In principle the establish- Prophet’s death in 632, when a significant minor-
ment of what is true has been made dependent ity was in favour of the succession of Ali, a first
on individual exegesis and even nowadays, com- cousin of Mohammed who was also married to
petent teachers of the Qur’an enjoy great social his daughter, Fatima. Eventually, Ali was made
respect in Muslim communities. On the other caliph, but the seeds of discord had been sown,
hand, the danger of confusion and heterodoxy is and a hard core of malcontents was formed who
inherent in the same principle. Islam has coun- believed that only Ali and his descendants could
tered that with the formation of a limited number be the true heirs to the Prophet. By the end of the
of recognised schools of exegesis, the madhhab. ninth century, this resulted in the formation of
The same is true for another important aspect of a broad separatist movement, the ‘party of Ali’,
Islamic religious studies, the fiqh (‘meditation’), (shi’at ‘Ali in Arabic), whose adherents were called
which deals with the study of Islamic law. Shi’ites and which had, and still has, a particu-
The ethical aspects of Islam are rigorously larly large following in Iraq and Iran. The Shi’ites
elaborated and explicitly bound to the notion of do not reject the soenna, but they have their own
God. Some Orientalists, therefore, refer to Islam tradition and their own spiritual leader appointed
as ‘orthopractical’ rather than ‘orthodox’. The by Allah himself, the Imam, who must be a direct
religious-ethical duties are described simply and descendant of one of the two sons of Ali.
precisely. The five so-called ‘pillars of the faith’ There were more splits within Shi’ism, even
are central: (1) the public confession of the belief before 1500. The so-called ‘Twelvers’ only rec-
in Allah and his Prophet; (2) regular recital of ognised the authority of twelve Imams, whose
prayers; (3) giving alms for the poor; (4) fasting in graves (for example, at Nadjaf and Kerbela in
the month of Ramadan; and (5) making a pilgrim- Iraq) are most holy objects of pilgrimage and
age to Mecca at least once in a lifetime. Among prayer. According to the Twelvers the twelfth
the less precisely described obligations is jihad. It Imam, or Mahdi, is immortal. This Mohammed
is often translated as a ‘holy war’, but it literally al-Muntazar disappeared around 875 and has
means ‘effort’ or ‘striving’, defined as the ‘effort lived in hiding ever since. One day he will reveal
to spread the laws of Allah and Islam over the himself and reclaim his authority over the true
earth’. Force of arms is just one of the instruments Islam, unsullied by Sunni blemishes. A second
through which this duty of effort can be fulfilled. breakaway movement, the Ismaeli, named after
There are also innumerable instructions relating Ismael, the son of the sixth Imam, Jafar al-Sadiq
to everyday life. Because this changes with time (c.760), was created by the desert Bedouin of Syria
and differs per culture, more enlightened Islamic and North Arabia who were dissatisfied with the
scholars have advocated that a distinction be rule of the Abbasids.

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But the problems that accompanied the rapid The rising was successful and led to the establish-
Arab expansion were not only caused by ques- ment in 750 of the caliphate of the Abbasids, who
tions of succession and religious dissent. Most had a new capital built on the Tigris – Baghdad
were related to the control of the enormous area – that would grow into one of the largest cities
that the Arab armies had conquered. As the Arab in the world.
population was small there could be no question The Abbasids pursued a rigorous policy of cen-
of intense territorial occupation and thus, if they tralisation which led to even more bureaucracy.
did not return home, the Arab warriors established The policy stood or fell by the effectiveness of
themselves in towns and villages as a ruling upper the means of exercising power that the caliphs
class. In that respect the Arab conquests resembled had at their disposal, in particular the military
those of the northern barbarians in some parts of support from the Iranians who had helped the
Europe. But there are also substantial differences. Abbasids gain control. Regional separatism lay
The Arabs exposed themselves to social and cultural dormant everywhere. At the beginning of the
integration far more slowly than the barbarians in ninth century things started to go wrong and a
the West. Initially, the Arabs did not impose their long period of civil war and revolts broke out.
religion, Islam, on the conquered populations. One consequence was that the Sawad, the fertile
They strove rather to retain their ethnic purity, and southern part of Mesopotamia where Baghdad
in all probability for a long time succeeded in this. itself was situated, fell into serious economic
In contrast, the Arabs learnt a lot about local gov- decline, threatening the caliphs’ most important
ernment and administration from the Byzantines source of income. Some caliphs tried to turn the
and Persians. No barbarian kingdom in the West tide by taking reformative measures. Al-Mutasim
could approach the highly developed administra- (833–842) was the first to experiment with armies
tive system in the Arab Empire. composed of non-Arab warriors from distant bor-
In order to support themselves the Arab der territories (Turks, Armenians, Kurds, Berbers).
soldier-immigrants in the conquered regions of This was the beginning of what was to be a long
the Middle East received an allowance from the tradition in the Islamic world, where the nucleus
taxes that the subjected peoples had to raise. The of the army consisted increasingly of non-Arab
inequality in the fiscal treatment of Arab and non- elite corps; and it would not be long before the
Arab Muslims was a particular cause of tension. commanders of these corps became part of the
Arabs were not required to pay taxes although ruling elite. As in medieval Europe this develop-
they were obliged to give alms (Arabic, sadaqa), ment was connected to the professionalisation of
officially for the poor. Non-Arab converts paid warfare and the growing importance of cavalry.
a heavy land and poll tax, and in that respect Turkish nomads and Berber Bedouin were partic-
were treated no differently from those who had ularly sought after, because they were excellent,
not converted. This situation was ended at the tough horsemen. During the tenth century the
beginning of the eighth century when Arab and Arabic system of mamluks (slaves) came into
non-Arab Muslims were treated alike for tax pur- being: mounted soldiers of non-free status were
poses – which greatly encouraged conversion placed in moderate-sized companies under their
to Islam. But the Arab upper class continued to own commander, who paid them and whom
monopolise military and administrative power, they had to obey. A second measure intended to
and this finally became unacceptable to the native deal with the crisis was the issue of what is known
elites. Abu-Abbas al-Saffah, scion of another house as iqta. These were contracts in which the state
of Mecca that was related to the Prophet, took revenues (taxes, domain produce, etc.) within
advantage of this disaffection to stir up rebellion a certain district were lent for a short period to a
against the Umayyads in the north-east of Iran. person of high standing, who during that period

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exercised both civil and military authority in that shows. The Fatimids were the descendants of a
area. In exchange, the holder of the iqta, if he Syrian leader from an Ismaili Shi’ite sect, who
held a military command, had to pay his troops had proclaimed himself Imam shortly before 900.
from the proceeds. Soon afterwards he fled to Ifriqya (approximately
After the first quarter of the tenth century modern-day Tunisia) where the Ismaili move-
not much authority remained to the caliph of ment had more followers than in Syria. With
Baghdad. His military commander-in-chief was the support of the Kutama Berbers, who wanted
now in charge and took the title amir al-umara nothing to do with the Arab elite, the Fatimids
(lit. ‘leader of leaders’). From the second half of seized power and proclaimed themselves caliphs.
the tenth century this position was practically Since the Umayyad ruler in Spain had reacted by
monopolised by the Buyids, a family originating doing the same, from that point on there were
south of the Caspian Sea but which had created three caliphs. From Ifriqya the Fatimids extended
its own kingdom in west and central Iran. The their power through attacks on the Maghreb and
Buyids probably encouraged the Islamic Shi’ite Egypt. They conquered Egypt in 969, where they
tradition, thus lending valuable support to the built a new capital, al-Qahira (Cairo, which lit-
development of Shi’ism into a real force within erally means ‘the victorious’), just 4 kilometres
the Islamic faith. This led to a sharpening of north of Fustat, the former capital of the Abbasid
religious differences in Iraq, because the caliphs province of Egypt.
tended to take the side of the Sunnis. From Egypt the Fatimids finally advanced on
The fact that the Buyids were able to create Palestine and their homeland Syria. By then it
their own kingdom was symptomatic of the col- had become evident that they must strengthen
lapse of the united Arabic Empire – which in fact the military basis of their power; this they did
already had a precedent in 750 when the last chiefly through the mamluk system. The Fatimids
of the Umayyads fled from Damascus to Spain, remained in power until the middle of the elev-
where the dynasty would remain in power for enth century in spite of some weird caliphs.
many centuries without paying much heed to Among them was al-Hakim (996–1021), a dan-
Baghdad. In the tenth century numerous small gerous psychopath whose reign of terror lasted
principalities in the Middle East, which were still for twenty-five years. His name was always
more or less loyal to the caliph, worked them- uttered with loathing in the West, for in 1009
selves loose from Baghdad. The Arabs no longer he plundered Jerusalem and destroyed the Holy
imposed themselves on the vast area that they Sepulchre.
had once conquered. From then on Islam was the The strength of the Fatimids lay in their enor-
unifying force, while the Arab language remained mous prestige; because of it succession was never
in use in prayer and administration. a problem. Unlike the Abbasids they allowed
In the border area of the north, in particu- family members to share the power as little as
lar, political fragmentation resulted in a serious possible, so that the caliph would never suffer
weakening of the military; the small kingdoms competition from his kin. They also had a toler-
of Armenian, Georgian and Kurd rulers bore the ant attitude towards religion, never attempting to
brunt respectively of renewed Byzantine aggres- make Egypt a Shi’ite state. Finally, Egypt enjoyed
sion and of Turkish nomads who at the beginning great prosperity under the Fatimids. Cairo became
of the eleventh century left the Caspian steppe an important transit market for trade between
and pushed into eastern Iraq and Anatolia by way the Indian and African worlds on the one hand
of Turkmenistan. On the other hand, the region- and the Mediterranean on the other. The Azhar
alism brought opportunities for the formation mosque, the building of which started shortly
of strong, new cores, as the rise of the Fatimids after 969, soon developed into a great centre of

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learning. By the eleventh century Baghdad was mediaries between the organised Church and
no longer the beating heart of the Islamic world: local religious cultures.
Cairo had taken its place. ■■ Early Christianity’s model of sanctity was
provided by the martyrs of the faith. After
the persecutions of Christians had stopped,
Points to remember two groups claimed the inheritance of the
‘holy martyrs’: first and foremost the monks
■■ The early medieval period saw the firm estab- (by heroic withdrawal from the world), but
lishment of two world religions: Christianity next also the bishops (as leaders who set an
and Islam. Both were closely related to example of virtuous Christian behaviour in
Judaism. Both were also at the same time the world).
activist, often militant movements and open, ■■ The spread of Islam followed in the wake of the
non-exclusive communities. remarkable, Islam-inspired Arab conquests.
■■ Three important factors behind the success Consequently, the fundamental openness of
of the Church in the early medieval period Islam was initially hampered by Arab racism,
were its close association to secular rulers, its which was only broken in the middle of the
virtual monopoly on literacy and its institu- eighth century with the Abbasid revolution.
tional wealth. The latter had as main sources ■■ In the Muslim world no distinction of principle
imperial and royal funds, donations by rich is made between political and religious leader-
believers who wanted to secure eternal salva- ship, or between secular and religious law.
tion by giving to the ‘poor’, and tithes levied
on the peasant populations.
■■ Christian bishops were key figures in the Suggestions for further
often chaotic early medieval world; they reading
were not only leaders of local churches, but
Brown, Peter (2012), Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth,
they also were essential for the upkeep of
The Fall of Rome, and The Making of Christianity in
secular governance. the West, 350–550 ad (Princeton/Oxford: Princeton
■■ Christian kings in the early Middle Ages had University Press). Sublime examination of the roots
a caesaropapist conception of royal author- of the crucial relationship between the wealth of the
ity, that is, they regarded themselves as the Christian Church and the Christian idea about eternal
salvation, which marked the victory of Christianity
leaders of the Church in their kingdom.
in the West in the centuries after Constantine.
■■ Most of the time, Christianisation was not
Dunn, Marilyn (2000), The Emergence of Monasticism:
a neutral, purely missionary activity; more From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages
often it went hand in hand with political (Oxford/Malden MA: Blackwell). Succinct and useful
deals or with attempts by secular rulers at survey of the early history of monasticism, with due
military conquest. attention to the main monastic traditions that took
shape in the West (including Ireland and England),
■■ Countless examples of syncretism prove that
as well as to the role of women.
the Christian faith in the early Middle Ages Fletcher, Richard (1997), The Conversion of Europe. From
took shape in a confrontational mixture of Paganism to Christianity 371–1386 ad (London:
top-down imposition of dogma, ritual and HarperCollins Publishers). Robust attempt at cover-
moral admonition, and bottom-up attach- ing, region by region, the entire history of Europe’s
Christianisation until the late fourteenth century.
ment to local traditions with respect to the
Its focus is on the conversion process and the
supernatural.
establishment of churches and basic ecclesiastical
■■ In the early stages of Christianisation monks, institutions. It has less to say about the internalisation
as reputed ‘holy men’, were essential inter- of the Christian faith.

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 T h E ESTAb L I Sh ME NT Of TWO WOR L D R E L I GI ONS: C h R I STI A NI T y A ND I SL A M 2 CHAPTER

Kennedy, Hugh (2004; 2nd revised edition), The Prophet Macmullen, Ramsay (1997), Christianity and Paganism in
and the Age of the Caliphates. The Islamic Near East from the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (New Haven/London:
the Sixth to the Eleventh Century (London/New York: Yale University Press). Elegant, well-written discus-
Routledge). Remains to date the standard treatment sion of the confrontation between Christianity and
in English of the rise of Islam, the Arab conquests pre-Christian religions in the late and post-Roman
and the establishment of the Arab Muslim caliphate world. Its keyword is assimilation rather than
until the beginning of the eleventh century. syncretism.

87
 3 The powerful and the poor:
society and economy in
the Frankish kingdoms
and beyond
The turbulence of the Migration Period and the was to control the labour of the majority poor
great epidemics of plague in the sixth century left rather than to grab land. By and large they suc-
behind a western world that was more empty and ceeded in attaining that goal. First of all, in the
desolate than it had been in the later years of long run – that is to say, seen over the half mil-
the Roman Empire. Soil research shows that in lennium covered by the early medieval period
many parts of Europe the forests increased dur- – peasants lost a significant amount of their hold
ing the fifth and sixth centuries, as did various on land in favour of aristocratic large landowners
forms of pastoralism. A large number of archaeo- (including kings and ecclesiastical institutions).
logical findings point to a sharp fall in settlement Specialists on the period do not hesitate to speak
density. Estimates of overall population decline of a complete transformation of the dominant
in post-Roman Gaul, Italy and Spain were in mode of production: from a peasant mode to
the order of 50 per cent, and some remote and a ‘feudal’ or aristocratic mode. Its essence was a
forested areas, such as the Ardennes, may even substantial increase in the transfer of agrarian sur-
have lost all their population for a while. It is pluses from peasants to aristocratic lords under
important to realise how much this affected the non-economic (non-commercial), ‘political’ pres-
so-called land-labour ratio. Because there was sure. However, and this will be the second major
plenty of land, to become a large landowner was point to be made in this chapter, this transforma-
less of a problem than to bring land to productive tion was not a bad thing in many respects. It did
value, for which scarce labour was indispensable. create the seed-bed for substantial demographic
Therefore, the real challenge for the mighty few and economic growth. For many years the entire

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period from 500 to 1000 was depicted as a time of polities the social elite had to cater for income in
demographic stagnation, but that view has been other, more direct, and sometimes forcible and
revised. Nowadays, one tends to think in terms of arbitrary ways: as booty, tribute, labour or land
a slow but sure recovery that started in the West rent. The effects for the direct producers, over-
around the beginning of the seventh century. whelmingly peasants in early medieval societies,
A cautious estimate suggests that the population could diverge widely: in sparsely populated areas
of western Europe doubled between 600 and with low aristocratic presence hardly, if any, sur-
1000 from about 12 to 24 million. During the plus had to be handed over to whatever overlord
same period, a remarkable recovery of commer- there was – which could even lead to an exten-
cial exchange is visible, even if this took the form sion of leisure. At the other extreme were those
of long-distance trade within trade networks of peasants who were tied to the land of powerful
low complexity, primarily aimed at providing a landlords who could exact heavy payments and
small elite with expensive prestige objects. services.
The key to our understanding of this trans-
formation was the collapse of the Roman tax
state. Despite attempts of the stronger of the Warlords and landlords
barbarian kings to keep taxation upright, all had
failed by the end of the sixth century. This fail- The early medieval aristocracy
ure had severe consequences. To begin with, in
early medieval kingdoms there was no room for Early medieval Europe was a peasant society
a Roman-style professional army, civic infrastruc- dominated by a warrior aristocracy, that is to say,
ture, lavish court, sizeable bureaucracy or large by a social elite that thought of itself as supe-
cities with proletarian populations that had to rior to ordinary people only because of its blood,
be fed on state expenses. This also meant that its wealth and its reputation in battle, and for
alternative solutions had to be found for creating all these reasons claimed a natural disposition
a ‘public order’. An obvious one was to involve to lord over others. Whether or not to term this
wealthy people with authority in public govern- aristocracy a ‘nobility’ is primarily a question
ment without necessarily paying them, or even of definition. References to early medieval aris-
just to privatise certain aspects of public govern- tocrats point variously to prominence (procures,
ment on a local level; another was to impose on the princes), wealth (divites, the rich), political
all adult free subjects public obligations in such and military power (potentes, the powerful) and
areas as (para)military service, maintenance of freedom-independence (liberi). All these qualities
vital infrastructure and participation in local were held to be transferable. They were thus seen
government and jurisdiction. One can easily be to be attributes of families rather than of individ-
sceptical about the viability of arrangements of uals. But birth alone was not enough. Aristocratic
that kind, but some early medieval polities were qualities had to be proven and constantly reaf-
remarkably successful in upholding a public order firmed, and aristocratic preponderance had to be
without having regular tax revenues at their dis- expressed in the possession of lordship, either
posal, not only relatively centralised monarchies as ‘senior’ over (other) free men or as master
like the Frankish kingdoms, but also the extraor- of all sorts of dependent people and slaves. In
dinary, headless ‘Free State’ Iceland, which took that sense, throughout the whole of the Middle
shape after the North Atlantic island had been Ages, nobility was always a combination of birth,
colonised by Norwegian settlers in the last dec- wealth, achievement and lifestyle.
ades of the ninth century (see pp. 91–92). The Society was less aristocratic in the first half of
drawback was that in these practically tax-free the early Middle Ages than it had been before

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or would (again) become afterwards. At the same between aristocrats and peasants was already
time it was more aristocratic – and aristocratic immense. In Lombard Italy, on the other hand,
in a different way – in the barbarian kingdoms the aristocracy was far more localised and, in
on former Roman territory than in the Celtic, addition, city based. Consequently, towns from
Scandinavian and Slav lands beyond the old early on became centres of political and social
Rhine–Danube frontier. Of the ‘supraregional power that extended over the countryside. At the
imperial aristocracy of service’ with its ‘mandarin same time, the Lombard aristocracy was, on aver-
life-style’ (Sarris 2011) that ruled the later Roman age, less wealthy than its Frankish counterpart,
Empire, not much was left in the sixth century. and high status was derived from office-holding
Their successors in the barbarian kingdoms of rather than ancestry. By implication, in Italy
the West had a different outlook. Like before, ordinary free men with landed possessions of
illustrious descent, landed wealth, the exercise modest size retained a stronger social and eco-
of public offices, and strong and continuous per- nomic position. Aquitaine and Visigothic Spain
sonal links to king and court as the main avenue had an intermediate position. Classical, less mar-
to further accumulation of wealth and political tial, Roman traditions for aristocratic wealth and
influence (also called Königsnähe, lit. ‘close- lifestyle were better maintained there, while at
ness to the king’) had remained the mainstay the same time aristocratic power, as in Italy, was
of aristocratic power. But there were two nota- more localised than north of the Loire river.
ble differences as well that found their origins By contrast, the barbarian world beyond
in the specific circumstances of the Migration the borders of the former Roman Empire had
Period. One was the military background of a preserved more of its prehistoric character of
large number of the new leading families while small-scale, thinly populated chiefdom socie-
at the same time a Roman-style military organi- ties, of which the free peasant was the backbone
sation was absent. This meant that the core of but whose most conspicuous features were local
early medieval armies consisted of the personal warlords and their Gefolgschaften. The intimacy
retinues of wealthy aristocrats, who as a result of the relationship between chief and followers
had a decidedly militaristic outlook. The other can be sampled in the Old English epic poem
was the crucial importance of the Church and its Beowulf, which probably originated around 800
clergy for the functioning of public governance, in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia. When
in particular at the local level. Consequently, the eponymous hero, at the beginning of the
aristocratic families in the early medieval West tale, arrives at the court of Hrodgar, king of the
had to divide their interests between the military Danes, he enters a conveniently arranged, even
and civil-ecclesiastical ranges of influence, which somewhat cosy, universe, centred around the
gave them a double-edged, if not schizophrenic, royal ‘hall’ – more a decorated barn than a pal-
quality. Not surprisingly, the early Middle Ages ace – where the king’s retainers are received and
produced both martial heroes of epic dimension fed and where his wife, the queen, politely passes
and numerous aristocratic saints (Adelsheiligen in around mead and beer. Such a structure could
German). only remain intact in its purest form when scale
Of all the early states on former Roman terri- of recruitment and scale of action were small, and
tory, the Merovingian kingdoms of Frankish Gaul when there were always wars to wage. In general,
fit this prototype best. Powerful families had pos- and tautologically, only war could give warriors
sessions and political interests everywhere, but a raison d’être (including a living) and only war
the concentration of aristocratic estates was larg- could keep in place the system of gift-exchange
est in the Paris Basin, where in the Merovingian and redistribution of wealth that was central
period the economic and social difference to the functioning of the early medieval type

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of aristocratic society (see pp. 99–102). But one with little social articulation. In his description
only has to compare the royal hall of Yeavering of the Slav groups that turned up at the Danube
(Northumbria) – which had a wooden theatre in frontier around the middle of the sixth century,
Roman style, nonetheless – with Charlemagne’s the Greek historian Procopius even uses the
majestic palaces at Aachen and Ingelheim to feel word ‘democracy’: that would have been how
the difference in splendour and scope of ambi- the Slavs ruled themselves, although towards
tion between the world of barbarian warlords in their enemies they were extremely cruel and
the north and the world of ‘civilised’, but no less murderous. Relics of rites and religion clearly
warlike, kings in the south. point to polytheistic convictions, including the
Although sparse written sources are quick still immensely popular vampire-myth, that were
to qualify the warlords of northern and central reinforced when conversion to Christianity led to
Europe as ‘kings’ or ‘dukes’, the extent of their replacing cremation of dead bodies by inhuma-
power was really quite limited. In Celtic Wales, tion. The earliest traces of settlement enclosures
there would have been four greater and seven and wooden strongholds date back to the seventh
smaller ‘kingdoms’ by the seventh century, while century. They are indicative of a gradual increase
early medieval Ireland famously had 150 túatha in the range of political action and the extent
(‘peoples’) that corresponded with as many king- of social unrest that went with it. At that point
doms, ruled by rí (‘kings’), who at times were in time the first Slav warlords appear in written
subordinated to powerful men claiming to be sources, such as ‘king’ Samo, the leader of a suc-
‘great king’ (riuri), ‘king of great kings’ (ri riuirech) cessful Slav revolt against the Avars in 623. He
or ‘high king’ (ard ri). In chiefdom societies of was of Frankish origin and established a strong
that scale, the social and legal distance between regional lordship that existed for no less than
aristocrats and common free men were not about four decades.
unbridgeable. In Anglo-Saxon England ordinary Arguably the most exciting experiment in
free men (ceorls) sometimes had the same wergeld creating ex nihilo a new society and a new state
– the compensation money that had to be paid took place far beyond the former frontier of the
for killing or severely injuring a person – as (ordi- Roman Empire, in Iceland. Iceland was colonised
nary) noblemen (thegns); all depended on their by Norsemen from Norway and the British Isles
respective wealth, and a point could be reached in the decades after 870. In this desolate envi-
on which a ceorl was openly recognised as a thegn. ronment, a relatively flat and egalitarian society
But things changed fast in the seventh century. of (predominantly) free peasants (boendr) took
Numismatic evidence indicates that Anglo-Saxon shape without the aid of a Christian blueprint.
England had a positive balance of payments with They were led by an aristocracy of local chieftains
continental Francia – the new name that began to called goðar (singular goði), whose most impor-
replace the old name Gaul. It means that its rural tant function was more political than military,
economy produced surplus (including metals and but who did not have a fixed district; followers
woollen textiles) that could be tapped and traded, of various goðar in the same area usually lived
and the Anglo-Saxon elite profited visibly, as can interspersed. Neither in wealth nor in social dis-
be seen in a number of hoards and treasures from tinction did goðar differ very much from their
this time. constituents, and in principle, any free man
The huge part of central and eastern Europe could become a goði just as he had been free in his
where people who spoke Slav and Baltic lan- choice of to which goði he was going to give suit.
guages lived remains far more obscure. The To become goði one just had to bind (which often
archaeological traces they left betray a simple, meant: ‘to buy’) a certain number of supporters.
rather primitive material culture and a flat society Because the goðar were responsible for organising

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local things (courts of justice), they played a key early medieval law allowed them to do so, pro-
part in the settlement of disputes and conflicts, vided they had a free status. However, more often
and redistributed part of their wealth through than actually taking vengeance, with its risk of
acts of hospitality, loans, gift-giving and public retaliation leading to an endless cycle of feuding,
feasts. However, for specific activities, such as the families of victims chose to have their damage
common use of grazing land and the organisation compensated with a payment of money known
of local poor relief, separate and self-governing as wergeld (lit. ‘man money’). To determine the
local communities existed apart from the goðar. exact amount of wergeld that had to be paid by
Iceland did not have a king or any other overlord the perpetrator and his relatives to the victim (if
formally until 1262–1264, when the ‘period of still alive) and his family, there were long price
the Free State’ ended, and the king of Norway lists that took account of variables such as the sex
was recognised as lord of Iceland. Despite being and legal status of victims, and of the nature of
a headless polity, and although armed violence the injury afflicted. Once wergeld had been duly
certainly was not absent, Free State Iceland did paid the families of perpetrator and victim were
not have an army (there were no enemies!); there expected to be reconciled and live in friendship,
were no real wars, no pitched battles, no military because they had no reason to reproach each
campaigns, no large-scale destructions. The only other any longer. Peace then reigned between
tax boendr paid to goðar was called the thingfarar- them; if this peace was broken the king imposed
kaup (‘payment for travelling to the thing/court’), harsh punishments.
a yearly remuneration of the goðar’s expenses to This highly institutionalised system of com-
visit the Althing, Iceland’s general assembly. One pensatory payments indicates two things. One
of the reasons behind Iceland’s success as a state is that homicide and inflicting grave physical
was its extreme legalism: everything had to be injury were not necessarily seen as crimes that
done in strict accordance with precisely defined should be dealt with by punishing the perpetra-
rules, which led to ‘a self-limiting pattern of state tor, and him alone. Rather, they were subjected
formation’ (Byock 2001). to a symbolical transaction between kin groups;
the aim was to restore honour by letting the
perpetrator and his relatives publicly pay off
Honour and blood vengeance. The other thing is that precisely the
survival of countless detailed regulations with
In early medieval Europe, honour was an impor- regard to wergeld payments suggests that acts of
tant concept, whose essence was the recognised violence that could lawfully arouse retaliation
value of a family – more so than of an individual were normally expected to be settled in public
– within a larger society that always had to be law courts. In that situation, blood vengeance,
defended, no matter what the cost. There is no even in a headless state such as Iceland, ‘became
reason to suppose that honour in this sense only an option rather than a duty’ (Byock 2001). In
counted for the social elite, but obviously the the Carolingian Empire, taking vengeance was
stakes of defending family honour were much actually forbidden by law in 779.
higher for aristocrats than for peasants. This
appears most clearly from cases of homicide and
grave physical injury. Then the families of a vic- The position of ordinary free men
tim felt not only justified but also duty-bound to
compensate for the harm done by inflicting com- In the absence of state institutions supported by
mensurate damage on the perpetrator or a member tax flows, non-aristocratic, free, able-bodied men
of his family of equal standing. In principle, had two public obligations which in the Roman

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Empire had been delegated to professionals: mili- not involved in a suit. At the same time, the for-
tary service and the attendance of public courts mulation of verdicts now came into the hands
of justice. In addition, local communities were of small, permanent benches of judges known as
responsible for the upkeep of what was left of pub- scabini (aldermen) – not to be confused with their
lic infrastructure (roads and bridges, in particular). namesakes in later medieval towns; as far as we
For a long time after the Migration Period some know, the Carolingian scabini were always aris-
sort of general conscription continued to exist in tocrats and dealt with cases coming from a wide
the barbarian kingdoms of the West. In Lombard area, usually a whole county.
Italy, this would have maintained its (nominally) Joining the army and attending court sessions
ethnic basis into the eighth century in the sense were not only cumbersome (and dangerous) obli-
that non-Lombard free men were not called to gations; they also attributed honour to ordinary
arms. The armies of the Frankish and Visigothic free men and they provided them with suitable
kingdoms around 600 seem to have been built up venues to mobilise patronage of the powerful
of free landowners who were all considered to be (and there are examples of free peasants who
‘Franks’ and ‘Goths’ respectively, whatever their belonged to the clientele of an aristocrat). From
ethnic background, around a core of royal and that perspective, the discharge of public duties
aristocratic retinues. Under the Carolingians the meant the loss of a chance to upward mobility.
mobilisation of ordinary free men for the royal Characteristically, after that point in time, ordi-
levy was further reduced. Charlemagne’s yearly nary free men in Carolingian sources are often
campaigns against increasingly distant enemies referred to as pauperi (‘poor men’), not necessar-
lasted for months and generally took place in ily because of their poverty, but because of their
the busiest, and most critical, part of the agrar- powerlessness. In addition to this dichotomic
ian year. On top of this all warriors had to bring division into liberi (‘free men’ but meaning aristo-
horses and provide their own supplies during the crats) and pauperi, a fixed tripartition in ‘estates’
campaigns. At the beginning of the ninth century (ordines in Latin) was becoming increasingly
Charlemagne took steps to limit military service evident: there were people who prayed (clerics),
for ordinary free men. After that, only those who people who fought and people who did manual
owned more than a certain amount of land had work. There was no doubt that peasants – free
to join the army in person: free peasants who or not – belonged to the third category and no
had less land either took turns at military service longer to the second. The first texts in which
or were jointly responsible for equipping a war- this comes to the fore are the monk Heiric of
rior. Alternatively, service could be bought off by Auxerre’s Miracula Sancti Germani (‘Miracles of St
paying compensation money, called haribannus Germain’; c.870), and the Anglo-Saxon transla-
(‘army fine’), which originally must have been a tion of Boethius’s De consolatione filosofiae (‘The
penalty for non-attendance. Gradually, war again Consolation of Philosophy’), made for King
was becoming a matter for well-trained specialists, Alfred the Great of Wessex (871–899).
who had to have the resources to devote them-
selves full-time to the practice of arms, to breed
and feed a number of horses, and to purchase Tenancy, serfdom and slavery
expensive weapons and armour.
We can see a parallel development in the This gradual social degradation of ordinary free
administration of justice in the Carolingian men was further reinforced by the fact that many
Empire. The Franks originally required all free of them were, or ended up as, tenants of aristo-
men to attend all sessions of the public court of cratic large landowners. As we saw, in the course
justice (mallus) in their county, even if they were of the early Middle Ages more of the wealth

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of kings, aristocrats and religious institutions Grundherrschaft, which, by stressing the old
(bishoprics, abbeys) was tied up in large land- ‘lordship’ part, has a different connotation from
ownership. Consequently, more peasants became the modern English ‘landlord[ship]’. By modern
enmeshed in a tenurial relationship with the standards private interests and elements of the
social elite. Early medieval tenancy is in no way exercise of public authority were inextricably
to be compared with modern, contractual lease- linked with these lordly rights.
hold, as it has been known since the late Middle Because extant sources very much favour the
Ages. First, the nature and weight of the rent (as social elite it is extremely difficult, even for the
the neutral designation of the recompense given relatively well-documented Carolingian Empire,
by the peasant to his landlord) varied widely to determine what percentage of the free peas-
because they were determined by the arbitrary antry ended up losing its freedom because of
decision of landlords who could, or could not, becoming tenants of aristocratic lords. Free men
consider ingrained local custom. Consequently, could voluntarily submit themselves and their
the terms of tenancy even on one and the same land to powerful lords because they needed pro-
holding could vary widely, as could the nature of tection. Conversely, there must have been plenty
the rent: labour rent, rent in kind or rent in coin of opportunities for aristocrats to take over plots
all depended on the needs of the landlord and of land of free commoners. All we can say is that
the topographical structure of his estates. substantial numbers of small peasants lost their
It is possible to distinguish long-term trends freedom in the course of the early Middle Ages
in tenancy as well. On most large estates in because they became tied to the land of large
Merovingian Gaul, peasant tenants received landowners and, through that, subordinated
small parcels of land against rent in kind. Labour to these landlords’ power. Peasant-tenants with
services were still absent, which is a sign of exten- such a status are usually called serfs or villeins.
sive land use. Only the eighth century saw a They can be compared to modern leasehold-
return to more intensification. Landlords started ers just as little as they can be compared to the
to reserve parts of their estates for direct exploita- slaves of Antiquity. This is not to say that there
tion (‘demesnes’) and demand labour services of were no slaves in the early Middle Ages. On the
their tenants to work these. This was partly the contrary, slavery was an institution that was pre-
consequence of the relative shortage of labour, sent everywhere, both inside and outside former
and partly linked to the regular expeditions of Roman territory – even in Iceland. The intermi-
large armies that needed to be fed. Because of nable petty warfare between warlords and the
the shortage of labour, powerful lords tried to tie yearly campaigns kings undertook against foreign
tenant-peasants to the land, which meant that enemies ensured a constant supply of human cat-
they were not free to leave. Being tied to the land tle in the slave markets of western Europe. Slaves
of a powerful man (or ecclesiastical institution) were just about the only export article of any
also implied being subjected (to some degree) to value in the thriving Christian trade with the
this man’s judicial authority – a further measure Islamic world. In time the region occupied by
of personal dependency that would be unac- the still pagan Slavs was the major source, hence
ceptable in modern leasehold relationships. It is the word ‘slave’, a dubious honour in naming, in
difficult to gauge the basis of such rights as to which the Celtic Britons were ahead of the Slavs
settle disputes and punish small breaches of local (in early medieval times ‘briton’ was another
custom: probably, aristocrats (meaning ‘better word for ‘slave’). The great slave markets then
men’ after all) just thought of themselves as hav- moved eastwards, to towns such as Mainz and
ing a natural right to ‘lord over’ ordinary people. Prague, with Venice as their main outlet on the
In this connection German historians speak of Mediterranean. In addition to these organised

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manhunts the slave population was replenished major incentive was no doubt an economic one:
by those wretches who through poverty or debt the structural labour shortage in a situation of low
were forced to sell themselves or their children, population density. On the one hand this scar-
or who were enslaved as a punishment. city led to the accelerated spread of labour-saving
Another misconception is that the early technology, such as watermills – an invention of
Christian Church spoke out explicitly against the first century before Christ – which relieved
the institution of slavery. That, too, is incorrect. slave labour, and to some extent made it unnec-
The Church Fathers in fact considered slavery to essary. On the other hand, the landowning elite
be proof of the great wickedness of those who found it extremely convenient to bring as much
found themselves in that deplorable situation. as possible of the land on their estates under cul-
Important dignitaries and institutions of the tivation and to keep it so. One method of doing
Church themselves possessed large numbers of this was to give a slave a small plot of land with
slaves. The Church was clearly morally ambigu- a small house on an estate. By this upgrading in
ous in the matter, however, and Christianity did the socio-economic position of slaves the differ-
indeed contribute to the radical disappearance of ence between slaves and other peasants settled
slavery from Christian Europe. From the begin- on estates tended to become blurred. That, too,
ning Christianity had welcomed the unfree. contributed to the extension of serfdom.
Even though slaves were looked upon as second-
class Christians who were not allowed to hold
priestly office, for example, they were nonethe- Large landownership and
less members of the Christian community, fellow manorialism
Christians and thus fellow men. This sort of rea-
soning was an enormous advance on the ancient In the early medieval Frankish kingdoms, large
view of slaves as beasts or machines. Instrumentum landownership could be huge. Bertrand, scion
vocale, ‘tool-with-a-voice’, was a common classi- of a powerful family in Merovingian Gaul and
cal designation for a slave. Following that, Church bishop of Le Mans between 585 and 616, would
leaders took over certain Stoic ideas concerning have owned close to 300,000 hectares of land,
slavery. One of these ideas was that although the an incredible quantity. For Charlemagne’s empire
institution of slavery may have been unavoid- there are more figures available, which tell us that
able, that in itself was no reason to treat slaves in around 800 the largest abbeys were supposed
inhumanely; another, that regularly manumit- to own between 3,000 and 8,000 mansi or tenant
ting slaves contributed to an individual’s moral holdings – which on average, as we shall see, had
edification. Many abbots, bishops and devout something like 12 hectares of arable – middle-
noblewomen enhanced their saintliness through large abbeys between 1,000 and 2,000, and small
the formal liberation of slaves. Finally, from the abbeys between 300 and 400. In the same period
eighth century onwards, Church leaders started royal vassals, that is to say, important lay aristo-
to prohibit outright the sale of Christian slaves crats, would own between thirty and 200 peasant
to pagans, but the fact that such appeals were holdings, while a legal provision of 806 mentions
repeated time and again during the eighth and the possession of twelve mansi as a minimum for
ninth centuries creates the impression that they sending a fully armed horseman to war.
were not immediately effective. The way in which large landownership was
Still, even if slavery did not disappear imme- organised is much debated. Were large land-
diately and completely, certain socio-cultural owners predominantly owners of a myriad of
and economic factors contributed to a relative scattered smallholdings or were their possessions
improvement in the treatment of slaves. The concentrated in so-called villae – whose meaning

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BOX 3.1 MASTER AND SLAVE EVEN UNTIL

DEATH
In the years 921–922 Ahmad ibn Fadhlan, an envoy of
the Caliph of Baghdad, made a journey through the
Volga region where he came into contact with a group
of Vikings (Rus). Never had he come across filthier peo-
ple amongst all of Allah’s creatures: ‘They do not wash
even after they have relieved nature or had sex, nor do
they clean themselves after they have eaten.’ The tall,
fair-haired men were tattooed from head to toe, always
carried arms and shamelessly copulated in public
with slave-girls. Ibn Fadhlan also witnessed the funeral
preparations of a dead chief:

When a chief dies his slaves and servants are asked who is prepared to follow him into death.
Whoever volunteers cannot go back on the decision. In this case a woman volunteered. She
was treated with much respect while preparations for the cremation went ahead. On the day
of the cremation the chief’s boat was pulled up on to land and the people walked around it
muttering all sorts of words. An old woman who was called the ‘Angel of Death’ placed a bier
covered in rugs and cushions on the boat. She was responsible for all the preparations. The
dead body, which had been kept in a burial pit for ten days, was brought out and dressed in
splendid robes made especially for the occasion. Then this corpse was stood among the cush-
ions in the tent that had been erected on the ship over the bier. The dead chief was provided
with alcoholic drink, food, aromatic herbs and all his arms. Then a dog, two horses, two cows,
a cock and a hen were killed and placed on the ship.
The woman who was going to die went to all the tents in the camp and had sex with the
owner of each tent, who then said: ‘Tell your lord and master that I do this out of affection for
him.’ Then she completed various rituals. A circle of warriors lifted her up three times above
something resembling a door post. The first time she said, ‘Look, I see my father and mother’;
the second time, ‘I see all my dead kinsfolk together’; and the third time, ‘I see my master
sitting in paradise; it is green and beautiful there, he is surrounded by men and slaves and
he is calling me. Lead me to him.’ Then she killed a chicken and was taken to the ship where
she removed all her jewellery, drained two goblets and sang a song. Finally she was taken to
the tent of her dead master, and when she hesitated she was roughly pushed inside by the
Angel of Death. Six warriors followed her in and had sex with her. Then she was placed next
to her master and killed. Two of the warriors held her feet, two her hands, and two strangled
her with a cord, while the Angel of Death stabbed her repeatedly in the breast until she gave
up the ghost. The dead chief’s closest relatives set fire to the firewood under the boat. Others
threw flaming branches on to the fire and within an hour everything had been burnt. Then
they covered the remains with earth and on the hill they put a post with the name of the chief
and the name of their king, who dwelt in the fortified place called Kyawh (Kiev).

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Ibn Fadhlan’s description of the Vikings’ barbaric appearance and their customs clearly contains a
number of stereotypes from ancient geography. But archaeological finds in Scandinavia have con-
firmed several of the unlikely sounding details from the story of the cremation. The graves of men
of high status often contain double interments of master and slave, as can be seen in the sketch of
the contents of a double grave found near Stengade on the Danish island of Langeland. The left-
hand skeleton must be that of the master, the right-hand one that of the slave who, voluntarily or
not, followed him in death, because the head of the right-hand skeleton had been severed from
the body and the feet had probably been tied together. A long spear had been laid diagonally
across both bodies.

Source: Text fragments from Ibn Fadhlan and illustration of the Stengade grave from Else Roesdahl, The Vikings
(London: Penguin, 1998), pp. 34, 54–55 and 157, illustration by permission of Penguin Books, London. For a
broader context, see Richard N. Frye, Ibn Fadlan’s Journey to Russia: A Tenth-Century Traveler from Baghdad to
the Volga River (Princeton NJ: Markus Wiener Publ., 2005), and Nizar F. Hermes, The ‘European’ Other in Medieval
Arabic Literature and Culture: Ninth–Twelfth Century ad (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 80–98.

in early medieval documents can be both ‘estate’ was known as the (peasant) holdings’ land (terra
and ‘village’ (two terms that are not mutually mansionaria). In addition, the tenants had a
exclusive anyway)? Specialists take a middle limited right to use the often extensive inculta
course: really large landowners, like Bertrand of (woods or other waste lands) and water resources
Le Mans, owned both: entire villas and numerous (lakes, brooks, etc.) that made part of their estate.
scattered smallholdings over a wide area. Another A considerable part of what was given in return
extremely rich large landowner, named Abbo, left for the possession of these holdings took the
in his last will 739 landed possessions scattered form of labour service (opera, i.e. ‘works’) which
over an area of 34,500 km2 to the monastery of the serfs who owned a farmstead (servi casati) sup-
Novalesa at the Italian side of Mont Cenis. plied to cultivate the lord’s land, often together
Still, the prevalent idea has long been that with serfs who did not have a farmstead (servi non
the Carolingian rulers purposefully promoted a casati) and real slaves (mancipia) of the lord of the
policy to have the landed possessions of large estate. Whatever the exact arrangement, the new,
landowners, first of all the kings themselves and innovative, element in estate management
and ecclesiastical institutions that were closely was the labour service of servile peasant tenants.
connected to them, systematically organised in Some estates, such as those of the abbey of
concentrated, so-called bipartite estates or man- Saint Bertin near Calais, had some sort of stand-
ors (curtes or villicationes in Latin), hence the term ard-sized mansi of about 12 hectares around the
manorial system. These were large landed middle of the ninth century. But this was far from
properties with a clear administrative and resi- general. Scattered data suggest that the arable
dential centre, known as sala (hall), curia (court) land belonging to tenant holdings could be any-
or casa indominicata (house of the lord). The ara- thing from less than 5 to 30 hectares. The highest
ble lands and the meadows of a bipartite manor figure is less than it seems, because in remote or
were divided into two parts, which were gener- marginal areas, much of the land lay fallow every
ally not equal in size. The part that the lord kept year and the actual yields were shockingly low.
for himself, or ‘in demesne’, was called the lord’s Neither was every farmstead taxed with identi-
land (terra indominicata), and the part that was cal labour services and dues. A distinction was
given to peasant-tenants in hereditary possession frequently made between ‘free holdings’ (mansi

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ingenuiles) and ‘unfree holdings’ (mansi serviles), but who did not have to provide regular labour
probably stemming from differences in the legal services. In Anglo-Saxon England, on the other
status of the original peasant-owner. Free hold- hand, a form of estate management took shape
ings were generally larger and burdened less that was quite similar to the bipartite manor of
heavily than the unfree. But other aspects are not the Carolingian heartlands, from which it was
very clear. Free peasants could own unfree hold- probably copied.
ings while, vice versa, serfs sometimes had free Modern evaluations of the manorial system as
holdings, so there was no one-to-one relation- a whole have varied considerably. The pessimists
ship between the legal position of tenants and point in particular to the low yields compared to
the legal status of their holdings. the relatively high costs of transport and supervi-
Why the Carolingian rulers would have so sion; the optimists to an interplay between the
insisted on the creation of bipartite estates is not spread of the manorial system and slow demo-
altogether clear. They may just have wanted to graphic and economic expansion. Indeed, data
bring more order to a chaotic world by promot- on the size of families on peasant farms points to
ing a system of estate management that implied population pressure at the beginning of the ninth
control over masses of peasants or, alternatively, century. The more than 1,450 peasant families
to better control the powerful, not the poor, by living on the manors of Saint-Germain-des-Prés
acquiring a better idea of the extent and distri- at the beginning of the ninth century consisted
bution of aristocratic and ecclesiastical wealth. of between five and nine members each, depend-
Maybe the whole policy was aimed primarily ing on the size of their farm. And peasants on
at the management of royal and ecclesiastical thirteen estates of the abbey of Saint-Victor at
estates, which had a key function in the uphold- Marseilles had on average five or six children who
ing and organisation of what central royal power survived the vulnerable early years of life. That is
there was: the royal court, the royal palaces and why the reclamation and cultivation of land was
the royal army and its leading warriors. generally started from overpopulated estates. At
Whatever the case, one has to keep in mind that point a certain amount of division of labour
that the entire Carolingian Empire was not cov- and specialisation, such as winegrowing, became
ered with bipartite estates. It was particularly feasible. In the long run that must have raised
evident in the region between the Rhine and productivity and invited commercialisation, and
the Seine basin, where large landownership was some such estates even expanded into real towns:
often concentrated, making possible the forma- Liège is a prime example. Similarly, population
tion of very extensive estates. But this type of increase on manors may have stimulated an
estate organisation was rare east of the Rhine, in increased use of expensive capital goods, such as
Carolingian Italy, and probably also south of the mills, iron ploughs and horses for traction. These
Loire, while it was virtually absent in peripheral were all assets that increased output but that were
areas such as the County of Barcelona. There, out of reach for small peasant owners.
most land-users were small free peasants, while This argument has been broadened by the
large-scale properties were still often exploited British historian Chris Wickham (2005), who
exclusively through the use of slave labour. In alleged that a gradual growth of agrarian produc-
the Papal States and the Byzantine parts of south- tion during the Carolingian age, resulting from
ern Italy, including Sicily, large landowners from new forms of tenancy, provided the Frankish aris-
early on preferred indirect exploitation. In that tocracy with new leverage to acquire wealth after
case plots of land were leased out in hereditary military expansion had come to a standstill. This
tenure to peasants who were often tied to the wealth from land generated a remarkable increase
land, and who can thus be considered as serfs, of elite demand which was the driving force for

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further economic growth and growing economic The same conclusion emerges from the study
complexity. To be a landlord proved to be even of long-distance trade in the early Middle Ages,
more profitable than to be a warlord. a subject of passionate debate for many dec-
ades, which keeps circling around a challenging
theory put forward by the Belgian historian
Trade and gift-exchange Henri Pirenne (1862–1935) in the 1920s and
1930s. The core of Pirenne’s theory is that the
Reciprocity and redistribution Migration Period left the economic system of
Late Antiquity, centred on the Mediterranean
Life for early medieval peasants was precarious by and linking southern Europe to the Middle East,
definition. Agricultural settlements in the early largely unaffected. In Pirenne’s view, the estab-
Middle Ages were so small (between five and lishment of barbarian kingdoms did result in a
ten farms), and so isolated, that mutual coop- certain amount of ‘degeneration’; but the unity
eration and support were essential conditions of the Mediterranean world would only be truly
for survival. Besides, land productivity was low, disrupted by the Arab conquests from the middle
and due to the absence of modern pesticides and of the seventh century. From then on East and
insecticides there was always the danger of crop West drifted apart. It forced the Carolingian rulers
failure which could easily turn into famine when in the West to create their own institutions, such
regional trade was not able to mitigate a sharp as ‘feudalism’. The importance of long-distance
decline of local supply. That is why early medi- trade declined; its core came to lie in the North
eval agriculture had many features of a ‘moral Sea basin, in particular in the region between the
economy’, an economy where mutual sharing Seine and the Rhine.
(‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’) played Over the years a number of objections to
an important part. But mutual sharing and Pirenne’s theory have been raised, the most valid
equal exchange are only possible when there are being that the Mediterranean evidently contin-
socially and culturally deep-seated rules of play. ued to function as an important transit zone after
Non-commercial values were also dominant in the Arab conquests and that the Muslim world
the management of estates. It has been rightly had a substantial share in the recovery of inter-
stressed that, as far as sources allow us to see, national trade in the eighth century. We would
neither aristocratic nor ecclesiastical large land- like to approach the Pirenne thesis from another
owners ran their estates with a profit-maximising angle. Pointers to the circulation of goods and
business model in the back of their minds. The coins need not necessarily be explained as trade,
old idea of carefully nourished self-sufficiency as transactions of a commercial nature. That is not
should not be totally discarded, nor the idea that true even for transports of bulk goods, especially
a portfolio of estates and offices, certainly by aris- grain, to provision the great cities. In the centu-
tocratic families, was seen as a ‘social resource’ in ries following the Migration Period, Rome’s grain
support of the maintenance or further advance supply came from Sicily and present-day Tunisia
of their elevated – and therefore always danger- where the popes had very extensive domains. Not
ous – position in the higher echelons of society unlike the Roman emperors of Antiquity, they
in which one could as easily fall to great depth gave most of it free to the non-aristocratic part of
as rise to great height. In short, many ‘economic’ Rome’s populace. So there is certainly no ques-
transactions by members of the social elite tion here of commerce, or commodity exchange;
should be seen as oil to grease the cogs of aristo- it is the continuation of a system of patronage.
cratic networks; if markets were used, they had a Much of what we know as ‘trade’ in the early
supportive function. Middle Ages, when looked at more closely, seems

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FIGURE 3.1 Non-commercial transactions in the early Middle Ages through reciprocity (1) and redistribution
(2)

to have fulfilled this support function. In general This mutuality can have a like or unlike
it only involved relationships within aristocratic character. In exchanges based on like mutual-
networks. This also explains why ‘trade’ did not ity (between allies of equal status, for example)
necessarily take place through towns and urban we can speak of reciprocity. In the case of unlike
markets. mutuality we speak of redistribution; in this con-
This interpretation of early medieval transac- nection it means the sharing out of wealth by
tions of goods owes far more to an anthropological a lord among his retainers but also among the
inspiration rather than an economic-historical members of his household, including servants
one. Philip Grierson, the British numismatist, in and slaves. Here, not only were prestige goods
a criticism of Pirenne’s thesis, had already called involved, but also primary consumer goods and, at
for such an approach by the end of the 1950s. a later stage, land. Both types of non-commercial
Grierson was himself inspired by two well-known transaction are outlined in Figure 3.1.
anthropological studies about the meaning of We can refine Figure 3.1 by taking different
gift-exchange in ‘primitive’, non-western socie- contexts into account. It is obviously sensible to,
ties, produced respectively by Marcel Mauss and once again, make a basic distinction between the
Bronislaw Malinowski in the 1920s. This anthro- Christian barbarian kingdoms on former Roman
pological view finds that trade should be seen soil on the one hand, and, on the other, the still
first and foremost as a means of supplying the pagan world of northern and central Europe. In
elite with highly valued, prestige goods which the first, the Church was part of the system of
served as gifts, such as weapons, horses, gold and gift-exchange, kings enjoyed a relatively strong
slaves. Unlike ordinary commodities gifts can- position and the aristocracy was much wealthier.
not simply be alienated by the recipient, because All three factors had a profound influence on the
the relationship between giver and recipient, extent and nature of non-commercial exchanges.
as opposed to that between buyer and seller, is Donating to monks and abbeys, in particular,
not neutral, but constrained by a form of mor- linked tangible wealth to otherworldly motives of
ally decided mutuality: the giving contains the gift-giving, which in practical terms meant that
expectancy of a gift in return. the gift (whether movables or land) disappeared

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from economic circulation forever because the fairs that we know about. They were held close
expected counter-gift was of a non-material, spir- to important centres of agrarian surplus sup-
itual type. ply as well as elite consumption, such as the
The schematic representation of the relation- abbeys of Saint-Denis near Paris and of Saint-
ships between lords and peasants in Figure 3.1 Vaast at Arras. The kings’ courts, although still
shows again that for the provision of the first constantly on the move, were similar poles of
necessities of life and the allocation of the two attraction, where thousands of people (high-
most important production factors, land and placed persons and their retinues) gathered for
labour – so actually for the entire primary sector considerable periods of time to engage in what
of the economy – there was hardly any need for have been called ‘tournaments of value’, a fig-
markets. On the other hand, the aristocracy did ure of speech to indicate the collective and often
have to turn in part to real commerce through ritualised (re)confirmation of essential values by
specialised middlemen (traders, merchants) for the elite. These included, in addition to conspicu-
their supply of prestige goods and luxury articles: ous consumption (showing off one’s affluence),
the spoils of war alone were not enough. This at all kinds of symbolically charged acts of con-
once meant that such commerce was long-dis- tract and transaction both between the king and
tance trade, because barbarian kings and warriors his magnates, and between the terrestrial world
also valued the exotic products of the East which of man and the spiritual world of God and his
found their way to the few remaining large mar- saints. There is no objection against calling such
kets, such as those of Mainz and Verdun: silks, places towns as long as one keeps in mind that,
costly perfumes, precious stones and ornaments, as towns, they operated first and foremost as cen-
pepper and cloves. In addition to this there was tres of power and consumption, not as centres of
a limited amount of trade in raw materials and economic production and distribution. But one
non-luxury consumer items. It would include could of course lead to the other, and it has been
wool, cloth, leather, skins, earthenware, salt, argued that everywhere in early medieval Europe
honey and metal utensils, all of which came the permanent presence of a resident bishop has
from more or less specialised production areas. been decisive for the survival chances of a place
This trade too was to a large extent fuelled by as a town.
elite spending-power, because both lay aristocrats But specialised long-distance trade gave rise to
and large religious institutions needed consider- the emergence of a certain type of urban settle-
able amounts of ordinary items for the running ment as well. They are known as porti, wiks or
of their households, for the feeding and clothing emporia, and their primary function was to be a
of their staff and slaves, etc. meeting place of traders, active on the main axes
Such trade in regional markets only picked up of long-distance trade which linked Scandinavia,
during the seventh century. Several Carolingian England, northern Gaul and the Rhineland
kings, including Charles the Bald, granted places with Lombardy and the Italian coasts of the
market rights (mostly for weekly markets). They Mediterranean. Long-distance trade was sup-
must have had a function in the exchange of ported by a new means of payment, a silver coin
bulk utilitarian goods. Although this type of minted in the Merovingian Empire from the end
trade remains almost invisible in our sources, of the seventh century. This denarius, or penny,
it is assumed that fairly large amounts of grain was worth one twelfth of a solidus, the standard
and other necessaries, including salt, were yearly Roman gold coin. Its introduction was a great suc-
needed for the army and also for feeding the cess. Within a short time imitations were being
rare towns. Regional exchange linked up with made in England and Frisia (they were known
the larger commerce through the first annual as sceattas), and altogether millions of pennies

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must have been struck during the eighth century. from the Weser to the Flemish coast, so that they
There was no lack of raw material, for the Franks had control of certain vital traffic routes. With
had a rich silver mine at Melle, in the vicinity of their centuries-old specialisation in cattle- and
Poitiers. The introduction of silver money must be sheep-farming, imposed on them by their envi-
seen partly as a reaction to the continuous flow of ronment, the Frisians had a long tradition of sea
gold to the East resulting from a structurally neg- and river trade. From the middle of the seventh
ative balance of payments, which probably had century this was given a new impulse when
swung round by the early years of Charlemagne’s Frankish power started to expand to the north.
reign, when large quantities of Arab silver coins Major trading stations in northern Europe, such
started to find their way to the West. as York and Birka (near modern Stockholm), got
The new silver coinage also met the appar- Frisian quarters. It is also probable that it was the
ent need for a method of payment for small Frisians who were behind the development of
transactions. That the denarius stimulated a cer- the two most important types of ship of a later
tain monetisation of the relationships between period: the hulk, whose round keel made it suita-
lords and peasants is evident from the primitive ble for the North Sea trade, and the flat-bottomed
administration of large estates. As early as the cog, which was suited to the calmer waters of the
ninth century, forty-seven holdings of an estate Baltic.
of the Abbey of Saint-Bertin near Calais were held The undisputed centre of Frisian commerce
in exchange for a payment of money. But this was was Dorestad, a Frankish trading post that was
exceptional. The role of money in the Parisian established early in the seventh century in a bend
demesnes of Saint-Germain-des-Prés was more in the Rhine just south of the old Roman garrison
limited at that time. Only a quarter of the obli- town of Traiectum (Utrecht). Afterwards, this area
gations of the ‘free’ holdings (mansi ingenuiles) was reconquered by the Frisians, but Dorestad
consisted of payments in cash, and these are data was at its largest and most prosperous when it
from one of the economically most progressive finally fell into Frankish hands in about 720.
regions of early medieval Europe. During the reign of Charlemagne the number of
its inhabitants was estimated at a maximum of
2,500. To build its docking facilities and landing
Traders, trade routes and trading stages with a total length of over 3 kilometres,
posts literally millions of trees must have been cut
down in the surrounding woods.
A growing share of the long-distance trade in The activities of the Scandinavian Vikings in
luxury articles was directed towards Scandinavia the ninth and tenth centuries appeal even more
and England. Important commercial contacts to the imagination. Literally, ‘Vikings’ means
between the North and the Black Sea region, something like ‘men from the viks (bays, fjords)
going via the Vistula-Dniester route, had existed who do something’. That ‘do something’ is often
until the beginning of the sixth century. When translated succinctly as ‘engage in trade’ but ‘go
the Avars and their Slavic allies and subjects on a raid’ is just as accurate. This is evident from
pushed their way into central Europe this route the prose Edda, the Old Norse collection of myths
was closed, and Scandinavian trade moved to the whose oldest written version was produced in
relatively peaceful and powerful north of Gaul. Iceland at the beginning of the thirteenth cen-
Initially, the Frisians played an important role tury. There, men who ‘do something’ do so either
as intermediaries in the commercial contacts í vikingu or í kaupferdum. The latter means (going)
between Scandinavia, England and the Frankish ‘on a trading voyage’ so the former must be ‘on
Empire. At that time their territory stretched a marauding raid’. To the Vikings, paradoxically,

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BOX 3.2 LORDS OF RINGS

Rings were an important gift with which lords
rewarded their warrior followers in the north-
ern barbarian world. ‘Ring-giver’ (beag-gyfa or
beag-brytta) was one of the epithets accorded
to kings in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf.
In medieval Iceland, ‘arm-ring’ (baugr) was
equivalent to money, hence baugatal (‘list of
rings’) to indicate the various wergeld rates that
had to be paid in compensation of manslaughter and other acts of violence. Numerous archaeo-
logical finds show that these rings took diverse forms, from thick rings for the finger to slender
shoulder and neck rings made of gold or silver. Large quantities of them have been found together.
They were sometimes worn in combination with other jewellery made of precious metals. Typical
of the period from the seventh to the eighth centuries was the use of bracteates, wafer-thin plates
of gold, silver or bronze which were stamped on one side only. They were often worked together
with rings to form one piece of jewellery, as can be seen clearly from this picture of a sixth-century
necklace found at Hjørring in North Jutland. The effigy on these bracteates usually represented the
heathen god, Woden, whose head was sometimes modelled on that of the emperors on Byzantine
coins. Opposite the head of the Woden figure is a man waving a stick. The text of the runic char-
acters on these Hjørring bracteates refers to the respect that the wearer of the ornament is keen
to show to the (divine) protector portrayed. It was probably an amulet.

trading and raiding were part and parcel of each Vikings from the Baltic penetrated the river basins
other. This may have something to do with the of the Volga and later, further westwards, of the
amoral ideas about the acquisition of wealth Dnieper and the Don. They probably first went
that were prevalent among the Scandinavian along this so-called northern arc soon after 850 as
aristocracy. The accumulation of wealth was, mercenaries in the service of warring Slav groups
as we have seen, indispensable in the barbarian and steppe nomads, but immediately saw the
world for obtaining the prestige essential for lead- commercial potential of trade with Byzantium
ers to maintain their warrior retinues – and thus and the Muslim world. They gained control over
their position of power. How they acquired their what has since then been called Russia. Although
wealth was unimportant. some modern-day Russian historians do not like
Because of this ambiguous character of Viking it, the word ‘Russian’ comes through Finnish
activities it is difficult to appreciate their results from the Old North German rossmenn or rosskar-
in economic terms. It has been argued that the lar, meaning ‘oarsmen’ or ‘seamen’. The oldest
looting of rich estates and churches had a positive known princes of Novgorod and Kiev had pure
effect on liquidity, which was further enhanced Scandinavian names like Igor (from Ingvar) and
by the fact that Viking war bands were often paid Oleg (from Helgi). The success of the trade, or
as mercenaries by Frankish and English rulers, what passed for it, with the south is evident
but the same pattern is also recognisable much from the discovery of hundreds of thousands
further to the east, where Danish and Swedish of dirhams, Arab and Persian silver coins, found

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in the soil of north-west Russia. Many of them of goods (gift-exchange or commercial transac-
would have changed hands in the great markets tion?) and of the use of coins (prestige object or
of Bulgar (near the confluence of the Volga and method of payment?), and the indistinct purpose
Kama rivers) and Itil (in the Volga delta on the of ‘journeys’ (trade or plunder?) make it difficult
Caspian Sea) in the steppe empire of the Khazars. to form a clear picture for the period before the
This eastern trade of the Russian Vikings dried seventh century. The same is essentially true
up fairly suddenly after the middle of the tenth for the phenomena of market and town in the
century, when the Khazar Empire collapsed and early Middle Ages. Because of the direct and
demand from the Middle East slackened, partly (almost) exclusive interest of the aristocracy in
due to a cooling of the climate in the Caspian long-distance trade, such trade was directed more
Sea area. towards ‘central persons’ (who moved around a
Despite the Vikings’ unconcern towards the dif- lot) than ‘central places’ as the British archaeolo-
ference between trading and raiding there is no gist Richard Hodges once put it. It also means
doubt that real trade formed an essential part of that the few towns that survived were centres of
the proto-historic economy of South Scandinavia. power before anything else, ‘public’ places linked
This is evident from the large number of place- to the presence – permanent or frequent – of
names ending in -kaupang/-koebing/-køping such important persons as kings, dukes, counts
(‘trading post’) dating from this legendary period. or bishops. Typical functions of later medieval
Most of the coastal areas were unsuitable for arable towns such as concentrated craft production and
farming but they had abundant water and rich pas- regional provision were as yet underdeveloped.
ture lands for animal grazing and stock rearing, an By that definition, the large trading posts of the
important source of wealth for the Scandinavian period, such as Dorestad and Quentovic (near
aristocracy. The vast inland forests provided a vari- Montreuil), or Hamwic (near Southampton),
ety of products in demand in both the East and may have been towns only to a limited extent.
West, among them pelts, wax, honey and pitch Their main function was to operate as gateway
produced from resin. The most important centres or channel ports which ensured royal control
of Viking trade were Haithabu (Hedeby), strategi- over the international flows of high-value goods
cally located on the shortcut through the Sleswig for either military use (weapons) or conspicuous
isthmus (by which merchants could save them- consumption within aristocratic networks.
selves the longer and more dangerous passage
round Jutland), Ribe (in South Jutland), Kaupang
(in the Oslo Fjord), Birka (mentioned above) and Early medieval politics:
the island of Gotland. From these centres, groups the Carolingian core
of Vikings sallied forth as traders, plunderers and
finally, sometimes even as farmer-colonists over Frankish royal dynasties and
the whole of the then-known world. the Carolingian century
The picture that emerges of trade in the early
Middle Ages is one of a surprising dynamism in an The Merovingian dynasty, to which Clovis
overwhelmingly agrarian economy with a modest belonged, had monopolised Frankish kingship
degree of commercialisation. In this connection before the end of the fifth century. When Clovis
the monetary historian Peter Spufford once called died in 511 he left four sons from two marriages
the enormous expansion of the minting of sil- who all laid claim to the royal title. This led to
ver denarii, sceattas and dirhams in the decades the constitution of four separate Frankish king-
round 800 ‘the false dawn of a money econ- doms, composed of a more or less equal number
omy’. The ambivalent nature of the circulation of civitates (local districts) that did not necessarily

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BOX 3.3 BRUNHILD

One of the rare women who came to great power in the early medieval world was Brunhild,
daughter of the Visigothic king Athanagild and reputedly a girl of mesmerising beauty. In 566,
she was married to the Merovingian king Sigebert I of Austrasia (561–575), who was murdered
after he had invaded Neustria, the kingdom of his brother and rival, Chilperic I (561–584). Soon
afterwards, Brunhild was taken prisoner but then agreed to marry Merovech, Chilperic’s son,
without Chilperic knowing this. When Chilperic found out he flew into a rage, maybe out of jeal-
ousy, maybe because he saw this new liaison as an attempted coup. Brunhild was lucky to get
away alive – after all, Chilperic had been married to her sister, whose throat had been slit after
she had openly complained about Chilperic’s relationship with his mistress, Fredegund. Now,
Chilperic just forced the couple to divorce, and sent Brunhild back to Austrasia, where her strange
move had raised deep suspicion among the leading aristocrats. For that reason, her son, the heir
apparent Childebert, was taken away from her. The tide for the queen-mother only turned in 584,
when Childebert was declared of age on his fifteenth birthday, now to become king of Austrasia.
In the same year Chilperic I was murdered, ‘the Nero and Herod of our time’, according to the
contemporary historian, Bishop Gregory of Tours. An attempt to make Childebert his succes-
sor to the kingdom of Neustria failed; instead the Neustrian aristocracy favoured Chilperic’s son
with Fredegund, Chlotar. However, in 592 Childebert did succeed in acquiring the kingdom of
Burgundy, after his uncle Guntram’s death. Now the time had come for Brunhild to avenge herself
on all those in Austrasia and Burgundy who had previously stood in her way. Among her victims
were an abbot, accused of treason, and Bishop Egidius of Rheims, who had conspired against her
and her son, and was banished while the lay plotters were killed.
When Childebert died in 596 Brunhild once again held the powerful position of regent, now
for her two grandsons, Theodebert II in Austrasia and Theodoric II in Burgundy. As regent, she
corresponded with Pope Gregory the Great (590–604), who, among others, asked for her support
for Augustine’s mission to Kent. But after Theodebert II in his turn had reached the age of fifteen,
Brunhild’s enemies among the Austrasian aristocracy succeeded in getting her expelled from
court. Brunhild then found refuge with her other grandson, Theoderic of Burgundy, whom she set
up against his elder brother. Also, with the help of local factions, Brunhild was able to dislodge
Bishop Desiderius of Vienne, who had aroused her wrath with his criticism of the king’s personal
life, for which he paid with his life. Brunhild was able to procure the episcopal office for at least
four of her supporters, among them Gregory of Tours, who never spoke ill of her.
In 612 she finally persuaded Theoderic to move against his brother. He invaded Austrasia and
killed Theodebert and his son. Then, as if punished by God, Theoderic himself died shortly after-
wards of dysentery. Once again Brunhild arranged the succession by helping her great-grandson,
Sigebert II, to take the throne as the only successor to a reunited kingdom Burgundy-Austrasia. It
turned out to be a deadly mistake, because this was not what most of the Austrasian aristocracy
wanted. They took the royals prisoner and handed them over to King Chlotar of Neustria. Chlotar
had young Sigebert and one of his brothers summarily executed. For his hated half-aunt, Brunhild,
who must have been over sixty at the time, he had another fate in store. In a show trial he accused
her of having killed ten kings – an exaggeration of her victims’ rank, not their number – and then
had her publicly humiliated and slowly tortured to death.

Source: Ian Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450–751 (London/New York: Longman, 1994), pp. 126–136.

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have to form a continuous territory. The same II of Herstal, Pippinid power was almost broken.
situation occurred repeatedly afterwards – also Only the vigorous action of Pippin’s bastard son,
because the Merovingian kings were polygamous Charles Martel (‘the hammer’), prevented this
– but the frequent jockeying for power among from happening. Charles eventually emerged as
sons who survived their father somehow never the winner out of this obscure period, and from
led to extreme territorial fragmentation. Weak him the dynasty took its name of Carolingians.
candidates were relentlessly killed or, if they were He held the office of mayor of the palace in both
lucky, coerced into becoming a monk. Between Frankish kingdoms and ruled without a king for
575 and 585, when two of the four brother-kings the last few years of his life. He was a very suc-
at that time, Sigebert and Chilperic, had been cessful war leader and did his utmost to expand
murdered, probably by each other’s servants, Frankish rule in all directions. Most memorable
two parties formed among their supporters: those are Martel’s campaigns in Aquitaine, which was
of Sibert were called the Austrasians, meaning under threat of Muslim raids from Spain. In 733,
‘[Franks] from the east’, while their opponents the Frankish army halted a large invading force
came to be known as Neustrians, that is ‘[Franks] near Tours, an event that later was blown out
from the west’. After a savage civil war, in which of proportion; according to recent scholarship
the respective widows of Sigebert and Chilperic, Christendom was not saved from extinction at
Brunhild and Fredegund, played a major part Tours. More importantly, the Muslim raids gave
(see Box 3.3), the ultimate winner, Fredegund’s Charles Martel the chance to strengthen his hold
son Chlotar II, succeeded in 613 in reuniting over Provence and Aquitaine. As victor, he could,
the Frankish kingdoms and reigned as a mon- moreover, demand tribute from subjected regions
arch. So did his son Dagobert (629–639). After and confiscate land with which to reward his
Dagobert’s death there were always either one bravest followers. Even Church possessions were
or two Merovingian kingdoms; and when there not spared, which would give Charles a bad name
were two, one was Austrasia, the other Neustria among later ecclesiastical critics for having stolen
plus Burgundy. Adjacent territories such as Church properties on a large scale.
Alemannia, Bavaria, Thuringia, but at a later stage The fact that, despite his military superiority,
also Aquitaine, had their own dukes, who were to Charles Martel did not put aside the Merovingian
a varying degree considered to be subordinate ‘puppet kings’ shows that kingship in the Frankish
to Frankish hegemony. world was more than just the supremacy of physi-
From about the middle of the seventh cen- cal force. Even the powerless last Merovingian
tury the highest officials of the Merovingian kings retained a sacral legitimacy that was passed
court – the maiores domus (‘mayors of the on though their lineage. But at King Theoderic IV’s
palace’) – made their presence increasingly felt. death in 737, Charles did not replace him and wil-
In Austrasia this office was virtually monopo- fully created an Interregnum that would last until
lised by members of the Pippinid family, so two years after Charles’s own death in 741. Entirely
called after Pippin I of Landen. The basis of in the style of a Frankish ruler, Charles Martel had
their power was formed by their extensive pos- divided his mayoralty between two of his sons,
sessions in the Ardennes, a densely forested area Carloman and Pippin III the Short. After several
where later they would found great abbeys such years of violence, Carloman heard the divine call
as Nivelles, Stavelot-Malmédy and Echternach. and retired to the Italian monastery of Monte
Shortly before 700 the Pippinids took over the Cassino in 747, entrusting his share of the mayor-
office of mayor of the palace in Neustria as well. alty, together with his son, to his brother, Pippin.
Even at that point, their position was far from The combination of military success and pow-
unassailable, and in 714 after the death of Pippin erful rule was probably behind Pippin’s famous

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FIGURE 3.2 Family tree of the Carolingian dynasty

question to Pope Zachary in 749: ‘whether it is with far-reaching consequences for European
good or not that the kings of the Franks should history.
wield no power, as is the case now’. The pope,
according to a Frankish version of events, agreed
that the Franks were justified in deposing the Military conquest and the
Merovingian puppet king Childeric III and instead Frankish armies
making Pippin king. In 754 Pope Zachary’s suc-
cessor, Stephen II, crossed the Alps and anointed The reign of Pippin’s son, Charles the Great or
Pippin, his wife Bertrada and their sons Charles – Charlemagne (768–814), deeply impressed his
the later Charlemagne – and Carloman as the new contemporaries and later generations. Court
ruling dynasty of the Franks. In return the pope historians have certainly done much to idealise
received protection for the papal territories that the life and deeds of their king and emperor, and
formally still belonged to the Byzantine Empire, this idealised representation of Charlemagne
but which were systematically threatened by was often recalled in later centuries. Scores
the Lombard kings in northern Italy. With this of European rulers had complicated genealo-
deal, the new Frankish royal dynasty and the gies constructed to ‘demonstrate’ their claims
Roman popes entered upon a special relationship of descent from him. It cannot be denied that

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Charles’s forty-six-year reign left a profound empire was terrorised and its fabulous treasure
impact on the history of Europe. in the ‘ring’, the circular residence of the khan,
What most characterised the first thirty years was seized. Here the Franks established a bor-
of his rule was the aggressive, almost continuous der region, the Ostmark, the origins of the later
waging of war and conquest. He had inherited dukedom of Austria.
many challenges from his predecessors which In Gaul expeditions were undertaken into those
he tackled with an intense determination. For a peripheral regions that had never been completely
start, the popes made repeated calls for protec- subjected to the Franks: Brittany, Septimania (the
tion. In 774 Charlemagne succeeded in annexing area between Narbonne and the Pyrenees) and
the kingdom of the Lombards, with the excep- Aquitaine. In 781 Charlemagne accorded Aquitaine
tion of the southern dukedom of Benevento, as a separate kingdom to his son Louis, just as he
and installed Franks and Alamans as colonists had given Italy to his oldest son Pippin previously.
and administrators. But the individual character A first invasion over the Pyrenees led to the mas-
of the region, with its rich, old culture, needed sacre of Charlemagne’s rear guard by the Basques
special consideration, and in 781 Charlemagne in the Pass of Roncesvalles in 778. This tragic event
made it a semi-autonomous kingdom under his was mentioned briefly in ninth-century annals and
infant son, Pippin the Hunchback. In later years transformed in the eleventh century into the epic
this Pippin conquered the Byzantine territories Chanson de Roland. Further raids in and after 801
around Venice and in Istria, which brought him ended in the subjugation of the region around
into conflict with the emperor in Constantinople. Barcelona and Tarragona as far as the Ebro, where
As early as 772 a series of cruel wars with a the Spanish March was established.
clearly religious dimension was launched against Charlemagne was undoubtedly a vigorous
the Saxons, which lasted until 804. Frankish leader who, like his forebears Charles Martel and
victories were followed by Saxon rebellions, Pippin the Short, was able to use his personal
leading to bloody reprisals – such as the massa- qualities to bring about the extraordinary expan-
cre of 4,500 prisoners at Verden (near Bremen) sion of his dynasty’s power. There were no major
in 782. Ten years later a new revolt resulted in advances in military technology behind their suc-
the massive deportation of Saxons to other parts cess, as has been argued. Such factors as improved
of the Frankish kingdom, after which Frankish armour and a more intensive tactical use of cav-
and Slav colonists settled in the area. In southern alry certainly had a part to play, but during the
Germania one campaign was directed against the eighth century they did not cause any dramatic
Ba[iu]varii (Bavarians), whose duke, Tassilo, was changes that might account for the success of the
trying to expand to the south and east. After a three great Carolingian rulers. By the same token,
rebellion in 757 King Pippin, who was Tassilo’s the disintegration of Charles’s enormous empire
uncle, had forced his nephew to ‘swear numer- during the ninth and tenth centuries cannot be
ous oaths to him’, and to become his vassal explained by techno-military or organisational
and the vassal of his two sons, Carloman and circumstances. So the personal factor must have
Charles. In 788, Charles, then Charlemagne, been decisive: from 714 to 814 three exception-
punished his cousin’s repeated breach of loyalty, ally strong, charismatic, leaders succeeded each
and deposed him as a duke. Tassilo was forced other, who were able to inspire great support and
into a monastery, and Bavaria was incorporated whose successes proved to have a great appeal to
into the Frankish kingdom. From Bavaria, the ambitious warriors.
Franks pushed on into Pannonia, modern Lower Part of the lands with which the Carolingians
Austria, where the Avars were settled. During suc- rewarded these warriors came, more or less under
cessive campaigns in 791, 795 and 796 the Avar pressure, from ecclesiastical resources. The decisions

108
 North Sea

R.
El
be
R.
V ist
ul
a

R.

Od
er
Aachen Cologne
R.
Rheims Worms

Rhi e
Paris

n
Verdun

Tours
R . L oi

Poitiers
r

Atlantic
e

Ocean

R. Danube
Venice
Pavia
Toulouse
Genoa
Ravenna
Narbonne
R.
Eb
or

Spoleto
Barcelona
Rome

Mediterranean Sea
Frankish kingdom(s) c.750
Conquests by Charlemagne
Papal-‘State’ (Frankish Protectorate) Miles
0 150 300
Remaining Byzantine territories in Italy
Tributary to the Franks 0 150 300 450
Kilometres

MAP 3.1 Charlemagne’s empire

 PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

of the Concilium Germanicum, the Church coun- small formations they could show their superior-
cil convened by Charles Martel’s eldest son, ity in speed, arms and strength against peasant
Carloman, in 742 or 743, is the earliest text to folk or irregulars. In an agricultural economy
show that the Carolingians and the Frankish with very low yields, which was characteristic of
Church had reached a modus vivendi, whereby the early Middle Ages, equipping such warriors
the ruler could indeed request the Church to and providing for their big horses laid a heavy
make land available to warriors, providing burden on the scarce resources available.
that the rights of the Church were recognised
through monetary compensations. The land
grants themselves were known as precariae verbo An incipient state
regis (‘requests [for land] by the king’s word’). The
land was given as a benefice, that is, as a con- The French medievalist Georges Duby quipped
ditional tenure, and fell to those appointed by in 1972 that Charlemagne’s empire was ‘a village
the king for services rendered. By way of redress, chiefdom, stretched to the limits of the universe’.
many Church institutions were entitled to a tithe For our view of what further happened with this
from certain royal estates or other sources of royal empire, and to what extent it could be called a
income. This decima regalis (‘royal tithe’) should ‘state’, much depends on our appreciation of the
not be confused with the ordinary ecclesiastical effectiveness of Carolingian royal administration,
tithe (see Chapter 2). and in particular the ability of counts, margraves
The underlying problem was that Charles and dukes appointed to represent royal author-
Martel, Pippin III and Charlemagne, despite all ity in each and every corner of the vast territory
those wars of aggression, were not able to suffi- which the empire enclosed, to successfully act as
ciently remunerate their warriors out of the spoils public officials and to distinguish between ‘pub-
of war. One has to realise that the Carolingians lic’ and ‘private’ exercise of power. Ironically, one
mobilised exceptionally large armies for that of Duby’s major contributions to medieval his-
period. Until the beginning of the ninth century, tory, the theory of the ‘banal revolution’, departs
the kings could use their authority to call up all from a rather rosy picture of the Carolingian
adult free men for war. If they chose to do so, administrative machinery. We shall return to this
actual recruitment only took place on a regional point in Chapter 5.
basis because of the vast extent of the Empire However, nobody would deny that a certain
and the slowness of communications. But shortly amount of institutionalisation was necessary to
after 800, as we saw, Charlemagne reduced the consolidate the military successes. Charles sur-
military obligations of free men. Increasingly, rounded himself with clerics who, despite his
Carolingian kings and their commanders relied reportedly crude nature, introduced him to some
on the heavily armed horsemen who made up of life’s finer aspects. The most prominent of
the king’s elite units and the large retinues of these clerics was the Anglo-Saxon scholar Alcuin
counts, bishops and abbots. Their equipment was of York, who had been called to Charlemagne’s
perfected in the course of the eighth and ninth court to teach the king. Alcuin also was one of the
centuries with the stirrup, panelled saddle and advisors who elaborated ideas on Christian king-
coat of mail. The heavily armed cavalry would ship and imperial rulership. These were partly
form the core of all western European armies until based on classical Roman models and partly on
the fourteenth century, in contrast to the superi- the Old Testament. A Christian king was meant
ority of the infantry in Antiquity and its renewed to be God’s chosen protector of the faith, which
importance after 1300. The military value of allowed him to concern himself with the affairs
horsemen was not limited to armies, because in of the Church and to carry out his own secular

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political activities in the sign of Christ. The idea Charlemagne’s biography, written more than a
of a reborn Roman-Christian empire was made decade after Charles’s death by the erudite noble-
clear to every subject through the new silver man, Einhard, who had been a trusted advisor of
denarii that Charles had struck after his impe- the emperor. Following the model of Suetonius’s
rial coronation. On one side these pennies bore Lives of the first twelve Roman emperors (c.125
a cross in or on a classical temple, with the leg- ce), Einhard could affirm that ‘during his whole

end christiana religio, and on the other the effigy reign Charles regarded nothing as more impor-
of the emperor draped, just like his illustrious tant than to restore (. . .) the ancient glory of
predecessors of Roman Antiquity, in a toga and the city of Rome’. The royal palace complex at
wearing a crown of laurels; the circumscription Aachen was equipped with an impressive aula
was Karolus imperator augustus (‘Charles, the (hall) in Late Antique style, modelled after the
august Emperor’). great Constantinian basilica of Trier, and with
Charlemagne’s imperial coronation was actu- baths (Aachen took its name from Aquae, that
ally a repeat at a higher level of the events of is to say ‘[thermal] waters’). The palace chapel
750–751, when Pippin had been anointed king. with its octagonal plan was clearly inspired by a
In 799 Pope Leo III came to Paderborn to ask for number of architectural models, taken from the
Charles’s help against a faction of the Roman aris- formerly imperial cities of Ravenna and Rome.
tocracy, from whose intrigues he had narrowly Marble pillars, capitals and mosaics were brought
escaped. This was Charlemagne’s opportunity to from Italy to Aachen to lend ancient lustre to
invoke the principle that had been formulated the new church. From around 800 onwards,
back in 749: he who actually exercises the author- Aachen would become the most important royal
ity attached to a title deserves to bear that same residence and the symbolic capital of the reborn
title. Had Charlemagne not, like a true Roman empire, a rival – in reality, very small – to Rome.
emperor, established his authority over all – or at Richly illuminated manuscripts were produced at
least many – of the lands of western Christendom? and for the court of Charlemagne and Louis the
Was his might not indispensable as protector of Pious. A clear and manageable new style of writ-
the Church? When Charles left for Rome in the ing, the Carolingian minuscule, evolved from the
autumn of the year 800 to restore the pope to his Roman script system. With the encouragement
authority, he displayed his effectiveness as pro- of Alcuin and other scholars that he brought
tector of the Church, and in this quality proved from Italy, Ireland, Francia, Saxony and Spain,
himself to be superior to the Byzantine emperor, Charlemagne stimulated the study of Latin.
who had so often failed. At the coronation cer- Ancient texts were copied and studied with the
emony in St Peter’s church on Christmas Day, the aim of achieving a more correct understanding of
Pope ensured that he first ‘created’ the emperor the Christian religion.
by crowning him, before the acclamation of the Because of the Carolingian elite’s Christian fun-
Roman people confirmed him in the dignity. By damentalism, court life at Aachen and Ingelheim
this act a precedent was created that would hold was not all worldly pleasures. On the contrary, it
until the end of the Middle Ages. had ‘shades of monastic order’, and under Louis
There is no doubt that the Carolingians took the Pious, the royal court even turned into the
good care of their own propaganda, which centre of ‘a penitential state’ – two happy qualifi-
resulted in more and more interesting literary cations by Mayke de Jong (2009) which perfectly
and artistic products being produced in their time summarise the austere spirit and the highly mor-
than in the centuries before or after. Among them alistic overtone of Carolingian rule, especially
are the royal annals in which the most important under Charlemagne and his son. Both were deeply
events of each year were recorded, and especially convinced that by divine order they had the task

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 PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

of morally purifying their people, and they did part of their paperwork carried out by a Church
not shy away from the logical consequence that institution at hand, or by the person for whom
they themselves were sinners too who had to be the document was intended. A chancery of his
corrected if need be. Both Louis the Pious and own enabled the king to complete more written
his sons disguised political purges as penance for documents without external agency, and even
sins committed against the Christian moral order. to create an archive to give him closer control
Louis did so immediately after his father’s death of his activities. The Merovingian kings had had
when he purged the ‘depraved court’ at Aachen a chancery with lay notaries, but later scribes
to put his own men in; his sons debased their were predominantly clerics, who were in the
father into a penitent during a revolt in 833. To direct service of the king/emperor. A particularly
the modern mind it is not easy to grasp how a important activity of the chancery was to issue
deeply religious man like Charlemagne squared numerous capitularies, royal or imperial decrees,
the purposeful killing and maiming of thousands split into separate chapters or sections, in which
of ‘pagan enemies’ with small-minded moral cru- administrative and legislative regulations were
sades against the peccadillos of each and every promulgated. They often formed the written
one of his subjects. Significantly, Charlemagne report of provisions orally agreed and proclaimed
launched his biggest moralising offensive, by the powerful men of the land at their annual
set down in the famous capitulary Admonitio general assembly (the so-called March Field or,
Generalis, in 789, in the midst of his savage wars after 755, May Field). In that context the spoken
against the Saxons. word had the power of law. The announcement
The king’s palace (palatium in Latin, Pfalz in everyone’s presence voiced the consensus,
in German) included his household and some and at the same time laid the duty on all those
office-holders who were constantly on the move. present to abide by what had been agreed. It is,
Even Aachen never developed into the fixed cap- therefore, likely that the capitularies served in the
ital of the Carolingian Empire – no more than first place as a sort of reminder for the chancery
did any of the later imperial residences. One of and for the missi dominici, the emissaries who
the reasons for this was that the king was always were sent all over the Empire in the king’s name
away on military expeditions during the months to ensure that the rulings were obeyed.
that were suitable for waging war. Another was Strenuous efforts to create a solid state insti-
that the presence of the king was essential in all tution in the Roman model were made when it
corners of the Empire so that his authority would came to the division of the territory in adminis-
be respected. A third reason was purely practi- trative districts, and the offices belonging to it.
cal: whenever possible, the king and his retinue Because the Empire was so vast the king/emperor
stayed in one of the more than 200 palaces in had to delegate his authority. We have already
order to make use of the revenues on the spot. mentioned the foundation in 781 of the (sub)
In the manorial economy, where there was little kingdoms of Lombardy and Aquitaine, which
traffic, it was simpler to allow large companies of were held respectively by Pippin and Louis,
demanding consumers to travel around than to Charlemagne’s sons. One level lower were duch-
attempt to centralise the harvest yields. ies – large territories that were supposed to be
Apart from the king’s itinerant household, inhabited by distinct peoples, such as Bavaria
the chancery, the administrative measures and and Saxony. Border regions with a strong military
legislation, the general assembly and the palace administration were called marches, such as the
school took on early forms of centralised state Spanish, the Breton or the Friulan marches; they
institutions that were separate from the king’s were ruled by margraves. However, the standard
person. The Merovingian kings had the greater administrative district was the county, of which

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there were about 600 in Charlemagne’s time. allowed to blackmail landowners with the threat
The number of counts was considerably fewer, of taxation or military service, etc.
because quite often one count administered more Among the factors creating unity in the
than one county. Carolingian Empire, we should again bear in
Counts were basically office-holders whose mind the paramount importance of the inter-
task it was to represent the king’s authority dependence with the Church. In Merovingian
in their district or county, to administer justice in Gaul there had been civitates where bishops had
his name there, to lead the general assembly, to the right to appoint counts, or to hold that office
summon to war and to ensure that the capitular- themselves. This was not without its dangers,
ies were observed. In return, a part of the royal because the bishops could easily find themselves
domains in a county was placed at its count’s dis- embroiled in a merciless struggle for power.
posal. The majority of counts were Franks, even Under the Carolingians the autonomous posi-
in regions of a different ethnic composition, tion of the bishops was increasingly felt to be a
apparently because the common background fos- problem, and in due course most of the episco-
tered loyalty. The emissary counts and bishops pal lordships lost their immunity. But then again,
sent in pairs as inspectors, missi dominici, were the same Carolingian rulers had no difficulty in
responsible for checking the counts’ activities or appointing bishops as missi dominici.
related tasks. High offices such as those of count, In short, whenever reference is made to a
margrave, duke and missus were called honores Carolingian state, kingdom or empire, such terms
(‘honours’) or, from the reign of Louis the Pious should not be understood anachronistically. In
onwards, ministeria (‘ministries’), terms that the everyday Germanic and Roman languages
combine highly moralistic ideas of an expected there was no word for an abstract concept such
readiness of aristocrats to be at the (unpaid) ser- as the state. Power relations were linked to a
vice of the community of the realm and of great person, concretely and directly. It was not until
honour that such service brought to them. the reign of Louis the Pious that court scholars
The objectification evident in this organisa- found a term that appealed to them in their
tion was no doubt a result of the efforts made Latin sources: res publica (lit. ‘the public cause’).
– under the oft-repeated motto of renovatio – to But the concept scarcely filtered through to the
restore the Roman imperium in a Christian form, reality of the structures of Carolingian govern-
based on the renewed study of Roman history, ment. An exception is provided by the frequent
law and literature by the learned clerics of the beheadings of counts accused of high treason, a
court. In practice the ambitious project showed typically Roman-law concept introduced by the
little sense of reality: the material circumstances court scholars. Attempts made to establish pub-
of the eighth and ninth centuries simply made it lic institutions were abandoned after a couple
impossible to achieve the results that had been of generations. In many respects, the apparatus
possible in the fourth century. In this sense we of state was limited to the court and a few hun-
must interpret the capitularies as ordinances dred officials who struggled to impose laws in
through which the king/emperor hoped to the enormous area stretching from the Ebro to
change an unmanageable reality, but at the same the Elbe, and including large parts of Italy. In the
time they were a reflection of that very reality. absence of a developed tax system it was a hope-
There are capitularies that decreed that counts less task to impose lasting administrative unity
could not go out hunting if they had to preside on the jumbled diversity of peoples belonging to
over a court session; must not be drunk while different cultures and levels of development.
exercising their office; could not accept gifts
from parties involved in court cases; or were not

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Creating loyalty: oaths of manded to do so, and otherwise maintain the

peace in the place in which they lived. In 802
allegiance, vassals and benefices
the emperor stipulated that allegiance should be
One traditional means of exercising power was sworn to him ‘as a man should swear allegiance to
demanding an oath of allegiance. In the Carolingian his lord’. In 805 a more exclusive note was heard
Empire, this became obligatory between 786 and in the relationship of fidelity: besides swearing
792, after repeated uprisings, for all free male sub- allegiance to the emperor, a free man would only
jects above the age of twelve, also for clergy and be able to swear allegiance to his own lord. An
monks, for the ‘men’ of bishops, abbots, counts oath was sworn with the hand on a holy object,
and others, and for all sorts of bondmen ‘who such as a relic or the Scriptures. Breaking an oath
held fiefs (beneficia) or offices, or were vassals provoked divine sanctions along with strong judi-
of lords and who could have horses, armour, a cial punishment for perjury. Only great men took
shield, a lance, a long sword or a short sword’. their oath of allegiance with the king in person.
Moreover, all laymen who swore allegiance also They were then called his fideles (‘faithful men’).
had to be ready to join the royal host if com- This happened in a ceremony called commendatio

PLATE 3.1 Ritual of ‘joining hands’ with the king (immixtio manuum in Latin), the symbolic sealing of a con-
tract with a vassal. The Royal Prosecutor, the Scribe and the Feudal Lord. Capbreu de Clayra et de Millas, 1292,
Catalan School.

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(‘recommendation of oneself’), which was later beneficio (as a benefice, later called ‘fief’) from
more usually called homagium (‘homage’, i.e. the king. In this time, grants in beneficio started
becoming another man’s man). It was symbol- to be applied to royal estates which counts were
ised by the ritual of ‘joining hands’ with the king allowed to use in their county as a reward for
(immixtio manuum in Latin). In due course, this the exercise of office. By the early ninth century
ritual would become a standard part of the hom- Charlemagne, in one of his capitularies, was ful-
age ceremony in which a man became a lord’s minating against counts ‘and other men’ (read:
vassal. royal vassals?) who were trying to convert such
Speaking of vassals, in addition to admin- ‘benefices’ into free property by devious means.
istering oaths of allegiance, the Carolingian The unmistakable acceleration in the deploy-
kings consciously intensified the use of verti- ment of vassalage, not only by the king, but on
cal, non-familial bonds of loyalty and personal all levels of the Carolingian elite, set off a process
dependence, most importantly that of vassal- in which, gradually, the material component –
age. Sources from the Merovingian era mention the grant of a ‘benefice’ or fief (feodum in Latin)
the term vassus (plural, vassi) in reference to – became a set part of vassalage, which it defi-
lower servants. The term was used frequently nitely was not yet in the eighth century. Then,
from the end of the eighth century onwards, but many ‘benefices’ were held by people who were
by then its meaning had started to alter. Vassi not vassals, just like there were many vassals who
clearly were free men who were in a relation- held no ‘benefices’. That is why the evolution of
ship of service to a lord (senior in Latin). It was vassalage into feudal-vassalic relations raises
a relationship of mutual dependence: the vassal three questions. First, at what point in time did
served and supported the lord, and the lord pro- benefices or fiefs become hereditary and/or could
tected and maintained the vassal. Between 801 they be alienated by their holders? Second, could
and 813 Charlemagne issued a capitulary (decree) other things than land, high public offices in
referring to five cases in which a vassal might particular, be the object of grants in benefice or
terminate the allegiance to his lord, from which fief? One early case is known from the Annals of
it is clear that vassalage was widespread, that it Fulda, which report that in 881 Charles the Fat,
was tied to conditions for both parties, and that King of the East Franks, gave his relative Hugh
it could be broken. It also strongly suggests that several counties ‘in beneficio’. But this case must
the relationship between a lord and a vassal had have been quite exceptional, if not unique. And,
become primarily a thing between aristocrats. third, did feudal-vassalic relations also take root
From around 780 vassi dominici or vassi regis outside the Carolingian Empire (and its succes-
(‘royal vassals’) start to appear in the sources, sor states)? The answers to these questions are
which means that the king himself had vassals important in order to determine if it makes sense
as well. The earlier example of the unlucky Duke to speak of medieval states as feudal states or even
Tasssilo of Bavaria, already mentioned, who in of medieval society as a ‘feudal society’. We
757 was forced into vassalage with his uncle, shall return to these questions in various subse-
King Pippin the Short, was an atypical case. From quent chapters. At this point, it suffices to stress
what we know about vassi dominici in the time of that in the Carolingian period only initial impe-
Charlemagne, they most certainly did not hold a tus has been given to the further development
degrading position, even if they did not belong to of feudal-vassalic relations in all three directions
the highest aristocracy. They appear to have been just indicated. The Carolingian Empire was in no
made part either of the king’s crack troops or of way a feudal state.
the royal household, later to become substantial
landowners. Some of them held their estates in

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The fiction of a united empire his surviving brothers, Charles and Louis the
German. They defeated the new emperor after
In 806 Charlemagne made arrangements for his a violent struggle, and, at Strasbourg in 842, in
succession. In accordance with Frankish custom the presence of their warriors, they swore solemn
he divided the realm between his three sons. oaths of mutual assistance and promised that
Two of them, however, predeceased their father they would never treat separately with Lothar.
so that the Empire would remain a monarchy. These oaths are famous because both kings used
While Charlemagne was still alive, he made his the vernacular tongue of their opponents so that
only surviving son Louis ‘partner in the imperial they would be understood by the other’s follow-
name’, as say the Annals of the Frankish Realm. ers: Louis swore in the Roman language (Romana
He was crowned by his father at Aachen in 813 – lingua), Charles in German (Theudisca lingua). The
an event that might be interpreted as an insult to idea of this language switching was to reassure
the pope. However, Pope Stephen came to Francia the lesser aristocratic warriors of both armies,
in 816 to anoint Louis at Rheims. During the who only understood their own language, of the
early years of his reign, Louis the Pious devoted sincere intentions of both leaders.
himself to the protection of Church institutions, In the end, there were negotiations between
from the papacy to the local clergy, in the face of the three brothers, which resulted in the partition
over-powerful secular lords. In 817 he, too, made of the Empire into three, laid down in the Treaty
arrangements for his succession, under which the of Verdun in 843. Charles the Bald received the
empire would again be divided between the three territories west of the Scheldt, Marne, Saône and
sons whom he then had. The emperorship was Rhone, and Louis the German all that lay east of
considered to be an indivisible unit. His eldest the Rhine. Lothar, the emperor, kept Italy and
son, Lothar, was therefore proclaimed co-emperor the central territories, including both Aachen
and sole heir to the imperial dignity, and in 823 and Rome. The northern parts would later be
he was anointed and crowned by the pope. The called Lotharingia (Lotharii regnum or Lorraine)
other brothers were given the title of king: Pippin after Lothar’s son and namesake, Lothar II, who
of Aquitaine and Louis of Bavaria – hence com- received them as a separate kingdom after his
monly called Louis the German – both territories father’s death in 855. By the same partition Italy
with a strongly developed regional identity. This went to his eldest brother, while the younger one
arrangement may have been intended as a com- was made king of Provence.
promise, but in reality the emperor had very little After 843, Louis the German, now king of
to say over the (sub-)kingdoms. East Francia (843–876), proved himself to be a
Things did not work out as planned in another strong leader. He consolidated the northern Elbe
respect. Within four fateful years, between 829, border against Danes and Slavs, and had them
when Louis granted an inheritance to his six- pay a yearly tribute in recognition of Frankish
year-old son, Charles (the Bald), with his second overlordship. The prince of Moravia, further to
wife Judith, and 833, when the emperor was the south, was a tougher adversary, and Frankish
humiliated and taken prisoner by his elder sons control over lower Pannonia (present-day lower
on the Field of Lies near Colmar, the dream of Austria and western Hungary) was not reasserted
a unified empire, meant to embrace and protect until 865; further efforts to expand Frankish
a united (Roman) Christendom, was shattered. power into Moravia itself failed. Apart from that,
And it did not stop when Louis the Pious died Louis’ mind kept being drawn to the West, and
in 840. Lothar’s demand for oaths of allegiance he repeatedly invaded Gaul. This western orienta-
throughout the empire, following his grandfa- tion would prove to be far-sighted, because bit by
ther’s example, stirred up bitter opposition from bit almost all of Lothar’s central empire, includ-

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MAP 3.2 Tripartition of Charlemagne’s empire at the Treaty of Verdun, 843

ing Italy, would fall into the hands of the East rulers of a territory that once had been consid-
Frankish/German kings (see Chapter 4). ered a land of wild and dangerous barbarians who
In 875 the imperial title, already devalued were a threat to the Pax Romana.
under Lothar I, fell for just two years to the West
Frankish king, Charles the Bald. In 881 negotia-
tions with the pope resulted in the recognition Dynamic peripheries
of the king of East Francia, Charles the Fat, as
emperor. The title would continue to exist in The British Isles and Viking
that part of the empire, later known as Germania Scandinavia
or Germany, with an interruption in the tenth
century, until 1806. So, ironically, the fiction of In many respects the seven kingdoms of the
upholding the Roman Empire came to rest upon Angles and Saxons followed an evolution that

117
 PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

was not dissimilar to that of the Frankish Empire. between 2,000 and 3,000 men. It soon became
Warrior retinues, some sort of a manorial econ- clear that the Danes had no intention of leaving.
omy and great social inequality could be found The great army roamed England for more than
on both sides of the Channel. Now and then ten years. In 876 it split up and while one half
Anglo-Saxon kings, just like their Carolingian started to settle and ‘to plough to support them-
counterparts, would ask the Church if it could selves’ in Northumbria, the other part remained
spare a piece of land for a well-loved warrior. One active as an army. In 878 it was decisively beaten
striking difference is that the dooms, the Anglo- at Edington by King Alfred of Wessex. It would
Saxon laws, were written up in the vernacular, be another decade before King Alfred could reach
unlike the Frankish capitularies which were for- a settlement with the Viking ‘king’ Guthrum in
mulated exclusively in Latin. When the king of which the old Roman road between London and
Wessex, Alfred the Great (871–899), followed Chester was established as a linear border between
Charlemagne’s example and founded a court Wessex and the Viking territories. The remarkable
school, translations of various texts were made density of place-names with a Scandinavian suf-
there from Latin into the vernacular. fix north of this line, land thence known as the
Another Carolingian imitation was ting- Danelaw, proves both that the agreed frontier
ing kingship with Judeo-Christian sacredness; was respected and that the invasion of the ‘great
the first Anglo-Saxon king to be anointed was army’ was followed by massive immigration from
Ecgfrith, son of Offa of Mercia, who became co- Denmark.
ruler alongside his father in 787. However, in King Alfred consolidated his military success
precisely this period of time the Anglo-Saxon by army reforms and by constructing some thirty
world was on the verge of rapid and irreversible burhs, fortified settlements on strategic locations,
change. Under the year 786 the Anglo-Saxon which more often than not grew into market
Chronicle records that three ships with ‘Danish towns. To pay for all his efforts, Alfred introduced
men’ moored off the coast of Dorset, their crew the Danegeld, a land tax to be paid in silver
killing the royal sheriff in a fight. It was the coin, which was levied for the first time in Kent
onset of a long episode of Scandinavian inter- in 865 and maintained until 1162, long after the
ference with the course of events in the British Norman Conquest. It enabled the English kings
Isles, of Vikings operating not so much as trad- to collect immense quantities of silver: as much
ers but as conquerors and colonists. In the course as 22 tons in the year 1018 alone, which would
of the ninth century Norwegian warlords and have represented about 42 per cent of the total
their followers took possession of the Shetlands, supply of coins circulating in England at that
Orkneys and Hebrides of northern Scotland, and time. Alfred himself had coins struck with the
the Isle of Man, putting pressure on the fragile legend rex Anglorum (‘King of [all] the English’),
united kingdom of the Scots that was taking the title that in due time would be bestowed
shape around 850. Further west, they settled on upon his successors.
the coast of Ireland, where they founded several After many struggles the English kings from
towns, including Dublin in 917. the House of Wessex finally succeeded in extend-
Meanwhile, war bands from Denmark con- ing their power over the Danelaw, which was
centrated their attacks on England, culminating allowed to preserve its own laws. In the same
in the invasion of the so-called ‘great heathen period the old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms disap-
army’ in 865, a coalition of various groups of peared as recognisable polities, even if their
Vikings that were active at that time in north- borders remained in the borders of the counties
east England, the West Frankish kingdom and or shires, which in large part were created in the
Ireland. The great army must have numbered tenth century. At the level of the shires, and of

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 T hE pO WER fU L A ND T hE pO OR : SOC I E Ty A ND E C ONOM y I N Th E fR A NK I S h K I NGDOMS A ND b E yOND 3 CHAPTER

MAP 3.3 Anglo-Saxon England,

c.800

the hundreds beneath them, courts of law were tern. Repeated, violent hit-and-run attacks around
established where, under the guidance of royal the middle of the ninth century led to the loot-
judges, local notables passed sentence. So, in mat- ing of major urban centres (Paris, Rouen, Nantes,
ters of administrative and legal organisation as Bordeaux), channel ports (Dorestad, Quentovic)
well, Anglo-Saxon England was quite similar to and rich abbeys (Noirmoutiers). Although some
the Carolingian Empire. of the expeditions seem to have been master-
Viking invasions in the western part of the minded by the king of Denmark, there was never
Carolingian Empire had a slightly different pat- a ‘great army’ active on Carolingian territory

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 PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

for years at a stretch. However, the situation On the other hand, the protracted Viking
in Francia became more complicated than in contacts in western Europe, though bringing
England from the moment that Carolingian rul- destruction to the existing order, also brought
ers started to hire Viking mercenaries to fight expansion to the commercial activities of the
off either competing Viking war bands or rival region. Priests and monks must have found it
brothers or sons with whom they were at odds. terrible when their treasures were stolen, but
The former strategy ended up granting coastal from an economic point of view it meant that
regions and river delta areas to Viking kings or the precious metals that had long been hoarded
chieftains to safeguard the interior. Among the were brought back into circulation as a means
earliest examples are the isle of Walcheren near of payment in long-distance trade. The same
the mouth of the river Schelde, granted to the goes for the English tax revenues in silver coin. A
Danish prince Harald Klak in 841, and the Frisian large part of this would have come from Frankish
coastal area, with Dorestad, that was given to two sources, through trade. By paying off the Vikings
Danish chieftains, Rurik and Godfred in 850. with Danegeld, this wealth (re-)entered into circu-
None of them succeeded in making their hold on lation and supported the Vikings’ brisk trade with
these territories last for more than a few decades. the East. In this way Viking activities in western
The famous exception is Normandy, named after Europe stimulated the circulation of goods and
the Northmen under the leadership of a Dane capital there, and the entry of the region into an
called Rollo, who in 911 were allowed to settle in intercontinental trading system.
the lower Seine valley by the West Frankish king
Charles the Simple. This agreement attracted new
settlers from Denmark and Norway, and they
stayed. The foundations were laid for the powerful
Duchy of Normandy.
The remarkable success of the Viking invasions
can be attributed to the speed with which they
made their attacks and then disappeared in their
slender boats. The Frankish royal armies were not
designed for surprise attacks of this sort. It took
them a long time to mobilise and even then they
often could do no more than watch from the river-
bank or coast, while the Viking ships remained out
of reach. Only when the Vikings started to spend
the winter in sheltered places did they become
vulnerable, particularly because their forces were
small. Eventually it became clear that the Frankish
kings were unable to protect their people, and it
was the local lords who offered resistance by build-
ing forts along the rivers or fortified bridges. The
bridge over the Seine at Pîtres in 864 was a late
case in which Charles the Bald took the initia- PLATE 3.2 The hull of the burial ship found at
tive on one of his domains. In general one could Öseberg near Oslo, Norway, had ceremonial pur-
say that the Viking invasions helped to acceler- poses, but is also a fine example of the large boats
ate the process of decentralisation of power in the with which Vikings carried out their raids over the
Carolingian world that had already begun. seas.

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 T hE pO WER fU L A ND T hE pO OR : SOC I E Ty A ND E C ONOM y I N Th E fR A NK I S h K I NGDOMS A ND b E yOND 3 CHAPTER

The activities of the Vikings in the ninth and style himself ‘King of all England, of Denmark,
tenth centuries cannot be considered separately of all the Norwegians, and of part of the Swedes’.
from what happened in Scandinavia during that Norway had been first unified under King Harald
same period. The formation of relatively strong Finehair, shortly after 870. In the second half of
kingdoms and the fierce competition between the tenth century Norway came under Danish
powerful stakeholders and their warrior reti- overlordship. Only after King Cnut’s death
nues that were part of this process led to the would a new Norwegian royal dynasty rise. For
ruthless expulsion of losers or of the voluntary Sweden, the picture remains rather obscure. In
departure of those who expected to find more Charlemagne’s time, a king of the Swedes was
luck elsewhere. It produced an endless stream of active in the Birka area, but the first to rule over
pretenders and exiles leaving their homeland in the larger part of what we now know as Sweden
search of their own, new, territory. Seen from a is thought to have been Olof Skötkonung (c.995–
different angle, traditional west-European histo- 1020). One of the sons who succeeded him was
riography has not been fair to the Scandinavians defeated by Cnut. It is difficult to say to what
in its traditional description of this process. It has extent Cnut really had control over Sweden.
always followed contemporary lamentations in Around 1130 the Swedes struggled out of the
Frankish and Anglo-Saxon, mostly ecclesiastical Danish grasp and were thenceforth ruled by their
sources about the horror of Viking incursions own, native, royal dynasties.
in the West while not paying any attention to
Frankish aggression against Denmark even before
Viking attacks on the coasts of Frisia, Francia and Slav principalities
England really started. Frankish aggression was
the main reason behind the construction of a Other warrior societies of the barbarian North
mighty defensive work on the Danish-Saxon bor- were also ‘scaling-up’ from chiefdom societies to
der, known as the Danevirke. It consisted of three early states in the course of tenth century, and
defensive lines, which were dug and laid out it is no coincidence that this produced the first
between 737 and around 970. The magnificent, detailed written information. Obviously, the
circular royal fortresses whose remnants have most successful of the many chiefdoms in this
been found further inland, such as Trelleborg on vast area now began to have sufficient size and
Sjaelland, and Fyrkat and Aggersborg on Jutland, political weight to seriously defy Frankish and/or
most probably were built to consolidate royal Byzantine power. We first see this happen with
power in Denmark itself, and not, as has long the Frisian ‘kings’ or ‘dukes’ around 700, fol-
been thought, as bases for large-scale attacks on lowed by Saxon and Slav ‘dukes’ by the end of the
England and the continent. eighth century. Neither managed to stay outside
Much of Denmark had already been uni- the iron grip of Frankish power, but whereas the
fied under one king before 800. His successors lands of the Frisians and Saxons were conquered
extended Danish power over southern Norway. by and incorporated into the Carolingian Empire,
The royal dynasty that emerged around the mid- Slav warlords on the extended eastern border of
dle of the tenth century in the persons of King the Empire managed to resist even if they often
Gorm the Old, his son Harald Bluetooth and his had to accept Frankish dominance. This situation
grandson Svein Forkbeard was very successful. of supervised autonomy paved the way for the
Svein started raiding England in 994 to conquer formation of larger principalities in the course of
the entire country almost twenty years later, in the ninth century, whose origins are rather hazy.
1013. After his death he was succeeded by his In the Balkans these were the dukedoms of the
son, Cnut the Great (1016–1035), who could Croats and the Serbs, whose leaders also had to

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 PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

deal with Bulgarian and Byzantine power in the Moorish Iberia

South. Further north a Moravian principality
took shape in the area of the present-day Czech Almost immediately after the conquest of Egypt
Republic. In the second half of the ninth century in 642–643 the Arab warriors turned their gaze
its princes succeeded in more than doubling the further westwards. In a little over fifty years the
territory over which they claimed overlordship; it whole of North Africa was under their control.
stretched from the middle Elbe in the north-west When the Byzantines were finally expelled in 680,
to the Drava and Tisza rivers in the south-east. the native Berber tribes united in a confederation
This ‘Great Moravia’ proved to be short-lived; and offered fierce resistance to the Arab conquer-
it was destroyed by the Magyars in 906. By that ors. Some of the Berbers had been Romanised and
time there were two other strong principalities lived in towns along the coast, while others were
with early state-like features and led by noble still nomads. In 705 the whole of the Maghreb
families with a long future ahead: the dukedoms became the province of Ifriqiya, independent
of Bohemia (or of the Czechs) and Poland (or of of Egypt. It is possible that reports of confusion
the Polane). According to Ibrahim ibn Yaqub, an in Visigothic Spain in 711 led to the crossing of
Arab traveller who visited Bohemia in the mid- the Straits of Gibraltar of an army force of about
960s, Poland was by far the largest, most powerful 9,000 Islamised Berbers, led by the governor of
and best organised principality in the world east Tanger, Tariq. The invaders had a rapid victory
of Germany. Its duke, Mieszko of the Piast family, near Medina Sidonia, and then advanced on
would have raised taxes in coin. From the reve- the royal capital at Toledo without meeting any
nues he paid his bodyguard of 3,000 elite warriors opposition. Partly by military conquest, partly by
handsomely, including a child allowance. concluding treaties with native Hispano-Gothic

PLATE 3.3 Moorish stronghold and city walls of Obidos, Portugal.

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 T hE pO WER fU L A ND T hE pO OR : SOC I E Ty A ND E C ONOM y I N Th E fR A NK I S h K I NGDOMS A ND b E yOND 3 CHAPTER

BOX 3.4 ST JAMES OF COMPOSTELA

According to twelfth-century sources, Charlemagne unsuccessfully besieged the Moors in Pamplona. But
due to St James’s intervention the walls collapsed, enabling the Christians to conquer the city. Charlemagne
presented part of the plundered Saracen gold to the church of Santiago and to the foundation of other
churches dedicated to St James. This reliquary from c.1200 depicts the saint’s miraculous intervention.

Although Acts 12:2 tells us that James was buried outside the walls of Jerusalem in the time of King
Herod, a Latin Breviarium of the Apostles dating from the late sixth century wrote that James had
left the Holy Land to preach in Spain, where he died. This view fitted in perfectly with efforts of the
Visigothic Church to introduce its own liturgy. During the seventh century numerous altars and
churches were dedicated to St James. In the late eighth century, after the Muslim conquest, Gallic
clergy used his cult to give Spain’s disorganised and oppressed Christians something to hold on
to. In a liturgical hymn of 785 St James was presented as ‘the shining golden head of Spain, our
leader and patron saint’. Then, between 818 and 834, a tomb was discovered in Galicia, brightly
lit by a star (stella) that hung over the field (campus). It was taken as a sign from heaven that this
was the burial place of St James (San Iago in Spanish). Since then St James has been the patron
saint of Christian Spaniards and supported them in their centuries-long Reconquest against the
Muslims. Santiago de Compostela quickly became the second most important place of pilgrimage
in Christian Europe, after St Peter’s in Rome.

Source: William Melczer, The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela (English translation with introduction,
commentary and notes) (New York: Italica Press, 1993).

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 PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

lords, the Muslim warriors reached the eastern conversos, were not treated as equals of the origi-
Pyrenees within ten years. Only the small king- nal Muslims, but they had chances to climb the
dom of Asturias, on the Cantabrian coast, and the social ladder as clients.
adjacent territories of the Basques straddling the The core region of Muslim al-Andalus – the
western Pyrenees, remained outside their reach. Arab name for the Iberian peninsula – was divided
From that point, Muslim armies made raids over into provinces that stemmed from the dioceses
the mountains as far as the Rhône valley, but their of the Late Roman and Visigothic period. From
fervour was broken when they suffered defeat at 716 Córdoba was the seat of the central govern-
the hands of the Frankish leader, Charles Martel. ment. Originally the administration was in the
In 751 they had to relinquish Narbonne. Three hands of governors serving under the authority
decades later the initiative was taken over by the of the governor in Kairouan/Qayrawan (Tunisia)
Franks. Around 800, Charlemagne established and eventually under the Caliph of Damascus.
the ‘Spanish March’, which extended Frankish The fall of the Umayyad dynasty in 750 led to
power to Barcelona. the de facto independence of small kingdoms
The quick successes of Tariq’s army invited a in the Maghreb and Iberia. This changed in
steady immigration of maybe a total of 20,000 756, when Abd ar-Rahman, a descendant of the
warrior colonists from both the Arab peninsula Umayyads and a political exile, succeeded in hav-
and the Maghreb. It means that the Muslim ing himself recognised as ruler in Córdoba with
conquerors only made up a small minority in the title of emir. After his far descendant, Abd ar-
their new homeland, just like the Vandals and Rahman III, had suppressed the uprisings of new
Visigoths had done a few centuries before. Later Muslims in the mountainous southern provinces,
‘immigration waves’ from North Africa will hardly which had been going on for years, he proclaimed
have altered the balance. The native population the orthodox caliphate of Córdoba in 929. With
of Iberia gradually became Islamised over the this he displayed his legitimacy as an Umayyad
centuries. One-eighth were Muslim in the eighth (although he was a half-breed with blond hair and
century, a quarter in the ninth century and a blue eyes) distinct from the Abbasid caliphate in
third in the tenth century. So, at no time did the Baghdad and from the heterodoxy of the Fatimids
Muslims form a numerical majority. Christians who had established their own caliphate in Ifriqya
and Jews were treated with reasonable tolerance. (present-day Tunisia) twenty years earlier.
The Christian communities were allowed to hold Until the close of the tenth century, Umayyad
religious services, their bishops were respected, rule was strong enough to prevent attempts at
they enjoyed a large degree of autonomy and Christian reconquest making serious headway.
justice was administered following their own Then the caliphs started to lose their hold on the
customary law. Jewish communities, which were extensive outlying areas or ‘marches’, which they
particularly important in towns, will have wel- controlled only for a short time or only in part.
comed the new Islamic authorities as liberators
after the repression they had suffered under the
Christian Visigoths. Both Christians and Jews had Points to remember
to pay taxes, though, as dhimmi (non-Muslims),
in accordance with Islamic law. In the course of ■■ Economic and political conditions in the
time many Christians adapted their way of life, post-Migration Period favoured the expan-
their language and manner of dress to the domi- sion of land-based lordship in combination
nant Arabic culture: they were called musta’rib with the formation of a class of dependent
in Arabic, which is translated as ‘Mozarabic’. peasants tied to the land, which also implied
Christians and Jews who did convert to Islam, subjection to the authority of the landlord.

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■■ This process was further reinforced when ordi- courts of law, the army, and the public offices
nary free men were relieved of their obligation of count, margrave and missus dominicus
to fulfil public duties such as attendance of (royal envoy).
public law courts and military service. ■■ In order to reinforce their personal bond
■■ In the Frankish world, but also Anglo- with the aristocracy Carolingian rulers made
Saxon England, many large estates became extensive use of vassalage. However, this in
organised as bipartite manors, whose most no way made the Carolingian Empire a ‘feu-
innovating feature was that, in exchange for dal state’.
possessing their own farm, serf peasants were ■■ A turning point in the history of England
obliged to work the land which the manor was the reign of King Alfred of Wessex (871–
lord had ‘reserved’ for direct exploitation. 899), who brought the Viking advance in
■■ Outside the former frontiers of the Roman England to a halt, and prepared the way for
Empire the characteristics of a small-scale a royal dynasty that could style itself ‘kings
chiefdom society, centred around local war- of England’.
lords and their armed retinues, survived longer. ■■ From the middle of the eighth century
■■ In general, the early medieval world was a onwards, the larger part of the Iberian pen-
world in which towns and trade were only of insula was consolidated into the Umayyad
secondary economic importance. The most emirate of Córdoba, which prevented attempts
conspicuous part of trade was international at Christian reconquest from making headway
commerce in prestigious objects that was until the close of the tenth century.
closely linked to the extensive gift-exchange
systems on which aristocratic society thrived.
■■ Vikings were men from Scandinavia who were Suggestions for further
active outside Scandinavia as both traders
and raiders. Larger-scale, aggressive, Viking
reading
invasions led to permanent migration of Barbero, Alessandro (2004), Charlemagne: Father of a
large numbers of Scandinavian settlers to the Continent (Berkeley: University of California Press)
British Isles, the Channel coast (Normandy) (orig. Italian, 2000). Of the new historical biogra-
and the Dnieper and Volga basins in Russia. phies of Charlemagne that have appeared over
the last two decades, Barbero’s is certainly one of
■■ The most successful successor state to the
the most readable and accessible for non-specialist
Roman Empire in the West proved to be
readers. It also deals with all important aspects of
the Frankish kingdom or kingdoms, ruled by Charlemagne’s reign.
the Merovingian dynasty from the end of the Hodges, Richard (2000), Towns and Trade in the Age
fifth century until the middle of the eighth of Charlemagne (London: Duckworth). Brief, idio-
century. syncratic, yet stimulating introduction to the
archaeological and (but less) historical problemati-
■■ The Carolingian Empire, constituted after
sation of urbanisation and long-distance trade in the
a coup d’état by the mayor of the palace early Middle Ages.
Pippin the Short in 749–754, reached its apo- McCormick, Michael (2001), Origins of the European
gee under Charlemagne (768–814), who on Economy: Communications and Commerce, ad 300–
Christmas Eve 800 was crowned as Roman 900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Monumental reconstruction of early medieval
emperor.
commerce on the basis of exhaustive analysis of
■■ Whether one would call Charlemagne’s
written, archaeological and numismatic evidence.
empire a ‘state’ depends on one’s appreciation Reconstructing roads, trade routes, traffic and trav-
of the effectiveness of its key state institutions, ellers, McCormick’s book makes the Dark Ages look
such as capitularies (royal decrees), public like an awfully busy place.

125
 PART I TH E E A RLY MIDDLE A GES, 300–1000

Smith, Julia M.H. (2005), Europe after Rome: A New Wickham, Chris (2005), Framing the Early Middle Ages:
Cultural History 500–1000 (Oxford: OUP). Highly Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800 (Oxford: OUP).
commendable cultural history of early medieval Awe-inspiring and extremely well-documented
Latin-Christian Europe. The book has a thematic top-down description of the local societies that took
approach, and deals in a modern, cultural-historical shape in both the post-Roman world of the West
way with broad themes such as literacy, kinship, and the neo-Roman world of the East, on both sides
genderisation, ethnicity, gift-giving, social identity, of the Mediterranean. A classical social-structuralist
honour, life and death and the ethics of (royal) rule. approach that is rare today.

126
Part II
The central Middle
Ages, 1000–1300
4 Early kingdoms and
principalities

Charlemagne’s legacy the German part of the Roman Empire, never

from Italy or Provence. Under King/Emperor
The East Frankish and West Frederick I Barbarossa (1152–1190) the adjective
Frankish kingdoms ‘holy’ was added. From that moment the offi-
cial name has been the Holy Roman Empire.
Of the three kingdoms that sprang from the Only the Roman kings could aspire to the title of
Treaty of Verdun (see Chapter 3) only Lothar’s Roman emperor; all they had to do was after their
Middle Kingdom was subjected to further subdi- coronation as Roman king at Aachen, go to Rome
vision; in the end, its three main parts – all three and have themselves crowned emperor there by
kingdoms – were successively added to the East the pope. As we shall see further on in this chap-
Frankish kingdom: Lorraine in 925, Lombardy/ ter, this was not always an easy task, although in
Italy in 951 and finally Burgundy/Provence in the end most Roman kings did succeed in getting
1034. the imperial crown.
The conquest of the old kingdom of Italy by After the annexation of Burgundy/Province
the East Frankish/German King Otto I, which was the border between the Roman Empire and
soon followed by his claim to the imperial title, France (the new name for the old West Frankish
rekindled the conviction that the German king kingdom) came to lie along the line of the
had restored the Roman Empire. Hence it is bet- Rhône, Saône, Meuse and Scheldt. In the east,
ter to speak of his new, extended multi-kingdom the frontier, stretching from the Baltic to the
as the Roman Empire, and not as the German Mediterranean and along the Danube, had since
Empire or Germany, as most older textbooks pre- Carolingian times consisted of reinforced and
fer to do. The reason behind this may be that all colonised ‘marches’ (border territories) – the Elbe
Roman kings/emperors since Otto I came from Marches, the Eastern March, Styria, Carinthia,

129
PART II TH E CENT RA L MIDDLE A GES, 1000–1300

the Marches of Verona and Friuli, and Krajina fiefs held of the king, while those who received
(the Slavonic word for border territory). them should be considered the king’s vassals.
Within their new borders both the Roman This idea took hold, gradually but irreversibly, in
Empire and the kingdom of France housed a great the further course of the twelfth century. From
diversity of peoples, languages and regional cul- that point on we may call the kingdom of France
tures. For that reason it is difficult to say what and the Roman Empire ‘feudal states’ because
kept them together. In both, a clear tendency what held them together was not something like
towards the transformation of what originally a national identity shared by all subjects, but the
had been the districts of royal office-holders into personal, feudal-vassalic ties between the king
autonomous and hereditary principalities can be and his ‘peers’ (the noblemen of princely sta-
observed from the late ninth century onwards. In tus). This made him their suzerain, while, on the
the German part of the Roman Empire this hap- other hand, his (factual) sovereign powers were
pened at the level of dukedoms, of which there still limited to what are called the royal domains
were five (Saxony, Franconia, Swabia, Bavaria in French historiography and Hausmacht
and, from 925 on, Lorraine), in the Italian part (‘dynastic resources’) in German historiography.
at that of margravates (e.g. Friuli, Tuscany), and However, from this point on the agreement
in France at that of both duchies and counties, between what happened in France and Germany
of which there were about twenty that counted ended, and their further political fates started to
(e.g. Flanders, Normandy, Aquitaine, Toulouse, diverge dramatically: while France developed in
[French] Burgundy). the direction of a centralised monarchy in which
But what exactly the relationship between the kings succeeded in extending their sover-
kings and princes turned out to be, and what eign powers over ever larger parts of France, the
exactly determined the latter’s loyalty to the for- Roman Empire was soon to turn into a federa-
mer, is difficult to fathom. For instance, in the tion of myriad state-like principalities that were
famous description of the election of Hugh Capet factually sovereign, held together by an emperor
to the kingdom of France in 987 by the monk whose power as a suzerain was largely symbolic.
Richer of Reims, no reference at all is made to
the nature of the bond that existed between the
king and the princes – called principes Galliarum, The establishment of the
i.e. ‘the princes of the Gauls’ (sic). For Richer it German Empire
was more important to stress that Hugh, after his
coronation at Noyon, became the king of many After the Carolingian dynasty died out in the
peoples. Even when Hugh’s great-grandson, East Frankish kingdom in 911, Henry, duke of the
Louis VI, was crowned king in 1108, some of the Saxons, nicknamed ‘the Fowler’, was elected king
major princes of France – the dukes of Normandy, in 919 because of his successful struggles against
Aquitaine and Burgundy – when explicitly asked the Norsemen, Slavs and Magyars. But for the
refused to do homage to the king; they promised time being, a further increase in royal power was
to be his fideles (‘loyal supporters’), and that was impeded by the German dukes who on several
it. But as we know from Louis’ biography by abbot occasions formed coalitions to thwart the king.
Suger of Saint-Denis, these princes were fighting Thanks to his military superiority, Henry’s son
a losing battle. Suger is among the first royal and successor, Otto I, was able to escape from
advisers in France and the Roman Empire who these perilous situations: he forced rebellious
started to sell the idea that all such royal offices princes into humiliating submission, and then
as those of duke, count or margrave (also when either banished them or gave them positions
their holders were bishops or abbots) should be elsewhere. In addition, the Saxon kings tried

130
MAP 4.1 The (German) Roman Empire, 1030
PART II TH E CENT RA L MIDDLE A GES, 1000–1300

FIGURE 4.1 Family tree of the emperors and kings of the (German) Roman Empire, showing changes in
dynasties during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

to guarantee the continuity of their dynasty by frequently concealed seeds of jealousy, between
following the standard recipe under such circum- brothers and half-brothers, and between first
stances: to appoint a son as successor and have wives and later wives. Otto I made his brother
him elected and crowned during the ruling king’s Henry duke of Bavaria, his younger brother Bruno
lifetime. In Germany, this practice eroded the tra- archbishop of Cologne and duke of Lorraine, his
dition of royal election. Only when there was no eldest son, Liudolf, duke of Swabia, another son,
son as heir did other contenders have any chance. Wiligis, archbishop of Mainz, and his son-in-
This was the case when Henry II (1002–1024) died law, Conrad, duke of Lorraine (before Bruno); he
childless and the House of Saxony had died out. married his daughters to both King Louis IV of
Under the decisive influence of the archbishop of West Francia and to the latter’s rival and even-
Mainz, the duke of Swabia, Conrad, was elected tual successor, Hugh Capet. For Otto, his son of
as the new king (Conrad II, 1024–1039). Conrad’s his second marriage, he procured a Byzantine
kingship laid the foundations of two new dynas- princess. In particular, the two archbishops in
ties that were closely related and that would the family played a key role in the political con-
rule the Roman Empire for over two hundred struction of the Empire. In spite of this openly
years: the Salians (1024–1125 and 1138–1152) preferential treatment of family members by
and the Hohenstaufen (1152–1254). positioning them in key positions, there was
Family ties were an essential instrument in much discontent, and dissatisfied sons, cousins
consolidating royal power, even though they or nephews regularly rebelled.

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This proves that, as important as dynastic Byzantine princess, Theophanu. For the German-
interests may have been, they were not enough Roman kingship, this renewed link to both the
to guarantee successful kingship. In this period, Carolingian and the Byzantine imperial tradi-
kings still had to prove themselves as successful tions meant that the position of hegemony it had
warlords, and in the tenth century success in war won in Europe was underpinned by a prestigious
much depended on the king’s ability and power ideology of supremacy. This was most gloriously
to overcome regional-ethnic differences. Otto expressed under Otto III (983–1002), who had
I clearly possessed all these qualities. His stun- his former tutor, the learned Gerbert of Aurillac,
ning victory over the Magyars at the Lechfeld elected pope. Gerbert chose the significant papal
near Augsburg in 955 was the result of the joint name of Silvester II (999–1003), as a token of his
efforts of Saxons, Franks, Alamans, Swabians, affinity with Silvester I (314–335), the bishop of
Bavarians, Lotharingians and Bohemians, who Rome at the time of Emperor Constantine. In
shortly before this challenge were fully occupied the short term, this new close link between pope
in fighting among themselves. Augsburg also and emperor confirmed the latter’s hold on the
secured German interventions over the Alps that Church. In the long term, the reassessment of the
had started a few years before and which ended in papacy held the seeds of inevitable conflict over
the realisation of Otto’s imperial dreams. areas of competences. Moreover, the orientation
towards Italy, in addition to German expan-
sion eastwards, demanded considerable military
The restoration of the Roman efforts which in time placed an enormous bur-
emperorship den on the Empire’s resources without producing
lasting results.
In 951, Otto received an urgent request of Otto I stayed in Italy from 966 to 972. In the
Adelheid of Burgundy, widow to Lothar, King of north his position was never really in danger,
Italy, to come to her aid against her rival, Berengar, thanks to capable and trustworthy deputies. The
Margrave of Ivrea. Otto responded by leading a risk for his successors would be greater: after suf-
great army over the Alps, defeating Berengar, and fering a humiliating defeat at the hands of the
marrying Adelheid. He also had himself elected Saracens in South Italy in 982, Otto II was imme-
‘king of the Lombards’, the title Charlemagne diately faced with grave problems in Germany.
had assumed nearly two centuries earlier. Ten This event would set a pattern. With a measure
year later the situation repeated itself, but now of exaggeration one could argue that the German
with the pope in the role of ‘damsel in distress’ Roman kings’ fascination with the imperial
whose position was threatened by party strife in crown, that had to be collected in Italy, led to
Rome. Again, Otto answered the call, and this their neglect of the German part of their Roman
time his price was the imperial crown, that was Empire, because too often this allowed full scope
pressed on his head at Candlemas (2 February) to centrifugal forces in both Germany and Italy.
962 by Pope John XII. This happened in pub- Still, almost all the German kings from Otto I to
lic ‘amidst the applause of the people of Rome’ Frederick II made the journey south across the
that, in agreement with Carolingian tradition, Alps at some point in their reign to have them-
pledged him allegiance. selves invested and crowned as ‘Roman emperor’
But Otto’s ambitions did not stop in Rome. by the pope in the Basilica of St Peter in Rome.
He sent his armies to southern Italy, which With the act of anointing, the highest religious
brought him into the centuries-old Byzantine authority in the West bestowed a sacral legitimacy
sphere of influence. It resulted in the marriage on the emperor’s authority. In reality, the impe-
in 972 of his heir and successor, Otto (II), to the rium, the imperial power, comprised the royal

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crowns of Germany, Lombardy and Burgundy the ‘imperial Church’ (Reichskirche in German),
(still an autonomous kingdom in Ottonian times). that in the Catholic parts of Germany would
In addition, the emperors claimed a vague remain intact until into the nineteenth century.
supremacy over the kingdoms of Hungary and It does not refer to the fact that bishops and
Poland, and over the former Langobard prin- abbots were expected to give counsel – or moral
cipalities of Capua, Salerno and Benevento in advice – to the king, or that the king’s chancellery,
southern Italy. Finally, they laid claim to the that produced all the king’s charters, was led and
title patricius Romanorum (‘the first citizen of manned by clergy; nor to the fact that bishoprics
the Romans’), that in 751 had been granted and abbeys as large landowners were expected to
by the pope to the Carolingian rulers to give contribute substantially to the king’s war efforts.
them the right to intervene whenever they liked These were all quite common in other Christian
in the turmoil of local faction strife in Rome. The kingdoms as well. What made the ‘imperial
inspired young emperor, Otto III, took his Roman Church’ special was that in the Roman Empire
protectorate so seriously that he had a residence from the middle of the tenth century, bishops
built on the Palatine, the hill in Rome where the and abbots of important abbeys were invested
ruins of ancient imperial palaces could be found. with comital authority, that is, with the secular
Yet the Roman king’s hegemony over Italy authority of a count – first incidentally, but from
and Rome was never very significant in practice. Henry II (1002–1024) systematically. From that
When a Roman king entered Italy with a German moment on, they were dignitaries wearing two
army, he usually was formally recognised, while different hats: they were the ecclesiastical leaders
getting some of his royal prerogatives respected. of either a diocese or a monastic community, and
But as soon as he had left, local and regional they had been made responsible for secular public
powers were always able to regain the upper administration in a district that for bishops did
hand. Resistance was often very real during vis- not coincide with their diocese. Nowhere else in
its as well. In 1037 Conrad II stood powerless Latin Christian Europe were ecclesiastical prelates
before the closed gates of Milan, while ten years so involved with matters of the world than in the
later Henry III in vain laid siege to Benevento. Roman Empire.
In the city of Rome, the emperors were usually The imperial policy of creating prince-(arch)
represented by an imperial governor, but the bishops and prince-abbots, as they should be
northerners never became popular. Regularly, called, had two obvious benefits: one, that high
popes who were appointed through royal inter- clergymen were well-trained, erudite aristocrats
vention were chased and replaced by scions from who combined natural authority with admin-
the local aristocracy. This would only change istrative experience; the other that they had to
under the pontificate of Leo IX (1048–1054) (see live in celibacy according to the canons of the
Chapter 6). Church, so they could not produce their own
legitimate dynasties. From the same perspective
it must be clear that the imperial Church could
The imperial Church and the only function well if the Roman king had the
contest for supreme power right to select and appoint (arch)bishops and
abbots of major monasteries. And this exactly
One essential factor that explains the ascendancy was what put a time bomb under papal–imperial
of the Roman Empire in Europe lies in the fact that relations. Until well into the eleventh century
the kings called in the resources of the Church to everything was working well, if only because
support royal government in a very special and popes in this period usually were appointed by
unique manner. For that reason, we can speak of the king or through his intercession. Moreover

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the kings from the House of Saxony turned as the centre of a belt of fortified margravates. He
into Christendom’s greatest protectors and they died at the age of thirty-nine, leaving a son of six
actively supported the spread of Christianity. who had already been crowned as Henry IV.
The archepiscopal see of Magdeburg, established The long reign of Henry IV (1056–1106) was
in 967 on the initiative of Otto I, served as an certainly one of the most dramatic of the Middle
advance German mission station against the Ages. During the nine years of his minority, sec-
Slavic pagans. With lavish gifts, Otto showed his ular and ecclesiastical princes mainly took care
fondness for the church of Magdeburg. Under of their own territorial interests. The duchy of
his successors, the construction of monumental Saxony grew into a permanent hotbed of oppo-
cathedrals (Bamberg, Speyer) flourished as well sition against the young king’s rule. The Saxon
thanks to royal involvement. magnates reacted against the construction of for-
But things started to change under Bishop tresses in the eastern parts of the duchy, where
Bruno of Toul, who became Pope Leo IX (1048– ministerials instead of their own kinsmen had
1054). He, too, was appointed by the emperor, been appointed as wardens. They would con-
but he belonged to the Burgundian-Lotharingian tinue to provide the core of aristocratic resistance
movement for Church reform that strongly against the king at any moment of royal weak-
resisted secular influences in the Church (see ness. And they did not have to wait long. When
Chapter 6). In the mind of the deeply religious in 1075 Henry appointed the archbishop of
Henry III (1039–1056), who was strongly com- Milan, the most important city of imperial Italy,
mitted to the reform movement himself, there and the bishops of two towns within the papal
was no discrepancy between the fact that he sphere of influence, Spoleto and Fermo, this
appointed popes (just like he appointed other provoked a fierce reaction from the dogmatic
bishops) and the need to purify the Church from Pope Gregory VII (1073–1085). Henry was not
secular influence. Did he not consider his own only excommunicated but also deposed as king.
office to be sacred? But for the leaders of the Almost automatically, Henry’s political oppo-
reform movement their ideals were irreconcilable nents took this as a legitimate opportunity to rise
with the imperial Church as it had been set up against the fallen king.
around the middle of the eleventh century. These disgraceful events were the prelude to
During a whole century, from 1024 to 1125, one of the showpieces of medieval history. Henry
four successive German kings belonged to the realised that the only way to stay in the saddle
Salian dynasty, who, as dukes of Swabia, had was to gain papal absolution in order to re-legit-
their home base in south-west Germany. Like imise his position as king. But when he heard
their Ottonian predecessors, the Salians had to that the pope intended to come to Germany to
defend their kingship against the regional aris- start negotiations over the terms of the king’s
tocracy, for whom any sign of royal weakness reconciliation, the king saw the danger. So he
triggered opposition or even open revolt. Conrad decided to stay one step ahead of his opponent
II (1024–1039) strove to improve his position by and take action, quick and daring. In the begin-
concentrating and expanding the royal domains, ning of 1077, in the depths of winter, he crossed
the administration of which he entrusted to so- the 6,500-feet-high Alpine pass of Mont Cenis to
called ministerials, servants of unfree origin elude his enemies who guarded the more accessi-
who were deployed for military service or for all ble Brenner route, and reach the pope before the
kinds of administrative duties. Henry III submit- latter had left Italy. At the time Gregory was stay-
ted the Slavonic dukedom of Bohemia in 1040 ing in Canossa, a stronghold south of Parma of
and strengthened the south-eastern border by the his faithful ally Mathilda, margravine of Tuscany.
creation of the imperial borough of Nuremberg It was before the walls of Canossa that Henry had

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to put on the penitential sackcloth and stand in Tuscany, the contest over the imperial church,
the snow until the pope deigned to receive him. excommunication and deposition. However,
Whether or not the gesture was sincere, Gregory the ecclesiastical sanctions had lost much of
could not refuse forgiveness, and so there was no their impact. In 1121, after years of struggle, a
war against Henry. It reduced his opponents to peace committee of twenty-four princes forced
a small minority of bishops and princes. They emperor and pope to come to terms with regard
elected three successive anti-kings but their influ- to the issue of royal appointments of high
ence remained marginal, the pope’s open support clergy. Its result was the Concordat of Worms
notwithstanding. (see Chapter 6).
In 1080, Gregory VII excommunicated and
deposed Henry once again, this time accompa-
nied by a prophecy of the king’s imminent death. The Mediterranean ambitions
However, not Henry, but the anti-king Rudolph of the Hohenstaufen
of Swabia died on the battlefield. Henry retali-
ated with a synod which deposed Gregory along With the election of Conrad III of Hohenstaufen,
the rules of canon law, and elected his own pope. duke of Franconia, in 1138, another dynasty from
In 1081–1084 Henry felt strong enough to make south-west Germany came to power. In 1152,
a journey through Italy, where he took Rome, Conrad was succeeded by his nephew, Frederick
chased Gregory from the Lateran palace and had I ‘Barbarossa’ (‘Redbeard’) (1152–1190), who
himself crowned emperor in St Peter’s basilica already in 1155 was crowned emperor. To ensure
by the anti-pope. Gregory, who had barricaded his election and then to stabilise his position
himself in Castel Sant’Angelo, was rescued from Barbarossa had to make far-reaching concessions
his perilous position by Robert Guiscard, the as soon as he assumed power. Most important was
Norman ruler over southern Italy, who was a his policy towards his one great rival in Germany,
vassal of the pope and now came to his lord’s Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, and head of the
aid with an enormous relief force that became Guelph dynasty. Initially, there was cooperation,
responsible for a horrifying sack of Rome. and Henry was rewarded with a second duchy,
Gregrory’s death not long afterwards did not Bavaria. This made Henry the effective ruler of
make an immediate end to the conflict between almost all of eastern Germany, even if at the same
pope and emperor. Pope Urban II (1088–1099) occasion the margravate of Austria had been split
tried to undermine imperial ambitions by sup- off from Bavaria to be granted, now as a duchy, to
porting an anti-imperial party. In 1089, he Frederick’s uncle Henry Jasomirgott of the House
arranged the marriage of Mathilda of Tuscany, of Babenberg. But in the decades that followed
who had been a widow for a long time, with the ill feelings between the emperor and the Guelph
much younger heir of the influential oppositional leader grew and in 1180, after a deep conflict,
Guelph family in Germany. In the same period Barbarossa deprived him of his ducal dignities.
the first urban league against the emperor was This did not break Guelph power, because Henry
created in Lombardy – several more would follow remained in possession of his family’s rich estates
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the and lordships in the Harz mountains and around
end, Henry had to yield to all opposition, which Brunswick. Enmity between the Guelphs and
was led by his own eponymous son and crowned the Hohenstaufen would keep colouring politi-
successor. The old emperor died in captivity in cal antagonisms, both within the Holy Roman
1106. Henry V (1105–1125) still had to face the Empire and internationally for decades to come.
same problems as his father: opposition of At the same time, Barbarossa did all that
the Saxon aristocracy, rivalry with the pope over he could to strengthen the Hausmacht of the

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Hohenstaufen in Germany. Through marriage, Frederick made a seemingly brilliant move when
Barbarossa sought to extend his power over the he betrothed his eldest son, Henry VI, already
so-called Free County of Burgundy (Franche- crowned King of the Romans, to the much older
Comté in French), so that the influence of the Costanza, daughter of King Roger II of Sicily, that,
Hohenstaufen now stretched over the entire apart from the eponymous island, also included
south-west of the Empire. More revealing, how- all of southern Italy until the papal territories.
ever, was the emperor’s failure to add the duchies Although at the time of the marriage in 1186
of Saxony and Bavaria to the Crown domains after Sicily was ruled by Costanza’s nephew, William
the downfall of Henry the Lion. This was in sharp II, it had not escaped Barbarossa’s notice that
contrast with how things were going in France William, after five years of marriage, had not
during this period (see pp. 142–146). One of its yet produced any offspring. When William died
causes was the Hohenstaufen’s Italian aspiration in 1189, he was succeeded by Costanza, which
which brought them repeatedly into conflict with meant that Henry VI became King of Sicily. By the
the papacy and the powerful city-states of north- time he was crowned emperor in 1191 he could
ern and central Italy. Barbarossa led no fewer than claim to rule a territory that stretched from Sicily
six expeditions into Italy, but none of these lasted in the south to the Danish border in the north
longer than three years. At first he succeeded in and was interrupted only by the Papal State.
subduing the Lombard cities and in a diet held at After Henry’s premature death in 1197, the
Roncaglia in 1158 he issued a manifesto in which struggle between the Hohenstaufen and Guelphs
the king’s traditional prerogatives or regalia were flared up again during the minority of his three-
defined, and permanent royal officials appointed year-old son, Frederick II. It would last from 1197
to supervise their full enforcement. He had the to 1212, during which time Pope Innocent III
assistance of lawyers from Italian towns, in par- in his capacity of liege lord of the kingdom of
ticular from Bologna, by then already a renowned Sicily acted as guardian of the young Frederick.
centre for the study of Roman and canon law. Meanwhile, both sides had their own candidate
They provided Barbarossa’s legislative activ- crowned King of the Romans: the Hohenstaufen,
ity with a Roman varnish; in reality regalia had backed by the French king, chose young
little, if anything, to do with Roman law. Frederick’s uncle, Duke Philip of Swabia; the
Apart from that, Milan, the major Lombard Guelphs, supported by Richard the Lionheart of
city, did not give in so easily. It assumed the England, Henry the Lion’s son Otto of Brunswick.
leadership of broadly based resistance against When Otto – who had succeeded Philip on his
the emperor. Barbarossa’s terrible destruction of death in 1208 as Otto IV – began to reinforce
the largest Lombard city in 1162 could not pre- his authority over Italy, he was excommunicated
vent the formation of a new Lombard League, by Innocent III. It was the beginning of a com-
which in 1167 comprised twenty-six cities in plex international tug of war which increasingly
Lombardy and Emilia. The League held ‘parlia- came to be seen as an extension of the bitter
ments’ to organise military cooperation. In 1183, Anglo-French conflict at the time. Once again,
in the Peace of Constance, Frederick was forced to the Hohenstaufen prevailed, and Frederick II was
grant the cities of the Lombard League substantial generally recognised as the Roman king and king
jurisdictional autonomy plus far-reaching con- of Sicily; in 1220 he was crowned emperor.
trol over their surrounding rural areas or contadi Frederick’s ambition of ruling both kingdoms
(sing. contado, derived from the Latin comitatus, proved to be simply unrealistic, and Frederick
‘county’). had to make concessions somewhere. Because of
Just one year after Constance, that was so his affinity with the Mediterranean world, but
disastrous for royal/imperial power in Italy, also because the pope did not particularly like the

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prospect of the Roman Empire being united with But neither did things always run smoothly in
the kingdom of Sicily, Frederick had his eldest son Italy. In 1226, the Lombard League revived as a
Henry (VII) elected as Roman king in 1220, the strong anti-imperial alliance of seventeen cities,
very same year in which he himself was crowned including Milan and Bologna. In 1237 Frederick
emperor. Henry’s headstrong rule would raise his went to war against the league. His victory on
father’s suspicion, and in 1235, the emperor had the battlefield did not prevent that the war went
his son deposed and imprisoned for treason. All dragging on. Meanwhile, the pope had excom-
in all, Frederick’s efforts to modernise justice and municated Frederick on two occasions. The
administration in Germany along the lines of immediate cause for the second occasion, in 1239,
the professional and centralised Sicilian model was the emperor’s intrusion upon the pope’s over-
with which he was very familiar failed, simply lordship over the isle of Sardinia. It was followed
because the necessary resources were not avail- by an unprecedented paper warfare – more heated
able and local customary law would not allow even than that between Gregory VII and Henry IV
them. As a consequence, the autonomy of the – during which the emperor was accused of her-
German princes increased noticeably. Already at esy and atheism. There were many witnesses who
an early stage Frederick could not get away from had heard Frederick argue that Moses, Christ and
somehow legalising this autonomist tendency. Muhammad were all three deceivers; that a virgin
First, in 1220 Frederick II yielded to the demands birth was impossible; and ‘that a man should not
of those bishops, archbishops and abbots who believe anything that he cannot prove through
had been invested with secular powers, for an the power of his intellect and nature.’ Later on,
extension of their autonomy and for the per- Frederick was identified as the apocalyptic Anti-
manent transfer of such regalia as mintage and Christ, a crypto Muslim, a practising homosexual
toll collection. Eleven years later, in 1231, in the and a destroyer of churches who on their ruins
Statutum in favorem principum (‘Statute in Favour had built latrines and brothels.
of the Princes’) by and large the same freedom At first, the excommunication of the emperor
from royal interference was granted to all secular had few consequences. Even in 1245, when Pope
office-holders, who at that time were involved Innocent IV (1243–1254), who had fled from
in a fight with the countless towns that in their Rome to Lyons, had a synod depose Frederick,
turn attempted to gain administrative autonomy. the kings of England and France remained
From that moment on we can rightly term the neutral. Not many German bishops put in an
dukes, margraves, counts and prince-bishops of appearance at Lyons, but the three most impor-
Germany ‘territorial princes’. Older German his- tant prelates – the archbishops of Mainz, Trier
toriography saw this ‘fateful development’ as the and Cologne – now revoked their fealty to the
price Germany paid for the emperor’s unwilling- emperor and dedicated themselves to have a rival
ness to leave Italy for longer periods of time in king appointed. One of them was Count William
order to set things right in Germany. Presently, II of Holland (1247–1256), whose authority as
historians have a more nuanced view, because Roman king never extended beyond the Lower
why should a federation of well-functioning Rhine region.
states have been inferior to a toothless super- In the meantime, Innocent IV went to extreme
monarchy? This discussion also determined the lengths, instructing the clergy, the mendicant
strongly varying appreciation of Frederick II. For friars in particular, to preach a crusade against
some, he had frittered away Germany, whereas the emperor rather than against Palestine. In
others see him as ‘the first European’ or as a pre- response, Frederick’s criticisms of the clergy ech-
cursor of Renaissance princes, with their feeling oed the widespread anti-clericalism of his days,
for raison d’état. which sometimes bordered on heresy:

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PLATE 4.1 Silvester, bishop of Rome from 314 to 331 and the first called pope, baptises Emperor Constantine.
This is one of eleven mural paintings dated 1248 in the church of the Quattro Santi Coronati (Four Crowned
Saints) in Rome. They illustrate the legend by which Constantine was healed of leprosy thanks to Silvester’s
invocation of St Peter and St Paul and then baptised. This iconographic programme fitted into Pope Innocent
IV’s propaganda against Frederick II, claiming superiority of the Church over the emperor.

In truth, the enormous incomes with which The sudden death of Frederick II in 1250, fol-
they enrich themselves through their exploi- lowed four years later by that of his son, Conrad
tation of many kingdoms, make them mad. IV (1250–1254), who had made an heroic effort to
[. . .] It is therefore necessary to return the keep his inheritance together, plunged the Empire
clergy of all ranks, especially the highest, to into a deep crisis that was to last for almost two
the condition of the original Church, imi- decades. In Italy, the cause of the Hohenstaufen
tating the humility of the Lord in apostolic was lost in 1268 after its last defenders, Frederick’s
conduct. [. . .] Therefore you and all princes bastard son Manfred and grandson Conradin,
must direct all your efforts, together with us, had been killed during their struggle against the
to ensure that they lay aside all excesses and, new master of Sicily and southern Italy, Charles
content with moderate possessions, serve of Anjou, brother of the French king, Louis IX. In
God. Germany, there would be no king who was gener-
ally recognised until 1273, when Rudolph count

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of Habsburg was elected. In the intervening dec- and adversaries of either king/emperor or pope.
ades, known as the Interregnum, the autonomy The imperial party became generally known as
of territorial princes and free towns would only the Ghibellines, a corruption of Waiblingen,
increase. an important stronghold of the Hohenstaufen
in Swabia. Their opponents rallied under the
name of Guelphs, corrupted from Welfen, the
The Italian communes Hohenstaufen’s most obstinate enemies in
Germany. From the rule of Frederick II onwards,
In Lombardy, as we have seen, the emperors had the Guelphs became the rallying point for all
been faced with rapidly growing towns. Cities of kinds of anti-imperial sentiments, usually in
some importance were seats of a bishop or arch- favour of the pope. The conquest of the kingdom
bishop who had effectively taken over many of of Sicily by the French prince Charles of Anjou
the public functions of the counts and margraves in 1266 made him the leader of the Guelph-
from the Carolingian period, unless the king had papist party. The opposition between Guelphs
succeeded in remaining in control. The bishops’ and Ghibellines would leave its mark on political
secular rule over a city and diocese was also based relations in north and central Italy until into the
on their rural lordships and their connections fourteenth century.
with the high nobility who were their vassals. As In the same, dramatic phase of Italian history,
the urban population grew from the tenth cen- another phenomenon announced itself; that is the
tury, citizens strove to emancipate themselves taking over of city-states by military strongmen,
from both royal and episcopal authority in much usually from powerful noble families. By monopo-
the same vein as citizens of towns north of the lising key functions in a city-state’s government,
Alps demanded autonomy from their lords. To followed by a coup, they established autocratic
press their claims home they organised in (sworn) rule – signoria in modern Italian, while contem-
communes, which then took over local govern- porary sources rather speak of tyranny. The first
ment (see Chapter 9). By 1085 Pisa had ‘consuls’, such signori were successful generals from the
appointed by the commune, and we know that wars between Frederick II and the northern city-
in the following decades many cities in northern states in the 1230s and 1240s, such as Ezzelino
Italy followed this example. da Romano, from the imperial-Ghibelline side,
The factual stalemate between Frederick I and who became the undisputed lord of, among oth-
the Lombard League paved the way for a further, ers, Verona, Vicenza and Padua, or Azzo d’Este,
remarkable extension of the autonomy of the a Guelph general who became the first signore of
towns of north and central Italy that now grew Ferrara. In the fourteenth century the establish-
into real city-states, often of considerable size. Part ment of signorie became the order of the day in
of this process was the steady submission of the north and central Italy; it put an end to republican
surrounding countryside (contado), partly through aspirations almost everywhere (see Chapter 11).
negotiation, partly through sheer conquest. In this
way the major cities of Lombardy, Tuscany and
the Romagna extended their territories to areas of Vassal states in central Europe?
between 2,000 and 4,000 square kilometres.
In the twelfth century, most of these city-states Seen from the double perspective of
were ruled by small councils in which both the Christianisation and pacification it is understand-
old landed nobilities and the wealthy merchant able that the Empire and the papacy worked hard
families were represented. Increasingly, they to establish Christian kingdoms on the exposed
were torn apart by party strife between adherents eastern flank of Christendom. In Charlemagne’s

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time the eastern border of the Frankish world tained, Bohemia, which by this time included
had already functioned much like the frontier of Moravia, now became a kingdom within the bor-
the late Roman Empire, that is to say, the Franks ders of the Holy Roman Empire. For comparable
resorted to active management of relations with reasons the Polish dukedoms of Pomerania and
strong local and regional leaders on the other Silesia were incorporated – but, as said, not the
side of the border. In the ninth century the first kingdom of Poland, that was, and would remain,
powerful early Slav state had emerged in the independent.
area that is now within the Czech Republic: the Yet another situation was created south of
Kingdom of Moravia. It reached its zenith and Bohemia. After Otto the Great’s victory over the
greatest extension in the 870s, but was destroyed Magyars, Magyar Hungary started to become a
by the Magyars in 906. Soon it would dawn upon German vassal state as well, and initially Magyar
the Slav world that the East Franks or Germans, leaders were fairly dependent on German sup-
and not the Magyars, would be the adversary port. This was certainly the case with Prince
to reckon with. In reaction, since 960 a strong Vajk of the Árpád clan, who came to power with
alliance of Slavonic lords had formed east of the German aid – after all Vajk was the brother-in-law
Oder, under the leadership of Prince Mieszko, of the later emperor Henry II. In the year 1000
‘duke’ of the Poles. Mieszko was obliged to rec- or 1001, Pope Silvester II, with the consent of
ognise the hegemony of the German Empire Emperor Otto III, crowned Vajk as King Stephen
and pay tribute. However, when he was baptised (István in Magyar – the Christian name he had
in 966, the German aggressors lost the excuse chosen at his baptism). But in the 1030s Stephen
that they supported the conversion of pagans. started to shake off Hungarian dependence on
Mieszko was now accepted as an ally. His succes- the Empire. He also challenged the still-active
sor, Boleslaw, was able to maintain this position pagan opposition and kept the Magyars under
so successfully that he had himself crowned king control in the vast lowland plain that was pro-
in 1025 without any German intervention. But tected on the north and east by the Carpathians.
soon the Polish king’s power started to weaken. From there Transylvania was annexed in 1003
In the twelfth century Polish dependence on and Croatia in about 1100 while between 1120
Germany was again on the increase. and 1150 Bosnia became a Hungarian protector-
In Bohemia, the Germans found greater inter- ate. The incorporation of Croatia gave Hungary
nal cohesion. As early as the beginning of the access to the Adriatic Sea, to which it would cling
tenth century, the House of Przemyslid, whose for centuries. Further south, Serbia struggled out
leaders were also called ‘dukes’ in German of the Byzantines’ grasp in the second half of the
sources, gained control. From the middle of the twelfth century. It was recognised as an inde-
eleventh century they were vassals of the Roman pendent kingdom in 1217.
kings. This would change in 1086 when Henry The emergence, with German support, of three
IV, in the heat of his struggle with the pope that Christian kingdoms in the border zone between
also extended to the Bohemian bishoprics, had the Slavonic and German-speaking worlds –
Vratislav II crowned as King of Bohemia. This Poland, Bohemia and Hungary – was without
was meant as an exceptional departure from the doubt of enormous significance for the future of
normal course of things, because Vratislav’s suc- central Europe. The names and status of those
cessors were again reduced to the status of duke. kingdoms have remained a reference point for
Only after Frederick Barbarossa had crowned the political activities of their modern successor
Vladislav II as king in 1158, Bohemian kingship states (Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary)
became hereditary. But because the vassalic tie throughout all the uncertainties of history, right
with the Roman king had always been main- up to the present day.

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PART II TH E CENT RA L MIDDLE A GES, 1000–1300

France: the concentric model promising beginning to the union of northern

and southern France. Now this promising pros-
With the accession of Count Hugh Capet as king pect was shattered at once by the royal divorce.
of France in 987, after a carefully staged election, It is true that Louis soon remarried another
the French kingship had to be built up from important heiress – to the County of Champagne
scratch. For almost two centuries to come, Hugh – who after another ten tantalising years finally
and his successors had to share effective sover- bore him a son, the future King Philip II, but
eignty over France with about two dozen dukes, the joy and satisfaction of all this were subdued
counts and margraves over whom the Capetians by the actions of his ex-wife and their startling
had little or any control. Some of them were consequences.
princes of European stature and grandeur, such Within a month of her divorce Eleanor had
as Duke William of Normandy (1035–1087), who married the king’s arch rival, Henry Plantagenet,
conquered England in 1066, or Count Philip of count of Anjou, although he was much younger
Flanders (1157–1191), who took part in the sec- than she was. At that moment, however, Henry
ond and third crusades and was on equal footing happened to be the most important contender
with Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, King Richard for the English crown, which indeed fell to him
of England and King Philip II Augustus of France. in 1154. Since Henry’s titles, besides that of King
During all that time the royal domain – that is, of England, included duke of Normandy and
the territory in which the Capetians could exer- count of Maine (an annexe of Normandy), Anjou
cise direct public government and mobilise their and Touraine, while Eleanor retained the County
own army – was limited to the Île-de-France, the of Poitou and the duchy of Aquitaine (which
area around Paris, with narrow extensions to at that time included all of Auvergne), the new
Compiègne in the north and the Loire valley to royal couple ruled over close to half the total
the east of Orléans in the south. Even within that territory of the kingdom of France. This power
area they hither and thither had to tolerate the complex, usually called the Angevin Empire
high-handed authority of local lords. (‘empire of Anjou’), was also many times larger
Only from the late twelfth century onwards than the French royal domain. Besides, Eleanor
was the Capetian dynasty in a position to slowly of Aquitaine was perfectly capable of having sons:
expand the royal domain and direct royal gov- she bore her second husband no fewer than eight
ernment in a concentric movement. The turning children, four of whom were boys.
point is a typical case of small events having sig- Needless to say that the Angevin Empire posed
nificant consequences. In 1152, after fifteen years a tremendous challenge – if not outright threat
of marriage, which produced two daughters, King – to the Capetian monarchy, and it was King
Louis VII (1137–1180) reached the conclusion Philip II ‘Augustus’ (1180–1223) who would take
that his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122–1204), up this challenge with overwhelming success. It
was too closely related to him to continue liv- makes him the most important king of medieval
ing with him in accordance with the rules of the France, and one of the great heroes of French his-
Church. The real reason, of course, was the lack tory. First, in 1185, after a military confrontation
of a son, and French law stated that the French with Count Philip of Flanders, he succeeded in
crown could only be inherited through the male taking over the entire south of Flanders, which
line. But women were not excluded as heiresses to came to form the County of Artois. In addition,
principalities, and because Eleanor was the only he acquired Picardy in the north-west (the area
surviving child of the duke of Aquitaine, in area around the town of Amiens) and the County of
the largest of all French principalities, the mar- Vermandois (the area around Péronne). With
riage of Louis and Eleanor had brought about a these three annexations alone, the income of the

142
 Approximate area of royal domain COUNTY OF
MONTREUIL FLANDERS TOURNAI
Major secular principalities
Prince-bishoprics LAON
CORBIE
RHEIMS
GERMAN
Rouen CHÂLONS
DU
EMPIRE
CH

C
YO
F NO Paris U

C OHA
RMANDY R.
Se M NTY
ine PA O
GN F
COUNTY OF E

RS
BRITTANY County of
Maine Orléans
COUNTY Tours LANGRES
OF ANJOU

OF N E VE
Nantes R. Loire

Y
NT
U
County of Dijon

CO
County of Marche
Poitiers DUCHY
Poitou OF
BURGUNDY
County of
DUCHY OF Auvergne
AQUITAINE
Atlantic Clermont-
Ocean Ferrand Lyon

KINGDOM OF
BURGUNDY
Bordeaux
R . R hône

COUNTY OF GOTHIC
TOULOUSE MARCH
DUCHY OF
GASCONY
Toulouse Arles

Miles
NAVARRE 0 50 100

ARAGON Mediterranean Sea 0 50 100 150

(kingdom since 1035) Kilometres

MAP 4.2 The kingdom of France in the year 1000

PART II TH E CENT RA L MIDDLE A GES, 1000–1300

BOX 4.1 POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY IN FLANDERS

IN THE YEAR 1128
In medieval Europe, recognition of a monarch or a prince of similar rank by the most prominent
among his subjects was required, but at the same time conditional: representatives were invited
to swear an oath of loyalty as vassals or pseudo-vassals (e.g. towns). This implied that the assent
could be withheld or revoked, just as in a feudal contract. An early example of such an action is
described in contemporary Flemish chronicles that report on what happened in the year 1128.
After the murder of Count Charles the Good, William Clito of Normandy, a grandson of William
the Conqueror, had been inaugurated as the new count in 1127 under condition that he showed
respect for the privileges of the land and particularly for those of the rapidly growing cities. Within
a year he had violated so many stipulations that citizens rebelled in Saint Omer and Lille and a
broad movement of opposition arose. In Ghent, the citizens had the following request addressed
in their name to the count by a sympathetic nobleman, in the wording of the count’s chancery
clerk Galbert of Bruges:

Lord count, if you had wished to deal justly with our citizens, your burghers, and with us as
their friends, you would not have imposed evil exactions upon us and acted with hostility
toward us but, on the contrary, you would have defended us from our enemies and treated us
honourably. But now you have acted contrary to law and in your own person you have broken
the oaths that we swore in your name concerning the remission of the toll, the maintenance
of peace and the other rights which the men of this land obtained from the counts of the land,
your good predecessors [. . .] and from yourself; you have violated your faith and done injury
to ours since we took the oath to this effect together with you. [. . .] Let your court, if you please,
be summoned at Ypres, which is located in the middle of your land, and let the barons from
both sides, and our peers and all the responsible [sapientiores] men among the clergy and
people, come together in peace and without arms, and let them judge, quietly and after due
consideration, without guile or evil intent. If in their opinion you can keep comital power in the
future without violating the honour of the land, I agree that you should keep it. But if, in fact,
you are unworthy of keeping it, that is, lawless and faithless, a deceiver and perjurer, give up
comital power, relinquish it to us so that we can entrust it to someone suitable and with right-
ful claims to it. For we are the mediators between the king of France and you to guarantee
that you undertake nothing important in the county without regard for the honour of the land
and our counsel.

This remarkably clear and early pronouncement of the principles of constitutional government
under the control of the representatives of the three estates emanates from the feudal notions of
contract: a vassal had the right of resistance if he was wrongly treated. The argument introduced
the widening of this concept to all citizens; it was grounded on their mutually sworn fealty on the
basis of law. The count, however, refused the proposal, rejected the homage previously done to
him by the spokesman and challenged him to combat. His reaction refuted the notion of comital
power as a public office subject to judgement by the ‘wisest’ representatives from the three estates,

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 EA R Ly K I NGDOMS A ND p R I NC I pA L I TI E S 4 CHAPTER

united in his council. The proposed meeting of the enlarged curia, the count’s court, was never
held, and arms finally decided in favour of the citizens. During the remainder of the twelfth century,
successive counts did not repeat the same mistakes but granted new privileges to the cities; no
mention is to be found of any effective assembly of the kind announced in 1128.

Source: Excerpt taken from Galbert of Bruges: The Murder of Charles the Good, Count of Flanders, ed. J.B. Ross
(New York/London: Harper Torchbooks, 1967), ch. 95.

Kings of France from the House of Capet (until 1285): emperor, Otto IV, failed dismally at the great
• Hugh Capet (987–996) Battle of Bouvines (1214). For the time being,
• Robert II (996–1031) Aquitaine remained English, soon to be reduced
to Gascony, the coastal stretch from Bordeaux to
• Henry I (1031–1060)
the Pyrenees. Because Gascony remained a fief
• Philip I (1060–1108)
from the French crown, just like Aquitaine had
• Louis VI (1108–1137) been, even the very much reduced continen-
• Louis VII (1137–1180) tal possessions of the English kings inevitably
• Philip II Augustus (1180–1223) turned into a new bone of contention.
• Louis VIII (1223–1226) And that was not all. In the preceding years,
King Philip had also profited from Innocent III’s
• Louis IX (Saint Louis) (1226–1270)
witch hunt against the Cathars in southern France
• Philip III (1270–1285)
and Aragon, who had been accused of heresy. In
FIGURE 4.2 Kings of France, 987–1285 1208, the pope proclaimed a crusade against the
heretics. From the beginning, this expedition,
French crown increased by 46 per cent during the led by the ambitious earl of Leicester, Simon de
first twenty years of King Philip’s reign. Montfort, and known as the Albigensian Crusade
But this was just the beginning. The next (after the town of Albi, supposedly the main cen-
target was to link Paris directly with the North tre of Cathar heresy), was derailed because the
Sea, which in fact meant control of Normandy, entire population of Languedoc was too eas-
the prize possession of the Plantagenet kings of ily identified with a religious minority, and in
England. After incessant intrigues aimed at stir- bloody events such as the capture of the city of
ring discontent within the Plantagenet family, Béziers in 1209, thousands of people were indis-
Philip Augustus used the violations of feudal criminately massacred. Attempts by regional
law made by Henry II’s youngest son and new princes, Count Raymond of Toulouse and his
king of England, John Lackland (1199–1216), as brother-in-law, King Peter II of Aragon, to start
an excuse to censure him as his vassal. After a with, to limit the damage and prevent the crusad-
month-long siege of the stronghold of Château- ers, most of them barons from the north, from
Gaillard, strategically built on a rock on the Seine grabbing too much land in the area were shat-
at the entrance of Normandy, French troops seized tered in the battle of Muret (1213). For a while,
Normandy and the lands along the Loire in 1204. the County of Toulouse was held by Simon de
After Normandy the other Plantagenet territories Montfort, who then was killed in an attack on
north of the Vienne river followed one by one. the city of Toulouse. In 1229, Raymond’s son,
John’s efforts to break the power of the French by another Raymond, was forced to surrender part
forming a coalition with Flanders and the Guelph of his county to the French crown, while his

145
PART II TH E CENT RA L MIDDLE A GES, 1000–1300

daughter and heiress was given in marriage to a Hundred Years War (1337–1453), and especially
younger son of King Louis VIII (1223–1226). This in the period 1463–1532, would the French mon-
assured that the County of Toulouse would even- archy continue to expand its territory in every
tually fall into Capetian hands. direction through the systematic annexation of
Fifty years after 1180 the area under the direct previously autonomous principalities, such as
control of the French crown had been quadru- Brittany, Burgundy and Provence (formerly part
pled in the north, west and south. Only after the of the Holy Roman Empire).

MAP 4.3 The Angevin Empire, 1150–1200

146
 EA R Ly K I NGDOMS A ND p R I NC I pA L I TI E S 4 CHAPTER

The steady strengthening of royal power in of Normandy, many noblemen from her native
France, combined with territorial expansion Normandy gained influence in England. A num-
which would not stop until well into the eight- ber of earls, the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of counts
eenth century, was quite unique in Europe, and on the continent, were opposed to this. They
may well be connected with the exceptional con- found a leader in Harold, the earl of Wessex, who
tinuity of the Capetian dynasty, which reigned was proclaimed king when Edward died. He had
from 987 to 1328 in the direct male line, and to defend his position against his own brother
then until 1589 in two branches. French expan- who sought help from Harald Hardråde, the king
sivity was diametrically opposite to the ‘imperial of Norway. Their great invasion force was routed
overstretch’ which led to strong regional powers near York in September 1066. In the meantime,
in Germany and Italy. William, the duke of Normandy, had crossed the
English Channel with a large crowd of warriors
eager for booty, to fight for his family’s claims.
The making of England Nowadays, the size of these armies is estimated at
a minimum of 5,000 men. In the famous Battle of
Shortly after the year 1000 the House of Alfred of Hastings on 14 October 1066 William’s mounted
Wessex, which had ruled over England for more knights defeated the English thegns and house-
than a century, had to make way for the Danish carls (the king’s personal guard), and Harold was
king, Svein Forkbeard, who in 1013 invaded killed.
and started to conquer the country with a large Hastings and its aftermath mark a turning
expeditionary force. His son, King Cnut the point in English history, first, because from that
Great (1014–1035), finished his father’s job and point on the histories of England and France
then ruled over Denmark and Norway as well as became closely knit, and, second, because at a
England. He based his strong position of author- stroke England’s ruling elite was gone, its power
ity on his recognition by the thegns, the local taken over by another, of French-speaking
Anglo-Saxon aristocrats. Cnut was succeeded by foreigners. The latter fact set in motion a revo-
two of his sons, but in 1042 the Danish inter- lutionary change of social property relations,
mezzo came to an end, and with the accession which was unparalleled in the Middle Ages. The
of Edward the Confessor the House of Alfred new king departed from the legal fiction that, as
the Great was again on the throne. Through the conqueror of England, he could dispose of
Edward’s mother Emma, daughter of the duke all its land, and that is what he did. Domesday

PLATE 4.2 Harold, earl of Wessex, swears his oath

on holy relics as the successor to King Edward the
Confessor, 1066. The tapestry preserved in Bayeux,
Normandy, is a uniquely realistic depiction in fifty
scenes of the power struggle ending in the Battle
of Hastings. The embroidery on cloth is nearly 70
metres (230 feet) long. It was made shortly after the
events and the colours are wonderfully preserved.
The central scene has titles in Latin, and strips at
the top and bottom show animals and drolleries as
well as highly precise images such as the oldest
representation of the mouldboard-plough.

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PART II TH E CENT RA L MIDDLE A GES, 1000–1300

Kings of England: both of native, Anglo-Scandinavian extraction

House of Normandy: (the minority) and Norman newcomers (the
majority), who in return had to follow them as
• William I the Conqueror (1066–1087)
• William II Rufus (1087–1100)
knights into war. For that reason, an estate held
• Henry I Beauclerc (1100–1135) in return for military service was called a ‘knight’s
• [Mathilda (1135–1154)]* fee’ (feudum unius militis, in Latin). Soon, mili-
House of Blois: tary service could be redeemed with a tax called
scutage (‘shield money’), while land held from
• Stephen of Blois (1135–1154)
the king came to be burdened with other tax-like
House of Plantagenet (Anjou) (until 1272): payments that were often reminiscent of feudal
• Henry II (1154–1189) obligations, such as ‘aid’ and ‘relief’.
• Richard I the Lionheart (1189–1199) In accordance with aristocratic landownership
• John Lackland (1199–1216)
of this period elsewhere in Europe, land-owning
• Henry III (1216–1272)
by tenants-in-chief and their subtenants was
*claimed throne; not generally recognised
connected to lordship over the peasant families
FIGURE 4.3 Kings of England, 1066–1272 that were settled on their estates and worked the
land. In England these rather imprecise judicial
Book, the ‘description of all England’ that William franchises enjoyed by lords were expressed in the
had made in 1086, shows how this operation term ‘sake and soke’. It remains clear, however,
had worked out after twenty years of Norman that jurisdictional rights of landlords – even bar-
rule. While the king kept about 20 per cent of ons – were always limited by the rights of the
England for himself as royal domain, the remain- king and of royal officials such as sheriffs, in
ing 80 per cent was divided under about 1,100 particular with respect to the prosecution of
new landholders called tenentes in capite in Latin crimes that could result in capital punishment.
(tenants-in-chief in English). Of these 1,100 So, if the Norman Conquest had been abso-
tenants about 300 were really important, that is, lutely revolutionary with respect to the ethnic
100 of them were prelates (bishops and abbots of composition of the social and political elite, it
large monasteries), the remaining 200 were lay did not produce a type of feudal state such as the
‘barons’ or great aristocrats. kingdom of France – the Normans’ home base
What tenants-in-chief actually received were – was at the time. While there is little objection
not specified quantities of land but estates against calling the Anglo-Norman tenants-in-
called manors, after the Norman word manoir chief royal vassals or vassals to the Crown, it
(although the economic format already existed must be clear that their fiefs (honours) comprised
in pre-Conquest, Anglo-Saxon England). Usually, landed estates, not public offices, as could be the
manors were organised as bipartite estates (see case in France and the Holy Roman Empire. It
Chapter 3) whose demesnes (parts ‘reserved’ is true that the Norman kings maintained the
by the manor lord for direct exploitation) were old Anglo-Saxon title of earl, later to be followed
worked by serf peasants or villeins. The number by the continental title of duke, but these were
of manors conferred upon the most important honorary titles, to be extended to princes of the
tenants-in-chief was impressive (e.g. 793 on the royal family and distinguished aristocrats. Their
Conqueror’s half-brother, Robert of Mortain); the conferment did not involve the grant of any pub-
sum total of manors of one tenant was called an lic authority. As foreign conquerors the Normans
‘honour’. Understandably, the tenants-in-chief, were in a vulnerable position and therefore they
both barons and prelates, gave a large part of had to build a strong system of government. They
their estates to subtenants, common aristocrats used the Anglo-Saxon tradition as a solid basis.

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The shires, or counties, which still exist today The Anarchy and the House of
within practically the same boundaries, date
Plantagenet
from that time, as do the local districts called
hundreds into which they were divided. The king After the Conqueror’s death, his work was vig-
appointed a sheriff to each shire, most of them orously pursued by his sons William II Rufus
high Norman aristocrats, who had fiscal, military (1087–1100) and Henry I (1100–1135). The latter,
and judicial responsibilities. However, the office whose sobriquet ‘Beauclerc’ refers to the general
of sheriff never became hereditary, it was never idea that he was ‘well served by his clercs’, is seen
granted as a fee (enfeoffed), and from early on as an astute, even if inflexible and cruel, states-
sheriffs were literally held accountable for their man, who determined the direction in which key
action, that is to say, they had to submit yearly administrative institutions were going to move
accounts of receipts and expenses. (to be discussed in more detail on pp. 161–162).
In sum, one could argue that Anglo-Norman However, much of Henry’s work was undone when
England was both the most and the least ‘feu- he died in 1135 with only a daughter alive. This
dalised’ kingdom of later medieval Europe: Mathilda (‘Maud’), widow of the Roman emperor,
the most because all the land of the kingdom, Henry V, and remarried to Geoffrey Plantagenet,
with the exception of the royal domains, was count of Anjou and Touraine, claimed the throne,
enfeoffed; the least because public offices were promised to her by her father, against the opposi-
never the object of enfeoffment, which means tion of a Norman party, led by a grandson of the
that in England much less of what we nowadays Conqueror in the female line, Stephen, the count
consider to fall under the category of public of Blois. England was now plunged into a civil
authority was mediatised than in the feudal states war, the Anarchy, which lasted for fourteen years
on the continent. Therefore, there was no move (1139–1153) and ended in Stephen’s recognition
towards the formation of autonomous principali- of Mathilda’s son by her second marriage, Henry
ties in England, with the exception maybe of the Plantagenet, count of Anjou, as sole rightful heir
Welsh Marches. The Anglo-Norman barons who to the English throne.
acquired land and castles there, the so-called As a king, Henry II (1154–1189), whose
Marcher lords, were granted a larger amount of marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine with all its
autonomy from royal interference, for strategic consequences has already been discussed, made
reasons, than normal tenants-in-chief had. a profound impression. Henry was a forceful
When the Conqueror passed away in 1087, personality, an indefatigable traveller through
the ‘restyling’ of the governance of England as his own realm, who must be given credit for
just described was still very much in the making. reversing some of the decentralising tendencies
That also appears in Domesday Book. It describes that were set in motion during the Anarchy,
per shire how many royal estates there were and in particular the development of autonomous
which tenants-in-chief held manors, and who local lordships. He also prevented the key royal
had a say in (parts of) boroughs or towns. It is offices of sheriff and (chief) justiciar from becom-
followed by a close inventory for each and every ing hereditary. However, Henry’s long reign was
manor of all the means of production present: tainted by two other long-standing issues: the
number of peasants (free and villein), of livestock, repeated rebellions of his sons and his conflict
capital goods (ploughs, mills etc.), rounded off with the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas
with an estimated (yearly) value of its proceeds. Becket. The reasons behind the former were
In this way, the king got a better view of the assets partly purely coincidental: Henry just happened
of his kingdom and their distribution among the to have a number of capable sons who all grew
aristocracy and the Church. up to maturity and then asked their father for a

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stake in the wielding of power. Henry met these firm resolve to limit the benefit of clergy (see
demands by having his oldest son crowned king, Chapter 2). The king was annoyed in particular
while the second one was appointed duke of with the ecclesiastical courts’ claims to exclusive
Aquitaine and the third one married to the heir- jurisdiction over all clergy and all Church lands,
ess of the County of Brittany. The lack of a land even when criminal matters were involved.
for his youngest son, the late arrival John, was But just as Thomas had served his new master
compensated with the promise of the kingdom unswervingly when he had been made chancel-
of Ireland, yet to be conquered – a first attack was lor, in his position as archbishop he would devote
launched in 1171–1172, with little success. But himself wholeheartedly to the defence of the
Henry was not disposed to give any one of his liberties of the Church. In the spirit of Church
sons a real say in any matter that would diminish reform, he now tried to resist any infringement
his own authority. Feelings of discontent, even on clerical privilege, but also demanded total
hatred, about this were stirred up by other players obedience from other bishops and even went so
in the field, like their mother, Queen Eleanor, or far as to denounce several named high courtiers
the cunning King Philip of France. The result was as immoral and depraved. Within a few months
a series of nasty war-like rebellions. after his appointment as archbishop, Thomas
The Becket affair only added to the troubles. Becket had succeeded in deeply annoying every
Even if England had no ‘imperial Church’ in the segment of the English elite, including the king.
way the Holy Roman Empire had, because bish-
ops and abbots were never invested with secular
public offices, the English king always claimed
a say in the appointment of at least the pri-
mate of the Church in England, the archbishop
of Canterbury. So, there was nothing unusual
about Henry’s engineering of the appointment
of his chancellor, Thomas Becket, to the see of
Canterbury in 1162, although Becket was not
even in major orders at the time. Becket was a
typical parvenu. As the son of a wealthy London
wine merchant and purveyor to the royal house-
hold he had studied for short periods of time
in Paris, Bologna and Auxerre. He successively
became clerk to the archbishop of Canterbury,
archdeacon of Canterbury cathedral, and, at the
end of 1154, chancellor to the new king, Henry II.
In that latter function Becket made himself par-
ticularly unpopular with the bishops and abbots
by his relentless demand for financial contribu-
tions to the royal campaigns while at the same
time he had no scruples about enriching himself
at their expense.
With his encouragement of Thomas’s appoint-
ment as primate of England, Henry must have
expected that the energy and decisiveness of his
faithful servant would help him to further his PLATE 4.3 The murder of Thomas Becket.

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Henry hit back by putting Thomas on the spot interests that were better articulated, more gener-
during a meeting of the magnates of the kingdom ally imposed and more coercively enforced.
– the high clergy, barons and holders of royal Like the Conqueror before him, Henry II was
office – at Clarendon in January 1164. He made succeeded by two of his sons: first Richard I the
Thomas, and after him the other bishops, swear Lionheart, then John Lackland. At first sight
in good faith to observe the laws and customs of there are similarities. For instance, it is tempting
the realm. Once these had been put down in writ- to pair Richard with Rufus and John with Henry I:
ing in the famous Constitutions of Clarendon, the first two both dashing knights, the second
they proved to be formulated entirely to suit the two both calculating schemers. At a closer look
king, and Thomas immediately revoked them. all four of them – not just Beauclerc – were ‘well
A few months later he had to flee the country. served’ by bureaucratic counsellors, capable of
Six years of self-chosen exile in French monas- taking care of all kinds of problems of govern-
teries followed, which would only end thanks to ment and finance that dashing chivalry and dark
papal intervention. Formally reconciled with the plotting created. These new bureaucrats were
king, Becket at last returned to England at the end often men of obscure origins, who were ‘raised
of 1170. But the archbishop had not learned his from the dust’ to the pinnacle of power, particu-
lesson and his intransigence and tactless actions larly in the holding of the office of chief justiciar,
soon brought matters to a head again. On 29 which, from the reign of Henry I onwards,
December, four of the king’s knights took mat- became the most important position in the royal
ters into their own hands and rode to Canterbury, bureaucracy. It is also thanks to them that the
where they murdered the archbishop in front of monarchy survived profound political and finan-
the altar in the cathedral. cial crises, such as the capture and ransoming of
Now, the affair turned against Henry, because Lionheart in 1192–1194, the loss of Normandy
soon after his death Becket was revered as a mar- in 1204, and the interdict placed on England in
tyr of tyranny. Miracles were attributed to him; 1208 after King John had refused to accept the
pilgrims flocked to his grave. Canterbury would appointment of the papal candidate to the vacant
grow into one of the most popular places of see of Canterbury.
pilgrimage of late medieval Europe. Already in In the end, only King John had any limitations
1172 Becket was canonised, and under threat imposed on his powers by his barons. Years of war
of a papal interdict Henry was forced to admit with France over his overseas possessions made
that he was the cause of Thomas’s cruel death him increase his demands on both barons and
and to do penance at the grave in Canterbury commoners. Not only did he by far exceed what
cathedral, where a company of (probably nerv- was commonly felt as fair and in accordance with
ous) bishops and monks gave their king hundreds the law and custom, he moreover lost his battles
of strokes with a whip. The king also had to and gave up ancestral territory – Normandy – in
retract all items of the Clarendon Constitutions which many English barons owned large estates.
that were disadvantageous to the Church. In John’s utter failure to turn the tide against Philip
this way, the Church had gained the upper hand of France while putting the screws on his barons
after all, so it seemed, although the price that finally led to open rebellion in the spring of 1215.
was paid was a high one. But the Church’s vic- To save his kingdom, the king had to give in, and
tory would prove to be ephemeral, because in the he did so in a remarkable document: the Magna
late Middle Ages the relations between Church Carta (see Box 4.2).
and state were changing rapidly and irreversibly.
Everywhere, ecclesiastical privileges came under
pressure as soon as they clashed with secular state

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BOX 4.2 THE KING AND THE LAW IN THE

MAGNA CARTA, 1215
The Magna Carta (‘the Great Charter’) – promulgated on 15 June 1215 after weeks of negotiating
between King John Lackland and the rebel barons, supported by the city of London – contains
no fewer than sixty-three articles. Most are directed against various forms of royal (and official)
arbitrariness in the application of law and the use of justicial force with the purpose of extorting
money from the nobility and other free subjects. Many items are, therefore, conditional (art. 12) or
formulated in the negative (art. 16). They should be read as reactions against specific abuses that
were instigated by the king. The same holds true for the few provisions that seem to be formulated
as universal principles of law, in particular the famous articles 39 and 40 – these also have to be
read first and foremost as reactions against concrete wrongs. In this, limited, sense, one could call
the Magna Carta a document in which, implicitly, the idea is expressed that even a king has to
obey the law. Whether this really was the first occasion remains to be seen. It is certain that the
Magna Carta stands in a tradition that at least goes back to the coronation charter of John’s great-
grandfather, King Henry I.

[12] No scutage or aid is to be levied in our realm except by the common counsel of our realm,
unless it is for the ransom of our body, the knighting of our eldest son, or the first marriage of
our eldest daughter, and for these only a reasonable aid is to be levied. Aids from the city of
London are to be treated likewise.

[16] No one will be compelled to perform more service for a knight’s fee or for any other free
tenement than is due therefrom.

[39] No free man will be taken or imprisoned or disseised or outlawed or exiled or in any
way ruined, nor shall we go or send against him, save by the lawful judgement of his peers
and by the law of the land.

[40] To no one shall we sell, to no one shall we deny or delay right or justice.

Already within weeks after its enactment the Magna Carta proved to be worth less than a straw.
The king refused to implement its provisions, the pope declared the whole document null and
void, and the dissensions between king and barons degenerated into a civil war. That the great
charter did not end up in the dustbin of history had everything to do with the unexpected death
of King John in the autumn of 1216. In order to get his minor son Henry (III) accepted as successor
to the throne, young Henry’s wardens had the Magna Carta reissued, now as a coronation charter.
A revised and shortened text version was made in 1225, and that version would become the docu-
ment that had to be sworn by the king of England on all important occasions. In hindsight one
could say that the death of a king saved the life of a great charter.

Source: Text taken from Nicholas Vincent, Magna Carta. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: OUP, 2012), Appendix.
See also David Carpenter, Magna Carta (London: Penguin, 2015).

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Iberia Trade and plunder also brought slaves from east-

ern Europe – one of the Arab words for slaves,
In the tenth century the caliphate of Córdoba saqaliba, is a corruption from Sclavones, Slavs. In
had emerged as a major power in southern the eighth century Arab traders used techniques
Europe. Its economic and cultural development that were to be taken over by the Latin-Christian
was far ahead of that of Latin-Christian Europe. world only centuries later: association, credit,
In the irrigated regions of Andalusia, and along money transfers and payment by cheque (from
the east coast of Spain, there was widespread the Persian word sakh), and capital reinvestment.
market gardening and agriculture, with a great In the towns of al-Andalus the different ethnic
variety of products: cane sugar, various spices, and religious communities lived in separate
cotton, linen, grain, rice, wine, dates and even neighbourhoods but had close contact with each
some semi-tropical fruits were exported to North other. Craftsmen of luxury goods specialised in
Africa and other parts of the Islamic world. State leather-working, arms-making, the production of
revenue rose from 600,000 gold dinars in around glass, paper and ceramics, and silk-, textile- and
800 to 6,250,000 dinars in around 950 – more carpet-weaving.
than tenfold. The city of Córdoba grew into a The court (alcázar) at Córdoba was a prominent
metropolis of several hundred thousand inhab- centre of culture. Caliph al-Hakam II (961–967)
itants, 3,000 mosques and 300 bath-houses. collected a library of 400,000 manuscripts. Even
Only Constantinople and Baghdad – and a cen- if that number is exaggerated it stood in marked
tury later, Cairo – were of a similar size. The contrast with the largest libraries in western
large size of Mediterranean cities could only be Christendom, those of the popes in Avignon
sustained thanks to intensive, highly produc- and the Sorbonne library in the fourteenth cen-
tive agriculture and extensive trade. For a long tury, neither of which contained more than
time, Muslim Iberia’s trade was mainly directed 2,000 volumes. Caliph al-Hakam also enlarged
to other parts of the Islamic world, far less to the Mezquita, the great mosque of Córdoba,
the Latin-Christian parts of the Mediterranean. and placed magnificent Byzantine mosaics in its
Besides, in Christian-Muslim contacts, little dif- mihrab, the prayer wall facing Mecca.
ference was made between trade and plunder. Over the course of the eighth century the Arab
Only in the twelfth century did this radically language and Islam – the latter used the former
change, and western trade with the Iberian pen- exclusively – came to dominate in the conquered
insula would expand sizably. Before that time, the areas. Through them the diversity of peoples and
Islamic world itself, even when no longer politi- political regimes jelled, without really eliminating
cally unified, offered a vast market that stretched the disparities between the different population
from Portugal to Persia. This trade brought prod- groups. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the
ucts like silk and spices from the Far East to the growing homogenisation of Arabic culture in al-
Muslim Middle East, North Africa and Iberia. Andalus led to an exodus of Mozarabs (Arabised
Spices formed the basis of advances in pharma- Christians) to the Christian kingdoms in the
cology in which Arab doctors, building on the north, which began to adopt a more aggressive
knowledge of their Greek predecessors, invented attitude. Military expeditions caused the two
preparations containing gum, sugar, musk, nut- cultures to grow apart, both stressing their indi-
meg, cloves and so forth, which were combined vidual character more strongly. Homogenisation
in syrups and elixirs (both words come from and integration exacerbated the polarisation on
Arabic). either side of the border zone. Yet during the
There was a constant supply of gold and eleventh and twelfth centuries, in the towns
slaves from inland Africa to the Islamic regions. and at the courts of al-Andalus, cultural activity

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flourished, becoming highly refined and many- nally based on strict moral principles, which
sided. It included sophisticated architecture, were at odds with the liberal Ibero-Arabic tradi-
various branches of science – astronomy, medi- tion. This worsened the relationship with the
cine, pharmacology, botany (botanical gardens Christians who became more militant, and, in
were established in Córdoba and Toledo) – juris- 1125–1126, King Alfonso I of Aragon and Navarra
prudence, theology and philosophy. The royal (1104–1134) led a Christian army as far south as
courts vied with each other in cultural matters: Málaga. It would last another two decades before
troubadours’ poetry sprang up, emotional, pro- Almoravid rule in Morocco and al-Andalus came
fane – even libertine – and dealing with the to an end after rival groups of Berber tribes had
liberated position of women. Love, battle and united in a religious programme that embraced
nostalgia were themes later to be adopted by the jihad, holy war, first of all against the Almoravids.
courtly lyrics of western Europe (see Chapter 5). They were known as al-muwahhidun, Almohads
The fundamentalist regimes of the Almoravids (‘those who profess the oneness of Allah’). After
and Almohads were a puritanical reaction to this the Almohads had proclaimed their own cali-
secularised culture. phate, they found a new, ruthless leader in Abd
At the beginning of the eleventh century, the al-Mu’min (1132–1163), who was feared for the
caliphate of Córdoba lapsed into anarchy as a mass executions and purges to which he gave
result of crises in the succession, and in 1031 it was orders. His first military operations in al-Anda-
even formally abolished. It crumbled into more lus, in 1147, were equally brutal, yet part of the
than twenty small kingdoms grouped according population recognised him. Only in 1172, when
to ethnic origins and known as taifas (from the the Almohads were led by one of Al-Mu’min’s
Arabic muluk al-tawa’if, meaning ‘faction kings’). younger sons, Caliph Abu Ya’qub Yusuf (1163–
The rivalry between the regional Islamic rulers 1184), the Iberian jihad came to an end and all
played into the hands of the Christians. King of al-Andalus was added to the Almohad Empire,
Alfonso VI of León and Castile (1065–1109) suc- which by that time also comprised Tunisia and
ceeded in advancing deep into the south and Algeria.
laying a heavy tribute on Muslim territory. After The Iberian campaigns of the Almohad caliphs
the fall of Toledo in 1085, the Muslim princes have been called ‘the first determined attempt
of Seville, Badajoz and Málaga asked the help of [on Islamic side] to reverse the successes of the
Yusuf ibn Tashfin, the leader of the Berber tribes Reconquista’ (Kennedy 1996). That attempt got
from Mauretania that had united under strictly soon bogged down. This was partly due to the
puritanical, Islamic principles. They called them- military successes of the kings of Castile and
selves al-murabitun, ‘warriors living together in a Portugal, partly to the lack of interest of the
ribat (house)’ – the origin of the word ‘Almoravid’. caliph himself, who left Spain in 1176 to con-
In the preceding years, they had united large centrate on the North African part of his empire.
parts of Morocco, founded Marrakesh in 1070 The last great Almohad caliph, Abu Yusuf Ya’qub
and, moving northwards, taken Tlemcen, Oran, al-Mansur (‘the victorious’) (1184–1199), spent
Algiers and Ceuta. Between 1086 and 1114 Yusuf most of his time as a ruler in North Africa, but
and his son and heir, Ali, eliminated all the taifa in July 1195 he defeated King Alfonso VIII of
rulers and then marched north towards Zaragoza Castile in the battle of Campo de Calatrava. After
and Barcelona. The Muslims of al-Andalus were al-Mansur’s death Almohad power in al-Andalus
again united under one power, the heart of which quickly collapsed. A vast Christian coalition that
lay in Morocco. Pope Innocent III pronounced to be a crusade
The Almoravid government, that in 1098 was finished off the Almohad regime in a battle near
recognised by the caliph of Baghdad, was origi- Las Navas de Tolosa, on the southern slopes of

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PLATE 4.4 The castle of Montsó, constructed by the Muslim rulers, conquered by the count of Barcelona in
the middle of the twelfth century, was strategically located on the border between Catalonia and Aragon. The
Military Order of the Temple exploited it as one of its principal ‘commanderies’. Tenth century.

the Sierra Morena, in 1212. This was a turning Iberian peninsula from the Muslims – has mostly
point for Islam in the Iberian peninsula. In 1228, been described in triumphalist terms: every
the Almohad caliph left al-Andalus for good – small parcel of land regained from the Moors
escorted by a guard of five hundred Christian meant a victory for Christendom. Recently,
knights! After that, the Muslims managed to sur- there is more of an eye for the special charac-
vive only in the south. Protected by its mountain ter of Islamic Iberia, with its relative tolerance
ranges the kingdom of Granada attracted large towards Christians and Jews, and as a vital con-
numbers of the Islamic population, so that it duit for highly praised cultural and intellectual
became very densely populated. Granada held treasures from Antiquity. In the end, neither of
its own against the Christians until 1492, also these things sufficed to break the impetus of the
because it was favoured by its location and clem- southward expansion of the Christian kingdoms
ent natural environment, which fuelled a lively that ever since the eleventh century took place
trade with North Africa and Italy. along three parallel axes, that are still recognis-
In the older, European-Christian view, the able in the modern language boundaries between
Reconquista – the slow ‘Reconquest’ of the Portuguese, Castilian and Catalan. In the West,

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PART II TH E CENT RA L MIDDLE A GES, 1000–1300

after a series of military victories, the Count of Seville in 1247; then there was stagnation for
Portugal proclaimed himself king in 1137, a title another two centuries. On the east coast the cen-
later confirmed by the popes. In 1147 Lisbon fell turies-long struggle against the Muslims brought
into Christian hands. The rest of the Portuguese about the dynastic union of the individual
Reconquest took place in fits and starts; crusad- regions under the Crown of Aragon: the March
ers from north-west Europe, and from Provence or County of Barcelona, the kingdoms of Aragon,
in particular, sometimes sent reinforcements. The Mallorca, Valencia, Murcia and various overseas
lands of the Alentejo and Algarve were for the settlements of merchants from Barcelona. Even
most part taken over by the military orders which larger political mergers would lie ahead, but
ensured both the conquest and the exploitation these would never lead to a dynastic unification
that followed. Faro was reached in 1249. of the entire Iberian peninsula, at least not in the
In the central kingdoms of León and Castile, Middle Ages (see Chapter 11).
which were united under a personal union in One problem of the southward expansion
1230, the Christian advance similarly took place resulted from the shortage of peasants to work
in phases. Toledo was taken in 1085, but it was the conquered land. The land retaken by the
not until 1236 that Córdoba fell, followed by Christians was so thinly populated that the

GALICIA
Santiago de
Compostela NAVARRE
León R.
Eb
ro ARAGON
Burgos
Atlantic LEÓN
Ocean Zaragoza
AL

Barcelona
G

CASTILE
RTU
PO

us

g
R. Ta

Toledo
Valencia
Lisbon Badajoz
Las Navas
de Tolosa
Córdoba
i v ir
Murcia Mediterranean
alqu Sea
ad
Seville
u
R. G

Malaga Granada

Cadiz Border of the Almohad Empire

to Portugal (1212–1275)
Miles to Castile (1212–1275)
0 100 20 0
to Aragon (1212–1275)
0 100 200 300 Muslim principality of Granada
Kilometres

MAP 4.4 The Reconquista (Reconquest) in the thirteenth century

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 EA R Ly K I NGDOMS A ND p R I NC I pA L I TI E S 4 CHAPTER

Muslims who lived there, now disparagingly reason to add lustre and persuasiveness to their
called mudéjares (‘those who have submitted’), position by assuring themselves of the support of
were treated tolerantly in order to keep agriculture the Church. Making their function sacred helped
going. In the valley of the Ebro and the kingdom to prop up their often shaky position. The Church
of Valencia, mudéjares for a long time formed a had no objections against providing this support
majority of the population. They were allowed to as long as the prince was prepared to propagate
keep their land, have local self-rule and practise Christian moral values, to act as protector of the
their own religion. This made it necessary to give faith and to contribute to a further expansion of
even more attractive privileges to the Christian Christendom.
communities in towns and villages, which in the The purposeful sacralisation of kingship is
long term seriously limited the authority of the tellingly expressed in the following prayer at the
kings, especially in rural areas. Another reason imperial coronation ceremony of Otto I in 962:
was that in the division of lands that followed
the conquest, the monarchy rewarded the nobil- Lord . . . enrich the king who stands here
ity for its participation by granting it important with his army with your abundant blessings,
concessions of land and jurisdiction. In that way make him strong and stable on his royal
a new class of extremely rich large landowners throne. Appear to him as you did to Moses
came into being in the south. In addition, the in the burning bush, to Joshua in battle, to
principal Castilian cities, that were governed by Gideon in his camp, and to Samuel in the
a knightly class (caballeros villanos), were assigned temple: fill him with the constellation of your
control over the surrounding countryside in blessing, replenish him with the dew of your
return for their unconditional support to the wisdom which was given to the blessed David
Crown. in his psalms, and which his son Solomon
received from heaven through your goodness.
Be his armour against his enemies, his helmet
The institutionalisation of against disaster, his restraint in the days of
the state prosperity, his eternal shield of protection:
make his peoples remain faithful to him, and
The sacralisation of kingship the mighty keep the peace; may they reject
greed in neighbourly love, proclaim justice
Between the tenth and thirteenth centuries and defend the truth. May all of the people be
the foundations were laid for a whole series of filled with your eternal blessing so that they
European states that still exist today, even if their will be joyous in victory and in peace.
territorial sizes and forms of government may
have drastically altered since that time. But, as God was thus very directly involved in main-
we saw in this chapter, most of them were rooted taining Otto’s supremacy, which in the eyes of his
in kingdoms or else in comparable monarchical contemporaries must have given him an exalted
principalities. Real republics were few in medi- and powerful position. After the dual process of
eval Europe – the city-states of twelfth- and election as German king and papal approval of his
thirteenth-century north and central Italy were elevation as emperor, and the anointing belong-
an exception, and even these formally recognised ing to the rites of both coronations (respectively
the higher authority of the Roman king. It makes by the archbishop of Mainz in Charlemagne’s
sense, therefore, to first discuss the evolution of church in Aachen and by the pope at St Peter’s
medieval kingship. Given their limited means in Rome) the imperial function had definitely
of exercising power, medieval kings had every acquired a sacral character. Its visible emblems,

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BOX 4.3 A CATHEDRAL FOR A ROYAL SAINT

In 1152–1153 Cardinal Nicholas Brekespear, who was born in England and would become Pope
Hadrian IV in 1154, travelled as papal legate to Scandinavia, to reform the regional Church. He
made the long journey to a town halfway up the coast of Norway called Nidaros, which meant the
mouth of the river Nid. Nowadays, the city is called Trondheim. There he elevated the bishopric
to an archbishopric, which had a huge district, encompassing all present-day Norway, Iceland,
Greenland and the groups of Atlantic islands (Faroes, Orkneys and Shetlands). Its location was
the burial place of King Olaf (995–1030) who had been active in imposing Christianity on Norway,
but also in centralising royal power. An uprising of clans supported by Cnut, king of Denmark and
England, forced him into exile in 1028, and it was in trying to restore his power that he was killed
in battle. He soon was hailed as a saint and his body brought to Nidaros.
Around 1150 the construction of a cathedral in Anglo-Norman style began, and Olaf’s grave
under the high altar became the centre of a very popular pilgrimage. The shrine was placed in
an octagonal choir at the eastern edge of the church. It was carried out in annual processions at St
Olaf’s Day and other important celebrations. All new kings of Norway swore their inaugural oath
on the shrine, before a popular assembly.
The cult of St Olaf was probably inspired by English examples. Out of fear of King Sverre,
Archbishop Øystein Erlendsson went into exile in 1180–1183. He spent part of this time in the
Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, where the royal cult will have impressed him, as doubtlessly did the
vivid memories of the conflict between Archbishop Thomas Becket and King Henry II, just a few
decades earlier. He may have observed the spectacular cult of St Thomas in Canterbury, and he
may have seen there the Romanesque polygonal eastern church. Anyhow, shortly after his return

Death and enshrinement of

St Olaf, king of Norway. Altar
frontal c.1300. Trondheim,
Nidaros cathedral.

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in 1183, work started to restyle the Romanesque cathedral at Nidaros with its remarkable octa-
gon, which shows clear similarities with English models in York, Canterbury and Lincoln. In the
thirteenth century, a nave in the Gothic style was added at the west side, and the old Romanesque
church was enlarged and newly decorated. The screen front with two towers to the west was
finished by 1300. With its rows of sculptures, it followed the model of Lincoln cathedral and
Westminster Abbey. The porches on the south and north were decorated with figural sculptures
which demonstrated a clear programme. They illustrated the ambitions of the reform movement,
highlighted in the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 in which Archbishop Guttorm of Nidaros had
participated. On the north side, facing the town, themes of the battle between Good and Evil were
to be seen by all who entered the consecrated space. On the south side, facing the archbishop’s
palace, the sinfulness of man, and the punishments that await him after the Final Judgement, are
represented.
In 1537, the Lutheran Reformation led to the plundering of the cathedral’s treasures. The nave
and the west front fell into decay, precipitated by the disintegration of the soapstone. The coro-
nation of the new king of Norway and Sweden (from the French House of Bernadotte) in 1818
took place in a cathedral whose nave was a roofless ruin with walls reduced to their lowest layer.
Patriotic rhetoric led to an ideologically driven restoration programme, which was started in 1869.
The nave was entirely restored in 1930, and the rebuilding of the west front was completed in
1969. The last statue was placed as late as 1983. The future kings of Norway will be crowned in a
dignified cathedral.

Source: M. Syrstad Andås et al. (eds). The Medieval Cathedral of Trondheim: Architectural and Ritual Constructions
in their European Context (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), www.nidarosdomen.no.

the royal and imperial insignia, specifically the who had met a violent death while defending
sacred lance, were viewed as venerable relics. the Christian faith and could duly be consid-
Other steps towards the sacralisation of king- ered as martyrs were honoured in this way. But
ship were made by generalising the incorporation also great conquerors or kings who in another
of the formula Dei gratia (‘by God’s grace’) in way had been charismatic figures were venerated
princely titles, as well as through the canonisa- as saints, with or without an official canonisa-
tion of kings. In the early Middle Ages, the Dei tion by the Church. A recent list has more than
gratia formula had long been reserved for bishops. sixty names on it, ranging from Alfred the Great
The first king to add these two most significant and Charlemagne to Olaf of Norway, Cnut of
words to his regnal title would have been Pippin Denmark, Stephen of Hungary and Louis IX of
the Short, but the addition remained unusual for France. These royal cults may certainly be consid-
kings and great princes until into the eleventh ered as early expressions of national sentiments
century. After that it quickly spread and at the in medieval polities.
same time became less exclusive, until in some Another ecclesiastical institute that was
parts of Europe even local seigneurs started to hijacked by secular princes was the Pax Dei move-
style themselves ‘lord by the grace of God’. The ment (see Chapter 6). This Church offensive to
veneration of kings as saints was certainly not curb the violent aristocracy was imitated by rul-
unusual in the Anglo-Scandinavian world of the ers who saw it as a weapon against lords who
tenth and eleventh centuries. Especially kings constantly undermined their authority. God’s

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peace thus became the peace of kings and com- the effective exercise of public authority – other-
parable princes. On several occasions in 1043, wise put, of rights to govern – within that count’s
the German king, Henry III (1039–1056), called county was withdrawn from the head of state
upon his subjects to put an end to their feuding, (the king). With an ugly word this is called the
to forgive each other and to keep the peace. His mediatisation of public authority.
successors repeatedly proclaimed a general peace As we saw at the beginning of this chapter,
of the realm (Reichsfrieden) but the regional land this situation took hold in both the kingdom
peace agreements (Landfrieden), imposed and of France and the Roman Empire in the course of
guaranteed by territorial princes within their own the twelfth century. In England, no such thing
jurisdictions, gradually became more effective happened because strong royal power, already
than any royal proclamation. present before 1066, discouraged any move
Making kingship into an office, rather than a in the direction of full mediatisation of public
charismatic dignity, was of course not brought authority. Yet another ‘feudal track’ is to be seen
about solely by the views expressed by the clergy. in the Iberian peninsula. Although in the western
Their ideas did no more than substantiate an evo- kingdoms (León, Castile and Portugal) it was not
lution that, from a purely organisational point unusual (in the eleventh and twelfth centuries)
of view, must have been inevitable. Through to enfeoff administrative districts comparable to
the extension of their lands, the most success- counties, such fiefs could always be recovered
ful contenders in the power struggle to stabilise at the king’s will. At a later stage, administrative
the territorial gains were forced to create a struc- districts became much larger but their governors
ture of government. Pacification was their first (called merinos mayores or adelantados) remained
concern, above all the suppression of potential removable vassals of the Crown. Similar dignitar-
internal resistance from rivals or other subjects. ies in the Aragonese principalities, called vegueres
In this way they could also assume the aura of (from: vicarii), battles (from: bailivi) or justicias
someone serving not merely a private interest (‘justices’), were appointed by the king, and were
but the public good, in the knowledge that the therefore more like the English sheriff. A typical
Church would support them. Iberian development, surely promoted by the cir-
cumstances of the Reconquista but thwarting the
reinforcement of centralised royal authority, was
Suzerainty and the feudalisation the existence of extensive lordships in the hands of
of public authority bishops, abbots, high noblemen and the military
orders that were either continuations of allo-
A crucial part of the process of state formation dial estates or formed by grants [enfeoffments?]
that took place in large parts of Europe between from royal domains. These lordships could be
the eleventh and thirteenth centuries consisted compared to Grundherrschaften on a large scale
of the feudalisation of public authority. By that because these lordships included far-reaching
we mean to say that the exercise of essential control over people, which was only limited by a
responsibilities of public government, such as customary right to appeal to the king.
legislation and the administration of justice, were In this way in many kingdoms and compa-
on a large scale enfeoffed, that is to say, granted rable principalities a situation came into being,
as fiefs to vassals. The textbook example is the in which a king or a prince in all or parts of his
count, who received his comital power, that is principality could only take action as a suzerain
to say, the sum total of his responsibilities as a (liege lord), but not as a factual sovereign (on the
royal (public) official, as a (hereditary) fief from development of the concept of sovereignty, see
the king. It means that by the act of enfeoffment Chapter 11). Most radical turned out to be the

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situation in the Holy Roman Empire, in which centre of the Empire. However, the fall of the
the exercise of most of the king-emperor’s pub- Hohenstaufen and the ensuing Interregnum
lic rights to govern was mediatised in favour of brought any such development to a standstill.
territorial princes and free imperial cities, and There is a marked contrast in this respect
territorial princes in their turn had mediatised between developments in the Holy Roman
much local public authority in favour of local Empire on the one hand, and England and
lords. The other extreme was England where in France on the other hand. The English kingdom
the late Middle Ages hardly any royal authority was already tightly organised before the Norman
was mediatised. Conquest, but the new rulers strengthened the
As will be considered further in the next chap- system of government even further with the aim
ter, mediatisation of public authority did not stop of enabling the foreign minority to keep control
at the level of counties and dukedoms. It was also by the introduction of a system of quasi-feudal
applied on the local level; in that case the lordship landholding tied to military service, which has
over a village or, more rarely, a town was enfeoffed already been discussed. Just as happened else-
by its nominal ruler, whether he be the king, or a where, central institutions in Anglo-Norman
count or a duke or any other lord. Enfeoffment of England were created from the royal court coun-
local lordships was a much-used strategy of kings cil (curia regis) through the increasing reach of
or territorial princes to bring so-called banal their competences, specialisation and then
lordships back under their nominal control. division into independent organs. Everywhere,
Enfeoffment of public authority cannot be dis- this sort of functional differentiation first took
posed of as a matter of words. Most emphatically, place in the technical field, in matters of juris-
it should not be compared to decentralisation of diction and finances. It is possible that, in late
public government as we know this from con- Anglo-Saxon times, there was already a central
temporary European states, which is always put accounting office before which the royal receivers
into effect through democratic delegation, in par- were held accountable. In the twelfth century it
ticular of legislative authority, and bureaucratic evolved into a real financial department, called
decentralisation, in particular of the executive the Exchequer. The office of sheriff (‘shire
branch. reeve’) was certainly of Anglo-Saxon origin; the
sheriff acted as the king’s representative at the
level of shires, the English equivalent to conti-
Servants of the state nental counties. The Normans strengthened this
office and added to the sheriff’s range of duties.
Given the fact that bureaucratisation must be Among others, he became responsible for the
seen as the ‘modern’ opposite of mediatisation administration of the royal domains in his shire
by enfeoffment, it is odd to realise that the earli- and for the execution of royal warrants. He also
est traces of a modern-type bureaucracy are found had extensive jurisdictional authority, but under
in the German part of the Roman Empire with Henry II this was reduced to the administration
the rise of ministerials, an estate of unfree serv- of criminal justice. In some ways sheriffs almost
ants. From the middle of the twelfth century, the looked like modern civil servants, in the sense
German kings burdened them with all kinds of that they carried out a reversible mandate that
military and administrative tasks and offices. At was not hereditary and for which they were held
the intermediary level, territorial princes started accountable. But in other respects they were not.
to appoint their own ministerials too. They might They were not primarily selected and appointed
have grown into an estate of civil servants which on the basis of professional competence, and
could have strengthened the administrative they did not receive a real salary.

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But the most far-reaching extension of royal of local customary law, which would remain so
control was in the field of law and justice. Over characteristic for other parts of medieval and
the course of the twelfth century there came into early-modern Europe.
existence, by fits and starts, a ‘common law’, Obviously modernisation of officialdom was
which can best be equated to ‘the king’s law’. It only possible in those areas where the economy
was dispensed in the sheriff’s shire court, but also was sufficiently monetised. The first really mod-
by itinerant royal justices, who heard all kinds of ern-type officials were probably designated in
pleas, both criminal and civil, but also handled Flanders, by Count Philip of Alsace. In 1170 he
all other royal business in their ‘eyre’ or circuit. started to appoint baljuws (baillis in French),
Royal interference went furthest in the field of who were salaried and dismissable at will. Their
criminal law, because, from the start, the Norman main tasks were to maintain the count’s preroga-
kings, as foreign invaders, quite understandably tives and to collect the revenues for the count.
were devoted to the general maintenance of At the same time the count ordered the ration-
‘the king’s peace’, and keen on prosecuting all alisation of criminal law in all the large towns
breaches of it. In the trying of criminal offences by the introduction of inquisitorial procedures
the royal justices were initially led either by pri- which favoured objective examination of facts
vate accusations or by ex officio pleas of royal and evidence of witnesses over various types of
prosecutors. From the time of Henry I onwards irrational furnishing of proof that were inher-
criminal pleas were more and more dependent on ent to the traditional accusatory procedure. The
the sworn declarations of ‘juries of presentment’, count’s liege lord, King Philip Augustus of France,
local jurors who gave testimony over felonies or followed the example; the earliest known royal
statements about the reputation of notorious sus- baillis are from around 1190. Their position was
pects. In this way, the English kings succeeded at somewhere between that of the receivers on the
a relatively early date in monopolising to a large desmesnes (prévôts) and the royal council (curia),
extent the prosecution of crime – at least of all so that a clear hierarchy was established. Unlike
serious crime. In the sphere of civil law, because the prévôts, they would no longer lease their office
of the nature of cases – largely questions of right or hold it in fief, but they received a salary out
and possession – royal, ‘common’ justice was of the revenues it was their task to collect and
only available for free men, who are estimated to were bound to the king through an oath of office
have constituted no more than one-third of the (itself a relic of the oral feudal tradition). It was
population at the time. In civil lawsuits – usually their task to accept homage of royal vassals in
called ‘common pleas’ – the accession to royal the king’s name, watch over the administration
courts of justice was assured by the use of royal of the king’s justice and tax collection, and on
writs or written commands ordering that pleas the king’s orders summon the crown vassals for
be heard before a royal official; the use of sworn military service.
local informants as ‘juries’ was introduced in this Philip Augustus’s grandson, Louis IX (1226–
sphere as well. By the end of the twelfth century 1270), made an end to the itinerant character of
a central court for civil lawsuits was instituted: the baillis’ service. In 1254 he created officially
the Bench or Court of Common Pleas, residing demarcated districts, called baillages. From that
at Westminster. moment on a great deal of money was spent on
By feeding an ‘ideology of royal-dominated fortifying castles, where the baillis lived, and on
justice’ (Hudson 1996) the English Common Law strategically situated towns within their jurisdic-
indeed became gradually ‘common’, that is to tion. King Louis also appointed the first baillis in
say, applicable to all the king’s subjects. This pro- the south of the kingdom, where they were called
cess came at the expense of enormous diversity sénéchaux; their districts sénéchaussées.

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Points to remember tisation of public authority, the introduction

of new types of civil servants and specialised
■■ The typical states of the central Middle Ages government departments, and attempts at
were monarchies, that is to say, either king- extending royal justice.
doms or principalities (counties, dukedoms,
etc.) of comparable stature. Relatively rare
were autonomous, republican city-states, Suggestions for further reading
best known from northern and central Italy.
Bartlett, Robert (2000), England under the Norman and
■■ The successor states to the former East
Angevin Kings, 1075–1225 (Oxford: OUP) (The New
Frankish and West Frankish kingdoms – the Oxford History of England). Masterful survey that in
kingdoms of Germany and France, respec- no way resembles the good-old diachronic histories
tively – underwent a political development of events. Clever reconstruction of English society
during the second half of the Middle Ages and polity within all-important thematic fields
(lordship and government, warfare, town and coun-
that was diametrically opposed: whereas
try, church and religion, daily life, world view), full
Germany disintegrated bit by bit into a myriad of well-chosen references to primary source texts.
of autonomous polities, France experienced Brink, Stefan and Neil Price (eds) (2011), The Viking
increasing monarchical centralisation. World (London/New York: Routledge). Encyclopedic,
■■ The fact that in Germany a centralised multi-authored volume that brings together the latest
monarchical state did not get off the ground on the Viking history of Scandinavia from all possible
scholarly angles, including archaeology, numismatics
before the middle of the nineteenth century
and comparative anthropology and religion.
was more than partly due to the creation of Curta, Florin (2006), Southeastern Europe in the Middle
the medieval (Holy) Roman Empire under Ages, 500–1250 (Cambridge: CUP). Welcome and
firm German leadership. well-documented survey of the history of the Balkans
■■ The contest for supreme authority in the in the early and central medieval periods, unfamiliar
to students in the West. The author stresses the rela-
world between pope and emperor followed
tionships between the early Bulgarian, Bosnian and
logically from the coincidence with Church
Croatian states with their neighbouring ‘superpowers’:
reform, aimed at pushing back lay influence, the Byzantine Empire and the kingdom of Hungary.
with the growth of secular state power. Dunbabin, Jean (2000, 2nd edn), France in the Making,
■■ In the central medieval period, the political 843–1180 (Oxford: OUP). Anyone who is really
fates of England and France became closely interested in French medieval history should con-
sult the five superb volumes covering the medieval
entangled as a consequence of the Norman
period in the new Belin Histoire de France edited
Conquest after 1066 and the formation of by Joël Cornette. Dunbabin’s work remains a fine,
the Angevin Empire after 1154. These events insightful, one-volume survey of early French his-
turned the kings of England into the most tory, even if it is limited to high politics and the
powerful vassal of the kings of France, which upper echelons of society. The three sections on
formative trends are especially worth reading.
created a political powder keg that would not
Wilson, Peter H. (2016), The Holy Roman Empire. A
be completely deactivated until the end of
Thousand Years of Europe’s History (s.l. Allen Lane).
the Hundred Years War in 1453. Monumental and ambitious effort to cover in one
■■ On the Iberian peninsula, the balance of volume the complex history of the Holy Roman
power between Muslim rulers and Christian Empire, from its beginnings in the ninth century
kings shifted definitely towards the latter as Kingdom of the East Franks, to its demise in the
Napoleonic era in 1806. The narrative deals with
after the beginning of the thirteenth century.
four overarching themes: the Empire’s universal
■■ The process of state formation in the central aspirations, the development of (proto)national
Middle Ages was characterised by a further identities, modalities of governance, and authority
sacralisation of kingship, widerspread media- and community.

163
 5 Accelerated growth
The three centuries between about 950 and 1250 1300, which are relatively well documented. In
were a time of great change in many fields: eco- 1086, the year in which William the Conqueror
nomic, social, political, religious and cultural. This ordered the compilation of Domesday Book, the
chapter will first concentrate on three aspects that oldest European source in any way resembling a
are closely linked: population growth, increase in countrywide population statistic, England had
food production and concomitant changes in the 2 million inhabitants at the most: this num-
relationship between lords and peasants. It will ber rose to between 4.5 and 5 million by 1300,
then concentrate on the rural segment of the pointing to a growth rate of about 0.5 per cent
medieval economy and society; the urbanisation per year. This means that by European standards
process will be discussed in Chapter 9. Anglo-Norman England had a strong growth in
population.
But even the English figure can hardly be
Population growth called spectacular from a modern global per-
spective. Besides, the European mean for the
The period between 950 and 1250 is usually eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries will
depicted as one of relatively strong and sustained not have been much greater than that of the pre-
population growth. But was that really the case? ceding three centuries. As opposed to the model
Bold estimates for the whole of continental of an explosive growth between about 1000 and
Europe (including Russia and the Balkans) place 1300, an argument can be made equally well
the number of inhabitants in the year 1000 at for an alternative: from the seventh century, a
between 30 and 40 million, and by the begin- gradually built-up and frequently disrupted net
ning of the fourteenth century at 70–80 million. population increase between the eleventh and
This means that the population of Europe more thirteenth centuries reached the critical mass
than doubled in the space of three centuries, an necessary to accelerate the processes of commer-
increase of 0.25 per cent per year. This figure can cialisation, urbanisation and state-formation that
be compared to recent re-estimates of the pop- were so essential for socio-economic and political
ulation growth in England between 1086 and development.

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 AC C E L E R ATE D GR OWT h 5 CHAPTER

Even then we should consider the fact that manuring levels by using non-animal fertiliser
there were large regional differences. Looking at were seldom taken, one of the exceptions being a
Europe as a whole, a dividing line can be drawn wide swathe through northern France where the
roughly between the south and the west, where land was regularly enriched with calcareous marl.
the population grew considerably and was rela- A form of green manuring did take place, entirely
tively densely populated by about 1300, and unintentionally, through the regular but mar-
the north and the east (Scandinavia, Poland, ginal cultivation of legumes (beans, peas); one
the Baltic region and Russia), where growth characteristic of legumes is that they fix atmos-
lagged behind until the end of the Middle Ages. pheric nitrogen (the most important inorganic
Demographically speaking, by 1200 the popu- fertiliser) in the soil.
lation density of western Europe was already Nevertheless, three methods for achieving
greatly in excess of that of eastern Europe. more intensive soil use are known from that
period of expansion. The first and most obvi-
ous was to convert grasslands into arable land.
Volume and nature of The cultivation of grain that can be baked into
agricultural production bread provides between six and seventeen times
more calories per unit of surface area than the
However meagre the doubling of a population in grazing of cattle. Indeed, some historians believe
the space of three centuries may seem to us, it that agricultural expansion in the high Middle
would only have been possible if food produc- Ages in the first place took the form of extending
tion had also roughly doubled: roughly, because the cultivation of grain in existing settlements,
we do not know whether calorie intake remained a process known in German as Vergetreidung
the same, and we must also make allowances for (‘cerealisation’).
increasing urbanisation. An increase in food pro- A second possibility lay in pushing back the
duction can be achieved in two ways: by a more fallow. In traditional agriculture, peasants never
intensive use of existing agricultural land and used all their fields at the same time. Experience
by expanding the acreage. The first option was had taught them that after a few years the har-
feasible only to a limited extent. In other words, vests became smaller, chiefly as a result of the
it would not have been possible to double land land being overtaken by weeds. So a good part
productivity (the physical yield per unit of sur- of the farmland was always left fallow. Cattle
face area) in three centuries, even at the cost of were then put to graze on this fallow land, in
falling labour productivity (the yield per worker order to eat away the weeds and leave manure.
deployed). Until long after the Middle Ages The land was ploughed before it was seeded
an increase of agricultural production primar- again. During the period of expansion peasants
ily meant extending the acreage of arable land in different regions of northern Europe started,
– either near existing settlements or by colonis- hesitantly, to experiment with various systems
ing areas far away, even on the frontiers of Latin with restricted fallow. Best known is the so-called
Christian Europe. three-course system, in which only about one-
A formidable obstacle to the improvement of third of the arable was left fallow; a winter cereal
soil production was the low level of manuring, (rye or wheat) was grown on another third, and a
mainly due to the lack of integration between summer cereal (barley or oats) or legumes on the
arable and pastoral farming. English manorial remainder. Through annual rotation a different
accounts dating from this period show no rela- third of the land lay fallow every year. In reality,
tion at all between harvest yields and the extent three-course systems were less common than is
of livestock grazing. Opportunities to maintain often thought. On English estates, for example,

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BOX 5.1 THE MEDIEVAL PLOUGH

Compared with the prehistoric ard, the mouldboard-plough, which was developed in Europe in
the first millennium ce, demonstrated three major improvements in construction. First, whereas the
ard had just one working part – a ploughshare made out of tempered wood – that could scratch
the surface of a field, the mouldboard-plough had three: the coulter, a blade projecting vertically
downwards from the plough-beam and whose height was adjustable; the ploughshare, which was
attached asymmetrically at the end of the plough sole, the beam on which the plough rests; and
the mouldboard, a wooden plate mounted diagonally on the plough sole. Second, two of the parts
– coulter and share – were made of iron. Third, the plough-beam was no longer attached directly
to the yoke of the draught animals, at least not on the slightly more developed types, but rested
on either a sledge-shaped ‘foot’ or a two-wheeled fore-carriage. This meant that less traction was
needed and that the depth of the furrow could be varied with a couple of small adjustments. A
mouldboard-plough with a fore-carriage is usually called a wheel plough (Latin: carruca).
The mouldboard-plough was far more sophisticated than the ard: through a combination of a
vertical (coulter) and horizontal (share) cut, the clods of soil were loosened; the mouldboard then
turned the soil over. The turning of the soil uprooted the weeds, brought mineral nutrients from the
subsoil to the surface, and helped to mix any added manure into the soil. The heavier construction
and adjustable iron parts made it possible to till heavy or unstable soil at different depths. When
the plough followed a certain set direction, it created a pattern of ridges and furrows that ensured

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good drainage, and thus facilitated the cultivation of winter crops, rye in particular. Finally, a
more effective loosening of the soil made crosswise ploughing, which was essential when the ard
was used, unnecessary. In this way one of the stages of ploughing was no longer really required.
In fact, however, arables, at least in demesne, were usually ploughed more than once. Besides,
mouldboard-ploughs required two persons to operate them: the tentor or ploughman, and the
fugator or driver of the draught animals. Also, the ploughing gang was followed by another gang
with a harrow to break up the loosened clods before sowing. Experienced ploughmen were highly
esteemed in peasant communities and by estate managers. Paradoxically, therefore, ploughmen
were often serfs or even slaves, because their lords or owners did not want them to leave their
estates without express consent.
An early picture of a medieval plough can be seen in the Bayeux Tapestry, the embroidery com-
missioned by Odo, bishop of Bayeux and half-brother of William the Conqueror, to commemorate
the Battle of Hastings. This plough has no mouldboard: this may be a mistake on the part of the
embroiderer – after all, the peasant walking next to the plough lacks both legs – but coulter, share
and fore-carriage are clearly recognisable. The same picture also shows the plough being drawn
by a mule or a hinny, with a horse dragging a harrow in front.

Source: Peter Fowler, Farming in the First Millennium ad. British Agriculture Between Julius Caesar and William
the Conqueror (Cambridge: CUP, 2002), ch. 9.

it was only one of seven cropping types that were development of the horse collar (a padded leather
commonly used. collar), girth (belly-band), swingletree (a cross-
Finally, the mouldboard-plough and horse bar to which the traces are attached) and shafts.
traction combined two technical inventions Through the improved method of harnessing the
which helped to intensify production as well as pressure point sat lower, while the padded collar
to extend acreage through land development, prevented the draught animal from being choked.
especially on the heavier soils of eastern and In this way the pulling power of horses could be
north-western Europe (see Box 5.1). The use of used far more efficiently, which in turn led to the
horses instead of oxen as draught animals has use of heavier, cold-blood draught horses and
evident advantages in agriculture: horses are heavier-built ploughs and other implements, but
more manoeuvrable and quicker than oxen. also of carts, equipped with a shaft.
They are also more powerful. However there are Innovations of the sort described never appear
disadvantages too: oxen are less discriminating out of thin air, but often are the result of long,
in what they eat and less susceptible to sickness, intermittent development and adaptation. The
have more stamina, are easier to yoke to agricul- oldest archaeological traces of mouldboard-
tural equipment and, when slaughtered, they ploughs and harrows in central and western
provide more and tastier meat. The two major Europe date from the time of the peoples’ migra-
disadvantages would have been overcome during tions, or even earlier. But the types with which
the medieval period of expansion: the problem we are familiar from the high Middle Ages only
of fodder through a strong expansion in the cul- resembled their Roman and barbarian prototypes
tivation of oats (which besides being used for to a limited extent. We must also bear in mind
horse-feed was also an ingredient in beer); and that, as far as technical innovation in the pre-
the harnessing problem through the combined industrial period is concerned, there was often

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a considerable length of time between the first with the digging of canals and the construction
development and the widespread use of new of embankments and sluices and ending with
implements or methods of working. There are wind-driven watermills to expel the water from
two reasons for this. First, technical inventions completely endyked peat polders into higher-
cannot usually be utilised on their own. They lying channels. This stage was reached in the
must be applied in a particular technological County of Holland soon after 1400, but the bat-
environment or ‘technological complex’, as this tle against the water was by no means won. The
is called. The success of the plough and har- ground level had subsided to such an extent that
row depended on the availability of two scarce the peat farmers were forced to give up arable
and costly products: horses and iron. In the farming and specialise in livestock, or make a liv-
Carolingian period even large estates possessed ing elsewhere. With their knowledge of drainage
only a few iron implements. The situation would and dike-building, peasants from Frisia, Holland
have been even worse elsewhere, and probably and Flanders were welcomed as guest labourers
the vast majority of peasants had only a spade or (from the Latin hospites) when low-lying coastal
hoe to till their strips of land. Second, psychologi- marshes and peat bogs were being reclaimed in
cal and social factors play a role. Pre-industrial other parts of Europe. Right at the beginning of
peasants were conservative; their principal sur- the twelfth century they were called in to help
vival strategy was the avoidance of risk, certainly with the first phases of the Ostkolonisation,
in the absence of any market incentives to speak the German colonisation of the lands east of
of. Besides, many peasant households were not the Weser, the Elbe, the Oder-Neisse and later in
free to use expensive draught animals and farm- Prussia east of the Vistula.
ing equipment; that often had to be shared with On the European scale, the reclamation of fens
other households or were the lord’s property, who and marshes was insignificant when compared to
then could lay down his terms. forest clearance – the felling of tropical rainforests
In north-west Europe the need for mould- in our own time is not an exaggerated compari-
board-ploughs and horse power increased quickly son. Between one-quarter and one-third of all the
after the tenth century when large parts of the land that was developed for cultivation between
vast expanses of woods and wetlands, moors and 950 and 1250 must once have been covered with
marshes that made up early medieval Europe’s woods and forest. In north-west Europe countless
wilderness were rapidly cleared and reclaimed place-names ending in -rode/-roth, -rade/-rath (see
into arable fields. Peat moors originate in areas the German verb roden which means ‘to clear’) or
with an inadequate natural drainage, as a -sart are reminders of this. Everything seems to indi-
result of which half-rotten plant remains bank cate, too, that by about the year 1000 there were
up to layers several metres high, that are then no longer any vast tracts of virgin forest in west
often covered with cushion-like packs of peat or south Europe. Certainly there were still many
moss (sphagnum). Reclamation of such moors woods, but with their numerous clearings of vary-
amounted to systematically draining them with ing size they resembled a cheese with holes in it.
the spade. At first arable farming was certainly Charcoal burners and woodcutters, miners and iron-
possible on the drained bogs if the land was high workers, swineherds, pitch-makers and wax-makers,
enough. However, the ground level will have sub- trappers, hermits and anybody who, for whatever
sided quickly as a result of the decreased volume reason, lived cut off from the civilised world shared
and oxidation of the peat bog. This forced peat a marginal and dangerous life there with bears, deer
farmers in wetlands, such as the coastal regions and wolves, animals that were increasingly forced
of the modern-day Netherlands, to be ever-more to retreat. It was the peasant colonists who really
ingenious in their water management, beginning accelerated the process of deforestation.

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There is no indication at all of any ecologi-

New types of local lordship
cal concerns. On the contrary, in literary and
other texts the picture of the forest as a sinister, One of the logical consequences of the growing
dangerous place that should really be eradicated population density during the period of expan-
continued to compete with the opposite view (at sion was what the French historian Robert Fossier
least as old) of the forest as an unspoiled Arcadia has called encellulement (meaning roughly ‘com-
or a place of spiritual contemplation. The best- partmentalisation’), rendered by Chris Wickham
kept forests were those where kings or other as ‘the caging [of the peasantry]’. Both terms
territorial princes vigorously insisted on their refer to the observation that in this period land
royal right to wilderness – their claim to unculti- was more and more territorialised, that is to say,
vated land, particularly with an eye to hunting, a divided up into neatly defined units of political
favourite pastime. That is why, in England, large or ecclesiastical control where people were getting
forests survived the expansion phase, although in more and more encased in a cascade of formal-
time it became necessary to enclose them as far ised local organisations, each with its own public
as possible to keep the game in and the poachers rights and obligations. This process, that was
out. This was not always easy, as we learn from more marked in new lands than in long-settled
the fourteenth-century folk songs about the leg- old lands, happened both from below, for exam-
endary outlaw, Robin Hood, and his merry men ple, through the formation of village communities
who hid in Sherwood Forest, one of the large (more about this later), and from above, through
royal woods. That Robin Hood is a product of the establishment of rural parishes and local lord-
the imagination, but the type certainly existed. ships. It is this last phenomenon which we shall
In about 1280, for example, a search was made discuss first and most fully.
for one Geoffrey du Parc who prowled about
Feckenham Forest in Worcestershire with a band
of some hundred companions, including, sure A banal revolution?
enough, his own priest.
This feverish activity on the fringes between The repeated (sub)division of Charlemagne’s
land that had long been settled and the wilder- empire after the death of Louis the Pious marked
ness outside created a typical frontier society – a a crisis in royal power which seemed to lead una-
world of busy peasant-colonists with a rolling, voidably to the transformation of dukedoms,
continuously moving frontier. Usually, a dis- margravates and even counties into autonomous
tinction is made between internal and external principalities. This tendency towards the creation
colonisation. In the former, expansion of agrar- of states within states was discussed in Chapter 4.
ian land and peasant activity took place in waste The question to be dealt with at this point is what
lands adjacent to existing settlements and one happened with ‘public’ (royal) governance further
could operate from a familiar institutional infra- below, at the local level, in a situation, moreover,
structure (village communities, parishes, manors). of expansion of settlement and slow population
In the latter, settlers were migrant colonists who growth? If not the king or his officials, who then
reclaimed wilderness far away from their place of was exercising authority over increasing num-
origins and often in remote areas. Here, frontiers bers of people? Since we characterised medieval
were more challenging, whether because of the society as an aristocratic society to the core, the
forbidding character of the surrounding nature, obvious answer would be (local) aristocrats, and
or because of the dangerous proximity of hostile nothing altered on that point. But the manner in
neighbours, who could be the subjects of native which aristocrats took control over people under-
Christian princes but also outright pagans. went drastic, and according to many historians

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revolutionary, change. In the early medieval ‘absence of government’ (Bisson 2009). Masters
world aristocrats were first and foremost large of landed estates could extend their authority
landowners with presumed natural rights of lord- over the peasants settled on them with ‘banal’
ship over all common people who lived and were rights, such as monopolies on milling corn, press-
settled on their estates (see Chapter 3). This is not ing wine or baking bread. Aristocrats who acted
to say that public authority was totally absent. In as advocates of religious institutions that enjoyed
the Carolingian Empire, the king’s bannus or immunity sometimes converted their position
supreme power of command and rule was exer- as protector into banal lordship. Finally, local
cised on the regional level by counts, who in their strongmen wealthy enough to build their own
turn were represented by local officials bearing stronghold could try to impose their power on
such titles as vicarius (vice-count), iudex (judge) or a village or small town while claiming to pos-
centenarius (hundredman). One may question the sess bannus. These diverse tracks betray a regional
effectiveness or even reality of this three-layered diversity in both scenario and chronology that
hierarchy of public governance, but everybody has not yet been charted sufficiently well.
agrees that no local officials in the Carolingian Of what did this new type of local lordship
Empire ever called themselves ‘lord of’ a specified consist? At its heart was the exercise of justice,
place. This was to change in the course of the including capital and corporal punishment – in
tenth and eleventh centuries when the number other words the trying of serious crimes. This
of ‘lords’ of localities started to mushroom, as did jurisdiction gave banal lords an excuse to con-
the number of castles. Both are sure indications fiscate goods and arrest persons arbitrarily, and
of the rapid diffusion of a radically new concept thus a means of forcing the small, free peasants
of local lordship, that is to say, lordship not based off their property. In addition, it was possible to
primarily on privately owned landed estates but organise on a local scale what had been impossi-
on the unauthorised exercise of some sort of pub- ble to achieve at state level: the levying of general
lic authority, derived from the royal bannus and taxes, tallage – often referred to as tallia (taille in
operative within a circumscribed territory. Hence, French) or exactiones in the sources – or the exact-
the use of the label ‘banal revolution’. ing of other general seigneurial rights that were
There are two scenarios for describing the not infrequently borrowed from the serf statute.
origins of these new banal lordships or sei- Finally, banal lords managed to impose all sorts
gneuries, as they are called. According to the first of labours and services on their subjects – such
the constitution of local lordships was guided as compulsory work in and around their castles
from above, the result of a deliberate policy of – and they exploited costly capital goods, like
counts to extend their reach and to strengthen mills and bakers’ ovens, as a monopoly, a prac-
their grip on villages and emerging towns tice that had earlier normally been restricted to
through the appointment of local agents, now great estates.
often called ministeriales (‘servants’ of unfree Taken together, these rights deriving from
origins) in Germany or castellani (castellans) banal lordship were called consuetudines (‘cus-
in France, who somehow struggled out of their toms’), a euphemism that was soon qualified
principals’ power and started, so to speak, for by the adjective malae (‘bad’), not just because
themselves. The second scenario describes the they were seen by local populations as undesir-
origins of banal lordship in the opposite direc- able infringements on their existing customary
tion. In this scenario we can distinguish various law but more because of their arbitrary character
tracks that all led to the establishment of banal and the threat of violence that was always lurk-
lordships from the bottom up, aimed at fend- ing behind their enforcement. Often enough,
ing off interference from above – and leading to banal lords made use of unrestrained, brute,

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force against their subjects. Shortly after 1200 the especially when the might of local lords was
noblemen of Catalonia even demanded from the directed against Church possessions, while they
king of Aragon the right to ‘mal-treat’ (male trac- often behaved with equal severity and violence
tare) their peasant subjects. This opened the door against those under their own authority. The
to the development of new types of systematic clergy never spoke out against the banal order
exploitation of peasants, couched in the double- as such.
speak term remensa (‘redemption’). Banal lords It would have been less easy to establish exploit-
offered peasants the ‘opportunity’ to ‘redeem’ ative lordships of such a potentially violent nature
all kinds of arbitrary burdens that were first put had not the seigneurs provided themselves with
upon them. two powerful means of exerting their authority:
It is important to realise that, the whole of a castle and a following of well-armed warriors.
Europe considered, experiences of peasants in These castles were not the kind of great protec-
these centuries differed widely. Banal lordships tive fortresses built throughout north-west Europe
were not set up everywhere, and where they were during the ninth and tenth centuries on the
they were not necessarily of the malicious and orders of kings and counts, near commercial cen-
violent kind. Now and then, ill-treated peasants tres such as Dorestad and Middelburg, to offer the
received support from clerical circles, but there people and their property some protection from
was always a touch of the hypocritical in that. the Vikings. In the context of banal lordship we
Ecclesiastical lords and institutions complained, are talking about more modest strongholds. They

PLATE 5.1 Difficult relations between landlords and peasants are exemplified in the enamel decoration of a
small portable altar in gilded copper created around 1160 in the middle Meuse region. The images are sur-
rounded by quotes from Matthew 21:33–42, which are illustrated in four plaques 4.9 cm high, the larger ones
22 cm long, and two shorter ones 11.8 cm long. The iconography reveals inspiration from the tenth-century
Codex Aureus from the abbey of Echternach (Luxemburg). The story tells of an absentee landowner who had a
vineyard planted, and a winepress and a tower constructed. He leased his property to vinedressers. When he
twice sent some of his servants and finally his son to collect the harvest, they were beaten, stoned and killed
by the vinedressers, who saw an opportunity to seize the inheritance.

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were not wholly unknown in the Carolingian era, Motte castles had a permanent small garrison of
but their number exploded to an estimated 2,000 professional soldiers who were in the service of the
in western Europe after the middle of the tenth lord of the castle. The sources often refer to them
century, quite a time after the last great invasions as milites castri (‘the soldiers of the castle’), the
of Europe by barbarian groups (Vikings, Muslims, gregarii equites (‘ordinary horsemen’) or cavalcata
Magyars). The primary purpose in building these (‘cavalry’). They were recruited from the young
strongholds, therefore, could not have been to scions of lesser, local aristocratic families, but
protect local populations against foreign invad- sometimes also from among free or even unfree
ers. Only Spain of the Reconquest, embroiled in peasants. They were well trained in mounted
a struggle to the death with the Moors, formed combat and were mobilised for the defence of the
any sort of exception – both Castile and Catalonia castle and for small-scale, often extremely violent
mean ‘land of castles’. Elsewhere the principal operations in the surrounding area.
aim was more plain and simple, namely to domi-
nate a territory. The new castles were there to keep
rival lords or ambitious kings or princes out of Regional differences and
the region, but they were there first and foremost feudal-vassalic packaging
to support a smooth and efficient exercise of the
bannus with the threat of terror. The whole idea of the banal revolution has been
The prototype of the castle that is meant here much disputed over the last three or four decades.
consisted of little more than a motte, a natural or One of the issues that has remained unresolved
man-made mound, on which was built a wooden is whether banal local lordships also came into
or stone tower (the keep or donjon), which was being in parts of Europe that had remained out-
several stories high and could only be entered by side the Carolingian Empire, such as England and
a staircase to the first floor. Some castles had a the Spanish kingdoms. A second question con-
walled space next to the motte, where there was cerns the complex relation between local banal
room for outbuildings, stables, etc. In existing lordships and supra-local powers (kings, counts
urban settlements such castles were built within or other princes) to which the former were at
or close to the town itself. In the countryside, least nominally subjected. To what extent were
however, castles were more often situated in banal lords accountable to a prince or a king for
relative isolation, far from existing habitation. their exercise of what in fact was royal or princely
A related phenomenon, called incastellamento in authority?
Italian (lit. ‘encasteling’), refers to the construc- Proponents of the idea that autonomous local
tion of entirely fortified new settlements with a lordships also took root outside the Carolingian
castle inside. The design of these castra or cas- Empire underline similar demographic and
telli (in Italian) or castelnaux or bourgs/bourgades economic conditions: population growth and
(in French) included a concentration of habita- condensing settlement offered opportunities for
tion and not infrequently a reorganisation of the aristocratic enrichment and therefore asked, as
agrarian landscape adapted to it. Incastellamento it were, for local territorialisation of lordship. In
was very common in Italy and southern France, some respects Anglo-Norman manor lords (see
but there are also excellent examples from the Chapter 4) did indeed look like continental banal
north. One that is very well documented is the lords – for instance they enforced ‘banalities’ on
small town of Ardres (near Dunkirk). It was cre- their estates and exercised some form of jurisdic-
ated ex nihilo around 1060 as an annexe to the tion over villein tenants in their manor courts,
motte castle that a local lord had erected to con- but outside the Welsh Marches they never suc-
trol the trade route to England. ceeded in taking over local public courts of justice

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(hundred courts) or in ruling out the authority a centralised monopoly of justice administration
of the king’s sheriff. In the Christian kingdoms and the use of judicial and military violence, two
of Spain a strengthening of local lordship was essential attributes of a modern state (see Chapter
stimulated by the extraordinary circumstances 11). How critical the domination of castles in this
of the Reconquista, in particular during stages of respect was to princes who wanted to keep con-
intensified hostility between the kings of León trol over their territories clearly appears from the
and Castile on the one hand, and the caliph feudal registers of the prince-archbishop of Trier
of Córdoba on the other, as in the last decades of in Germany during the first half of the fourteenth
the tenth century. In the County of Barcelona, century. Of the 136 castles in his territory, thirty
which would remain part of the kingdom of were managed by his own castellans, sixty-five
France until 1137, the evolution of banal lordships were owned by liege vassals who owed open
rather seems to have been the outcome of inter- access to the archbishop, four by other vassals
nal aristocratic uprisings, first against the count who owed open access, and four by liege vassals
of Barcelona, and later against his successor, the and thirty-three by other vassals who did not owe
king of Aragon. open access.
As to the second issue it seems to be useful to
connect the evolution of banal lordships to the
deployment of feudal-vassalic relations. In older Was later medieval society a
historiography the weakening of royal authority feudal society?
through the simultaneous formation of quasi-
autonomous principalities (counties, dukedoms, The gradual expansion of feudal-vassalic ties
margravates) and banal lordships was labelled as became an essential – and increasingly ‘juridi-
‘feudal anarchy’. In reality, however, feudal-vas- cised’ – template for structuring the political
salic ties were increasingly used to restore royal and economic relations within the ruling class
and princely power, because in the long term of medieval society. In appreciating their value
many banal lords, voluntarily or under pressure, we should distinguish between various levels of
became the vassals of kings or princes. Moreover, application.
local banal lords in their turn started to estab- On the highest political level power relations
lish feudal-vassalic ties with their own milites. became feudalised as soon as high dignitaries
The ramifications of such multi-layered feudal like dukes, margraves and counts were all vas-
networks are evident in a survey that the count sals of the king, and recognised that their offices
of Champagne had made in 1172 of all the vas- (principalities) were fiefs held from the king or
sals and their fiefs in his county, possibly with Crown. As was demonstrated in Chapter 4, this
the intention of demanding ligesse (preferential happened considerably later, and also less widely,
fealty) from them all. This survey, known as the than older scholarship assumed, that is to say in
Feoda Campanie, contains the names of no fewer the course of the twelfth century and at that stage
than 1,900 (local) lords and milites. An inquiry only in the Roman Empire and the kingdom of
held by the duke of Normandy (also the king of France. Elsewhere, in the Iberian kingdoms and
England) in exactly the same year has much the England, kings made use of feudal-vassalic rela-
same outcome: the duke had about eighty ten- tions to reinforce their power as well, but they
ants-in-chief in Normandy, who in their turn had were nowhere so totalisingly used to construct a
between 2,000 and 2,500 knights as their vassals. ‘state’ on the basis of suzerainty as in France and
By bringing local banal lords back to heel the Holy Roman Empire, so there is no reason
through feudal-vassalic relationships kings and not to call them ‘feudal monarchies’ or ‘feudal
princes took an important step in the direction of states’. There, the direct and personal feudal

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relationship between the king and the main Of a completely different order was the
holders of state authority had become the most enfeoffment of vassals with landed estates, pieces
important binding force in the state. By impli- of land, rents from land (including tithes) or, at a
cation, a substantial part of public government later stage, money rents. The essential difference
became mediatised, which means that the king with the modalities discussed is that in this case
had to leave the effective exercise of royal author- vassals received no public authority. Obviously,
ity in the larger part of his kingdom, that is to aristocrats possessed fiefs of both types that could
say, outside the royal domain, to crown vassals also be mixed. Then, the vassal received both
with an indefinite mandate whose loyalty to the land (e.g. a manor) and the (lower) jurisdiction
head of state was conceived in a non-bureaucratic over the peasants who lived on that land. This
way and therefore could not be held accountable construction came close to – or was a direct con-
in a bureaucratic way. The ultimate, and absurd, tinuation of – early medieval Grundherrschaft (see
consequence was that feudal monarchies tended Chapter 3).
to abolish themselves as states. This is what hap- Another essential difference can be made with
pened to the Holy Roman Empire in the course respect to what vassals had to deliver in return.
of the thirteenth century, when the factual sov- According to classical feudal law of the twelfth
ereignty of the principalities, free cities and other and thirteenth centuries, the vassal was obliged
autonomous political units became so great that to stand by his liege with counsel and in deed
the emperor’s suzerainty over them no longer (consilium et auxilium in Latin). The pre-eminent
justified him being called a sovereign head of deed was military service as a knight. When sum-
state (see Chapters 4 and 11). The Holy Roman moned for the feudal host, large vassals not only
Empire had turned from a state into a confedera- were expected to show up in person but they
tion. What remained of the emperor’s sovereign had to be accompanied by a specified number of
rights was limited to some small prerogatives, knights. These often were their own vassals, who
and his high court of justice (Hofgericht), to had similar obligations. For this reason ‘national’
which the German princes and free towns could armies of kingdoms and comparable principalities
submit their disputes. In the fifteenth century it kept a decidedly feudal signature until the end
attracted so little business that in 1495, Emperor of the Middle Ages. Usually, the core consisted of
Maximilian tried to provide it with new elan – the prince’s noble vassals with their feudal reti-
and a new name: Reichskammergericht – hoping nues, which were then supplemented with, for
that this would add to the emperor’s sovereignty. instance, urban or peasant militias, or mercenary
As we discussed in this chapter, this feudal pat- troops. Depending on type and scale of opera-
tern could be reproduced on the regional/local tions, destination and budget, hybrid forms were
level when kings or comparable territorial princes tried out – one of these was to contract power-
enfeoffed noblemen or rich townsmen with local ful noblemen, specialised in warfare, who then
lordships, urban or rural, and with or without cas- mustered troops (both cavalry and infantry) to
tles and other sources of income such as estates carry out specific military operations on behalf
or tithes. This also led to mediatisation of public of a king or prince. Factually, the feudal duty to
power, but now on the level of local government assist had now been replaced by a mercenary con-
over towns and villages. The reasons for doing this tract, whose main accepter, however, was a vassal
could vary from simple pecuniary problems to the enfeoffed with a money rent. British historians
desire to provide close relatives with a substantial place such arrangements under the heading of
(and honourable) source of income. Depending ‘bastard feudalism’.
on the political and financial situation, a ‘fund’ of In the late Middle Ages, enfeoffment on the
this type of fiefs could shrink or expand. explicit condition of military service was relatively

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rare. More common was the granting of pieces of In any case, this whole range of feudal-vassalic
land of modest size in feudal tenure, also to com- options was only in place from the twelfth cen-
mon townspeople or peasants. Feudal tenure in tury onwards. Whether its results are enough to
this sense resembled a hereditary lease, although qualify later medieval society as a feudal society
no yearly ground-rent had to be paid – only the remains a matter of appreciation, also because
usual relief (relevium) when a new holder took up of substantial regional differences. But in our
the fief. This type of enfeoffment also was the opinion it would be unwise to just leave out any
only one that involved non-aristocratic com- reference to feudalism in a textbook on medieval
moners; for the remaining, fiefs and vassals was history; feudal bonds of all the kinds just men-
something that was limited to the aristocracy. tioned were too meaningful for that.
In the central and late Middle Ages, fiefs of
any kind usually were hereditary, but not always
in both lines. Many fiefs inherited in the male Changes in the surplus extraction,
line only, or else, preferably. Less clear is to what adjustments in the demesne
extent fiefs might be sold by the vassal-holder, economy
in other words, whether there was a market for
fiefs. Often, new fiefs were created after someone The establishment of banal lordships also led to
had ‘offered’ a privately owned property (e.g. an considerable shifts in agrarian surplus extraction,
estate or a castle) to a lord to have it returned to that is the non-commercial transfer of income
him or to her as a fief – which was called a fief was transferred to lords. Before that time this
de reprise (a ‘take-back fief’). The possible reasons had been settled chiefly through obligatory ser-
behind this were manifold; they could be politi- vices of labour and the payment of surpluses by
cal or financial; and the ‘offer’ could have been serf peasants within the framework of landlord-
made voluntarily or under pressure. ship. Banal lords, on the other hand, exploited
We just mention in passing the political con- people – whether as serfs or otherwise – in a well-
struction by which one monarch became the defined territory on the basis of usurped public
vassal of another one. In such cases, feudal bonds authority.
expressed political dependency on an inter- This is not to say that banal lords would have
national level. Well-known examples are the had no interest in owning land. On the contrary,
Norman duchies in southern Italy (in 1059, Robert many lordships had a hybrid character: their
Guiscard became the pope’s vassal in exchange for possessors were both large landowners and exer-
being recognised as duke of Apulia and Calabria, cising banal power of command (see Box 5.2).
and future duke of Sicily, which he first had to The point is that many of them abandoned the
conquer), and the kingdom of England that at direct exploitation of demesne land on bipartite
some point in time formally became fiefs held estates. This shift was closely connected to the
from the pope, while the kingdom of Scotland evolution of the manorial system which, during
was considered to be a fief of the king of England. the period of expansion, fell into decline wher-
Very complicated from a feudal perspective – and ever it had been prevalent, except in England.
recipes for war – were situations in which a king There are a number of deeper-lying reasons for
possessed a principality in another kingdom, like this. It is quite possible that financial problems
the Norman kings of England did with the duchy of the aristocracy played a role. With the general
of Normandy in France, the Angevin kings with a increase in population, the aristocracy increased
whole range of French principalities in addition too, and that meant that the inheritances for suc-
to Normandy, and the kings of Denmark with the ceeding generations gradually became smaller. In
German duchy of Holstein. many regions the relative impoverishment was

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underlined by the often extravagantly large gifts which was scarce, was kept on the manor. Large
of land and tithes made to Church institutions. landowners, who had dispensed entirely with
These were probably intended as gifts with a pro- the labour services of serfs when it was no longer
viso through which the donors retained certain labour but land that was scarce, were now faced
rights, in particular rights of usufruct. However, with a stark choice. They could completely aban-
in their attempts to reduce lay influence on the don the direct exploitation of their demesnes,
Church, and with the revival in canon law of and then lease out the indominicatum (land held
ownership concepts borrowed from Roman law, in demesne) in its entirety or in parts; or they
abbeys and other ecclesiastical institutions began could continue to keep the land in direct use, but
to look upon gifts as permanent transfers of prop- now exploit it with the help of paid labourers.
erty. In some areas, too, the ownership of many During the eleventh and twelfth centuries large
tithes, an important source of revenue for the landowners all over Europe chose primarily the
aristocracy, was returned to the Church. Falling second option, but in the longer term preference
incomes contrasted with rising costs. These were was given to the first alternative. The new monas-
caused in part by the increased costs of warfare, in tic orders of Cistercians and Premonstratensians
part by the rising fiscal or other demands of kings formed an exception, as did England. The former
or territorial princes of comparable standing, in were able to continue with the direct exploitation
part by the reopening of trade with the Middle of their land by bringing in so-called conversi,
East which made countless desirable luxury simple lay brothers, who provided the order with
goods (including spices, silk and ivory) available, cheap labour. In England, from the end of the
so that the aristocratic way of life became more twelfth century, many lords of manors (secular
sophisticated but above all more expensive. and ecclesiastical) resisted the switch from villein
Moreover, the disappearance of the classical labour services in order to profit as much as pos-
manorial system from many regions of Europe sible from the high grain prices. That is why in
during the period of expansion can be explained various parts of England the manorial system was
more neutrally by three economic developments. maintained in its classical, bipartite form until
First, the large-scale development of new culti- well into the fourteenth century.
vated land far away from existing settlements, Elsewhere not only did serf labour services tied
asked, as we saw, for new forms of organisation, to the direct exploitation of the manor disappear,
in which there was no place anymore for bipartite but other servile obligations could also be gradu-
estates with their laborious deployment of labour. ally commuted into fixed money payments, like
Second, rising urbanisation simultaneously cre- the lord’s right to the best of the moveable prop-
ated demand for agricultural products and offered erty in a serf’s legacy or to compensation for serf
employment outside agriculture. This partly off- daughters who wanted to marry someone from
set the effects of the third development, namely outside the manor. This commutation process
the inversion of the land-labour ratio, the scarcity went fastest in reclamation areas, whereas serf-
relationship between the production factors of dom remained widespread in long-settled areas,
land and labour. As a result of the growth in pop- such as the southern part of Germany, where
ulation, land became scarcer and more expensive, Grundherrschaft remained a reality.
and labour more plentiful and cheaper. This stim- This entire development had three serious con-
ulated the conversion of serf labour services into sequences. First, over time serfdom lost much of
cash payments or deliveries in kind. Serf labour its real significance; in many areas this was trans-
services in the manorial system were, after all, lated into the disappearance of the legal status of
connected to the ownership of a farmstead, and serfs and the specific customary law attached to it
were originally intended to ensure that labour, (the whole complex of legal regulations to which

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BOX 5.2 THE LORDSHIP OF TALMONT IN THE

COUNTY OF POITOU

MAP 5.1 Possessions of the lordship of Talmont (Poitou)

A fine example of a successful banal lordship is provided by the seigneurie of Talmont St Hilaire,
situated near the Atlantic coast of the County of Poitou, which was part of the Angevin Empire
between 1154 and 1242. At the heart of the lordship was the imposing castle of the Talmont family
at Talmont, which was flanked by the abbey of Sainte-Croix, founded by the Talmonts. As well as
Talmont itself, they held the lordship of two or three other villages in the neighbourhood (Olonne,
Grosbreuil and Orbestier(?)). In those villages they also owned estates, tithes and the collation
rights to the parish church, which they did in a number of other villages as well. In yet other vil-
lages they took rents from land and owned mills, baking ovens and wine presses for communal
use. In sum, the lords of Talmont had three sources of income: private estates and rents from land;
income following from the control of local churches and abbeys, in particular tithes; and all kinds
of tax-like payments as well as the proceeds of the administration of justice (justicial fines, in par-
ticular) that followed from the exercise of banal lordship. Part of these possessions were enfeoffed

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to ten vassals. The lordship rights themselves were often divided between family members. This
can also be observed elsewhere: rights to estates, banal lordships and even castles could be sub-
divided, or exercised in common, between brothers or between brothers and sisters, or between
families and third parties, such as religious institutions.

Source: Cédric Jeanneau, ‘Le dominium seigneurial en question: exercice, territoire et adaptation aux marges
du Comté Poitevin (1150–1250)’, in Martin Aurell and Frédéric Boutoulle (eds), Les seigneuries dans l’espace
Plantagenêt (c.1150–c.1250) (Bordeaux: Ausonius Éditions, 2009), pp. 309–334 and pp. 323–325.

serfs were subject). This led to greater social dif- Knights and peasants:
ferentiation and geographic mobility in the
countryside. Second, the fact that it was possible
image and reality
to commute serf labour and to buy off other ser-
vile obligations in regions where there were many Horsemen become knights
manors meant a breakthrough in the commercial-
isation and monetisation of the rural economy. The installation of local lordships can be seen
Peasants were now compelled to convert either as the tailpiece of an earlier-discussed, lengthy
their surpluses or their own labour into money. socio-historical process, that is to say, the gradual
And, third, the manor lords themselves suffered formation of a new style of warrior aristocracy
losses insofar as labour services or other servile which is commonly referred to as the knight-
obligations were converted into cash payments. hood. We have already touched upon the key
Rents were fixed once and for all, while the thir- factor in its formation: the growing tactical
teenth century was a century of rapid inflation. importance of heavily armed cavalry in feudal
The real value of the periodic payments was soon warfare. This development led to a further pro-
eroded, to the advantage of the paying tenants. fessionalisation of mounted fighting, which
At a later stage manor lords tried to counteract was speeded up by progressive technological
this by letting out parts of the demesne over advances in weaponry and equipment: the per-
which they still had some control on a short- fecting of the chain-mail hauberk and of many
term lease for a limited number of years. An types of weapons for striking and stabbing, horse
alternative was sharecropping or divided leasing armour, nailed horseshoes and the panelled war
(French champart is derived from the Latin campi saddle with its high, wraparound cantle and
pars, meaning ‘part of the field’), which was most pommel. In addition to great skill, the result of
common in certain parts of France and Italy. In long training, the fighter on horseback needed a
this system the owner received a fixed share, usu- large fortune, and that was why armed horsemen
ally one-third or one-quarter, but in Italy later – milites in the Latin of the time – were predomi-
one-half also, of the gross yields of the lands he nantly aristocrats.
had leased out. But professionalisation also implied that physi-
cal fitness, talent and assured loyalty all played a
part alongside birth and wealth in the recruitment
of mounted warriors, while specific historical
circumstances would also have an influence, of
course. We have already seen that banal lord-
ships were partly based on small private armies of

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horsemen who were equipped and maintained at king. As was explained in the previous chapter,
the expense of the lords of the castles. The often in the first decades after 1066 the position of
denigrating references to these horsemen lead us these milites-tenants and their enfeoffment with
to surmise that they were not always of noble ori- one or more estates (manors) was emphatically
gins. In the German part of the Roman Empire connected to their service as mounted fighters.
kings and holders of high office recruited many Through the growing degree of technical and
of their horsemen from the unfree estate of min- tactical competence demanded of these mounted
isterials, especially in the decades around 1100. fighters, through the crucial role they played in
On the borders of the Reconquest in Castile and the great military operations of the eleventh and
Catalonia there arose a class of peasant-horsemen, twelfth centuries, such as the Crusades, which
caballeros villanos. The cavalry of the communal at the time greatly fired the imagination, and
armies of the free city-states of north and central through their increasingly expensive weapons
Italy had from the beginning a mixed noble-bour- and equipment, the prestige of the milites rose
geois character. In England, the Norman Conquest almost before their very eyes. What then hap-
of 1066 was of overwhelming importance: here pened is remarkable: milites of high aristocratic
milites referred to the ordinary mounted fight- birth allowed themselves to be identified with
ers in the army of William the Conqueror, often horsemen of more humble origin. Even mon-
of noble French origin, who became ‘tenants’ of archs presented themselves as mounted warriors.
the ‘tenants-in-chief’, the barons and dignitaries William the Conqueror, for example, is depicted
of the Church who had a direct bond with the in the Bayeux Tapestry more often as a horse-
man among his milites than as a monarch on his
throne. William also was the first king to have
a seal made showing him as a warrior on horse-
back, an example that many rulers and high
aristocrats would follow. In the same period, the
French royal princes (and future kings) Philip I
and Louis VI were formally made knight at the
ages of fifteen and seventeen, respectively. This
fusion of high aristocratic, minor noble and non-
noble, sometimes even unfree, elements into an
elite military corps that in time became difficult
to distinguish from the nobility, was coupled
with the development of an esprit de corps, a new
code of honour and behaviour with its own. At
the same time, entry to the group was formal-
ised in ceremonial, such as the solemn bestowal
of a knight’s equipment – first described as such
in the Chanson de Roland (c.1120). From then on
we no longer speak of horsemen but of knights,
while chivalry is the word used to indicate the
cultural and moral encasement of knighthood.
Within the knightly or chivalrous code of
PLATE 5.2 Girding on a knight’s sword. Chansons behaviour, traditional – many would say universal
de Guillaume d’Orange, first half of the fourteenth – values, such as courage, loyalty and fellowship,
century. always remained important. But in addition

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to that, the construction of a knightly ethos of Christian pilgrims. During the first Crusade
received the support of the Church from the very the order became militarised, and it was recog-
beginning. For this purpose an old concept was nised by the pope in 1113. In about the same
unearthed: that of miles Christi or miles Sancti Petri period of time, a French crusader, Hugh de Payns,
(‘soldier of Christ’ or ‘soldier of St Peter’). In early founded ‘the brotherhood of the poor knights
Christendom this title of honour was first given of Christ’, which was recognised in 1128 as the
to clerics in general and martyrs in particular. In Order of the Temple (the Knights Templar).
the fifth and sixth centuries it was passed on to The third great military order, the Order of the
the monks, the new body of the Christian elite. Hospital of St Mary of the Germans (the German
Then it was the turn of the bishops, as we can see or Teutonic Order) started in 1190 as an initiative
from a pastoral letter sent by Pope Nicholas I to of merchants from Lübeck and Bremen during
the bishops of the West Frankish Empire in 865. the siege of Acre by the crusaders. Not much later,
The pope forbade the bishops to take part in any a whole series of smaller, less expansive orders
more armed conflicts, for they were the milites were thrown up in the Baltic area and in Spain
Christi and, as such, should only fight battles of and Portugal, where they held huge estates until
a spiritual nature and exclusively in the service well into the early modern era. Both clerics and
of the pope. laypeople could join these orders but only the
Oddly enough, it was this concept of miles latter swore an oath of battle; as compensation,
Christi that was regenerated in the circles around in some orders they were not bound to celibacy.
Pope Gregory VII soon after the middle of the Bernard of Clairvaux found these new spir-
eleventh century, in an attempt to harness the itual orders of knighthood the highest possible
secular milites for the Church by propagating, in fulfilment of the new ideal of the militia Christi.
addition to bravery and fidelity, such Christian Ordinary knights – Bernard’s milites saeculi –
virtues as godliness, the defence of the helpless were not in the same league. In his view they
and peace (towards fellow Christians). The fight renounced their original chivalric ideals by pay-
against non-Christians, the infidel enemies of ing exaggerated attention to their appearance
the faith in Spain and the Holy Land, provided and their emphasis on outward show. By this out-
unprecedented new opportunities for cloaking ward show Bernard meant the sub-culture that
the milites in Christian ideals. Conversely, efforts was growing up around the knights and of which
to make the clerical morality more military and diverse matters such as heraldry, clothing, hair
heroic were much in evidence, as was clearly style and training formed a part. By the begin-
shown in the Liber ad milites Templi de laude novae ning of the twelfth century there was already
militiae (‘Book for the Knights of the Temple in much hostile criticism of knights’ attire in clerical
Praise of the New Knighthood’) written in about circles: knights looked like women, even on the
1145 by that Cistercian pillar of the Christian field of battle where they were decked out in gold
Church, Bernard of Clairvaux. It is a eulogy of and silver jewels. Slightly later there were suspi-
the new religious orders of knighthood, which cions about the tournaments, with their melées
came into being in the Holy Land to defend the (team fights) and jousts, which probably grew out
conquered holy places and to protect, if necessary of the knights’ training in arms in about 1100
by force, the newly swelling stream of pilgrims. and rapidly developed into excessively popular
The oldest of these unique orders was the Order spectacles. Because participants were frequently
of St John of Jerusalem, which dates back to 1048 killed, the rules of the game were altered, partly
when merchants from the Italian town of Amalfi under pressure from the Church which regularly
were allowed by the Fatimid caliph of Egypt to prohibited tournaments, although never with
start a hospital in Jerusalem for the medical care lasting success.

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Chivalry and courtliness: pave the way to high esteem, maybe personal
salvation, but most importantly to ‘courtly love’.
new rules for moving in high
This ‘courtly love’ (amour courtois in French)
circles is a concept created by literary historians in the
The new virtues of chivalry were imprinted dur- nineteenth century – hence the inverted com-
ing the inaugural ceremonial, by moral tracts and mas – to describe sublimated erotic feelings in
didactic poems aimed especially at the chivalric courtly literature. Its two most important charac-
lifestyle, but also through completely new liter- teristics are the inversion of the traditional role
ary genres, which formed a part of the specific pattern (in courtly love the man serves a lady,
culture that took shape at the courts of monarchs not vice versa) and the moral improvement to
and other great princes who set themselves up as which such love can lead (courtly love makes the
the natural leaders of the new order of knights. lovers, in particular the man, morally better peo-
That is why courtliness (courtoisie in French) ple). For the improvement to be fully effected the
became central to the knightly code of behav- lover should suffer the necessary privations and
iour. Its hidden intentions were on the one hand humiliations and perform deeds of self-sacrifice
to regulate tensions and to avoid open aggression and valour for his loved one. But all is well that
and feuds, especially between young men whose ends well, and he could then savour the true joys
entire upbringing was focused on the use of force, of love.
and on the other hand to achieve an important The exercise of courtly love implied a sophis-
place at court through the acquisition of honour. ticated, and now and then perhaps mischievous,
Such underlying thoughts were, to start with, game with its own complicated set of rules.
translated into a programme of etiquette, aimed If we should believe some literary texts, it was
at civilising the knightly class. It was memorised attended to in special parlour games, such as ‘the
in simple maxims such as the Middle German law courts of love’ and the jeux partis (‘shared
Wirff nit nauch pürschem Sin//die Spaichel über games’), where the various players took turns to
den Tisch hin (‘Never expectorate over the table defend another viewpoint over penetrating ques-
like a peasant’). Of a rather more elevated nature tions such as, ‘If your lady makes the spending of
were the, partly classical, virtues which the ideal a night of love with you depend on her toothless
knight was expected to possess: loyalty, (moral) old husband, would you rather have your turn
purity, moderation, steadfastness, sense of hon- before or after?’ Most historians would agree
our, generosity-largesse and readiness to help, that such ‘games’ never took place in reality, but
coupled with physical strength and self-control, were fantasies enabling the authors to explore all
and a certain knowledge of the world. In this list, the possibilities of a new literary style. Even so,
honour – with its counterpart dishonour – was their content must somehow have reflected the
probably the most important. Honour adhered, mind-set of noble audiences.
as it were, to high social status, but could also Apart from the fact that such vulgar aspects
be acquired by performing honourable deeds. of courtly love were completely at odds with
Prowess, bravery in battle (prouesse in Old Christian ethics on marriage and conjugal love,
French), was of course essential for knights. But the whole complexity of ideas about courtliness
courtly culture required that a warlike spirit be and courtly love formed a ‘social Utopia’, in the
directed to a more sublime goal. Gradually the words of Joachim Bumke, that bore little resem-
idea developed that honour did not really count blance to the grim reality of everyday life in a
if it was not earned in the service of another per- medieval castle. This can be illustrated well by the
son, preferably a lady or a great prince, or better way women were treated. If the idealised, courtly
still, the Christian faith. Only then did honour image of the woman was based on (in our eyes)

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toe-curling clichés such as ‘external beauty is the by vassals to their liege lord. Behind the (literary)
reflection of a pure soul’, it speaks volumes about expressions of courtly love, then, lay the hidden
the fundamentally ambivalent attitude towards ambitions of the lower echelons of the nobility
women held by men from the higher classes in to win a place through their skill at arms at one
those days: women were by nature inferior but of the larger or small courts scattered through-
at the same time could be models of virtue. It is out feudal Europe. In both views courtly love still
true that, incidentally, aristocratic women rose to remained ‘essentially a system men created with
great power, especially as queens or queens-regent the dreams of men in mind’ (Bogin 1980).
over underage princes, but even in that latter Courtly culture and courtly love found a liter-
situation there were almost always men pulling ary vehicle in three new genres which flourished
the strings. More generally, the more land and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: the chan-
wealth a woman owned or could claim by right, sons de geste, the courtly lyric and the romances
‘the more likely she was to be controlled and of chivalry. Of the chansons de geste (lit. ‘songs
manipulated by male relatives or lords’ (Stafford of exploits’), epic texts focusing on the deeds of
1989). Even if one is not inclined to follow such one person, the subject matter of which is often
a cynical view of medieval society, one would borrowed from the time of Charlemagne, the old-
have to admit that medieval women, certainly est group is probably the most interesting from a
aristocratic women, did not enjoy anything like socio-historical point of view. The texts belong-
modern western personal liberties. During their ing to this group, like Raoul de Cambrai (written
youth they were kept strictly secluded from men; in the last quarter of the twelfth century), paint
many noble girls never married and disappeared a revealing picture of the feudal nobility of
into a convent; and those who did marry were northern France as they liked to see themselves:
married off and were then completely subject to extremely violent and preoccupied with prob-
the husband’s authority. In terms of legal auton- lems of loyalty raised by the rapidly spreading
omy and freedom of action, the best position for feudal-vassalic networks. At the same time these
women to have was that of a widow beyond the texts betray the new sensitivity described above
need or age of remarriage. which at first sight belies the tough mentality
On top of ingrained convictions of male supe- of the knights. How could these bloodthirsty
riority and natural dominance over women, there lovers of force ever be moved to tears by stories
was an unvarying double standard in cases of pre- where ladies faint when they hear of the death
marital or extramarital relations, and the whole of their beloved husbands? And yet this is the
concept of courtly love and the obsessive long- sort of sentiment sung in the oldest chanson we
ing for unattainable women predominant in it know, the Chanson de Roland (‘Song of Roland’,
has been interpreted as an outlet for the younger c.1120), which tells of the heroic death of one of
sons of noble families who often felt neglected in Charlemagne’s army leaders in a battle against
their inheritance and could never enjoy the pres- the Basques.
tige of their father or elder brother. They could The second literary genre that came into being
do little more than hope for a good marriage or at this time – the courtly lyric, sometimes called
good fortune in battle. In anticipation of this the poetry of the troubadours, and certainly
they roamed from castle to castle, and from tour- meant to be sung – overflows with this new sen-
nament to tournament, projecting their erotic timentality. Its origins can in part be found in
feelings on the wife or daughter, for example, of the Arabic and Mozarabic culture of the Spain of
the lord they served as miles. In the love of these the tenth and eleventh centuries. Not only the
young knights-errant for unattainable women, themes but also the rhyme schemes and music
one variant sees a metaphor for the loyalty owed are of Arabic origin, as is the word ‘troubadour’

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itself, which probably derives from the Arabic tar- the early Middle Ages, King Arthur. In Chrétien’s
raba, ‘to stir up emotions through song’. Other romances – written in French between about
influences include the Christian religious genre 1150 and 1180 – courtly and religious sentiments
of the Marian hymns and the revived intellec- and ideals were woven together with a power-
tual interest in the love poetry of the Roman ful imagination and a feeling for moral character
poet, Ovid. Out of this mixture there developed development. The adventurous life of a knight
in Provence and the south of France a complex was now presented as a spiritual quest in a dream
poetry with an exact form and a new view of life. landscape which can be interpreted at different
Although crude erotic verse also has a place in levels – the main character’s quest for divine
the genre, the woman is generally placed on a ped- grace, the search for his own identity or place
estal, and the love between a man and a woman in the aristocratic community, etc. Chrétien sees
is elevated to an ideal of moral self-fulfilment, love as a magical power which can break all social
often achieved only after intense inner conflict. conventions but also rise above them to a higher,
During the thirteenth century the troubadours’ transcendental level of experience. At the same
poetry, which was composed in Occitan (the time his views on love were not just romantic
language spoken in the south of France at the and mystic. In Erec et Enide Chrétien suggested to
time), became a symbol of the widespread resist- his aristocratic audience that only those who had
ance to the efforts of both the king of France who a heart for the political community over which
wanted to tighten his grip on the south, and the they were appointed, including the weak and the
pope who wanted to stamp out Catharism, which strong, were good enough to rule.
had been condemned as a heresy. The poetry of Chrétien’s arrangement of the material from
the troubadours had a profound influence on Brittany served as a model far beyond France and
the courtly lyrics of other regions, including long after the Middle Ages, in both poetry and
Sicily (and through Sicily on the great Tuscan prose, but always in the vernacular. The German
poets of the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- Arthurian romances of Wolfram von Eschenbach
turies) and Germany, where in the thirteenth and Hartmann von Aue – both knights them-
century Walter von der Vogelweide and Ulrich selves – are considered among the most successful
von Lichtenstein were considered the most versions; the third great German composer of
accomplished Minnesänger (‘love song singers’). Arthurian romances in the Middle Ages, Gottfried
Finally, the younger courtly epic, the real von Strassburg, a cleric, used another French-
romances of chivalry, combined elements from language work as a model for his famous Tristan.
the chanson de geste and the poetry of the trou- The influence of courtly literature on western
badours. The works in this genre paint a strongly literature has been enormous. It introduced the
idealised picture of reality and are brimming model of romantic love throughout Europe. What
with erotic and mystical religious symbolism. started as a stylised game for courtiers in real cas-
It is often difficult for today’s reader to fathom tles has been watered down over the centuries
the deeper meaning, and that makes it awk- to become today’s sentimental novel.
ward to link the contents to the reality of those
days. The pioneer in the field was Chrétien de
Troyes, who in all likelihood was a cleric con- Orders of chivalry
nected to the Angevin court. For his major works
he drew from a new vein that had been opened In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, long
in England in the twelfth century, the matière de after the death of Chrétien de Troyes, a new
Bretagne (‘material from Brittany’), a shorthand suitable institute for chivalry was created at the
for all kinds of stories about a legendary figure of important princely courts of Christian Europe

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with the foundation of orders of chivalry, which This meant that the initial criterion of achieve-
should not be confused with the much older reli- ment – a knight is an accomplished warrior on
gious orders of knighthood. The new orders were horseback – was gradually replaced by the crite-
meant to be exclusive brotherhoods for high aris- rion of birth and lineage – a knight is the son
tocrats who were closely connected to the prince of a knight. Almost by implication, this twofold
himself. The oldest one known is the Order development asked for internal ranking. If all
of St George, which was founded in 1326 by knights were now considered to be noblemen and
Charles-Robert of Anjou, king of Hungary. More most noblemen had no objection to being called
appealing to the imagination is the Order of the a knight, not all members of the knighthood were
Garter, constituted around 1345 on the initiative of the same level. Hence, texts from the eleventh
of the English king, Edward III. According to a century onwards started to distinguish between
apocryphal story the order’s device, honni soit qui ‘princes’ (persons entitled king, duke, margrave,
mal y pense (‘shame on him who thinks badly of count, etc.) and ordinary ‘knights’. In between
it’), would have been the kings’ chivalrous riposte were so-called barons or ‘bannerets’, that is pow-
after the countess of Salisbury, a famous beauty erful lords who led their own knight-vassals
in her day, lost her garter during a ball. A French into battle under their own banner. Following
royal counterpart was bound to come, and only the inheritability of the knightly status was the
a few years later King John II founded the Order distinction between titled knights, who had
of the Star. Now, there was no stopping to it, and received the accolade (a new ritual, introduced
one order of chivalry after the other came into in the thirteenth century), and squires, who were
being. By far the most famous became the Order aspirant knights. For financial reasons, many
of the Golden Fleece, a creation of the duke of sons of knights remained squires until they were
Burgundy, Philip the Good, from 1430. The occa- of advanced age, for the ceremony of investi-
sional ‘chapters’ or plenary meetings of the Order ture into knighthood was extremely expensive.
soon evolved into imposing gatherings at which But even the status of squire required the main-
weighty political questions were discussed. tenance of a knightly lifestyle which not every
young man from a knightly family could afford
and many of them had to give up, or lost, their
Tendencies towards classification privileged position.
and separateness In spite of this urge for distinction and inter-
nal ranking, in spite also of vehement criticism
The time when Chrétien de Troyes was writing against parvenus, and even of legal attempts
his great romances also marked the gradual con- to block the entry to knighthood, such as the
clusion of a process that had started two centuries Imperial Land Peace of 1186, which laid down
earlier. In different parts of Europe this process that children of priests, deacons and peasants
took other forms and went at different speeds, could not become knights, nowhere in the late
but everywhere it comprised two tendencies: one Middle Ages did knighthood become a fully closed
towards internal ranking, the other towards sepa- estate, dictated by birth alone. Rich townspeo-
rateness and distinction. ple and even wealthy peasants always managed
If around the year 1000 the word knight had to find a way in. Besides, everywhere monarchs
been first and foremost a referent to a military retained the right to elevate individuals to knights
horseman, two centuries later knighthood every- or noblemen.
where in Europe had become associated, if not As always, there were considerable regional
identified, with nobility. Precisely in that period of differences in the extent and speed with which
time knighthood became hereditary everywhere. knighthood and nobility – or aristocracy –

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merged. The assimilation went furthest in France who had themselves formally been admitted to
and Aragon, while in Germany the association of the order of knighthood. While members of the
knight with nobleman was hampered for a long high nobility (barons or peers) entered this order
time by the fact that originally many milites had at will, not all members of the old knightly class
been ministeriales, unfree servants of powerful could afford to do so. In 1200 the English knight-
lords, which imprinted on the German knight- hood would have had about 1,500 members.
hood a stain of servility. In the city-states of north From the thirteenth century on, the knightly
and central Italy it was the other way around, class began to be identified with the lower nobil-
because old noble families usually had urban resi- ity, in later sources usually referred to as the
dences and so they mixed with the most wealthy gentry. The gentry would gradually acquire a per-
and powerful non-noble, bourgeois, families. manent role in local government and be looked
Therefore, the Italian knighthood from early on upon as the natural representative of the English
formed an amalgam of noble and non-noble ele- countryside, and also as a section in parliament’s
ments with one aristocratic lifestyle. Problems House of Commons.
only arose with the admission of knights from
the affluent urban middle classes, the Popolo,
that in many places gained access to city-state Peasants
governments – or even took these over. That is
why cavalries of mighty Italian city-states such Around the year 1000, the workers (laboratores)
as Florence had two divisions: that of the milites of the tripartite scheme of estates (see Chapter 3)
nobiles (‘noble knights’) and that of the milites were predominantly peasants. The literate, clerical
popolani (‘knights from the Popolo’). elite viewed them with mixed feelings. In one pas-
Finally, in England soon after the Norman sage of the Carmen ad Rothbertum regem, Adalbero
Conquest, the milites or knights formed a fairly of Laon speaks compassionately of the harsh fate
sizeable group of between 4,000 and 5,000 men, of the serfs; in another, of the ‘lazy, misshapen
which was to swell during the twelfth century. and in every respect contemptible rustic’ (rusticus
Their position was then still chiefly defined in piger, deformis et undique turpis). Adalbero’s views
feudal-military terms: they were liegemen of on this matter were not very original either. From
tenants-in-chief who had to follow their lords as the Carolingian period many small, free peasants,
fully armed horsemen in times of war. This was with their essentially public tasks (attendance in
the basic agreement of their fief, known as the the host and courts of law), lost not only their
knight’s fee (‘fee’ is derived from feodum, a fief). standing but also, as we have seen, their personal
The social status of this group was not particu- freedom. The rise of knighthood and the growth
larly high, and the knights of this time were not of towns then led to an increasingly negative
generally counted as nobility. This changed in the stereotyping of peasants, which was completely
thirteenth century when their numbers began to at odds with the vital social function that was
dwindle, to about 3,000. By that time compulsory invariably allocated to them in the organic view
attendance had long become commutable, for a of society, with the Christian ideal of poverty that
sum of money known as scutage (from scutagium, they represented and with the concern for the
literally meaning ‘shield money’). From that violent circumstances in which they were obliged
time, too, the knightly class should be seen as to live. Attitudes towards particular social groups
strictly separate from the knighthood. The for- are often ambivalent. They express a mixture of
mer included all families who carried the title of contempt, compassion and fear, and perhaps, too,
knight; the latter included only those who could, an unconscious need to rationalise and justify
or wished to, afford the lifestyle of a knight and clear social inequalities.

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At the centre of this negative stereotype was a cowardly and lecherous yokels with no sense of
sort of bestialisation, the identification of peas- decorum.
ants with beasts, which in some respects can be Should peasants now be considered the under-
compared to the ancient and early medieval view dogs of the medieval world only on the basis of
of barbarians, infidels (Muslims, Jews) and slaves. their negative treatment in literary and legal
A wide range of harmful and harmless vices was works? There are three reasons for a more bal-
then given to that beast image, from wild sav- anced view. First, there is the impression that the
agery to madness, stupidity and ‘an extraordinary overall material position of peasants gradually
proclivity for flatulence’ (Freedman 1999). They improved during the period of expansion. The
are referred to in a wide variety of works. Learned deeper background to this is that by medieval
political tracts from clerical circles spread the standards even peasants were not without rights.
notion that peasants were boorish ‘barbarians’; Local customary law remained strong in rural
an ‘asinine race’; ‘half-savages who cannot gov- areas throughout the Middle Ages, and in the
ern themselves and are therefore doomed to long term the strength of certain customs turned
serfdom’ found Aegidius Romanus in De potes- out favourably for the peasants as a class – among
tate ecclesiastica (‘On the Power of the Church’) them was the serfs’ right to transmit their farm
in 1301. Deadly serious historical works thought and their land to their children, and the custom
that peasants were not able to make love, because that once dues had been set they could not be
one could hardly call their animal urge to copu- changed. Second, the increasingly open nature
late by such a name (Li histoire de Julius César). of the agricultural economy during the period of
Peasants were – even then – the butt of count- expansion offered peasants opportunities to
less crude jokes (fabliaux, Schwanken) in which operate on different product and factor markets,
their ignorance, filth and violence formed an easy although the risks attached were very real. Third,
target for merciless ridicule. Legal texts such as the social position for negotiation and political
the Usatges de Barcelona (‘Customs of Barcelona’) involvement of peasants was improved consider-
defined peasants as ‘beings that possessed no ably by the development of village communities.
other value than that of being Christian’ – and In the early Middle Ages the inhabitants of
even that was openly doubted sometimes. In the country settlements certainly built up collec-
standard work on courtly love, De amore (1185), tive activities. These activities were expanded
the author, André the Chaplain, bluntly suggests and accentuated with the growth of settlements
that the courtly gallantries to which (noble) and housing density and the disappearance of
ladies were entitled were wasted on peasant the manorial system. We already pointed to col-
girls. André advised his (noble, male) readers to lective decisions inherent in open-field farming
mount them without ceremony, a counsel that and the use of extensive waste lands surround-
was repeated in countless variations in another ing rural settlements. In low-lying fen and clay
popular and most appropriate literary genre of areas, permanent settlement depended on the
the later Middle Ages: the pastourelle or shep- good organisation of drainage and dike-mainte-
herd’s song. Both in courtly literary works in nance. Then the expansion and density of the
the proper sense, and even more so in parodies, network of country parishes brought a collective
such as Neidhart’s poetical praises of country girls concern for the building and maintenance of
(c.1225), courtliness was willingly contrasted with parish churches (for which the parishioners were
rusticitas, lumpish rusticity. Peasant behaviour themselves responsible), and coupled to this was
was non-courtly in every respect, and contrary the organisation of the local poor relief.
to everything a knight stood for: honour, skill All this led to the establishment of a great vari-
at love, courage, moderation. Peasants were just ety of local institutions, such as neighbourhoods,

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marks (local organisations for the management of the villagers were personally free (the denial of
common pasture and wood lands), water boards serfdom) or that the malae consuetudines were
and foundations for the maintenance of the eased, and that the local authority could apply its
parish church and poor relief respectively; they own law and generally had slightly wider powers
all came together in what was called the village than ordinary village communities.
community or community of the vill (commu- This development of village communities with
nitas villae in Latin). The term is also found in statutory powers did not take place in Scandinavia
older sources but it acquired a new connotation or England. Sweden was simply too thinly popu-
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Not only lated. There the hundare or härad remained the
were these village communities based on collec- lowest unit of local government, districts that
tive oaths and had a de facto legal personality, usually comprised a number of villages or par-
which gave them the competence to act on ishes and held jointly a law court or ting. In
behalf of the local community, they also started England there were indeed communities of the
to exercise local public government within the vill with their own, public, courts of justice (so-
latitude offered them by local lords: they issued called leet courts), but in the course of the twelfth
local regulations or bylaws, they administered and thirteenth centuries most of these came into
common land and common infrastructure, and the hands of local manor lords. At that point,
they imposed fines on offenders. A bench of jurati a leet court became privatised and subjected to
(‘sworn men’, jurors) or scabini (aldermen) was the lord’s manor court (or court baron), which by
often elected to exercise these powers, which present-day standards was not of a public nature.
were not as yet separate; it consisted of resident Finally, in emergencies, medieval peasants did
peasants, and its composition changed periodi- not shrink from organising armed resistance to
cally. Sometimes there was no bench and it was oppressive lords, thus showing themselves to be
the assembly of all the villagers together that gov- far less helpless than clerical and courtly literature
erned and administered justice. In this case local was eager to depict. From the thirteenth century
officials were appointed simply to carry out the there are examples of knightly armies being cut to
tasks. The competence of village communities pieces by peasant militias: in 1227 near the town
in the administration of justice was often (but of Coevorden in the northern Low Countries,
not in principle) limited to judging disputes and in about 1230 during the so-called revolt of the
infringements of local regulations. Here, serious Stedingers on the lower Weser, and in 1315 at
crimes, for which corporal or capital punishment the pass near Morgarten in the Swiss Alps. But, as
was laid down, had to be brought before a higher we see from the countless individual and collec-
court of law. tive lawsuits which they fought in higher courts
Just like the towns, villages could also acquire of law against noble or clerical landowners and
privileges granted by charter, so that they became which often dealt with everyday matters, such as
‘liberties’. We know these existed in central Italy, the use of woods and peat lands, even if there was
the north of France and the duchy of Brabant. no physical combat involved medieval peasants
The propagation of liberty in this type of charter were able to hold their own.
was sometimes coupled with a rather ridiculous
appeal to ancient Roman or Biblical-Christian tra-
ditions, as if villages became republics freed from Points to remember
tyranny overnight, or, like the Jewish people, had
left the slavery of Egypt and crossed the Red Sea ■■ Around the year 1000, the slow net popula-
in search of the Promised Land. In practice, the tion growth that had been going on from the
granted liberty meant little more than that all seventh century onwards reached the critical

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mass needed for a clear acceleration in eco-

Suggestions for further
nomic growth and state formation.
■■ Net population growth and urbanisation
reading
in the central Middle Ages were matched Bagge, Sverre, Michael H. Gelting and Thomas Lindkvist
by an increase in food production that was (eds) (2011), Feudalism: New Landscapes of Debate
attained far more by an expansion of land for (Turnhout: Brepols). One of the latest updates on the
cultivation through wood clearing and wet- charged debate on fiefs and vassals in medieval his-
tory, covering all corners of medieval Europe. With
land reclamation than by a more intensive
contributions from key discussants such as Susan
use of existing farmland.
Reynolds and Dominique Barthélemy.
■■ Both the weakening of royal power and the Bartlett, Robert (1993), The Making of Europe: Conquest,
tremendous expansion of human settlement Colonization and Cultural Change 950–1350 (London:
elicited the creation of a new type of local Allen Lane). Daring attempt to describe the ‘making’
lordship, whose base was the unauthorised of Europe in terms of the reproduction of certain key
institutions (and their related value systems) from
and unaccounted exercise of public power by
core areas to peripheries during a long-drawn phase
local strongmen. of conquest and colonisation between the tenth
■■ Both in the construction and reinforcement and fourteenth centuries. Works well for northern
of local lordships, and in the attempts of Europe, less so for the Mediterranean world.
kings and princes to get them under control, Bumke, Joachim (1991), Courtly Culture: Literature
and Society in the High Middle Ages (Berkeley/Los
feudal-vassalic relations were abundantly
Angeles/Oxford: University of California Press)
used.
(orig. German, 1986). Classical treatment of the core
■■ Both the proliferation of local lordships and concept of central medieval elite culture by a lead-
the increasing importance of expensive war- ing literary historian; still unsurpassed in its scope,
fare on horseback contributed to the origins its thematic richness and its submersion in primary
of a new class in the medieval aristocracy: source texts.
Crouch, David (2005), The Birth of Nobility: Constructing
the knights.
Aristocracy in England and France, 900–1300 (Harlow:
■■ Religious sanctioning of knightly violence, Pearson). Very systematic, debate-driven study that
bound to certain basic rules, the desire of ‘stands like a border post looking out on an uncer-
the highest aristocrats (including kings tain country’, as its author says about another book
and princes) to identify with knights, and on more or less the same subject. A must for any-
one who wants to begin to grasp the intricacies of
the development of a refined court culture
medieval nobility, knighthood and aristocracy (e.g.
(including a prolific literature) all contributed
the possible differences between these three terms),
to both the ‘courtly’ sophistication of knight- and all that has been said about them over the last
hood into chivalry and to the ‘nobilisation’ century or so.
of knighthood. Freedman, Paul (1999), Images of the Medieval Peasant
■■ Peasants, although belittled and ridiculed in (Stanford/Cambridge: Stanford University Press).
Startling view, not so much of the ‘real life’ of
courtly culture as a matter of course, were
medieval peasants, but of their representation in
well able to defend their customary rights. various contemporary social discourses and their
■■ The basis of peasant strength was the village concomitant imagery.
community which developed into a body of
local public government and acted not just
as a continuation but also as a counterweight
to local lords.

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6 Religious reform and
renewal

Aspirations to reform The first step necessary to do this was to purge

the Church of worldly pollution by curbing the
Throughout its long existence the Catholic profound secular influence in the Church on all
Church has always shown a considerable capac- fronts. One of the reformers’ continuous objec-
ity to purge itself. Long before the Reformation tives was to enhance the clergy’s observance of
frequent demands for reform had been heard. moral purity, and on the Second Lateran Council
We must not confuse attempts at reformation of 1139 it was decreed that all clergymen of the
with the desire for innovation. Church reform four higher orders (subdeacon, deacon, priest
was always aimed at the restoration of old values and bishop) should live in celibacy and ‘sepa-
and relationships which, in the eyes of those in rate themselves from the women with whom
favour of reform, had been lost or were in dan- they dared to copulate trespassing the holy com-
ger of being lost. But the attempts at reformation mands’. Only that would provide them with the
that became apparent in the tenth and eleventh authority to prescribe moral restraint to lay soci-
centuries differed in one essential respect from ety. The imposition of strict rules for marriage,
earlier offensives, such as those made under now defined as a sacrament, provided the clergy
Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. They had with the means to control legitimate descent,
always been aimed at improving the morals of i.e. the continuity of aristocratic property and
individuals: of the monks and lay clergy, to begin power. As one can imagine, the reformers met
with, and then of ordinary laypeople too. The fierce resistance, not the least from higher clerics
reformers of the tenth and eleventh centuries still themselves, who would not give up the comfort
considered this an important aim, but in addition of concubinage.
they proposed drastic alterations to ‘the mystical
body of Christ’, the Church as an institute.

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Pope versus emperor: the Crown, who received estates and the rights
attached to them as fiefs, but they were never
the investiture controversy
appointed as government officials. In France the
The reformers’ first target was lay investiture, problem of lay investiture did not become as
the early medieval practice whereby clerical dig- pressing for yet another reason. In some areas,
nitaries – bishops and abbots – after their election bishops were frequently invested with the rank of
by ‘clergy and people’ and before their consecra- count. And in various important northern French
tion by archbishop (or pope), were invested by cathedral cities such as Rheims and Laon, on the
the king or his representative with the supreme basis of their rights as count, they acted as lord
signs of spiritual dignity, a staff and a ring. of the town and its surroundings. However, in
Through this act the king had de facto control of the eleventh century, the position of the king
the appointment of bishops and abbots, because simply remained too weak to make the bishops’
they could not exercise their office without the activities in secular government a cornerstone of
investiture. That was why it was also customary royal policies; the king even lacked the right to
for the king to give his approval to the election. appoint (arch)bishops and abbots in many (arch)
For those in the church who were in favour bishoprics. This precluded the French version of
of reform, this practice was a thorn in the flesh the investiture contest from becoming an exclu-
because it created the opportunity for the buying sive struggle between king and pope.
and selling of clerical offices, also known as the sin
of simony after a certain Simon who had admit-
ted to it according to the Acts of the Apostles. The The reform programme
conflict over lay investiture was exacerbated in
the German Empire by two developments. First, Ironically enough, the popes’ great offensive
German kings since Otto I – or since the recovery against secular investiture in Germany was set in
of their control of north Italy and their claims to motion by the king. It was Henry III who shortly
the imperial dignity – had frequently intervened before 1050 made an end to the abuses to which
in the selection of the pope. Second, the policy the Holy See in Rome had fallen victim and who
of the German kings was to involve bishops in had had his cousin, Bruno of Egisheim, bishop of
state government. Of course this was not entirely Toul, elected pope as Leo IX, 1049–1054. He turned
new. We have seen that it was common enough out to be the first in a line of competent German
for bishops to represent the secular authority popes under whom papal authority was undoubt-
in their dioceses during the early Middle Ages. edly strengthened. Leo IX still respected the sacred
The Carolingians often brought in bishops and character of kingship and even recognised the
abbots as royal emissaries. However, as we saw in king’s right to make clerical appointments; how-
Chapter 4, the German kings went a step further: ever, he pleaded against the practice whereby lay
initially just on occasion, but then systematically rulers bestowed religious symbols on churchmen.
under the Salian dynasty (1024–1125), bishops He received strong support from reform-minded
were invested with the title of count or duke, elements in the Curia, the papal court. Their two
which gave them important secular authority in most radical representatives were Humbert, a schol-
addition to their spiritual authority. As part of arly monk from the Burgundian abbey of Cluny,
a system of royal government this arrangement whom Leo IX elevated to be cardinal-bishop of
could only work if the German kings had the Silva Candida (near Rome), and a native of Rome,
right to appoint bishops and abbots. Hildebrand of Soana, who was also a monk. From
In England after 1066 bishops and abbots 1059 onwards, Hildebrand was responsible for
of great monasteries became tenants-in-chief of controlling the papal finances.

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The reformers’ first success, in 1059, was to he ensured from the very beginning that there
revise the procedure for the election of the pope. would be no mistaking his intentions. In his first
Humbert of Silva Candida is generally seen as the two Lent synods held in 1074 and 1075 in the
genius behind this ruling. Until then, the popes, Lateran basilica in Rome, he promulgated decrees
just like ordinary bishops, had been chosen by forbidding the sale of church offices (simony),
their diocese’s ‘clergy and people’. In practice the intervention of laymen in the appointment
this meant that the quarrelsome Roman aristoc- of prelates and the celebration of mass by priests
racy determined who became pope. The ruling of having sexual intercourse. In the latter year, he
1059 placed the choice of pope in the hands also issued a curious document, Dictatus Papae
of the college of cardinals, the collective name (Papal Statements). At a first glance the Dictatus
for the most important clergy in Rome. Among is reminiscent of a megalomaniac’s wish list.
their number were the bishops in the immediate Twenty-seven short, staccato sentences sum up
vicinity of Rome who had performed liturgi- whence the power of the pope should come:
cal tasks in the basilica of the papal residence,
the Lateran, since the eighth century (cardinal- [The pope] alone may have control over
bishops), and the priests and deacons attached the imperial insignia. That he may remove
to the most important churches in Rome (car- emperors. That he may be the only one
dinal-priests and cardinal-deacons). All together, whose feet must be kissed by all rulers. That
there were about fifty cardinals in 1100; later he cannot be judged by anybody. That the
there would be many more of them. In 1179 it bishop of Rome [i.e. the pope], if consecrated
was decided that all the cardinals were equal, according to canon law, is undoubtedly sac-
and that for the election of a new pope, a two- rosanct through the merits of St Peter.
thirds majority of the votes would be required.
However, this did not mean that the selection In fact what we have here is an extreme re-
of the pope was safe from secular interference, interpretation of the doctrine of the two swords
for many of the cardinals were scions of Rome’s – the spiritual and the secular – through which
noble families. Moreover, as long as the elections the highest authority in the world was granted
were held in public, there remained a danger of to the pope without the batting of an eye. What
outside interference. The year 1216 saw the first was new was how unambiguously Pope Gregory
conclave, the election in strict seclusion, which made explicit old radical claims which had always
is still the custom today. It did not meet with remained more or less veiled, and presented them
immediate success: the cardinals were shut up for as the caesaro-papist standpoint. The Dictatus
days in a room which was too small and lacked Papae should then be seen as the blueprint for a
adequate sanitary facilities, an indescribable new hierocratic world order which was to replace
situation. This unfortunate start meant that the the old caesaro-papist order, in which kings con-
conclave did not become the rule until 1274. sidered themselves as head of the Church in their
It was Hildebrand of Soana who would make own kingdoms.
the Church’s supreme authority a cornerstone of It became increasingly obvious that a conflict
papal policy when he himself was elected pope. between the pope and the German king could
He radically opposed lay investiture of the clergy not be avoided. The struggle came to a head in
and private churches. His fierce attitude provoked 1075 when Henry IV (1056–1106) installed his
strong reactions from the emperors in particular chaplain Tedald as archbishop of Milan, while a
because of their specific role in the protection canonical election had already taken place and
of the Catholic Church and their involvement the candidate-elect had received papal approval.
in Italian politics. As Gregory VII (1073–1085), This was the first step towards the memorable

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events described in Chapter 4. Most perplexing 1122. The king gave up the investiture insofar as
of all Gregory not only excommunicated the it related to the bestowal of the spiritual office.
emperor, but also removed him from office. The He was also obliged to guarantee the ‘free’ elec-
first had happened before, but never the sec- tion of bishops, meaning that elections would be
ond. Now it was clear how great the power of safeguarded from interference from laypeople. It
the pope had become, even though he did not meant that thenceforth bishops were elected by
have a king’s army; there was turmoil in the the most important priests in the bishopric, usu-
German Empire and Henry’s position was seri- ally the canons of the cathedral chapter. The king
ously threatened. Henry made the best of a bad was allowed to retain the right to investiture with
job by, literally, going to Canossa to ask the pope the symbols of any secular authority that might
for forgiveness, which Gregory could not refuse. be granted to bishops.
Yet Henry had to pay a high price for this tactical The popes attached great importance to the
victory: a German king had implicitly recognised Concordat of Worms, for the full text of the agree-
that the pope had control over his kingship, and ment was put on the walls of the great receiving
this set a dangerous precedent. hall of the Lateran Palace, visible to one and all.
As for the pope, Canossa allowed him to for- Of course Worms, and similar arrangements with
mulate his ideas concerning the relationship other princes, did not provide a true solution
between kings and popes more broadly and to the problem of lay intervention in Church
more rigidly. In short, they asserted that the king affairs. As long as the offices of bishops and abbots
should be obedient (obediens), useful (utilis) and remained profitable and their holders belonged
suitable (idoneus), respectively to the pope, for the to the literate elite and had secular authority or
pope and in the eyes of the pope. In addition, the extensive worldly possessions, then princes and
German king should no longer have the exclu- the aristocracy would continue to interfere in
sive right to the emperorship in the West. The elections, only no longer overtly and directly.
tone was set for the struggle between the German The half-hearted ruling for secular investiture
king/emperor and the pope, each supported by a and the appointment procedures to high eccle-
part of the German and Italian episcopacy. The siastical office were the most radical aspects of
nadir was reached in the half century between the papal reformers’ more general efforts to stem
1076 and 1122. With daggers drawn, emperor lay influence in the Church. Another path was
and pope used every means available to harm to limit the proprietary church system. This was
and humiliate the adversary: from appointing or successful particularly when new churches (often
supporting anti-kings or anti-popes to denounc- parish churches) were established, and very grad-
ing or demonising the opponent. Gregory VII, ually through the revision of the status of existing
himself called ‘the holy devil’, regularly identi- churches. The right of appointing a person as the
fied Henry with Satan and even developed the local priest still often lay in the hands of noble
idea, for that time bizarre, if not heretical, that lords, but sometimes in those of local communi-
all secular authority originated with the devil. ties too, as was the case in the mountain villages
Henry’s son and successor, Henry V (1106–1125), of the Alps and Pyrenees and in several places
was not unfavourable to the moral aims of the in Italy. Parishioners everywhere now had a say
papal reform movement, but he would not yield in looking after the church building and related
an inch on the question of the bishops’ inves- matters such as church properties and local poor
titure, which he considered to be indissolubly relief.
linked with his ius regni (‘right of kingship’). So The reformers met with fierce resistance, in
the battle continued. A compromise was even- Scriptures as well as in conflicts about dismiss-
tually reached at the Concordat of Worms in als and appointments, which contest dragged

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BOX 6.1 THE DONATIO CONSTANTINI

One of the most famous documents in medieval history is the so-called Donatio Constantini
(Donation of Constantine). This document is in the form of a solemn deed of gift, in which, shortly
before his definitive departure for Byzantium-Constantinople, Emperor Constantine not only con-
firmed the primacy of power of the pope in Rome over the Christian Church, but also transferred
to Pope Silvester I his palace in Rome, all his imperial insignia and all his authority over the west-
ern part of the Roman Empire, including the city of Rome and all Italy and the islands of the West.
Constantine further confirmed that he had placed the imperial crown on Silvester’s head himself,
and on that occasion ‘as a mark of respect to St Peter’ had held the reins of the pope’s horse and
helped him to dismount, as if he were Silvester’s squire.
It is perfectly obvious that Constantine never issued this document; in this sense it is spurious,
but the question is whether it is also a falsum, a purposeful falsification, because it is not at all clear
who (or what group) would have wanted to make it appear real, and above all why. It has often been
suggested that there was a connection with the well-known reversal of 754, when Pope Stephen II,
under pressure from the Lombard threat, turned away from the emperor of Byzantium and found a
new protector in Pippin the Short, ruler of the Franks. This is understandable, because it is generally
agreed that the first version of the Donatio Constantini must date from the third quarter of the eighth
century.Yet none of the sources point to Pippin or any of his successors being familiar with the text
of the Donatio. Nor is there any indication that its contents played any part in the ideological basis of
papal policies in that turbulent time.What is certain is that the Donatio was created in clerical circles
close to the pope. There are three theories concerning its purpose. One suggests that the text is no
more than a frivolous practice-exercise in rhetoric, in which case the Donatio is indeed spurious, but
not falsified. The second theory argues that the production of the text served a purely local Roman
aim: its authors wanted to stress the importance of the great basilica near the papal residence of
the Lateran in a period when the Vatican and the basilica of St Peter threatened to overshadow the
Lateran. The supporters of the third theory take an even broader view: the Donatio would have been
used against the new Frankish allies to support the claim that the popes had secular supremacy
over extensive parts of central Italy – a claim that would appear to be successful. With the last aim
the text – in a splendid new transcript that was meant to pass for the so-called fourth-century origi-
nal – was in any case deployed in the diplomatic game for the ‘restitution’ of Church areas to Pope
John XII (955–964) at the time of the arrival of the German King Otto I in Italy.
With the reform movement from the middle of the eleventh century the Donatio Constantini
became a real ideological pillar in the defence of papal claims to the highest authority in the
Christian world, despite the repeated oaths of the pope’s opponents that the document was ‘false’.
Even the scientific unmasking of the Donatio by the humanists Nicholas of Cusa and Lorenzo Valla,
who between 1430 and 1440 used other arguments to prove irrefutably that it could not possibly
be dated to the beginning of the fourth century, did not prevent various Renaissance popes from
appealing to the Donation of Constantine. It is famously referred to in the Treaty of Tordesillas in
1494, where Pope Alexander VI as alleged lord of the western hemisphere divided the New World
into a Portuguese and a Castilian sphere of influence.

Sources: H. Fuhrmann, lemma ‘Konstantinische Schenkung’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters V (Munich/Zurich:

Artemis Verlag, 1991), cols 1385–1386; Hartmut Hoffmann,‘Ottonische Fragen’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung
des Mittelalters 51 (1995), pp. 53–82.

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along for decades. King William the Conqueror sanctions, diplomatic bravura and ideological
simply ignored the papal decrees and continued propaganda to realise their hierocratic claims.
his interventions in church affairs. King Henry I Undoubtedly, the single most formidable as well
went on for ten years to rule France as an excom- as ambitious expression of this was the general
municated Christian. Then, a compromise was exhortation to wage holy war against all enemies
found because the pope couldn’t afford to chal- of the Christian faith in defence of the Church.
lenge both the emperor and the most powerful The first instance was Pope Urban II’s famous call
kings at the same time. On a local level, scores for a crusade to free the Holy Sepulchre issued at a
of established bishops, abbots and provosts of council at Clermont in 1095. The overwhelming
chapters, as well as lay rulers, were banned by the response showed that the Roman popes had the
pope or by regional synods. Some of them went authority to use the new dynamic of the western
on in office under the protection of the emperor aristocracy to achieve the Church’s objectives.
or king, but then they had to face at times violent It was above all bishops and archbishops from
attacks from reformers. The opposite happened France and Spain who took part in the Council
just as well: some duly elected and appointed gathered at Clermont on 24 November 1095. On
bishops of the reformed tendency were prohib- the agenda was the matter of the excommuni-
ited to enter their city or had to flee under the cation of Philip I, the king of France, who had
pressure of the local powers. Rulers and their repudiated his queen and refused to end his affair
clients were just not prepared to give up their with the wife of one of his barons. Pope Urban II
influence on the real as well as spiritual power also inveighed strongly against the lay investiture
represented by the prelates. Nevertheless the suc- of bishops and the acts of violence and injustice
cessors of Gregory VII propagated the papal view committed by knights contrary to the Peace of
vigourously. The change in the procedure for the God alliances supported by the Church. It is in
imperial coronation introduced by Pope Innocent this light that his call for a crusade – addressed
III (1198–1216) was particularly significant in to the knights at the end of the Council – should
this respect. Until then, when the new emperor be seen. Several chronicles report that the pope
had been girded with the sword, the next words urged them to devote their forces rather to the
in the ceremony stated that the emperor had defence of their brothers in faith in the East, who
received the sword ‘from God’ in order to protect had become the victims of the infidels’ violence.
the Church. Innocent changed this to ‘from the The canons of the Council record that those war-
pope’! This made it perfectly clear that the pope riors of the faith who went to Jerusalem without
had both swords at his disposal. Not that this thought of vain glory or material gain, but only
was not original. The same idea had already been with the intention of visiting the Holy Sepulchre,
hinted at in the Donation of Constantine (see Box would be granted plenary indulgence, that is to
6.1). The fact that the new papal order was never say a full remission of punishment in Purgatory
actually realised in no way lessens the tremen- for sins committed in life.
dous impact that the papacy, buttressed by this In addition to the sincere religious motivations
new ideology, had on the twelfth and thirteenth to promote the Christian faith and the purity of
centuries – but on that period only. the Church, the pope would also have had political
considerations in mind. The request for military
support from the Byzantine emperor offered the
The impulse for the Crusades western Church the chance to strengthen its posi-
tion there, as it had already done in Sicily and
Lacking adequate military, and often also politi- Iberia. The aim of the expedition was certainly not
cal, weapons, the popes had to resort to canonical the defence of the Byzantine Empire – the crusaders

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travelled straight through. The Turkic-Seljuk the various ideological elements that, together,
masters of Anatolia were put to flight, but not constituted the Christian concept of holy war
eliminated. A papal vassal state in Palestine, how- against the infidels – knightly virtue, earthly
ever, would have been an excellent result from the salvation, God’s grace and religious vocation.
opportunities offered. Seen in this light, it can be Crusades never were ‘simply military campaigns’
understood why the pope tied the Church hierar- but always and primarily ‘acts of devotion and
chy in the newly conquered regions to Rome and a means of salvation’ (Madden 1999). Crusaders
not to the patriarch of Constantinople. were unlikely driven by love of gain alone: they
The western invasions in the Middle East that wanted to cleanse their sins and save their souls.
followed Urban II’s proclamation were accom- To that end they and their families had to make
panied by an intensive propaganda campaign huge financial sacrifices, and they often had to
for the greater glory of the Catholic Church face appalling hardships on their journey. Most
and the nobles who took the cross. Practically of them eventually returned to their homeland,
all the surviving sources in the West relating to which also indicates that the acquisition of new
the Crusades breathe a virulent partisanship and land never was their prime motive. On the other
portray a clichéd image of the enemy, which fit- hand, the behaviour of the crusaders in the Holy
ted in logically with the Church’s campaign to Land was quite another matter. The cruelty of
crusade. The opening verses of Psalm 79 were their actions, in particular the plundering and
frequently quoted to vindicate what was to be wholesale murder for which they were respon-
seen as a war of liberation of the Holy Sepulchre: sible, for instance, during the First Crusade, in
‘O God, the heathen are come into thine inher- Ma’arrat al-No’man and Jerusalem, filled the
itance; thy holy temple have they defiled.’ On local population with revulsion, and exposed
earlier occasions, when Jerusalem was taken by the desire of many ‘Franks’ to take as much booty
the Muslims in the seventh century or at the as quickly as possible.
destruction of the Holy Sepulchre by Caliph al- Many more appeals for crusades would follow
Hakim at the beginning of the eleventh century, (see Chapter 7) – until long after the Middle Ages
the Catholic Church had not yet attained the – directed not only against the Islamic rulers of
moral and organisational strength it acquired in Palestine. In 1063, Pope Alexander II had already
the second half of the eleventh century. The great launched a crusade against Muslims in Spain. In
Church Reform, the Peace of God movement, 1230, the Teutonic Order started, under the papal
the Investiture contest and the encouragement crusaders’ flag, the outright colonisation of the
of the Iberian Reconquista were all expressions of still ‘heathen’ regions at the southern shores of
this newly acquired self-confidence. the Baltic Sea, from Prussia eastward. The moti-
Neither is there any need to doubt the deeply vation of a crusade was also used to exterminate
religious motives of most crusaders. Chroniclers Christians who had been labelled as heretics in
called the men (and some women too) who took Italy and southern France. In all these violent
the cross pilgrims, or even martyrs or new apos- actions, religious arguments had become mixed
tles, the expeditions themselves pilgrimages – all up with purely political and economic ones.
terms that underlined their elevated religious sta-
tus and their willingness to make great sacrifices
in the eyes of contemporaries. Abbot Guibert de Papal claims to the highest
Nogent, one of the non-participating historians authority in the world
of the First Crusade who finished his ‘God’s deeds
through the Francs’ in 1108, and who had been Besides rhetoric and diplomacy, the other two
in personal contact with crusaders, connected most important weapons in the papal arsenal

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were excommunication and interdict. By excom- to present him as the pope’s vassal in 1157. More
munication we mean the exclusion of individual than fifty years later, England’s king John could
disobedient believers from the Christian com- not avoid it: he became the vassal of Innocent III
munity; by interdict we mean the suspension in 1213, and acknowledged that he held England
of Church services within a certain area. An and Ireland in fief from him. In exchange, the
even heavier penalty was to accuse a person of pope took John’s side in the struggle against
heresy, which meant that secular rulers could the defiant barons, and lifted the interdict which
be asked for military support. So it was that, in had been placed on England in 1208. In the
1074, Gregory VII asked King Sven Estridsson same period the pope also established his formal
of Denmark to come and drive the ‘heretical’ lordship over the kingdom of Sicily.
Normans out of south Italy. A similar appeal was It goes without saying that the popes’ efforts
made to Count Robert II of Flanders in 1102, this to secure their authority above that of kings and
time aimed against Emperor Henry IV. In such emperors did not remain unopposed. Of all the
cases heresy should not, of course, be seen as German kings and emperors most affected by
a deviation from the Church’s doctrine, but as a the question, it was Frederick Barbarossa (1152–
serious disturbance of the world peace that was 1190) who took up arms against the pope over
guaranteed by the Church. In such circumstances this and other matters. He was the first emperor
it was the popes’ sacred duty to take action. to refer consistently to his authority and his
Bravura formed the basis of papal claims to empire as the Holy Roman Empire (sacrum impe-
territorial authority over large areas of Europe. rium (Romanorum)), something just as holy and
On the basis of the island clause in the Donatio God-given as the Holy Church. Moreover, not
Constantini, just before 1100 Urban II laid claim all clerical circles shared the extreme interpre-
to Corsica, and soon after 1150 Callixtus III tation of the doctrine of the two swords which
bestowed Ireland on the English king, Henry II. was current since Gregory VII. The moderate or
Then the popes looked for allies prepared to rec- dualist view – that the two powers in the world
ognise them as liege lord. That was not always are more or less equal – was laid down in the
successful. The oldest case is also the best known: Decretum Gratiani (c.1140), the most authoritative
the remarkable alliance that Gregory VII made compilation of canon law in the Middle Ages.
with the Norman lords of southern Italy in 1080,
during the second phase of his trial of strength
with Henry IV, was based on their feudal-vassalic The papal monarchy
bond. Other princely vassals of the pope included
the count of Barcelona and the duke of Dalmatia The struggles of the popes with kings and emper-
and Croatia. The latter promoted himself to king ors about supremacy in the world should not be
in 1076 with Gregory’s acquiescence. The kings seen separately from the gradual strengthening
of Aragon and Navarre and the dukes, later of the papal hold on the Church itself. It was
kings, of Portugal maintained a peculiar relation- coupled with the expansion of central adminis-
ship with the pope that was called patrocinium, trative organs in Rome. The College of Cardinals,
a kind of patronage. Nor did Gregory hesitate to known as the Sacred College (Sacrum Collegium),
ask William the Conqueror to become his fidelis developed in the twelfth century into the popes’
(vassal) in return for the political and spiritual most important advisory and administrative
support he had received from the papacy in 1066. body. The popes sent the cardinals everywhere as
Nowadays it is generally believed that William their personal, authorised envoys (legati a latere),
did not fall for this, just as Frederick Barbarossa ensuring that their authority was felt in every cor-
would not be misled by a sly diplomatic attempt ner of Christendom. The actual administration

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was based on the papal Curia. From the second The easing of the financial situation and the
half of the twelfth century, departments began to improvements in financial management then
specialise and become separate; jurisdiction and contributed to a strengthening of the pope’s hold
finance were the first. on what, for the sake of simplicity, we earlier
The popes had, of course, always had some called the Papal State (see Chapter 2). The whole
form of supreme judicial authority in the Latin complexity of properties and vaguely defined
Church, but it was not institutionalised until the seigneurial rights that made up the Papal State
twelfth century. The popes began to take on more was considerably extended in 1102 with a large
jurisdiction, while papal judgements were increas- number of possessions in Tuscany, Emilia and
ingly sought. At first the pope and cardinals dealt Lombardy belonging to the estate of the reform-
with everything themselves in the consistory, minded margravine Matilda of Tuscany, who died
as the regular meetings of the pope and Sacred childless in that year, bequeathing all her worldly
College were called. One official, the chancellor goods to the Church of Rome. From about the
(cancellarius), had a key role in these meetings. middle of the twelfth century the step-by-step
He heard cases together with the pope and later consolidation and territorialisation of the worldly
presented a verdict in accordance with the judge- power of the popes in central Italy can be traced.
ment that had been formulated in the consistory. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were also
The Curia tried to channel the enormous increase the era of a new series of ecumenical councils
in papal jurisdiction through the formation of rather different in nature from the papal syn-
specialised law courts: the Poenitentiaria to try ods of the early Middle Ages. The conventional
moral questions, and the Audientia for other mat- idea that questions of doctrine could only be
ters. Native clergy, schooled in canon law and decided by a general Church council still existed,
with a special mandate, were appointed for cases but there had not been many of these meetings
wherever they occurred. since the seventh century. This was chiefly due
The twelfth century also showed a consider- to another tradition, that ecumenical councils
able growth in the income of the Church in Rome. should be chaired by the emperor, and there
There were two separate funds for administration: had not been one for a long time, at least not in
the Camera Apostolica – the Apostle’s Office – for the the West. Leo IX was the first pope to summon
papal share and the Office for the cardinals’ share, an assembly of bishops from different parts of
which after 1289 was as large as that of the pope. Latin Christendom, and to preside at it without
The Camera Apostolica came under the supervision the emperor being present. In 1049 he had the
of the papal treasurer (camerarius). In this period the relics of St Remigius, who had baptised Clovis,
papal domains and the sums received irregularly placed upon the altar of the cathedral of Reims
from secular princes, to finance crusades, amongst and urged all the prelates to declare that they
other things, still provided the major part of papal had not paid for their appointment (the sin of
revenues. This second source was less dependable, simony). Three were deposed, two of which were
because the pope had few sanctions to extract pay- immediately reinstated by the pope, and one was
ment from an unwilling prince. In time other, excommunicated. This gathering was a prelude to
regular sources of income would become more a new series of ecumenical councils in the West
important. Under Innocent III the first attempt which were held regularly from the beginning of
was made to tax the clergy by means of a three- the twelfth century, and which marked the tran-
yearly levy on their income. Further experiments sition to a more offensive strategy of the popes.
were made along these lines, much to the dismay The popes also started to use councils as a mag-
of some rulers who viewed in horror the flow of nificent stage to exhibit their doctrinal power and
clerical income out of their kingdoms. display the unity of the Church. The legislative

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role of those attending the councils was soon lim- the Middle Ages, but in recent years the reasons
ited to hearing what decrees had been prepared for this view have changed. Previously, Innocent
by the pope and his legal experts before giving was admired as an administrator and politician,
them their loud and undivided assent: fiat!, fiat! for his impressive legislative and managerial
(‘Let it be! Let it be!’). activities, his strenuous efforts to consolidate
From 1123 the scene of these new-style Church further the Papal State in the making, his suc-
assemblies was normally the papal residence in cessful mobilisation of crusader armies, and his
Rome, the Lateran, with its great basilica and skilful manoeuvres in international politics.
adjoining palace. The Third and Fourth Lateran More recently, Innocent has been seen above
Councils, held in 1179 and 1215 and summoned all as the embodiment of the exalted aspira-
by Alexander III (1159–1181) and Innocent III tions and ideals of a new papacy that was aimed
(1198–1216) respectively, were the high points of at the spiritual and eventually political leader-
these new ecumenical councils. Both produced ship of all Christendom. An important means
comprehensive regulations in many areas: the to achieve that aim was the development of the
Third in relation to the election of the pope, but concept of plenitudo potestatis (the fullness of
also in the field of marriage and kinship. The power) which had already appeared in works of
Fourth Council approved seventy-one decrees Pope Leo the Great (440–461). Innocent’s prede-
dealing with a variety of matters: how often a good cessor, Alexander III, had reintroduced the term
Christian should make his confession, the morals to indicate what he saw as the unrestricted and
of the clergy, the prohibition on the clergy against exclusive judicial and administrative power of
taking part in trials by ordeal, the recognition of the pope within the Church. Innocent III went
certain religious groups and the condemnation a step further. By linking plenitudo potestatis with
of others as heretics, and the injunction that the well-known passage in Matthew’s Gospel
Jews should thenceforth wear a yellow badge on on St Peter’s power of the keys (see Chapter 2)
their clothes. The Fourth Council also broke new he could substantiate the pretension that the
ground in that it was the first Council to which authority of the pope was superior to any worldly
not only bishops but also other clerical and sec- power whatsoever.
ular dignitaries were invited. This was a sign of
self-confidence bordering on arrogance and belief
in their own supremacy that had been built up Reformation and renewal
by the popes since Gregory VII, for the invitation in monastic life
was certainly not based on any intention to give
the Christian community a say in Church affairs Cluny and the Ecclesia
through its ‘natural’ representatives. The rulers Cluniacensis
were not asked to take part in the decisions, only
to join in the deliberations and chiefly to witness The cradle of most of the Church reforms just dis-
an event that concerned all Christendom. That cussed was Cluny, in the West Frankish duchy of
does not mean that the sessions were all sweet- Burgundy. William the Pious, duke of Aquitaine,
ness and light. When the question of whether or founded an abbey there in 910, which within two
not Frederick II should be recognised as emperor centuries would become one of the richest eccle-
was being dealt with, supporters and oppo- siastical institutions in the West. As early as the
nents alike created pandemonium, and the pope second abbot, Odo (927–942), reforms aimed at
himself joined in vehemently. restoring the Rule of Benedict were carried out,
The pontificate of Innocent III is traditionally especially in connection with the command to
considered to be the climax of papal power in pray. A lengthy liturgy took shape, and Cluny

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garments in silk, gold and silver showed off the

abbey’s extraordinary wealth. By about 1150
Cluny, with three hundred monks in residence,
most of them priests, was far and away the larg-
est monastery in Latin Christendom. The private
donations led to an overflow of masses and lita-
nies naming the pious donors in the numerous
memorial services. Every day up to more than
two hundred psalms were recited, and hundreds
of poor people crowded through the abbey gates
in the hope of being given food. Altogether this
must have formed an agglomeration comparable,
for that time, to a large town.
Cluny owed its special place in the religious
landscape of the dynamic tenth century to four
other factors. First, the success with which it
conveyed its efforts at reformation to numer-
ous other monastic communities, both new and
already established. Eventually, at the beginning
of the twelfth century, the Cluny circle, Ecclesia
Cluniacensis, numbered more than 1,000 houses
which depended on the mother abbey in vari-
PLATE 6.1 The imposing buildings of the abbey of ous ways. Existing abbeys (possibly with their
Cluny, destroyed during the French Revolution, after daughter houses or offshoots) kept their own
a lithograph by Émile Sagot, after 1798. abbot, while new foundations were guided by a
lower-ranking prior appointed by the abbot of
Cluny. Through a system of visitations or inspec-
was the first abbey in which praying for the sal- tions from Cluny itself, the mother abbey’s hold
vation of the dead – not just dead monks and on the associated monasteries was fairly strong.
their relations, but also outsiders – became a seri- Second, from the end of the tenth century,
ous occupation. With this particular aim Odilo Cluny enjoyed an unusual form of Church
(998–1049), Cluny’s fifth abbot, introduced a exemption. The abbey was exempted from local
new Church feast, All Souls’ Day, celebrated episcopal supervision and every form of secular
on 2 November. The idea that the souls of the authority. It is true that other great medieval clois-
individual dead were painfully cleansed of their ters, Bobbio, Saint-Denis and Fulda among them,
earthly sins before the Last Judgement, or were had enjoyed this exemption before Cluny, but
even punished in hell, gathered weight in about the granting of it to the Burgundian abbey had
1000. In their cosmic struggle with the forces of even more far-reaching consequences when it
the devil, on All Souls’ Day the Cluniac monks was extended to all its houses in 1024: it made
gathered together in a dazzling ceremony of sing- Cluny almost a kingdom within a kingdom, and
ing psalms and chorals. A vast cemetery was laid a powerful bulwark in the emancipatory strug-
out next to the abbey for those members of the gle to free ecclesiastical institutions from secular
faithful who wished to be buried within striking control.
distance of holy Cluny. The Burgundian abbey The third factor was that Cluny had a special
prospered from it as gifts flowed in. Liturgical relationship not only with the pope but also with

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the principal apostles, Peter and Paul. This came renouncing the world, contemplation and an
about in 981 through the ceremonial transfer of ascetic lifestyle. The protest led to the establish-
relics of Peter and Paul from Rome to Burgundy. ment of two new monastic communities, both
For pilgrims from the north the road to Cluny of which stood for a rigorous observance of the
could thus be seen as a sort of second-best pilgrim- Benedictine Rule: La Grande Chartreuse, in the
age to Rome. Gifts of land made to Cluny were mountains above Grenoble (1084), and Cîteaux,
expressed as gifts to St Peter, so that the (aristo- north of Cluny (1098). They were the mother
cratic) landowners could imagine themselves to houses of the first two well-organised monastic
be the ‘neighbour of St Peter’ (Rosenwein 1989). orders, the Carthusians and the Cistercians. The
Could there be a more powerful protector? Cistercians were especially successful. The num-
Fourth, Cluny soon developed into a centre ber of Cistercian houses grew to around 350 in
of learning and intellectual training. The abbots 1150, and by 1250 to around 650 for men and
enjoyed an impressive reputation throughout around 900 for women, in the farthest corners
Christendom. Their advice was highly valued of Latin Europe. The Order had a congregational
by kings and popes and they were much in evi- structure of mother and daughter houses linked
dence at all great festivities, such as the Peace of to each other. The highest administrative body
God gatherings where lay and ecclesiastical lords was the chapter-general; it consisted of the abbots
promised to collaborate in keeping the peace and of all the houses and met once every three years.
prevent violence. The abbots were chosen by the monks, to whom
Despite its exceptional allure, Cluny was not they were accountable.
an isolated phenomenon. The Burgundian and As an expression of the Cistercians’ return to
German kingdoms had their own centres of the roots of monasticism, they chose isolated
monastic reform, which had no connection with locations at the fringe of civilisation, as in the
Cluny, such as the abbey of St Victor at Marseilles original ‘desert’ of early Christianity, an attempt
and the abbey of Gorze in Lotharingia. In the to live in strict seclusion from the world. They
core regions of the German Empire the efforts rejected the domain exploitation of land, includ-
at reformation were concentrated on the rich- ing serfdom, unfree labour and surplus extraction
est and best-known Carolingian abbeys: Corvey, in kind, in rents or tithes, and coupled with feu-
Lorsch, Fulda, Prüm, Echternach, Reichenau and dal forms of power. They restored the original
Sanct Gallen, and so on. Other great Benedictine sober Benedictine liturgy and lifestyle, rejected
abbeys, notably Monte Cassino, the mother of ornaments in their churches, and they returned
them all, and which enjoyed a flourishing period to the order to work. As the Cistercians wanted
in the eleventh century, managed to avoid all to live on the products of their own work, they
attempts at reform. organised their rural estates into large compact
units of exploitation, outlying farms known as
grangie, supervised by a monk living on the farm
The new orders itself. These exploitations often applied innova-
tive methods in agriculture, artisanal techniques
Soon, however, serious criticism was levelled and administration. In the abbey of Fontenay,
at Cluny from within monastic circles. It was founded in 1118 by Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–
directed at the splendour of its festivities, the 1153) in a marshy valley in northern Burgundy,
relative luxury in which the monks lived, and a metallurgical factory had hammers and bellows
the intensive involvement of many of Cluny’s powered by watermills. Surpluses could be sold
abbots with secular politics, none of which was on the emerging urban markets. The manual
compatible with the original monastic ideals of work was mostly carried out by conversi, monks

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PLATE 6.2 The abbey of Fontenay in north Burgundy is a fine example of Cistercian principles: located at the
fringes of civilisation, it was built in a sober style, contrasting with the luxury of the older Benedictine abbeys,
and there was a clear involvement in agricultural and technical innovations. The location was chosen in 1118
by Bernard of Clairvaux in a valley amply provided with running water, which was used to supply energy to
watermills which powered bellows and hammers in the forge. In this 53-metre-long twelfth-century building,
iron-ore mined nearby was worked into metal tools.

of simple birth who had taken monastic vows but stant involvement in what was happening in the
had few liturgical duties because they were illiter- world outside. Spirited and committed as he was,
ate. They are also known as lay brothers because and being a brilliant preacher and orator, he gave
they had not been ordained and were not ton- synods, councils, popes, kings, fellow abbots and
sured. In addition, wage labourers were hired to intellectuals the benefit of his advice and admoni-
work in the grangie. tions, whether they asked for it or not. A fervent
The explosive increase of Cistercian monas- champion of a hard, and if necessary armed,
teries in the early stages was chiefly due to the fight against non-believers, heretics and other
inspirational activities of Bernard of Clairvaux, dissidents, in which he included all supporters
named after Cîteaux’s third sister monastery of the new rationalistic approach to theological
which he had founded to the east of Troyes: questions, Bernard was one of the driving forces
‘Clear Valley’. Even though he was the leading behind the Church’s growing militancy.
figure in a rapidly growing order that considered From their side, the popes liked to deploy
seclusion from the world and strict asceticism Cistercians as ‘missionary storm-troops’ (Sayers
of paramount importance, Bernard himself 1994). They took part in crusades and everywhere
behaved more like a Cluniac abbot seeking con- established themselves on the borders of the

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non-Christian world, such as the Slavic regions This created a difference between canons regular
east of the Elbe. Their example inspired the and secular canons. The former were clergy living
foundation in Spain of the military orders of together in a monastery, who held to monastic
the Knights of Calatrava and Alcántara, which rule and were not allowed personal possessions;
followed the Cistercian rule and maintained the latter did not live together and were allowed
links with the order of Cîteaux. And it was the personal possessions.
Cistercians whom the pope charged with the (non- The attraction and rapid growth of the new
military) suppression of the ‘heretical’ Cathars in orders responded to the need for authentic
Languedoc soon after 1200. Their organisational monastic life, which had been lost in many of the
model was soon followed by the other new old Benedictine abbeys and even in the tremen-
orders, the Carthusians, Premonstratensians and dously successful Cluny movement. In a way, as
the Mendicants. a consequence of their own impact, these institu-
The Carthusian order, founded around 1100 by tions in the course of centuries became so wealthy
Bruno of Cologne, a close advisor to Pope Urban that they deviated from their original goals and
II, sprang from the heremitic tradition inside thereby lost credibility. The gradual shifting away
Christian monasticism which underwent a spec- from the initial inspiration can be observed as
tacular resurgence in the eleventh and twelfth a recurrent process, in the Church as well as in
centuries: witness the enthusiastic veneration any large organisation. It certainly was a sign of
of the two prototypical hermits who had played the Church’s remarkable vitality that it showed
such an important part in the life of Jesus him- the capacity to time and again adapt its institu-
self: St John the Baptist and St Mary Magdalen. tional model to new challenges. Quite a number
In their version of the hermitage, Carthusians of secular chapters were reformed into regular
lived a community life, but the monks spent the communities, living in chastity and poverty, and
greater part of their time in strict segregation, many new chapters applying the Augustinian
each in his own cell in the closed precincts of rule were newly founded. The choice made by
the monastery. many thousands of men and women to take
Equally successful was the initiative of Norbert the vows, and for innumerable others to facili-
of Gennep (1092–1134) who became the founder tate them with their lavish donations, is a clear
of the order of the Premonstratensians. Dissatisfied demonstration of the strong spiritual movement
with his comfortable life as a canon of the chapter in these centuries. In conjunction with the spir-
of Xanten in the duchy of Cleves, Norbert retired itual needs, the huge increase of monastic houses
into the wilderness. His reputation as a preacher certainly also reflects the profound expansion of
of repentance brought him many followers and western society as a whole, which supported this
resulted in the formation of a religious commune growth both in demographic and in economic
in the woods of Coucy, near Prémontré. Norbert terms.
ended his life as archbishop of Magdeburg on
the German-Slav border, several years after the
pope had recognised the Premonstratensians Vita apostolica, imitatio Christi
as a new monastic order. Strictly speaking, and the new spirituality
Premonstratensians are not monks but canons,
higher, ordained clergy who live in accordance In addition to varied attempts at reform in the
with a monastic rule, in this case a rule attrib- eleventh century a new religious sensitivity with
uted to St Augustine. This happened quite often two main features presented itself. One was
in those days. All over Europe such monastic com- the idea that good Christians must live follow-
munities of canons sprang up like mushrooms. ing the example of Christ and his apostles in

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the New Testament. This effort towards nudus hoped to be able to reach his audience better. The
nudum Christum sequi (lit. ‘to follow naked the Waldenses (the followers of Waldo) were declared
naked Christ’) – to lead a morally pure but at the to be heretics in 1184 because of their particu-
same time activist, ‘apostolic’ life (vita apostolica) lar interpretation of the Bible. They shared that
stripped of material excesses – linked itself quite fate with the Humiliati (who were later rehabili-
naturally with the second feature, spirituality, tated), the collective name for small communities
the search for a personal, intimate relationship of pious laypeople in various towns throughout
of the mind with God, fed by prayer and medita- northern Italy.
tion. The manifestation of the divine with which The beguine movement, which began in the
Christian believers now identified themselves bishopric of Liège in the same period, was of a
more than ever before was God the Son, Jesus rather different nature. Beguines were pious
Christ – and his mother, Mary. In sculptures women who lived together in casual communi-
and paintings both were given an emotional, ties and supported themselves with their own
human image. Over time, Christ changed from handwork. Thanks to the intervention of highly
a distant, sovereign conqueror of death into a placed admirers they were absolved of any sus-
helpless Saviour suffering unimaginably – but not picion of heresy and received papal recognition,
beyond human empathy – before death; Mary, on condition that they held to a monastic rule.
from a majestic queen of heaven into a caring The great spread of beguine communities appar-
and grieving mother, whose sorrow was so much ently answered unmarried women’s needs to lead
aggravated because she had foreknowledge of a spiritual life in a protected environment in the
her son’s human fate. Both turned into objects heart of the cities.
not only of awe and devotion but even more so
of compassion and passionate love, becoming,
therefore, the path to true inner conversion. The mendicant orders
The new religious fervour found its most radi-
cal form of expression in movements that wanted The most noticeable manifestation of these new
to give more than a spiritual and internal moral religious ideals were the mendicant orders, so
meaning to the ideal of the apostolic life. Besides, called because they renounced all worldly pos-
to live as Christ and his apostles had lived – in pov- sessions and went round begging. Just like the
erty – they passionately wanted to proclaim the Waldenses, the Friars Preachers, or Dominicans,
word of God. With their critical attitude towards aimed at challenging the Cathars of southern
laxity and ‘depravity’ inside the Church, these France from the ideal of evangelical poverty. After
new secular movements balanced constantly on his order received papal sanction in 1216, Dominic
the edge of being condemned for heresy. The ear- Guzman (1170–1221), the Spanish canon who was
liest of these radical apostolic movements came their founder, preferred another option: to preach
entirely from lay initiatives in the rapidly grow- to the ordinary faithful in the vernacular. This
ing towns of Lombardy, the Rhine and Rhône meant that the Dominicans had to know their
valleys and the southern Low Countries, where theology and thus had to be well educated. The
concentrations of wealth paradoxically inspired Dominicans therefore established their own edu-
a fascination with absolute poverty. In Lyons it cational system that would allow the best pupils
was a cloth merchant, Waldo (c.1140–c.1218), preliminary training followed by top-quality aca-
who gave up all his possessions to go and preach demic theology studies. In large towns the order set
in Languedoc and beyond the Pyrenees and the up advanced schools for the study of the arts and
Alps. He invested all his money in the transla- theology, an initiative that was rapidly copied by
tion of the Bible into Provençal, with which he other orders, including the Franciscans.

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In other respects, too, the Dominican order

was excellently organised. The principal house
was in Bologna, and the order’s general chapter
or assembly often gathered there. The basis of the
order was formed by the houses or priories, of
which c.1350 there were nearly 650, usually set
up in the poorer quarters of towns and headed by
a prior and his socius (assessor) – the mendicant
orders rejected the lofty position of the abbot of
the old Benedictine tradition. The provinces were
one level above the local foundations and were
governed by provincial chapters, which in turn
sent representatives to the general chapter.
In comparison with the threat of persecution
of new lay movements insisting on poverty, the
enormous success of the movement of Francis
of Assisi (1181–1226) is particularly remark-
able. Neither in his background (he was the
son of a cloth merchant from the town of Assisi
in Umbria) nor in his activities was Francis PLATE 6.3 St Francis supports the Church, which has
very different from someone like Waldo. Francis collapsed. Allegorical fresco by Giotto (c.1267–1337)
was a layperson, unschooled in the new scholas- in the upper church of the basilica of St Francis at
tic tradition and not very interested in allegorical Assisi.
interpretations of the Bible: he wanted to take
the text literally, especially that of the New Francis was on good terms with Ugolino,
Testament, and immerse himself in it. For cardinal-bishop of Ostia and subsequently Pope
Francis, the ideal of the apostolic life meant Gregory IX (1227–1241). This was an important
above all the imitatio Christi, the empathic reliv- connection for the transformation of his move-
ing of Christ’s life. Francis went far in this, for ment into a religious order as it assured him of
shortly before his death his hands and feet bore permanent support in the Curia. It led, among
the stigmata, the wounds of the crucified Christ. other things, to a fairly problem-free recognition
In addition, Francis wanted to embrace life as of the order of the Friars Minor, as the Franciscans
God had created it in all His infinite goodness, soon came to be called. Francis’s early disciple
both the breathtaking beauty of nature (Francis Clare, a noble woman of Assisi, founded a female
and his followers were the first to have an eye for community nearby, which she intended to fol-
natural beauty and respect for flora and fauna) as low the rule and lifestyle of the Franciscans. In
well as the horrors of sickness and death. Francis 1228 at least twenty-four female communities
also advocated possessing absolutely noth- in northern Italy followed Francis’s model, but
ing; he even spoke out against owning a book. it was inconceivable for the Church hierarchy to
Whoever wanted to follow him had to wander approve women to go out and preach. When the
with him and beg for food and shelter. Francis Order of St Clare was finally recognised in 1263
himself struggled between the sacred duty to as the Second Franciscan Order, the sisters had
preach the Gospel to the world and a personal to accept to remain within their convents’ walls
inclination towards contemplation and ascetic under the traditional Benedictine Rule. The par-
isolation. ticipation of laypeople was arranged in special

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statutes for a Third Order (tertiaries), intended phenomenal success continued after his death.
for sympathisers who wanted to commit them- By the middle of the fourteenth century the order
selves to a life spent in the spirit of the Gospel but had some 1,400 houses.
who lived a normal married life and continued These houses were of course contrary to the
to work as usual. During the fourteenth century founder’s aim to have no possessions at all. It is a
the tertiaries, with increasing frequency, would question that divided minds for a very long time,
take monastic vows and live in closed communi- and proved almost fatal for the survival of the
ties. Even before Francis died, the order of the order. It demanded what C.H. Lawrence (2013)
Friars Minor had spread far beyond Italy, and its has called ‘heroic gymnastics of conscience’ to

MAP 6.1 Density of houses of mendicant orders (Franciscans and Dominicans) in about 1300

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reconcile the ideal of absolute poverty with the success rested on the revolution in the Church’s
needs of a successful movement eager to spread its communicative strategy: from the splendid
message across the world. Two schools of thought isolation of the rural abbeys into the urban com-
were soon evident. The realists, or conventu- munities and even their poorer outskirts; from
als, realised that the order needed property and a mainly ritual and magic liturgy in Latin to an
income in order to perform its tasks properly. The approach of the believer in his own language;
other school, the principled or spirituals, wanted the content of their preaching was based on the
to hold on to Francis’s ideals. Moreover, they monks’ superior learning, dwarfing that of
allowed themselves to be led by the unusual phi- the traditional parish priests, as well as on the
losophy of the Cistercian abbot Joachim of Fiore, choice of popular themes. This brought about
who died in southern Italy in 1202, and who had an enormous increase in the religious and moral
distilled a new vision of world history from the indoctrination of the laity, the cognitive and emo-
Bible. Joachim had prophesied that a new era of tional internalisation of the belief. It also enabled
spiritual purity under the aegis of the Holy Ghost the Church to respond to the new spiritual sen-
would dawn before Christ’s Second Coming, in sitivity among the most fervent of the faithful.
which the spiritual Franciscans foresaw their own The desire to spread the word of God soon led
important role. The differences between the two members of these orders far beyond the borders
schools dragged on until, in 1318, the General of Latin Christendom. Among the Franciscans
of the order, Michael of Cesena, laid the matter were such famous travellers to Asia as John of
before Pope John XXII for a definitive ruling. To Pian del Carpine, William of Rubroek and John
the dismay of the spirituals the pope issued the of Monte Corvino, who all visited Mongolia and
bull Cum inter nonnullos in 1323, arguing that China in the thirteenth century and left detailed
the view according to which Christ and the apos- reports about their observations. The downside
tles had no possessions was heresy. Though this was that it encouraged intolerance of everyone
may seem outrageous, the pope no doubt realised who did not believe in Christ in accordance with
that the acceptance of the dogma of apostolic the orthodox views of the Catholic Church.
poverty would put a bomb under the Church of
Rome in its historically evolved structure.
The importance of the four mendicant orders The faithful become visible
– besides the two major orders of the Friars
Preachers (Dominicans) and the Friars Minor God’s peace and God’s truce
(Franciscans), there were the Carmelites and the
Augustinian hermits – can hardly be overesti- In 1033 it was 1,000 years since Christ had died
mated. They were the first orders settling in the on the cross and to commemorate the event –
cities and going out of their cloisters to care for so wrote the Burgundian monk Rodulfus Glaber
the souls on the basis of a solid theological train- (Rudolf the Bald) in his chronicle – large gather-
ing. The principle of humility and poverty made ings were organised at various places in Aquitaine
them opt for the construction of relatively sober where, to the great enthusiasm of the crowds,
buildings without high towers. In contrast to the relics were shown, sermons were preached and
Benedictine tradition, the communities’ heads truces were concluded with local lords. These
were not called abbots but priors. The monks had events, which in reality took a start during the last
to live without any personal property and were two decades of the tenth century, were so popular
supposed to go out on quests for alms. that they were soon copied in the farthest corners
The mendicants’ first generations inspired the of France and Burgundy. Everywhere the entire
flocks by their true enthusiasm. Their phenomenal populace turned out to listen to their shepherds,

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miraculous healings took place and invariably Church leaders and proclaimed in 1103 the
there were shouts for ‘Peace, peace’ – a reference ‘imperial peace’ (Reichsfriede) that would last for
to the movement for God’s peace. This came four years. His son and all important princes and
into existence as a result of the unfettered vio- great lay lords of the Holy Roman Empire swore
lence that accompanied the establishment of to curb the endemic feuding between the lords.
banal lordships in France. Some bishops and The explicit inclusion of the Jewish communities
abbots, sometimes in cooperation with counts or was a striking element in the imperial peace, as
dukes, then convened synods to establish rules they had endured heavy attacks in the period pre-
to limit violence. Local lords and their knights ceding the first crusade. In the Empire, the peace
were invited from far and wide to swear a solemn movement was carried on by the princes within
oath to observe these rules. Originally the rules their territories, and the so-called Landfriede, ter-
were aimed at protecting social groups that were ritorial peace, became the leading idea of the
helpless in the face of violence, beginning with public order. The ecclesiastical peace concept may
the clergy and later extended to include (unmar- further have inspired the normative peace within
ried) women and children, pilgrims, merchants town walls or in relation to particularly vital
and other travellers, and finally even peasants, objects of public interest such as markets, fairs and
who were only once called upon to end their own dikes.
(counter) violence. We know of some twenty-five
of these peace occasions dating from the first half
of the eleventh century. A second, more radical The formation of a persecuting
phase forbade acts of violence on specific days society
and later during longer periods of the year, indi-
cated by the Church calendar. This was the God’s In the eleventh century heretical groups, in the
truce, the oldest of which dates from soon after sense of religious communities that set them-
1020. In 1038, the archbishop of Bourges encour- selves outside the Church, sprang up in many
aged the peasants to attack the castles of lords places, first in Champagne, and very soon there-
who refused to comply. By 1050, the aristocracy after throughout the Rhineland, France and
and the high clergy rallied to protect their privi- England. It is difficult to see any connection
leges against popular uprisings; as a result, lords between the various dissident groups at this
and princes preferred to take themselves the lead period. The point upon which they were prob-
of territorial peace movements in which they also ably most in agreement was their sharp criticism
swore to protect Church property. of the corruption and secularisation inside the
With this movement the Church leaders were Church, focusing on the secular clergy and their
in fact trying to fulfil one of the primary tasks of far from apostolic way of life. In that respect the
secular rulers, namely to protect their subjects. creation of heretical sects and new monastic
Adalbero of Laon, a fervently royalist bishop, orders can be seen as two sides of the same coin.
recognised this and fiercely reviled the preten- There was a fine boundary between canonisation
sions of the abbots of Cluny in particular for their and being burnt at the stake so to speak, and for
takeover of the king’s most essential task – main- modern observers it is still not clear why some
taining the peace in his kingdom. Adalbero groups (the Franciscans, for example, and later
believed that monks should remain inside their the Humiliati) were recognised and accepted by
cloister walls and lead a life of contemplation. the Church, while others, notably the Waldenses,
Kings and other secular princes responded by were denounced as heretics.
explicitly proclaiming their own peaces. Emperor The Cathars, kathari (from the Greek, ‘the
Henry IV wouldn’t leave the initiative to the pure’), believed that the material world was not

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created by God but by Satan. Satan was the lord was now a ‘traitor’ or an ‘enemy of the faith’. The
of Genesis; the good God did not reveal Himself turning point was reached in about the middle
until the New Testament, and the physical exist- of the twelfth century. The Church no longer
ence of Christ was only a sham, to mislead Satan. acted reactively, but began an active search
In order to approach the good God, all material for the truth by developing inquisitorial pro-
things had to be foresworn radically; one had cedures. The pope himself continued to play a
to be cleansed of matter by regular fasting, by steering and controlling role in the whole pro-
not eating meat and by absolute sexual conti- cess, by sending legates, mobilising the new
nence. Because this was too difficult to achieve religious orders (first the Cistercians, later the
for ordinary people, the Cathars – just like the Dominicans), involving secular military power,
Manichaeans at the time of Augustine – had issuing anti-heretical decrees and council deci-
two levels of believers: the ordinary credentes sions and, finally, by establishing – in 1229 under
(believers), who did not follow the strict moral Gregory IX (1227–1241) – a special, mobile papal
commandments to the letter, and a select elite tribunal, the Inquisition, which was intended
of perfecti (perfect), who did and thus acquired to counterbalance the laxity of many bishops in
an almost saintly status. Most credentes did not persecuting alleged heretics.
become perfecti until their deathbed. This was The Cathars of southern France were the first
brought about by the administration of the ‘sac- to feel the full weight of this coercive machin-
rament of consolation’ (consolamentum). The ery during the Albigensian Crusade (see Chapter
perfecti read intensively the Scripture, of which 4). Systematic persecution of the Jews had been
they circulated translations in the vernacular. preceded by the appalling pogroms that took
The Church firmly opposed this practice out of place during the build-up to the First Crusade.
fear for unorthodox interpretations that were not The connection is obvious: who else but the Jews
guided by the designated spiritual leaders. were responsible for the crucifixion of Christ in
Whether or not in any organised way – a the holiest of places that now had to be liber-
debated issue – Catharism spread all over west- ated from the infidel? At a deeper mental level
ern Europe during the twelfth century. There was this traditional and essentially theological con-
at that point no question of systematic persecu- viction now became broadened into the idea
tion by Church or civil authorities. This situation that the Christian community, as the unsullied
changed dramatically at the end of the twelfth bearer of Christ’s legacy, had to guard its purity
century, with the emergence of what the British and destroy every stain with fire and sword. With
historian R.I. Moore (2012) has called ‘the perse- every new crusade to the Holy Land and with
cuting society’. By this he meant that both the every Christian advance made in the Reconquest
Church and the now budding states of the great of Spain and Portugal, the persecutions flared up
European kingdoms were beginning to define again. Other factors exacerbated them, such as
their own aims and ideologies so precisely that the growing resentment at the Jews’ dominant
they could identify any conflicting groups or position in the exchange and credit business, also
interests much better than before. The content in connection with the levying of direct taxes
of the Catholic religion had become established by spendthrift kings. Jews could fill this eco-
through the development of dogmatic theology, nomic niche because in their business dealings
the systematisation of canon law and the grow- with Christians they were not hindered by the
ing number of rules issued. Once it had been Church’s prohibition on asking interest on loans.
determined what was soundly orthodox, and There are countless other indications from the
what was not, dissidence could no longer be tol- eleventh and twelfth centuries that a centuries-
erated; whoever had once been seen as ‘erring’ long latent anti-Semitism had become virulent:

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Jews were driven off their land or forced to live All this is evidence that the attitude of negative
together in certain quarters of the towns. The tolerance, formulated in the days of Augustine,
earliest accusations of infanticide and cannibal- was turning into open discrimination, stigmati-
ism surfaced more or less simultaneously with sation and chronically active persecution. This
the theory of an international Jewish conspiracy. change in the treatment of the Jews reveals more
Jews would have talked caliph al-Hakim into painfully than anything else that economic
destroying the Holy Sepulchre in 1009, and Jews expansion, consolidation of the faith, the ideal
would have smuggled weapons to the Mongols of service to and the fight for God – in short,
who attacked Poland and Hungary in the 1240s. everything that was so characteristic of the great
For the first time we hear of anti-Jewish purifica- period of expansion in medieval history – had a
tion rituals, such as stoning Jewish quarters or dark, shadowy side.
beating Jews at Passover. Jews were forced to wear
distinctive clothing. They were exposed to new,
massive pogroms and slaughters in the German Among the believers
Empire and in France in the first half of the four-
teenth century, and especially in the years of the Rudolph Glaber’s chronicle and other texts about
Black Death. the movements for God’s peace are actually the
Whereas expulsions of the Jews by public first historical documents in which attention
authorities – town governments and states – had is paid to the common faithful. The common
been rare and temporary in the early and central people figured in Carolingian writings also, but
Middle Ages, these became ever more frequent then only in a non-specific background role.
and radical in the late Middle Ages. The king of In the eleventh century they made themselves
England set the example in 1290, followed by the heard, loudly and in an active role. It proves that
king of France in 1306 and again in 1322, fol- progress had been made with the process of the
lowed by the Catholic kings of Spain in 1492, internalisation of belief. This process was sup-
who proclaimed that the Jews were ‘a damage to ported by the ongoing extension of pastoral care
the realm’ and ‘an offence to the Christian reli- in the local communities that had become self-
gion’. The fact that occasionally expulsions were conscious entities with the rural parishes as their
followed by recalls, as in France in 1315 and core.
1359, made the behaviour of kings ‘unpredict- Not only written texts but other, material,
able’ (Stow 1992). For the Jews, this was the more sources too, such as buildings, bear witness to the
dangerous because in the course of the twelfth active involvement of growing numbers of believ-
century their direct dependency on secular rul- ers. The first really monumental stone churches,
ers had been increased by a change in their legal catering for a stream of many hundreds if not
status. From being a special ethnic group falling thousands of faithful, date from the eleventh cen-
under the tuition of the king, just like any other tury. It is no coincidence that the largest lay on the
foreign group (see Chapter 2), Jews now became increasingly busy pilgrim’s routes: Saint-Sernin
servi camerae, ‘serfs of the [royal] chambre’, a in Toulouse and the Burgundian showpiece,
unique status which further enhanced their social Sainte-Madeleine in Vézelay, on the main routes
isolation. In practice it meant that their freedom to Santiago de Compostela (which had its own
of movement was limited, that they had to plead impressive church); and in other busy places of
their cases before royal courts (which was not pilgrimage: Sainte-Foy in Conques, for exam-
always a disadvantage) and that the king could ple, or Durham cathedral, built over the grave
take his share of Jewish credits, or tax the Jews of St Cuthbert, or in populous and economically
arbitrarily. successful towns such as Pisa.

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The eleventh-century texts reveal strongly were made easily accessible so that pilgrims could
divergent aspects of the commitment of the laity. even clamber over and under them. Some of the
On the one hand they create the impression that faithful were also happy to spend the night close
the religious enthusiasm of the masses was to a to the reliquary hoping for a dream in which
high degree directed, and possibly also abused, the saint would appear to them and perform a
by Church authorities. This happened, for exam- miracle, a form of superstition from as far back
ple, through adjustments in the liturgy relating as Greek Antiquity. Physical contact with relics or
to the most important sacramental activities in reliquaries was not an essential condition to being
the Church: the consecration of the bread and able to profit from the miraculous power of the
wine during the mass. The lifting of the host and saints. People who were in trouble, wherever they
chalice high in the air after consecration so that were, could just call upon their favourite saints in
the congregation could see, answered the wishes a short prayer, and that frequently produced the
of the laity to be directly involved in one of the desired effect – if we may believe the countless
great mysteries of the faith: the dogma of the real stories of miracles that were in circulation.
presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Sometimes The sorry state of medical knowledge makes
holders of high Church office who also had it easy to understand why the faithful looked to
secular powers were able to exploit the military the saints for healing their physical or mental
potential of their faithful. After the proclamation ills. It soon led to specialisations, traces of which
of a ‘God’s peace’ they would, as we saw, mobilise are still visible today: such as St Dympna of
religiously inspired people’s militias and use their Geel in Brabant, a saintly princess of Irish origin
help to break down the power of the banal lords who, soon after her grave had been found dur-
in their territory who were too independent, giv- ing reclamation work, enjoyed the reputation of
ing no quarter and, if necessary, using brute force. helping in a variety of mental illnesses. This later
There are also repeated accounts from this time of led to the foundation of madhouses in Geel, the
the lynching of Jews and heretics. forerunners of the much talked-about open psy-
On the other hand, sources dealing with the chiatric institute that is still located in the village.
traditional elements of the perception of the Even then, miraculous cures were carefully
Christian faith, such as the worship of relics, scrutinised. Official recognition was only given
increasingly reveal manifestations of genuine after extensive questioning of both the patient
popular faith. Relic-worship has a magical back- (who might also be put to a test) and witnesses.
ground: in the relics the believer experiences the If a believer was certain that his or her prayer had
saint’s physical presence and his or her miracu- been heard by a saint, then the rules of reciprocal
lous power. This double experience is felt more exchange came into action, and something had
intensely the closer the believer comes to the to be done in return to reward the saint and to
relic. Naturally, this is best achieved when rel- convince the believer of the miraculous powers
ics are worn on the body, a practice that already of the saint. This quid pro quo came in different
existed in the eleventh century. Not everyone forms. It could be a replica of the healed body-
could afford to purchase personal relics, however, part, life-size or smaller, and made of wax, silver
certainly not the physical remains of important or gold; or the object that had caused the ill (the
saints. Most believers had to resort to visiting the pitchfork on to which someone had fallen, the
places where saints were buried or their relics pin that had been swallowed); the aids that the
preserved. To achieve optimal physical contact healed person no longer needed (crutches, band-
between pilgrims and saints, the tombs and ages); or gifts of thanks in cash or in kind (often
reliquaries, which in pilgrimage churches were a quantity of wax or candles), entirely uncon-
usually placed directly behind the main altar, nected with the miracle. The most extreme gift

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was the dedication of the whole person, who participation in the Eucharist. Further the passage
then became the servant or maid-servant of the rites: baptism, burial and increasingly also the
saint. They could always be called upon, in the benediction of marriage. Even a thousand years
name of the saint, by the church with which the after the introduction of Christianity, it proved
saint was connected. difficult to turn pagan beliefs and practices into
Christian orthodoxy. Synods repeatedly had to
forbid, for example, dancing rites on cemeteries,
Pastoral care intended to chase the deceased into the realm of
the dead. Dragons belonged to popular beliefs,
The demographic growth required the Church as representations of uncontrollable damaging
to adapt its structures in order to bring the flock forces which were to be pacified by processions.
under its control. Pastoral care had not always In his Dialogue about Miracles, written between
been the clergy’s priority, as, until around 1200, 1219 and 1223, the Cistercian monk and mas-
monasticism had prevailed. It was assumed that ter of the novices Caesarius of Heisterbach (see
the ascetic and spiritual lifestyle would please Box 6.2) puts up quite a number of ignorant
God and incite his benevolence for the society priests (sacerdotes idiotae) who have doubts about
as a whole. Care for the souls mostly remained the dogma of the transubstantiation during the
limited to the aristocracy patronising the mon- Eucharist, who spoil the host, who celebrate
asteries. At best, they would act as role models of mass in an unworthy manner, and then provoke
good Christian behaviour. In the twelfth century, Christ’s image to weap or turn its head, who are
however, apostolic action was more required than insecure about how to deal with the secret of the
mere contemplation in order to keep up with confession, who have a concubine and children,
the newly founded rural and urban communes. and who commit fornication.
That meant a strong effort to create new parishes, What then did ordinary Christian people
building new and larger churches, providing believe? Surely quite general was the belief in
them with priests to deliver the sacraments, and some kind of an after-world where good behav-
with sources of income for the charitable works. iour would be rewarded. Notions of good and
The number of parishes in England, for example, evil were widespread, as were perceptions of
estimated at about 2,000 at the end of the elev- the signs of heavenly wrath. Fear for damna-
enth century, would quadruple over the next two tion was associated with the devil, while God
centuries. was seen as immanent justice. As people were
Most parish priests still were illiterate, unable scared of death, it was a matter of great concern
to read the Bible. Equally, most of them must to die a ‘good death’, which the clergy sought
have been unable to get access to the manuals to channel through confession and the extreme
for confessors, which produced a list of sins likely unction, where possible accompanied with pious
to be brought up during confession, with the donations to the Church and the poor. Magical
corresponding penitence to be imposed. Because thinking was directed to the miracles performed
confession, before 1300, was not yet a generally by saints and their relics.
embedded and regular practice, this exception- The Church inculcated by all means the fear
ally interesting type of documents will have for eternal damnation of the evildoers, such as
circulated among the higher levels of the clergy robber knights and usurers. Threats of the most
rather than that of the ordinary parish priests. extreme and everlasting torments were thought
External practices had to be imposed in the first to curb even the worst individuals towards the
place: rest on Sundays and attendance of the desired behaviour. Visual representations of the
mass, penitence at least once a year before Easter, Last Judgement showed in detail a wide-opened

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lion’s mouth, all kinds of monsters, devils tortur- the Church, and, above all, sincere confession.
ing the souls of the damned with hooks, and the Moreover, the survivors might help to shorten
pains of hell’s fire. Preachers constantly referred their beloved’s stay in Purgatory by praying and
to the implications of a sinful life. In the thir- having a substantial amount of masses read or
teenth century, theologians developed the new sung in favour of the tormented soul-in-sus-
concept of the Purgatory, a transitional stage pense. This practice of memorial services, many
between death and the deceased person’s soul’s of which were endowed to be performed in eter-
ultimate destination: hell or heaven. The length nity, became very popular in the late Middle Ages
of stay was thought to be proportional to the and thereafter. Apart from the immense transfer
required penitence before becoming eligible for of capital to the Church it provoked, these ser-
heaven. This implied that man was now thought vices strengthened considerably the intermediary
to be able to influence his after-life by pious role of the clergy between the believers and the
and charitable conduct, including donations to after-world.

BOX 6.2 HUNDREDS OF EXEMPLARY STORIES

Miracles, including reappearances of deceased persons and visions of the future, were thought
to be signs of God’s absolute power, able to intervene in a way which could not be explained
by natural laws. Such magic thinking is widespread in all cultures. The Catholic Church defined
lots of natural phenomena as signs of God’s will and connected unexpected events, such as
natural disasters, sudden illness, physical impediment or death, with heavenly punishment for
sin. A blasphemous knight would be struck by deadly lightning, a blasphemous baker saw her
bread transformed into dung. Miracles also occurred in a positive way: a wife was told to survive
only by consuming the host, the host remained intact after the church burnt down, flat beer was
transformed into wine, inexplicable healings rewarded the pious believers.
One of the most influential collections of miracle and visionary stories is that composed between
1219 and 1223 by Caesarius, monk and master of novices in the Cistercian abbey of Heisterbach,
south of Bonn. During his travels as a companion to his abbot for visitations of dependent abbeys,
he heard lots of these stories, many of which had been told during general chapters of the order.
He found other stories in the existing literature. His compilation counts 746 stories, thematically
structured in twelve ‘distinctions’ which deal with the sacraments, miracles, visions, Mary, Christ’s
body, demons, temptation, death and remuneration of the deceased. Caesarius presents his stories
in the context of dialogues between a monk and a novice. His style is captivating, partly by the use
of quotations. He is fairly precise about his sources and the identification of the narrated events,
in as far as privacy allowed. His aim obviously was to provide a solid instruction for the young
Cistercian monks, many of whom would become priests.
In a number of chapters, Caesarius explains how proportionality of punishment functioned in
Purgatory. No authority was immune from God’s sanctions. A Cistercian abbot who had performed
his task perfectly, except that he did not fulfil his share of the manual labour with the brothers,
appeared thirty days after his death to his fellow-brother who was praying for his soul. His legs
were black as coal and full of ulcers, causing him ‘pains too great for words’. His brothers’ prayers
liberated him from his pains. A certain prior of Clairvaux appeared in a poor condition before

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a praying nun, and explained that he suffered immense torments, but that, thanks to the strong
support of a brother, he expected to be liberated by the next Feast of Our Lord. She said: ‘But we
held you for a most holy man’, upon which he answered: ‘God punishes me because I was all too
much striving to the extension of the abbey’s property. Under the appearance of virtue, I have
been misled by the evil of avarice.’
The wife of a usurer in Liège protested against the bishop’s refusal to bury him in the church-
yard. She appealed to the pope, quoting 1 Corinthians 7:14: ‘For the unbelieving husband is
sanctified by the wife’, declaring to be prepared to expiate his sins as a recluse giving alms,
fasting and awakening. After seven years, her husband appeared to her in a dark habit, and said:
‘Thanks to your labours I escaped the depth of Hell (de profundo inferni) and the worst penances.
If you can continue these benefices during seven more years, I will be entirely liberated.’ Which
she did, and he reappeared in a white cloth, because he had confessed.
Lots of stories deal with the weaknesses of the flesh: priests, monks and converses sleeping
during the choral prayers, a nun impregnated by a cleric in a grangia, or a nun who had aborted,
became ill and died without confessing: she had to walk continuously with the glowing child
amidst scorching fire. Satan harassed a young recluse and nun by strong carnal lust (gravissime per
stimulum carnis colaphizavit). A helpful angel liberated her from this torment after citing psalms.
However: ‘What a wonderful thing! As soon as the spirit of fornication was chased, immediately
appeared the spirit of blasphemy, which tempted her even stronger and more perniciously.’ In
the end, the nun resigned to suffer the temptation of the flesh. A confessor committed sin with
an adolescent and confessed to his abbot before dying, but without naming his companion. He
reappears to his fellow, saying: ‘I am suffering the worst pains because of my sin committed with
you. I got a burning chain around my genitals, on which I am hanged and tormented.’ The adoles-
cent is too ashamed to confess, until the abbot calls together all members of the community, upon
which the adolescent confesses and accepts the penance which will liberate his partner.
As it appears from this kind of stories, Cistercian novices were well prepared to their tasks as
pastors.

Source: Caesarius von Heisterbach, Dialogus Miraculorum. Dialog über die Wunder, edited and translated by
Horst Schneider and Nikolaus Nösges, 5 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009).

Churches as the visualisation of teristics attributed to both styles are identified

Christian knowledge primarily from church architecture and religious
sculpture, and even then we have to consider
The era of the great religious reforms in the elev- the regional diversity that is so characteristic of
enth and twelfth centuries was also the period political and socio-economic life in the central
of Romanesque and Gothic art. The first of these Middle Ages.
terms was proposed by modern art and architec- An important starting point is the maxim of
tural historians; it does not go back to any such Nikolaus Pevsner, the famous architectural his-
contemporary expression. The name Gothic was torian, that ‘technical innovations never make a
first used in sixteenth-century Italy to designate new style’. By this he meant that we can only
the northern origin of a certain ‘barbarian’ style speak of a new style if we can discern a specific
of painting, sculpting and building. The charac- total concept that is fundamentally different

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from the prevailing one. Most distinctive for being so. The early Romanesque churches in the
Romanesque church architecture, from that German Empire catch the eye with their massive,
perspective, is the emphatic articulation of the closed west fronts, sometimes built out further to
interior and the embellishment of the exterior: a second, west transept with its own apse. They
before, only the inside was considered impor- are flanked by rather slender, often round, towers.
tant, now the outside of churches was given a They often have four or five towers, two flank-
majestic religious character. The development of ing the west front, two at the ends of or above
this new concept in all its component parts was the transept and one heavy crossing tower. The
closely connected to the new and varied func- so-called imperial domes were built to celebrate
tions that churches began to take on from the the successive dynasties, including their mausole-
end of the tenth century. There was a boom in ums. The domes of Mayence, Worms and Speyer
the worship of relics, meaning that costly reli- along the Rhine, and Bamberg along the Danube,
quaries were given a central, easily accessible were founded in the early eleventh century by
place in churches which had to provide room for emperors, and used for their coronation ceremo-
a massive stream of pilgrims. At the same time nies. Their symmetry represented the two powers:
the offering of prayers for an increasing number the east side with the altar, oriented towards the
of souls required more altars, so that mass could Holy Land, was the space of the spiritual power;
be said by more priests in the same church at the the west side contained above the entrance hall
same time. In monastery churches this was nec- a throne for the secular power which, in a way,
essary as more and more monks were ordained overlooked the whole. Many western French
priests, who had to be in a position to celebrate and Norman churches have a more ‘open’ main
mass frequently. In cathedral churches, and pos- façade, and the flanking towers rise higher.
sibly in other parish churches in the growing Cathedrals heralding a completely new archi-
towns, the increasing number of canons and tectural concept were built in a series of cities
other priests attached to one church kept pace all over the French crown domains in the Paris
with the growth of the parishes and increased basin during what looks like an astonishing com-
spiritual care, but it was also connected to the petition for the most daring novelty, which took
religious activities of specific groups of laypeople place between 1130–1140 and about 1270. From
with their own patron saints, such as fraternities. there, Gothic, as the dominating architectural
All this meant that there was a greater need for style, but, again, with a large regional variety,
internal spaces that were clearly divided up, and spread all over Europe until well into the six-
within which there was room for different chap- teenth century, from Norwegian Trondheim in
els with their own altars. The exterior provided the far north to Sicily in the deep south. It all
the opportunity for visual support to sermons, started in the 1120s, when Abbot Suger of the
which often were preached in the open air, in abbey church of Saint-Denis north of Paris, where
front of the church’s main entrance. the French kings were buried and valuable relics
At first sight, Romanesque churches may look were kept, was irritated by the continual jostling
very different. Some are built to a central plan, of the faithful. He believed that an abundance
and have domes. The Saint-Front in Périgueux is of light was necessary to honour God fittingly.
a fine example. The west fronts of many Italian Wasn’t light the primordial manifestation of
churches have retained the pure form of the Late God? In order to give the faithful the chance to
Antique basilica, with its high nave and low side get near the relics he designed a passage round
aisles. The façade does not then have the flank- the main altar, around which a series of chapels
ing towers, but there is generally a tall bell tower in a half-circle enabled many priests to read the
that is free-standing, or gives the impression of mass. This ambulatory was consecrated in 1144.

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It gave extraordinary lustre to the French mon- English Gothic the vaulting was flatter and lower
archy that at that time was engaged in enlarging but with more ribs in it; in the coastal areas of
its power over the territorial princes. the Low Countries, and later in the regions round
The new concept was introduced into cathe- the Baltic Sea, the style was adapted by the use of
drals built in the wide vicinity of Paris. Their bricks. In time the decorative elements were very
walls were thinner and yet higher than the thick profuse, and the term flamboyant Gothic was
walls of Romanesque churches, and, to let more used. Milan, extravagantly decorated, consider-
light in, much larger windows were left both in ably wider and proportionately lower than the
the aisles and in the façade, where the window French models, is one of the rare examples of an
took the form of a rose. In order to support the entirely Gothic cathedral in Italy. Nevertheless,
exterior walls, buttresses and flying buttresses gothic stylistic elements were very popular even
were constructed. The weight of the roof was there.
spread geometrically over a large number of How could this new concept come into being
abutments through the construction of pointed in the Paris basin, and spread so widely and so
arches, which in addition stressed the height of rapidly? As far as the architects were concerned,
the interior. In short, Gothic was characterised it must be remembered that from the eleventh
by an upward thrust, soaring towards God. In century, education in cathedral schools – those
the second half of the twelfth century, a period of Chartres, Paris and Rheims, for example – was
of feverish building, there was an intense com- increasingly associated with the knowledge of
petition to create ever more spectacular projects. mathematics and geometry borrowed from the
The roofs became higher and higher: the central Arabs. It was this knowledge, added to their
nave of the Notre Dame of Paris, started in 1163, own empirical findings, that enabled architects
was 32.8 metres high; thirty years later, in 1194, to make accurate studies of the distribution of
Chartres reached 36.55 metres; Rheims meas- weight in their plans. A collection of precise draw-
ured 37.95 metres in 1212 and Amiens 42.30 ings with designs for sections of buildings, dating
in 1221. The record was achieved in Beauvais, from c.1235 and made by the French architect
where building began in 1247 and 48 metres was Villard de Honnecourt, has been preserved, as
reached. This was beyond the limit of technical have the very accurate plans of the west front of
ingenuity and the roof collapsed in 1284. Strasbourg cathedral, drawn on parchment and
Many a Romanesque church was reconstructed dating from 1275. The famous art historian Erwin
in the Gothic style, in its entirety or in part. A Panofsky pointed out that the first flourishing
spectacular example is the cathedral of Tournai, of the Gothic style coincided in time and space
also belonging to the kingdom of France. Its with the heyday of Scholasticism. Both reflect
grandiose nave and transepts were built in a rela- the same mind-set of striving after transparent
tively short time between 1100 and 1150 in the encompassing structures with elegant divisions,
Rhinelandish Romanesque style. A heavy tower subdivisions and membrifications. In Panofsky’s
on the crossing was flanked by four higher towers view, a Gothic cathedral was like a summa of
on the edges of the transepts, a reference to the Christian knowledge in stone.
heavenly Jerusalem. However, by the time of its The fact that the Gothic building style could
completion, the glories of Gothic had spread to spread so successfully owes much to the pres-
neighbouring regions and the glorious cathedral tige that the French kings, who were so eager to
was seen as old-fashioned. As soon as 1242, the expand, lent to cathedral-building in the twelfth
bishop decided to rebuild the choir in the more and thirteenth centuries. And not only kings:
spacious and lighter new Gothic style. Each coun- without the strong financial support of the citi-
try had its own variant on the basic concept. In zens in the rapidly growing towns, the immense

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PART II TH E CENT RA L MIDDLE A GES, 1000–1300

building projects would never have been real- not keep them from interfering with secular
ised. There was competition between the towns affairs.
for the finest and most daring project. In a tech- ■■ The higher clergy’s strict observance of its
nical sense the style was spread through the own rules and purity (chastity of all priests)
mobility of the master builders, who were organ- strengthened their role as mediators between
ised into lodges and moved from one building the sinful common believers and God. This
yard to another. There was competition among motivated ever more donations to the exem-
them, too, and pupils sometimes developed plary religious institutions.
their masters’ designs further in other places. ■■ From the end of the tenth century, the clergy
The demonstrative example of the kings caught became more assertive imposing its norms on
on: citizens saw it as a means of expressing the the lay society, in the first place on the power-
worth of their town, and other leaders did not ful aristocracy. They curbed the use of violence
lag behind. The rivalry was now centred on the against the unarmed people, and reoriented it
height of the towers: the dukes of Austria wanted towards the expansion of Christianity.
to see the Stephan’s church in Vienna elevated to ■■ At the highest level, the papal claim to uni-
a cathedral and commissioned the highest spire versal authority as the ultimate judge on
of Christendom, which was effectively achieved earth of the behaviour of laypeople unavoid-
in 1436 with 136 metres. Alas, Strasbourg broke ably led to conflicts with kings and emperors.
the record already in 1439 with its 142 metres. In This had the most far-reaching consequences
both cases, the planned second tower was never in the Holy Roman Empire.
completed, nor were several other ambitious ■■ The consolidation of the Church’s internal
projects. Some of them, such as the cathedrals of structures underpinned its high ambitions; at
Cologne and Ulm, were not finished until the late the same time, it proved sufficiently flexible
nineteenth century. to adapt constantly to new spiritual and social
The cathedral’s primary function was to make needs – with the exception of those of women.
divine worship as glorious and effective as possi- It included the foundation of great numbers
ble. Other functions came later: the prestige of a of new parishes, in line with demographic
monarchy, a region and a city. With that in view growth.
the same style was adapted for palaces and purely ■■ The creation and rapid dissemination of
civic buildings such as town halls, market halls, the successive new types of monastic orders
guild halls and private residences. The generali- expressed and channelled the remarkable
sation of the most typical artistic expression of spiritual vitality of this period, especially in
Christianity shows the impressive progress the the rapidly growing towns.
Church had made by the late thirteenth century ■■ Thanks to the greater effectivity of the
in the dissemination of its values. They now preaching and spiritual care, the ordinary
penetrated all segments of the European society. faithful became more actively and emotion-
ally involved which led to mass movements
such as pilgrimages, crusades and the cult of
Points to remember relics. In the thirteenth century, the Church
fought to keep control of its self-declared
■■ From the late tenth century onwards, the orthodoxy.
higher clergy’s intellectual standards and ■■ The undeniable organisational and spiritual
growing self-awareness of their role in society success of the Catholic Church during the
led them to claim the ‘liberty of the Church’ central Middle Ages had its dark sides which
from lay interference on all levels. This did included its inflexibility towards the eastern

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‘orthodox’ churches, leading to a perma- First Crusade, the expansion and climax of crusad-
nent schism, and, from the twelfth century ing during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
and the failure and fragmentation of such practices
onwards, the systematic persecution and
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The author
repression of dissenting forms of belief (‘here- considers the motivation behind the Crusades and
sies’) and other believers (Jews and Muslims). examines chronologically the whole crusading
movement, from the development of a ‘crusading
impulse’ in the eleventh century through to the
Suggestions for further imperialist imperatives of the early modern period.
Lawrence, C.H. (1994), The Friars: The Impact of the Early
reading Mendicant Movement on Western Society (London/New
York: Longman). The preaching orders that arose in
Blumenthal, Uta-Renate (1988), The Investiture the early thirteenth century around the charismatic
Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth figures of St Francis and St Dominic were the most
to the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia: University of effective instrument for the Church to switch from
Pennsylvania Press; orig. German, 1982). In the con- the primarily ritual liturgy in Latin to a persuasive
frontation between Church and monarchy known strategy through the spoken word in vernacular
as the investiture struggle or Gregorian reform, ideas languages. So, the Church could confront the chal-
cannot be divorced from reality. The official thought lenge of an increasingly confident, secular and
is therefore presented in its contemporary political, independent-minded age. The author shows how
social and cultural context. papal patronage turned the unruly beggars into a
Constable, Giles (1998), The Reformation of the Twelfth disciplined force for orthodoxy, and he analyses the
Century, 2nd edn (Cambridge: CUP). This is a ‘reex- extraordinary impact they had on western society in
amination of what it meant to be a Christian’ in their first hundred years of existence.
a world where traditional social ties and structures Moore, R.I. (2012) The War on Heresy (Cambridge MA:
were changing, which led to a tension between a The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press). By
contemplative life – previously thought to be the the end of the eleventh century, a more defined ver-
highest form of religious life – and an active life sion of ‘orthodoxy’ was created which, for political
within the world, engaged with society. The author and theological reasons, excluded many people for
takes into consideration hermits, recluses, wander- the first time. What were the beliefs and practices the
ing preachers, crusaders, penitents and other less persecutors defined as heretical? And why were they
organised forms of religious life. In particular he such a threat? The traditional ‘exuberant variety of
studies the variety of reform movements, the rela- religious belief and practice’ became a problem only
tion of the reformers to each other and the outside whenever it seemed to be (or lead to) a questioning
world, and their spirituality and motivation as of authority. Fears of heresy inspired passions that
reflected in their writings and activities. moulded European society for the rest of the Middle
France, John (2005), The Crusades and the Expansion Ages and resulted in a series of persecutions that left
of Catholic Christendom, 1000–1714 (London/New an indelible mark on its history and culture.
York: Routledge). A detailed examination of the

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Part III
Expansion and
maturation,
1000–1500
7 The beginnings of
European expansion

The West becomes more decades before the conquest of England, enter-
aggressive prising knights who had not achieved the success
they had dreamt of in Normandy set out for south
From the eleventh century a general expansion- Italy where the first lordships were in Norman
ary movement manifested itself in the West in hands by 1029. The sons of Tancred of Hauteville
diverse regions and in various forms. The basis for were the boldest of these knights. One of them,
this movement must be sought in the stabilisa- Robert Guiscard, defeated the forces of Pope Leo
tion which the West achieved from the middle of IX in 1053, and even took the pope prisoner. Six
the tenth century, when the devastating invasions years later the same pope, who needed Robert’s
from Hungary and Scandinavia finally came to an support in his confrontation with Emperor
end. Agricultural production and population grew Henry IV, recognised him as duke of Apulia and
steadily, so that after a few generations the existing Calabria. In 1084 Robert rescued Pope Gregory
social ties came under pressure. In western Europe VII from Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, where he
from the eleventh century a start was made to was besieged by the emperor (see Chapter 4). His
reclaim peat and marshlands, clear woods and cul- expeditions took him as far as Serbia, whence in
tivate the land. The most visible expression of this 1081 he intervened in the contest for the imperial
was the search for new areas of settlement, both crown of Byzantium. His youngest brother, Roger,
in the direct vicinity of the old western European took Sicily from the Moors in the years between
centres of habitation and further away. 1061 and 1091. The pope gave his blessing to
The conquests that most appeal to our imagi- this offensive against Islam and even appointed
nation were certainly those of the Normans, Roger as his legate, a position normally filled by
themselves descendants of Viking settlers. Some a prelate. This was an important precedent for

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PART III E XPANSION A ND MAT U RAT IO N, 1000–1500

the Crusades in Palestine. By 1130 the newly cre- and iron for shipbuilding, and bought as many
ated kingdom of Sicily included all south Italy as possible of the luxury goods that the highly
as well as the isle of Sicily, and later even some developed Arab market economy had to offer. In
of the coastal regions of Tunisia. It was based on the middle of the eleventh century a Persian trav-
the institutions founded by Byzantine and Arab eller observed Christian ships in the Syrian port
rulers. It lasted for centuries in this formation. of Tripoli whence they set sail to other Islamic
Roger II (1130–1154) recognised the pope as his harbours. Muslims who wanted to go from the
overlord and paid him an annuity, in return for Maghreb (the western lands of Islam) to the
which he could do as he pleased. His position was Levant (Syria and Palestine) would have travelled
of great strategic importance for Rome, against on Christian ships from that time on.
the Muslims and Byzantium, and also as backing Venice was another centre for the expansion
against the German emperors. of commercial links between Italy and the eastern
A part of the growing population of western Mediterranean Sea. Located on a series of islands
Europe sought new means of existence to the east far north in the Adriatic, it was fairly invulner-
in the thinly populated German Empire and in able by Muslim raids. The city still formally
the Slavic regions beyond. It is striking that from recognised the supremacy of Byzantium, which
the middle of the thirteenth century this east- in 1082 as a reaction to the Norman advance
ward mass migration, which in fact was nothing into Serbia had given Venice exclusive free-trade
less than the occupation of land, was presented privileges without any levies and duties. There
as a crusade against the heathen Slavs and Balts. was a lively slave trade in people who had been
By then, Christian enterprises in Palestine had captured during raids in the Slav regions of cen-
come to a standstill and part of the West’s drive tral Europe and the Balkans. This trade decreased
for expansion was directed at the European fron- as those areas became converted to Christianity,
tiers of Christianity in Iberia, central Europe and and it was replaced and diversified by trade in
the Celtic periphery of the British Isles. other products. For Byzantium, threatened as it
The active resumption of trading relation- was on every side, the support of the Venetian
ships from the West was another form of the fleet was of strategic importance. For their part,
same expansionary movement. By the ninth the Venetians profited from the vast material and
and tenth centuries, when there were still fre- cultural riches that Byzantium could still provide.
quent Arab raids along the coasts of the western It is very likely that Sicily’s trade with Egypt
Mediterranean, Amalfi and neighbouring villages, and Syria continued under Norman rule. In the
well protected on the steep and rugged coast of western Mediterranean the ports of Pisa and
the peninsula of Sorrento, could develop a mighty Genoa carried out a successful naval attack on
fleet and become the great entrepôt in the West what they saw as a pirates’ nest at Mahdiya in
for trade with the surrounding Muslim regions. Tunisia in 1088. The pope gave his blessing in
The Amalfitans stood under the purely nomi- retrospect to this undertaking, which thus was
nal rule of the Byzantine Empire and possessed motivated in the first place by economic reasons
wharves and warehouses in Constantinople, but but was included in the increasingly aggressive
they developed close ties with Egypt as well. In attitude of the Catholic Church towards the
the tenth century, a colony of merchants from Muslims. It is striking that in all these regions
Amalfi was established in Fustat. Up to 160 of the westerners took the initiative in the contacts
them were killed in a riot in neighbouring Cairo, with the far earlier developed eastern and south-
in 996. Disregarding papal interdictions, the ern Mediterranean coasts, and this in the period
Amalfitans nevertheless continued to conduct preceding the Crusades. Religious differences
trade with Jews and Muslims. They supplied wood were no barrier at all to close commercial ties.

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Everything indicates that it was this very in the various Muslim kingdoms. After the death of
intensification of the contacts with the higher Basil II in 1025, the Byzantine Empire was plagued
developed regions in the Near East that offered the for more than half a century by the misgovern-
West additional opportunities for growth, based ment of a series of weak emperors, at the very time
on the adoption of more valuable and varied when strong new adversaries appeared on its bor-
products, technology and other cultural features. ders. The Byzantines managed to check the Turkish
Through their commercial activities the Italians Pechenegs, yet another nomadic people who had
in particular learnt to deal with other cultures, entered the region of the Lower Danube, but they
new products and the advanced trading meth- were powerless to the threat from the Normans in
ods that were commonplace in Constantinople, south Italy and the Seljuk Turks in Asia Minor. The
Tripoli, Alexandria and Cairo. Indirectly they greater part of all the regions they had conquered
gained entry to large and distant markets which with their blood, sweat and tears during the tenth
in turn gave them a head start on other western century was lost in the course of just a few years.
Europeans. They were able to set themselves up as The disastrous year of 1071 was symbolic of the
the great intermediaries between East and West, course of events: this was the year of Manzikert
a position they would hold until the sixteenth (see p. 225), the year, too, when the Normans took
century. The expansionary westerners showed Bari in the west. The two events marked the loss
greater dynamism and drive, and they were more of Byzantine power in south Italy and the largest
open to innovation, all of which enabled them part of Asia Minor.
to overtake their stronger rivals in the long run. The strong emperors of the Comnenus dynasty,
which came to power in Constantinople in 1081,
could not rectify this loss of territory, but they did
Clashes of civilisations: succeed in preventing further erosion of Byzantine
crusaders, Muslims and possessions in Asia Minor. Alexius I Comnenus
Mongols (1081–1118) made clever use of the long-term
presence of the first western crusade army in the
The period from the ninth to the eleventh cen- region. It led to the Byzantines again having all
turies formed the apex of political, economic and the coastal regions of Asia Minor firmly under
cultural developments in the Byzantine Empire and their control.

PLATE 7.1 Depiction of the cruel habits of Tartars in a western chronicle.

223
PART III E XPANSION A ND MAT U RAT IO N, 1000–1500

As a result of these developments the Byzantine and the Taurus mountains. Caravans of thou-
Empire underwent a power-shifting process from sands of camels brought supplies to Cairo from
the centre to local potentates from the eleventh sub-Saharan Africa, which was forced by military
century onwards. Great landowners ruled over action to pay tribute in the form of slaves. This
several village communities and thousands of flow of humanity to the Mediterranean region
slaves. The emperors had to rely on their coop- has been estimated at 20,000 people per year –
eration to collect the taxes in their areas, in men for the army and heavy labour, women for
exchange for a part which they kept for them- household tasks. This slave trade continued from
selves. Other elements of state power also fell the ninth to the twentieth centuries and most
into their hands, including the administration certainly contributed to the demographic stagna-
of justice, maintaining order, the conscription tion and the dislocation of social ties in central
and command of troops. The landowners thus Africa. In the Near East, wood, needed particu-
became real warlords who tried to make their larly for shipbuilding and as fuel, was the most
position hereditary. Independent peasants were strategically scarce raw material. The major pow-
forced out of the market by the heavy tax bur- ers fought each other continually for control of
den, which they could only escape by seeking the wooded regions. High-quality, traditionally made
protection of the warlords – on whom they then products fed a rich export trade. The prominent
became directly dependent and to whom they Jewish community in Cairo was specialised in
had to make payments. Imperial power was thus glass-making and in dyeing fine linens and cot-
gradually eroded. The highly developed bureau- tons. They formed an important link in these
cracy proved to be no match for the warlords, who industries, which according to surviving letters
were of course indispensable for warding off the and bills must have included 265 different crafts.
constant attacks from nomadic peoples. The use Besides military power and economic pros-
of mercenaries (usually ‘Franks’, by which west- perity the Fatimid Empire radiated a high degree
ern Europeans were meant, sometimes Turks too) of cultural activity. This was reflected in its own
did not bring long-term solace to the emperors, architectural style for mosques and palaces, dec-
because a lot of money was needed to pay them orated with coloured enamel tiles. The caliph’s
and the forces often proved untrustworthy. Like palace contained a library of 18,000 volumes,
so many other imperia the Byzantine Empire col- including 1,200 copies of the Universal history of
lapsed under a combination of internal erosion al-Tabarî (d. 923). Caliph al-Hakim (996–1021)
and external pressure. founded a great Shi’ite school near the al-Azhar
The other major power in the eastern mosque, with the purpose of spreading the moral
Mediterranean was the Fatimid Empire in Egypt, principles of the Qur’an. His religious fanati-
which within a short time of its establishment in cism led to new tensions and divisions, and it
969 had emerged as the dynamic centre of the was under his rule that the Holy Sepulchre in
Muslim world. Already in 909, when still only Jerusalem was destroyed.
ruling over what is now Algeria, the Fatimids had Largely responsible for the shifting balance of
declared themselves caliphs. The move of the power in the Near East during the eleventh century
caliphate to Egypt meant humiliation to both were the Oghuz or Turkmen, a nomadic Turkic peo-
Baghdad and Córdoba. The new capital, Cairo, ple recently converted to Islam. They underwent a
just a few kilometres south of the older capital period of tremendous expansion. Their leaders, the
Fustat, grew into one of the most important mar- Seljuks, made a pact with the Iranian aristocracy
kets in the Near East, attracting cotton from Nubia, who were anxious to restore political unity and
slaves from sub-Saharan Africa and wood from religious orthodoxy. Since 1038 they took over
Calabria, Kabylia, Lebanon (the famous cedars) effective power in Baghdad, and in 1055 the caliph

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MAP 7.1 The empires of the Fatimids and the Seljuk Turks after 1071

made their leader sultan and ‘king of the East and their rule was characterised by laborious efforts to
the West’. Hence the caliphate of Baghdad is more establish some degree of state authority, not an
properly called the ‘empire of the Great-Seljuks’. easy undertaking for a nomadic people that was
Syria and Palestine also fell into their hands, only not familiar with abstract power constructions of
the ports remaining under Fatimid rule. In about this sort. On the Catholic side the ferocity of the
the same period another group of Seljuks started Seljuk conquests is given as a decisive reason for
to raid the upland plains of eastern Anatolia, to launching the Crusades. Yet it must be remem-
the detriment of the Armenians and Byzantines. bered that Christians were by no means the only
In 1071 they so thoroughly destroyed the imperial victims of the admittedly violent Turkmen. More
army at Manzikert that all Asia Minor except the intolerance was directed against radical Shi’ites
coasts came under Seljuk control, after which it than against Christians. Among the Christians
was known as the empire of the Rum Seljuks (Rum it was the representatives of the Byzantine
meaning ‘Roman’). Orthodox Church rather than other Christians
The Seljuks encouraged religious orthodoxy in who were unacceptable to the new rulers. With
the areas they conquered. Between 1071 and 1092 a few exceptions, all the Christian monasteries

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were allowed to remain. Even the Greek Patriarch their own faith (provided this was Christianity
kept his position in Jerusalem. Evidence from or Judaism): should they choose the latter, then
different sources shows that pilgrims from the they were expected to recognise the political
West were also allowed to visit Palestine under supremacy of Islam and not to dispute it. On
the Turkish rule. The St John’s Hospital and two payment of a special tax, jizya, non-Muslims
monasteries near the Holy Sepulchre, founded could enjoy the traditional Arabic contractual
for pilgrims by merchants from Amalfi in 1080, hospitality, dhimma, which guaranteed their per-
continued to function as usual. The sources con- sonal safety and that of their goods and religious
tain no evidence of Christians being persecuted services. Even if adherents of other faiths were
or of systematic desecration of Christianity’s holy discriminated, this was certainly an exceptionally
places by the Turks. tolerant attitude for the time. That made it pos-
When the crusaders invaded Syria in 1096 sible for some 200,000 Arabs to rule over more
they thus found themselves in a situation where than ten million people of different cultures and,
the opposition was not on a par with them. The in the course of time, to gradually assimilate large
two great powers, Byzantium and the Fatimid numbers of them.
Empire, were weakened and divided. The Seljuk In the region where the crusaders directed their
Turks, the conquerors of the preceding decades, attacks there was certainly no clear-cut evidence
were now entangled in a dynastic struggle. They for a religious situation of dominant Muslims
dominated Bagdad and, after 1071, the sultan of and subjected Christians. No less important than
the Rum Seljuks installed a permanent residence the religious differences between Muslims, Jews
in Nicaea, and later in Konya/Ikonion. Others and Christians, and within Islam itself, between
hired their military might for their own strategic Sunnis and Shi’ites, were ethnic, linguistic and
purposes. The Near East, already extremely com- cultural differences. The general picture is one
plex and rarely stable, found itself in a new, very of a great variety of peoples, led through clans
unsettled constellation as a result of the western whose authority was based partly on a specific
intervention. During the first half of the twelfth religious conviction.
century this brought about a weakening of the In Syria (in which the Muslims also included
Muslim empires which was to the advantage of Palestine) the crusaders encountered mostly
the Byzantine Empire and the Latin crusader Shi’ites in the north and Sunnis in the south,
states in Syria. each with their own rulers. There were diverse
other cultures, too, such as the Druses who rec-
ognised the Fatimid caliphate. Another Shi’ite
The multicultural Near East sect with the ominous name of hashîshiyûn, or
hashish-drinkers, lived in the north of Iran and
It is important to remember that in origin Islam Syria. Because murder was their most important
did not aim at being a religion essentially differ- method of fighting the Sunni Turks, the name of
ent from Judaism or Christianity. In theory the these hashîshiyûn became ‘assassins’ in the French
Muslims recognised the beliefs of the two other of crusaders.
‘peoples of the Book’, on the understanding Among the Christian communities in the East,
that these did not claim to possess the undis- in addition to ethnic and linguistic differences,
torted, definitive version of the message. This there was a diversity of religious currents from
makes it easier for us to understand the Muslim the early centuries that had been pronounced
attitude towards peoples of other faiths in the heterodox in the West, but which had survived
lands over which they ruled. In principle they in a fossilised form in the East under Islamic
allowed everyone to choose between Islam and rule. They included the Nestorians, Maronites

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stemming from the Monothelite tradition, and Hermit, won over great numbers of supporters
three Monophysitic Churches: the Armenian, among the ordinary people. This still unstruc-
the Jacobite (with a liturgy in Syrian) and the tured movement, in all its enthusiasm, proceeded
Egyptian-Coptic; there were also orthodoxies to pogroms against the Jews in the towns along
following the patriarchate of Constantinople or the Rhine but was entirely wiped out in its first
of Antioch, Jerusalem or Alexandria (see Chapter encounter with Turkish horsemen who slaugh-
2). It must be obvious that in this region of very tered or enslaved most of them. The real Crusades
divergent communities the Catholic Church in that responded to the will of God Himself, as the
Rome had no authority at all. pope had declared, would have to be led by the
The Jews lived in small scattered communities, experienced warrior class of knights and princes.
especially in the towns. They looked upon the However, there was no logistic provisioning for
Islamic rulers as their liberators from the heavy the hordes of many thousands of fighters and
handed Byzantine or (in Iberia) Visigothic rul- followers.
ers. This view was also shared by many Christian Four chivalric armies were formed in different
communities who had welcomed the Muslims regions. Most of those who took part in the First
as their liberators from an exacting imperium. Crusade came from the north of France, where
There was no segregation or ghetto-forming. Urban II was born himself. His relationship with
On the contrary, from the ninth to the eleventh Emperor Henry IV was very tense, because he still
centuries the Jews flourished economically and stood by the anti-pope he had appointed. Very
culturally throughout the Arab world. little cooperation could thus be expected from
There is thus every reason to look for the the German Empire, even though Godfrey of
motives for the Crusades not in the East but in the Bouillon, of the powerful house of Boulogne and
West, as expounded in Chapter 6. Moreover, so the most famous leader of the First Crusade, was,
far as we can tell from surviving texts, any knowl- as titular duke of lower Lorraine, technically a
edge of Islam and the situation in Palestine was German lord. This army had to march towards
demonstrably lacking in the West. The Crusades, Constantinople through the Holy Roman Empire
then, can be interpreted as a form of western and Hungary. A second army from the north-
expansionism on both religious and political ern regions was led by princes such as Robert
grounds. Thanks to the unbroken tradition of Curthose duke of Normandy, Count Hugues of
pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and the economic rela- Vermandois, a brother of the king of France, and
tionships between Italy and the Near East which Count Robert II of Flanders. They reached the
had been in existence long before, it was possible meeting point of Constantinople via Italy. One
to consolidate the effects of this expansion. southern army was led by Count Raymond of
Toulouse, another important force came from
Norman Sicily under the leadership of Bohemond
Crusades, crusader states and of Taranto, elder son of Robert Guiscard.
western colonies in the East The transport operations were exceptionally
challenging, due to the great distance, and the
The proclamation by Urban II at the Council of unprecedented numbers of tens of thousands of
Clermont in November 1095 of a crusade to liber- specialised warriors with their horses and equip-
ate the Holy Sepulchre (see Chapter 6) triggered an ment. These men needed to prepare themselves
overwhelming response. Several tens of thousands to survive in an unknown inimical territory
took off to Jerusalem. Successive waves of peo- with a different climate. Only the north-Italian
ple marched overland towards Constantinople; seaports had shipping capacity and expertise
Fervent preaching, such as that by Peter the in the area of destination. Of all the port-cities

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only Genoa came into action immediately; its him and took the title ‘King of Jerusalem’, thus
ships would ensure that the ‘Franks’ were provi- relegating his dependence on the pope into the
sioned. Genoese carpenters built the equipment background. The crusader-kings of Jerusalem did
needed for the siege of Antioch, and, together not enjoy any supremacy over the other Latin
with English vessels, supplied the wood for the rulers in the region. A fourth state, the County
construction of siege towers and catapults just in of Tripoli, was formed by Raymond of Toulouse
time for the decisive attack on Jerusalem. In 1104 and was a magnet for Italian traders. In 1187 it
they provided valuable assistance at the capture became part of the principality of Antioch. For
of Acre. Pisa and Venice waited to offer their sup- the first twenty years the ‘Franks’ fought fiercely
port until 1100, when the crusaders had obtained to win the cities along the coast. The support and
their first lasting successes. All the shippers, arti- provisioning from Italian fleets was essential for
sans and merchants accepted rich remuneration
for their services to the crusaders, above all in
the shape of extensive commercial privileges and
allocations of property in the conquered regions.
Venetian involvement was more limited; the
Venetians were mostly interested in keeping their
rivals out of the region where they had obtained
a monopoly from the Byzantine emperor. In
Constantinople itself they were the only foreign-
ers who had been assigned their own quarter.
The success of the First Crusade is indeed
almost a miracle. Having been ferried piecemeal
over the Bosporus in the spring of 1097, the cru-
sader army immediately gained an important
victory by defeating Kilij Arslan, sultan of the
Rum Seljuks, under the walls of Nicaea. Shortly
afterwards it embarked on a summer-long, disas-
trous crossing of hot and dry Anatolia. Then, in
the autumn, the tide turned again. The crusad-
ers took Edessa on the Euphrates and Antioch,
the old metropolis on the coast, which became
the centres of the first two crusader territories
or states in the Near East: the County of Edessa,
which, due to its remote location, would be lost
in 1144, and the principality of Antioch, which
managed to survive until 1268 and whose first
lord would be Bohemond of Taranto.
Jerusalem was taken on 15 July 1099, after
a siege lasting less than five weeks. Godfrey of
Bouillon had himself proclaimed ‘defender of
the Church and the Holy Sepulchre’, bringing
him much personal renown. No doubt it was
good for the salvation of his soul, but he died
just one year later. His brother Baldwin succeeded MAP 7.2 Crusader states in about 1150

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this. Acre fell to them in 1104, Sidon and Beirut Edessa. In southern Syria a form of peaceful co-
in 1110 and Tyre in 1124. existence grew up with impregnable Damascus.
Relationships between the Byzantines and The Latin colonisation was generally limited to
Latin Christians were fraught with difficulty, the towns because the westerners were relatively
despite the originally undoubtedly good inten- few in number and therefore needed the cover of
tions of emperor and pope. Moreover, it was robust walls to ensure their safety. They settled
hard to discern any feelings of mutual solidarity only sporadically in villages, under the protec-
between the Latin rulers. After the great conquests tion of castles. The strongholds, known as kraks,
perhaps a few hundred ‘Frankish’ knights and were situated in high places and could stand firm
some thousands of footsoldiers remained in the against Muslim sieges. Later it was mainly the mil-
conquered regions, but in the tangle of coalitions itary orders that formed domains where vineyards
they made to survive and prosper they did not were planted and sugarcane, indigo and grain cul-
form a homogeneous block that could challenge tivated. The ‘Franks’ of Syria and Palestine did not
the Muslims or Byzantines. Every sort of combi- create an extensive feudal system based on the
nation was made, cutting straight across religious holding of land, such as existed in their land of
borders. From 1128 there was close cooperation origin. The shortage of men compelled them to
between the Muslims of northern Syria and Iraq, make very flexible rules of succession in favour of
in which the latter took over control of Aleppo younger sons and daughters, making it difficult to
and pushed back the Latin states of Antioch and accumulate property, while the continual struggle

PLATE 7.2 The crusaders’ fortress Krak des Chevaliers was raised in the County of Tripoli, Syria, after the
First Crusade. It could house 2,000 soldiers.

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made everything uncertain. Knights were tied to The privileges that the Italians acquired from
more powerful lords by ‘bezant feoffs’, rents paid the conquerors were probably more attractive on
in cash; the ‘bezant’ was a Byzantine gold coin paper than in reality. The endless years of war
that was imitated locally. In this way the greater would have thoroughly disrupted commercial
degree of monetisation in the East compensated relationships with the Middle East. During the
for the lesser degree of control over the land by first half of the twelfth century Egypt continued
western standards. to be the most important connection, and the
Besides the knights, the military orders commercial significance of the new Latin set-
(Chapter 5) helped to consolidate the Latin pres- tlements in the Levant in that period should
ence in the Holy Land. The number of knights therefore not be assessed too highly. Surviving
offering their services to these new orders grew documents relating to overseas commercial
quickly, and pious gifts began flowing in. All sorts transactions show how important the trading
of banking practices developed to transfer these monopoly in Byzantium was to the Venetians,
riches from the West to the East. Pilgrims leaving while Genoa concentrated more on Egypt. The
for the Holy Land could ‘buy’ a credit in one of Genoese also maintained intensive commercial
the western houses of these orders, in Paris or relations with Sicily where, among other things,
London for example, which they could cash in they bought grain and sold cloth from Flanders,
the local currency once they had arrived safely and further round the western Mediterranean
in Jerusalem – an early sort of traveller’s cheque. with Marseilles, Sardinia, Almeira, Ceuta, Bougie
The military orders formed the largest con- and Tunis. For both Venice and Genoa the con-
centrations of Latin power in the Levant. They tact with the ports of the Latin East was sound
accumulated enormous estates and fortunes, in but in no way dominant.
the West as well as in the East. By the end of the Antioch, Tyre, Acre, Cyprus and Armenia
twelfth century the Templars owned some twenty Minor were among the sites of the substantial
strongholds north of Tripoli, one of which housed trading posts now built by the Italian cities; they
1,700 fighting men. Besides their own heavily demanded exclusive jurisdiction over the posts
armed and solidly trained knights they also took and sent their own representatives as adminis-
Islamic mercenaries into their service. For the trators (consuls or bayles). On the pattern of the
latter, money apparently prevailed over faith. funduq in Islamic areas these trading posts were
The third category of Latin colonists in the blocks of houses or entire quarters of a town where
East, after the knights and the military orders, the foreign traders stored their goods in ware-
was formed by Italian traders. They benefited houses, lived, had their churches, bath-houses,
from the military protection offered by the Latin ovens, administrative and court buildings, and
strongholds and accepted substantial rewards often even a watchtower and fence. They enjoyed
for their services. An excellent example is the full administrative and judicial autonomy and
agreement the doge of Venice made with repre- could enjoy their own culture in their own circle.
sentatives of the king of Jerusalem in 1123. With In Acre, which became the capital of the kingdom
an eye to the conquest of the port of Tyre, which after the loss of Jerusalem in 1187, the economic
was still in Islamic hands, the Venetians insisted life was completely dominated by the three Italian
on being given a legally autonomous commercial fondachi (the Italian corruption of funduq), where
quarter in every town in the kingdom, and fis- caravans arrived from the interior, ships moored
cal advantages, in return for their fleet’s support. and craftsmen and money-changers set up their
Should Tyre and Ascalon be taken, one-third of establishments.
those towns would come to them in free and This colonisation formed the steady undercur-
permanent possession. rent of western expansion, while the Crusades

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BOX 7.1 LEGAL PROTECTION OF FOREIGN

TRADERS
Letter from Al-Abbas, vizier of the Fatimid Caliph Al-Zafir, to the archbishop and commune of Pisa,
17 February 1154:

[…] Your ambassador Raynerio Botaccio has come to us with letters from Archbishop Villano
and from the consul and notables of the city of Pisa. In them you tell us that traders from your
town, your brothers and relations, whom you sent to us as a son to his father, were last year
arrested and deprived of much of their merchandise, which is not fitting for such a large king-
dom, far greater than any on earth. Therefore we have sent you this embassy with a splendour
that you only use for the greatest occasions, with a galleon where an ordinary ship is usual, in
order to arrange everything in accordance with his judgment. […]
We have explained to your ambassador that his complaint is not based on the truth. We
have been informed that our traders in Alexandria, who embarked in good faith on the same
ship as your traders, were killed most treacherously. They had been told that Frankish pirates
had been sighted, and therefore descended into the hull, whence one by one they were
thrown into the sea.Your men then took their wives and children and property for themselves.
The law and the trading agreement between us provide for the imprisonment of the guilty
people and their accomplices, and that we hold your traders who are staying in our land until
you have delivered the culprits to us with compensation for the families of the victims. […]
Your ambassador also complained that many of your compatriots are in our prisons. To this
we have replied that we captured those Pisans while they were making war against us with
the Franks, to whom they gave help and supplies. According to the treaty between us, Pisans
who are found on the same ship as the Franks are treated in the same way as the Franks. […]
After long negotiations with us and with his companions, your ambassador has promised
to remain completely loyal to us and not to threaten our subjects in any way at all. They will
not enter into any agreement with the Franks, nor with any of our possible enemies, on land,
at sea, or in our harbours. They will not undertake any enemy action against our army, either
on their own or together with others. None of your traders will bring a Frank from Syria here,
disguised as a trader. […]
Now we extend you the privilege of coming to Alexandria for gold, silver and all your
business affairs and allow you to live there in your funduq. You may transport everything that
you have for sale to all places in our empire, after payment of 12 per cent customs duty, and
also take them back with you, with the exception of wood, iron and pitch which our customs
purchase at the market price. […] We hereby confirm all the privileges that were previously
granted by us, and in addition grant you a funduq in Cairo and exemption from the duty on
silver.

Source: C. Cahen, Orient et Occident au temps des Croisades (Paris: Montaigne, 1983), pp. 228–230.

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were its spectacular but not very effective phases Saladin crushed a crusader army on the Horns
of concentration. Although commercial relations of Hattin, a dry plateau above Lake Tiberias, and
before 1096 should not be underestimated, and shortly afterwards captured Jerusalem and most
those of the first decades of the twelfth century of Palestine. Saladin’s empire would stay in the
were not focused primarily on the Latin East, it hands of his dynasty, known as the Ayyubids, for
cannot be denied that the Crusades gave a new more than fifty years, without ever achieving a
impulse to the commercial expansion of the high degree of centralisation.
West. Italian shipping was given new functions in News of Saladin’s conquest of Jerusalem is
the logistical support of militant and peaceful pil- said to have caused the death of Pope Urban III.
grims overseas, and Italian traders had fantastic It provoked his successor into calling upon all
opportunities to explore new markets. They had Catholic princes to take the cross. He allowed
no difficulty, then, in adding eastern products them to collect one-tenth of the Church revenues
to their supplies when Egypt closed its doors to within their realms to support their endeavour.
them. The advancing westerners were an irritant, In May 1189 Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, then
especially to the Byzantines, who had expected aged sixty-six, took command of a huge army
that the Crusades would restore their own empire in Regensburg. The leader’s high profile and
and certainly not establish Latin competition in the chivalric ethics in general led to the most
their backyard. The Pisans and Genoese had fol- extravagant adventures which had very little in
lowed the Venetians and acquired trading rights common with their religious mission. Frederick’s
in Constantinople. In 1182 a wave of disaffection threat to conquer the Byzantine Empire if it did
broke out against them and they were completely not support the crusaders resulted in more than
annihilated. just the immediate acquiescence of the Byzantine
emperor. Frederick faced the greatest difficulties
in taking his army through Byzantine territory.
The later Crusades The German troops laid waste to Thessaloniki
and Adrianople. Shortly afterwards, Frederick
The rise to power of the dynasty of Zengi, the drowned while crossing a torrential river in Asia
Turkish ruler of Mosul in northern Iraq, provoked Minor. The kings of France and England, Philip II
the Second Crusade (1146–1148) after Zengi Augustus and Richard the Lionheart, needed two
invaded the Christian County of Edessa, and more years to set aside their rivalry before joining
conquered its capital. The Crusade, now headed the advance on Palestine. As worthy hooligans
by the kings of Germany and France, was aimed avant-la-lettre, the English troops ransacked wher-
at recapturing Edessa and attacking Damascus, ever they passed by in Portugal, Sicily and Cyprus.
but it was a failure in all possible respects – the The latter Byzantine colony was conquered
County of Edessa was lost for good. A new threat because of the insulting treatment of Lionheart’s
to the remaining crusader states appeared when sister Joan, who had landed there after a ship-
Zengi’s son, Nur ed-Din, conquered Fatimid Egypt wreck. The remnants of the German army joined
in 1171, thus uniting Syria and Egypt. When Nur the French and English troops that retook Acre
ed-Din died three years later, his Kurdish vizier in July 1191, but King Philip Augustus returned
(governor) of Egypt, Saladin, staged a successful home before that victory. King Richard now took
coup d’état and was recognised as the new ruler the lead of the crusaders’ army and twice they
of Egypt and Syria. Subsequently, he turned a came close to the walls of Jerusalem, but on both
fierce power struggle over the throne of Jerusalem occasions decided to retreat because he judged
between several noble ‘Frankish’ families and an attack to be unwise under the circumstances.
their supporters to his own advantage. In 1187 The operation boiled down to negotiations about

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the free access for Christian pilgrims. On his relationships with the Arab and Greek world, and
way home, the hot-tempered King Richard was tension between him and the popes, however,
taken prisoner in Austria. All things considered, made him hold back. In 1228 his fleet finally
the Third Crusade was not a great success, the put to sea. Frederick was accompanied by just
kings’ leadership questionable. The recapture of a few hundred knights; using his knowledge of
the coastal towns of Palestine and the conquest the Arabic language and culture he made a peace
of Cyprus assured the ‘Frankish’ presence in the treaty with the sultan, under the terms of which
Near East for another century. the Christian king of Jerusalem would again have
The Fourth Crusade (1201–1204) highlighted authority over the city and a few places on the
the lack of a coordinated western policy with road to the coast. Jerusalem was again under
regard to Palestine. The emperor of Byzantium Christian rule, with the exception of the holy
seemed to have become the prime enemy. After places of Islam on the Temple Mount. Christian
his experiences with Barbarossa’s army in 1190 pilgrims were allowed to visit the Holy Sepulchre
he refused to allow the crusaders to cross through if they behaved with respect and discretion. The
his territory. Now that the crusaders were forced Muslims would be allowed to keep their own
to go by sea, Venice had a golden opportunity to law. This ten-year peace was respected on both
make her mark on events. The target now became sides, but the haggling over the most holy city in
to engineer a change of power in Constantinople. Christendom and one of the most sacred places
Before the crusaders had embarked, the Venetians of Islam was seen as a despicable act of treason by
decided that they would have the right to three- most Christians and Muslims alike. Frederick had
quarters of the booty, three-eighths of the territorial himself crowned king of Jerusalem in the chapel
conquests and one-half of the committee to select of the Holy Sepulchre, demonstrating his direct
the new emperor of Constantinople. As payments link to God. This was exactly what the pope had
were not timely delivered, the crusaders took the feared and why two years earlier he had already
proud capital in 1204, started looting it and estab- excommunicated the emperor.
lished their Latin Empire there, which extended Soon after the ten-year peace came to an end
over most of Greece and lasted until 1261. a Sixth Crusade took place, from 1239 to1240.
The scandalous distraction of the Fourth Crusade Because of the refusal of the emperor to take part,
from its real goal persuaded Pope Innocent III to the Crusade was led by Thibaut IV of Champagne,
suggest at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 that king of Navarre and Richard of Cornwall, count of
a new Crusade be preached as soon as possible. Poitou. Once again their military successes were
The date of departure was set for 1 June 1217. The little more than the retaking of former positions.
massive mobilisation had a modest success with The role of diplomacy increasingly supplemented
the capture of the fortress on Mount Tabor, so that that of force. The Christians held their ground
Acre was no longer under threat. The goal then by allying themselves to one of the rival Muslim
shifted to Egypt since that was the stronghold of princes, in particular trying to play Syria and
Muslim power in the Near East. In February 1218 Egypt against each other. Their game was com-
the ‘Franks’ laid siege to the port of Damietta pletely disrupted in 1243 when a huge army of
at the mouth of the Nile. The town was taken after the expelled Ayyubid ruler of Syria, as-Salih, and
twenty-two months, its garrison exhausted and its his allies from northern Iran advanced through
people starved, but in 1221 the ‘Franks’ had to give the Bekaa Valley into Jerusalem, murdering even
it up again. in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In October
The West cherished great hopes that Emperor 1244 the Christian army lost many thousands
Frederick II would join the Crusade, as he had of men. The Latin positions had received a blow
vowed to do at his coronation. Differing views on from which they never recovered.

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BOX 7.2 CULTURAL EXCHANGES

Most Muslim sources dealing with the Crusades present the westerners under the common name
of ‘Franks’, without any distinction by region of origin or language. Generally, authors described
the invaders as rude, violent and courageous in fighting, but stupid, unlettered, disrespectful for
social order except only for knights, showing laxity towards women and in morality.
In the course of time, contacts between ‘Franks’ and indigenous people became more fre-
quent, through raids and skirmishes, but also in market exchanges, diplomatic contacts, alliances,
personal friendships and even participation in religious ceremonies. One of the best informants
about the Muslim perception of the Franks is the knight, diplomat, courtier (both in Damascus
and in Cairo), poet and chronicler Usama ibn Munqidh (1095–1188). At the end of his long life, he
described everyday events he witnessed and heard of in his broad experience. He belonged to
the family of the lords of Shayzar in northern Syria, living in a castle on a high rock promontory at
three sides surrounded by the Orontes river. The lords had become tributaries to Trancred, the
Christian Prince of Antioch, and his successors. The Munqidh clan had to face attacks from the four
consolidating crusader states, but they also encountered many Muslim foes in the principalities
of Hama and Aleppo, and scores of neighbouring local lords. The political and religious geo-
graphy was extremely scattered, and the great powers in Damascus, Cairo and Byzantium made
themselves felt everywhere. In all that turmoil, friendly relations nevertheless occurred.
Usama described all kinds of strange habits he observed among the Franks, by which it is
apparent that they mixed in market places, in public baths, in private houses and even in churches.
He named some of them as his ‘friends’.
So, some of Usama’s ‘friends’ among the Templars had allowed him to pray in the al-Aqsa
mosque, then converted into a Christian church. A Frankish newcomer seeing him praying towards
Mecca grabbed him and turned him to the east, saying:

‘This is the way you should pray!’ The Templars came in to him and expelled him. They apolo-
gized to me, saying: ‘This is a stranger who has only recently arrived from the land of the
Franks and he has never before seen anyone praying except eastward.’ Everyone who is a
fresh emigrant from the Frankish lands is ruder in character than those who have become
acclimatized and have held long association with the Muslims.

As an example of acculturation, Usama tells the story of one of his men who had been invited to
the home of a retired Frankish knight in Antioch who came with the early expeditions.

The knight presented an excellent table with food extraordinarily clean and delicious. Seeing
me abstaining from food, he said: ‘Eat, be of good cheer! I never eat Frankish dishes, but have
Egyptian woman cooks and never eat except their cooking. Besides, pork never enters my
home.’

On the other hand, Usama recounts the anecdote of a bath-master, in which the encounter confirms
his wish that God may curse and confound the Franks. The bath-master is the storyteller, Usama
adds his moral comment.

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Mostly Franks scorn loincloths. One knight came to me and tore off mine and threw it away.
When he saw that I had my pubic hair shaved, he said: ‘Very well, by the truth of my belief!
Shave me in the same way.’ He laid himself on his back. He had there so much hair that it
looked like a beard. After I had shaved him, he stroke the spot with his hand. Feeling how
smooth it was, he said: ‘By the truth of your belief, do the same with Ad-dama!’ He thus meant
his own wife, and ordered one of his slaves to go and call her to come. […] She similarly laid
down on her back, and the knight repeated: ‘Do with her as you did with me!’ So I shaved her,
while her husband was sitting at my side and looking on. Then he thanked me and paid me
for my services.
Look at this great contrast! They don’t know envy nor honour.

Source: Die Erlebnisse des syrischen Ritters Usama ibn Munqid, edited and translated by H. Preissler (Munich:
C.H. Beck, 1985), pp. 151–153, 157–158; P.M. Cobb, Usama ibn Munqidh, Warrior Poet of the Age of Crusades
(Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2005).

Louis IX of France now took control, embarking The spread of faith and
for Cyprus in 1248 for what would be the Seventh
colonisation
Crusade. It gives an idea of the scale of the invest-
ment to realise that the king had built for this For two centuries the West had sent relatively
purpose the first Mediterranean harbour of the large streams of people, services and capital east-
French kingdom directly on the Mediterranean: wards. It is not difficult to imagine that without
Aigues-Mortes. By May 1249 Louis had assem- this outlet the West would have suffered far
bled an international crusader army of more than greater internal tensions. The Latin Empire estab-
2,500 knights, 5,000 archers and 15,000 other lished in 1204 made it possible for the Venetians
troops. Once again their target was the Nile Delta. to build up their network of trading posts in the
Damietta fell into their hands quickly, but then Aegean Sea and the Peloponnese. After 1212
the crusader army was decimated by scurvy and Venetians went on to found a colony on Crete.
hunger. To make matters worse the king was cap- The island was divided into six, on the model
tured, together with thousands of his and English of the ‘six parts’ in their own city, and a Latin
men, after which they were all ransomed. Louis’ Church hierarchy was established. Venetians took
Second Crusade, the eighth in the row, was even possession of the land and administrated it until
more disastrous, ending with his death in Tunis in 1669. Sugar plantations were established (the
1270 where he had sought an operational base for name of the capital, Candia, became a generic
his army, which had been weakened through sick- name for candy) and later, other islands in the
ness. King Edward I of England carried on to Acre. Aegean Sea, such as Euboia, were colonised and
The idea of the crusade had not yet disappeared, provided with a plantation economy and slave
but when in 1291 the Christians were forced to labour. Long before 1300 the trading cities of the
evacuate Acre, the last Latin city held, there was Mediterranean had ventured upon such a colo-
no longer any effective reaction from the West. nisation movement which continued without
any serious interruption until after the fifteenth
century along the coast of Africa and then across
the oceans. Two forms of colonisation developed:
networks of trading posts along distant overseas

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PART III E XPANSION A ND MAT U RAT IO N, 1000–1500

routes and settlement colonies where slaves kets. The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople
worked on plantations. The former were the in 1453 and of Caffa in 1455 cut off the western-
links in the chain between regional commercial ers from that traditional trading circuit, and made
circuits offering goods of different kinds. them search more actively at the Dalmatian mar-
The Byzantine Empire was split into a number kets and in North Africa. Frequent Ottoman raids
of small principalities along the south coast of the impoverished and depopulated the Balkans in
Black Sea and the Aegean coast as far as Smyrna. the second half of the fifteenth century, and they
In the tradition of the great rivalry with Venice implied massive deportation of people and cattle.
the Genoese supported these rulers, which ena- In Bosnia and Albania, the most destitute even
bled them to set up trading posts with monopoly sold their children in order to survive themselves.
rights along the Black Sea in Trebizond, in Tana These slaves were employed in the Ottoman econ-
on the mouth of the river Don and, above all, in omy, households and army, as well as being sold
Caffa in the Crimea, where they installed a consul to Italian and Catalan merchants.
in 1281. Through these places they could stock After the Reconquest of the kingdom of
up on slaves and exploit the overland routes to Valencia in 1239, the Christians felt entitled to
the Mongol khanates and China, whence they enslave the Muslim population and to employ
brought back silk and spices. Because of the them on the rural estates and in their households.
support they gave to the Greek emperors who In Castile, slaves were regularly employed in all
regained control in Constantinople, the Genoese sectors of the economy, for domestic and artisa-
were allotted an important settlement in Pera on nal work, and as labourers on the haciendas. From
the Golden Horn, just opposite Constantinople, as the middle of the fifteenth century, Portuguese
well as the island of Chios. This was an enormous fleets had brought black slaves from West Africa
breakthrough for the West: in economic terms, to the markets in Lisbon, Seville, Granada and
they were now masters of all the Mediterranean Valencia. Fragmentary sources provide some
and a large part of the Black Sea. The Italians had minimal figures for the period around 1490: they
eliminated the Muslims as middlemen in the trade reveal that up to 500 slaves per year were regis-
with the Far East. In the western Mediterranean tered in Lisbon, and up to 300 in Valencia. From
the Genoese, Pisans and Barcelonans similarly there, Genoese traders are recorded as regular
created the link with the caravan routes bringing providers of the Florentine market, via the port of
gold from Senegal, across the Sahara. Livorno. Slave trade by Christians was thus a con-
Italian and Catalan merchants had no objec- tinuous tradition from Byzantium to the Italian
tion to employing and trading slaves whom they and Iberian markets, which adapted rapidly to
bought initially at their trading posts on the changing conditions, to the massive transatlantic
north shores of the Black Sea. On the boundaries transports of the early modern period. Faith did
of the western steppes, Christians, Muslims and not prevail in this trade, and even if authorities
heathens raided and enslaved each other inter- occasionally signalled a bad conscience, the trade
mittently. In 1421, the doge of Venice, Tommaso was officially tolerated.
Mocenigo, estimated a minimal yearly import of a
thousand slaves. The western Balkans was another
recruitment region, with Ragusa (Dubrovnik) Colonising central and eastern
and Zadar as the main markets on the Dalmatian Europe
coast. Although in the late Middle Ages it could
no longer be generally assumed that slaves were The stagnation of the colonisation of the Holy
non-Christians, Christian merchants nevertheless Land after the thirteenth century gave a new
regularly bought and sold them at public mar- impulse to the movements of colonisation to the

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continental peripheries of Europe itself. This link from the west, whose own Flemish, Dutch,
is clearly visible among the citizens of Bremen Brabant or west German customary law was
and Lübeck who, first in Jerusalem and later in often recognised; their language and culture, and
Acre, maintained a hospital for their pilgrims. In most noticeably such place-names as ‘Flamen’,
Acre they were even allocated their own quarter. ‘Fleming’ and ‘Holland’, also left permanent
There they founded a religious order of knights traces in the regions they settled. There were
whose rules were approved by Pope Innocent III analogous expansion movements elsewhere, in
in 1199. This German (or Teutonic) Order first Iberia with the Christian Reconquest, and under
acquired considerable property in both the East the Anglo-Norman kings the English pushed
and West. After 1211 its primary focus was on deep into the border regions of the British Isles.
the protection of Christianity on its European In these waves of conquest and colonisation,
eastern frontier. In the meantime, in 1197, religion played a mobilising role. Yet the reli-
the bishop of Riga had founded another order gious factor should not be seen as decisive in
of knights, with the telling name of ‘Brethren of each and every respect. On both the Islamic and
the Sword’, specifically to suppress the heathen Christian sides there was a clear lack of solidar-
Latvians and Livonians. From 1230 the German ity. The caliphs in Baghdad did not do much for
bishops proclaimed a permanent crusade against their fellow believers in Syria, their main interest
the Baltic and Slavic peoples. Both military orders was to maintain or restore their own authority.
were given considerable political, legal and The Almohads in Iberia showed no interest in the
material rights to spread Christianity by force of struggle in the Levant. On the Christian side the
arms through the sparsely populated regions increasingly serious clashes are particularly notice-
of southern Baltic shores, and to deprive the few able; they led to a full-blown war between Latins
inhabitants of their land and liberty. and Greeks, and eventually to the decline of the
The Teutonic Order took the land on the fer- Byzantine Empire. Latin princes and Latin trad-
tile plains of the lower reaches of the Vistula ing cities were so busy quarrelling with each other
and established a series of towns there between that they missed opportunities and even brought
1231 and 1237. These towns were laid out in a harm upon themselves. Yet was it not these typi-
chequerboard pattern, and were populated with cally western divisions of power – Church, princes,
Christians from the Lower German linguistic area traders and multiples of the last two – that had
in the West. The native Prussian inhabitants of produced a more dynamic, flexible and therefore
the region were forced to pay rents in kind to the more durable system than the Greek-Byzantine
Order. Others were set to work as serfs on the great dominions of Christianity or Islam? In the long
estates where grain was cultivated in vast quan- run it is the western system of autonomous
tities. In the fifteenth century this grain would spheres of power for religion, state government
occasionally help to reduce the food shortage in and market economy, including its two forms of
western Europe in years of bad harvests. From colonisation – plantation colonies and trading
the sixteenth century, the exports of rye rapidly posts – that has become dominant in the world.
increased to a huge and continuous stream. Its origins lay in the events just discussed.
Prussia thus became a typical export econ-
omy, in the hands of a foreign upper class. The
knights were generally recruited from among the Take-off to a commercial
lower, partly unfree German nobility of service revolution
(ministerials) who could thus achieve the ideal
of acquiring large estates. Thousands of villages From the tenth to the nineteenth centuries,
were founded in this way by groups of migrants north-west Europe established its economic

237
PART III E XPANSION A ND MAT U RAT IO N, 1000–1500

superiority in the world, after having lagged certainly a precondition of commercialisation,

behind the other continents until then. The since it resulted in surpluses which could be
relative autonomy of the towns with respect to put into circulation. In those regions that were
ecclesiastical, feudal and monarchic authorities by nature particularly suited for this, special-
was a basic condition for this ‘European miracle’. ised products like wool, salt, minerals or wine
Nowhere in the earlier developed urbanised soci- were involved, elsewhere, ordinary foodstuffs.
eties in India, China or in the Near East had a Specialisation took shape, and in itself contrib-
comparable level of autonomy been established uted to trade. This interaction between agriculture
by citizens. Because of the relative freedom, which and trade certainly benefited from the growing
the multitude of separate jurisdictions helped to political stability at the local level. Italy played a
bring about, it was possible for a social pattern pioneering role in this because it was supported
with its own norms and values to develop in the by its contacts with those Mediterranean shores
towns (see Chapter 9). It arose from the citizens’ that were in the lead. Its shortage of raw materi-
need to associate in order to protect their com- als forced Italy to explore overseas possibilities as
mon interests against the feudal world around its population increased. The cultural and mate-
them, which was pursuing fundamentally dif- rial heritage of Roman Antiquity, the links with
ferent aims. Part of it was a rational, boundless Byzantium, and its central geographical location
pursuit of material riches through the accumula- contributed to Italy’s initiating role. Internal
tion and reinvestment of profits from trade, in growth and external events, economy and poli-
short: commercial capitalism. tics thus seem to be closely linked in the search
R.S. Lopez (1976), the Italian-American eco- for an explanation for the take-off of the western
nomic historian, has characterised this swing European economy.
as the ‘commercial revolution’, a breakthrough In addition to the internal causes of com-
whose effects were similar to those of the mercialisation, there were external causes. In
Industrial Revolution. Beginning with Italy dur- the first section we referred to the reversal in
ing the tenth century, he saw how trade took an the power relationships between western Europe
ever-stronger hold on the production process and surrounding cultures. There should be no
and on the mentality and way of life in general. doubt about the considerable extent to which
Far-reaching innovations in traffic and transport, this part of the continent lagged behind the
commercial practices and institutions, and prod- Mediterranean area. In about the year 1000 the
ucts available were introduced in Europe. Italian leading zones lay clearly in Byzantium and the
shippers and merchants adopted many of them Muslim areas. In northern Europe, southern
from current experience in the Muslim world, Scandinavia – which was also in contact with
and these are still in existence: accounting sys- Byzantium and Persia, through overland routes
tems, credit notes, maritime insurance, bills of straight across Russia – functioned as a centre of
exchange, banking, share companies, the capi- development, although on a far more primitive
talist mentality. In this, Italy played the role in level. Trade with the less developed regions pro-
the commercial revolution that England was to vided the core areas with raw materials, primarily
perform later in the Industrial Revolution. wood, which was always extremely scarce in the
The causes of these innovations were complex Muslim world, but also with weapons and slaves.
and reinforced each other. Just as demographic In the periphery this trade set its own dynam-
growth was the fundamental motor for agricul- ics in motion. Southern Italy and Venice profited
tural progress, agriculture in turn formed the most from it. Merchants from Amalfi settled in
essential basis for the commercial revolution. their own district in Constantinople even before
The steady growth of agricultural production was 944, and there must have been several hundreds

238
 Th E b E GI NNI NGS Of E U R OpE A N E x pA NSI ON 7 CHAPTER

of them in Cairo. Around 1070 they built two obtained a warehouse, a church and thirty houses,
monasteries and a guesthouse for pilgrims in the start of a trading post. In 1100, twenty-six
Jerusalem. Three years later the Normans would Genoese galleys and four supply ships carried
conquer Amalfi, cutting short its commercial about 3,000 men who captured and looted the
growth, but not the Sicily’s and southern Italy’s coastal city of Caesarea and the main port of Acre.
relations with the East. Above all, Genoa and Pisa Genoese and Pisan merchants soon obtained
needed to secure their transit route via Messina concessions in several ports. Venice already
to the eastern Mediterranean. Sicily became their had a firm footing in the Golden Horn and the
main resource for grain, leather, sheep’s cheese Byzantine Empire, where its merchants had been
and even silk, the production of which imitated exempt from all taxes and customs duties since
Persian models. Venice owed its ascendancy to its 1082. The Republic was slow in supporting the
close ties with Byzantium, its unique geographi- Crusaders as they didn’t want to jeopardise their
cal location, salt-winning and the glass industry. positions, including that in Alexandria. By 1124
In about 1000, fleets from Pisa and Genoa Venice nevertheless also established another solid
cleared the Tyrrhenian Sea area of Islamic pirates bridgehead in Tyre.
and raiders. In 1016 Pisa conquered first Sardinia, If we were to look at all these facts through
then Corsica. Sardinia would become their first the eyes of the people who lived in the east-
colonial experience. Especially the Genoese ern Mediterranean around the year 1100, there
exploited the island’s pastoral economy before would be no reason to attach special significance
Sicily would become an even better provider. At to them. After all, the highest level of develop-
the time of the Reconquest of Iberia, and some- ment in the world had been concentrated in that
times in coordinated actions, the Pisans and region for 8,000 years, and it was still by far the
Genoese frequently captured Muslims off the richest in every respect. Shifts of core locations
east coast, but this seemed to make no difference and territorial authority, and even the tempo-
to regular trade. In 1087, Pisans and Genoese rary supremacy of the Roman Empire, had not
attacked the stronghold Mahdia on the Tunesian essentially affected the situation. That handful of
coast, where the trans-Saharan caravans fuelled barbarian ‘Franks’ in Palestine could never hold
the gold from the Niger into the Mediterranean out against the superior strength of the enormous
trade circuit. One century later, the Genoese had armies of Islam. The westerners’ heavy armour
found more sustainable ways of dealing with did give them some advantage but was not suit-
north-west Africa: they got concessions for com- able for use on the Arab horses. Although this
mercial settlements, funduqs, in Tunis, Bougie, analysis is not wrong in itself, it does not take
Mahdia and other harbours, which all together into account the growth effects that the inten-
represented 37 per cent of their trade in 1182. sification of commercial relationships in Italy,
Fine ceramics, grain, leather and, above all, gold Provence, Catalonia, and also in the hinterland
were the main export products. of north-western Europe, would produce.
The fleets of the north Italian cities played a However, external factors effectively led to a
key role in transporting large armies to Palestine stagnation of the brilliant Arabic culture in the
and Syria and provided the warriors with logis- Near East from the thirteenth century onwards.
tic support, which testifies to the level of their First, the Abbasid Empire, with the caliphate of
development. These combative seafarers took Baghdad, lost momentum to the Fatimids and to
advantage of the situation by accepting substan- their Ayyubid successors. In the eleventh century
tial rewards for their services and then followed Seljuks seized power and drove Byzantium into
the crusaders and gained a firm foothold in the a defensive position. Moreover, until the 1230s,
seaports of the Levant. In Antioch, the Genoese northern Iran and Baghdad suffered unusually

239
MAP 7.3 The Mamluk Sultanate, 1250–1517, and the Mongol Il-Khanate, 1256–1335

15º 30º 45º 60º 75º 90º 105º 120º 135º 150º

60º

Moscow A S I A
Bulgar
K H A N AT E O F T H E Lake Baikal
Kiev GOLDEN HORSE
New Sarai
EUROPE Karakorum
Lake Balkbash
Venice Aral Sea EMPIRE OF THE 45º
Astrakhan
Black sea C H A G ATA I G R E AT K H A N
Ca

Rome Constantinople K H A N AT E
m G o b i
spi

u Khanbaliq
A
an

Da
Anatolia rya Samarkand
sea

Granada Medit
err
an Antioch Tabriz Balkh C H I N A
Tangier ea
n Sea II - KHANATE
Fez Acre Baghdad TIBET East
Jerusalcm Hangzhou
Marrakesh Cairo China 30º
Multan Sea
Pe

MAMLUKS Delhi G
s

Hormuz a
Indu

nge
rsi

n
G u lf Quanzhou
s
a
Re

S a h a r a Guangzhou Tropic of Cancer

dS

Mecca
ea

A r abi an Pagan South

Nile

Timbuktu P eni nsul a A r abi an Bay of China

A F R I C A Sea Bengal Sea 15º

MAP 7.4 The Mongol khanates, 1256–fourteenth century

 Th E b E GI NNI NGS Of E U R OpE A N E x pA NSI ON 7 CHAPTER

cold winter temperatures, which turned into a East meets West

continuous pattern accompanied by drought.
The persistent cold winters were affected by the Events in the Islamic world during the thirteenth
Siberian high wind system and severely damaged century were influenced less by the Crusades
the cotton plantations as well as various other than they were by Mongol invasions. First,
crops such as dates, figs and citrus trees. As a con- Chinggis Khan (c.1167–1227) annihilated the
sequence of these climatic changes, Baghdad was north-Iranian empire of the Khwarazm shahs in
depopulated well before the Mongols’ conquest, 1220. Then, in 1253 Chinggis’s grandson Hülegü
and Egypt took over as the main supplier of cot- invaded Iran, Iraq and Syria with a huge army.
ton and flax for Europe. Second, the Mongol Five years later he conquered Baghdad, where
invasions deeply ravaged and disrupted west Asia, he caused a horrifying bloodbath in which the
which led to a shift of the trade routes to India last caliph of the Abbasid line was one of the
away from Persia to Egypt, via Alexandria, Cairo ten thousand victims. Aleppo and Damascus
and the Red Sea. Third, the aggressive enter- followed soon after, but in 1260 the Mongols
prises of the Christian fleets in the end drove were defeated by the army of the Sultan of
the Muslim seafarers out of the Mediterranean, Egypt. Hülegü’s Mongol dominion, the so-called
and made them turn towards the Red Sea, Yemen Il-Khanate, now centred on Iran. The Mongols
and the Indian Ocean. So, Egypt secured the would never rule over Palestine, but their failed
main linkage between the Mediterranean trade attempt at taking it also heralded the end of the
networks and those around India, bringing to last crusader states. The Christians’ original hope
Europe spices, precious stones, perfumes, but of consolidating their crumbling positions with
also more common indigenous products such as the help of the Mongols evaporated.
alum and paper. The weft of linen warp and cot- The impressive Mongol conquests in central
ton woof, fustian, which was very popular and Asia and the Middle East caused terrible losses of
imitated in Europe for centuries, was named after human life and the devastation of irrigated agricul-
the old capital Fustat, near Cairo. ture and of old cultural centres such as Samarkand,
Characteristic of the commercial develop- Bukhara and Baghdad. It is estimated that the
ment in the tenth to thirteenth centuries was population of Iran was reduced by a half in the
that, in comparison to the early Middle Ages, it course of Mongol occupation. It has to be added
was no longer limited to very scarce or unique that a substantial part of these losses was caused
commodities, in small quantities and with a by the outbreak of the plague from the late 1330s
very high value. Merchants no longer came only onwards. Recent epidemiological research proves
from distant leading regions such as Syria. From that the pathogen of the Black Death had its ori-
the thirteenth century commerce became more gins in Mongolia, and must have spread from there
wholesale and increasingly included everyday to China, to central Asia, and eventually to Europe.
consumer articles such as grain, wine and a wide The region’s new rulers were the Mamluks, of
variety of cloth, which for many centuries was generally Kipchak Turkish slave origin. They were
the source of the wealth of northern France and employed as heavily armed horsemen who played
Flanders and an exchange value for Italians in a key role in Egyptian warfare. In 1250 a Mamluk
the Near East. This was only possible through the coup had ended Ayyubid rule. Egypt, Syria and
increase in demand and purchasing power and Palestine came under the rule of Mamluk gen-
because the evolution of methods of transport erals, who, just like the Ayyubids, took the title
could carry the growth. of sultan. Between 1516 and 1520 their sultan-
ate was absorbed into the Ottoman Empire (see
Chapter 11).

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PART III E XPANSION A ND MAT U RAT IO N, 1000–1500

Although in Latin-Christian Europe fear for a century, which stimulated contacts between East
the Mongols was great, only the eastern part of and West over the land routes that bordered the
the continent – the Pontic steppe and the Russian Eurasian steppes and which are commonly known
principalities north of it – really came to suffer as the Silk Road. The Western Khanate of the
the burden of Mongol dominion. This was effec- Golden Hord, with its centre at the Lower Volga
tively established in 1237–1242 when a large and its harbours on the Black Sea coast, favoured
Mongol army, led by Chinggis Khan’s grand- close exchanges with the Italian maritime powers.
son Batu took hold of the Pontic steppe, then Venetians and Genovese massively bought grain,
inhabited by Kipchak Turks, and attacked Russia. slaves, horses, wine, furs, leather and wax, and
After having taken Kiev, the Mongols ravaged sold mainly textiles. They used their trading posts,
through Poland and Hungary, but without any respectively in Tana and Kaffa, to connect with
intention to conquer these Christian kingdoms. the overland routes to China. However, rivalries
The Mongol khanate of the western steppes, on and outright wars between the various Mongol
the other hand, would remain for centuries a khanates frequently impeded such collaboration
great challenge and contributed indirectly to the and at times even blocked the overland routes
formation of the Russian Tsarist Empire. between Persia and China. The most famous of
If the Mongols did not show much interest the explorers, the Venetian merchants Maffeo and
in western Europe, various western travellers Niccolò Polo, and the latter’s seventeen-year-old
made the long journey to the Mongol rulers in son Marco, who set off to visit Kublai Khan in
Mongolia and, later, China and reported about 1271, didn’t trust the maritime connection from
highly developed cultures, states and econo- Cape Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and preferred
mies about which hardly any reliable knowledge the caravan route, which took them nearly four
existed in Europe until then. The Franciscan years. Some twenty years later, their return jour-
friar John of Pian del Carpine was sent in 1245 ney was made on Chinese junks to Sumatra, and
by Pope Innocent IV to Khan Batu. He met him then further by various, probably Arab, ships
at the Lower Volga and the Great Khan Guyuk via Ceylon and the west coast of India, back to
in the Mongol capital Karakorum. The nego- Hormuz and from there to the Mediterranean har-
tiation did not lead to direct effect as Batu first bours. The Chinese Empire’s economic core was
wanted the pope’s submission before agreeing located at the mouth of the Yangzi river. Arab and
on an alliance against the Arabs. In 1253 King Persian merchants could establish themselves in
Louis IX sponsored the journey of the Flemish the harbours of southern China. As a matter of
friar William of Rubroeck. In the detailed account fact, the overseas connection has always been
of his journey, he contrasted his own observa- more important and more secure than the cara-
tions with the traditional geographical insights van routes. Ships could carry much heavier loads
which were still based on Isidore of Seville and than pack-animals. An Arab ship dating from the
his sources in Antiquity. Their accurate obser- ninth century, found sunk off the Indonesian
vations on regions and peoples that had been coast, was fully loaded with thousands of bowls
unknown to Europeans did not lead to an imme- and dishes in Chinese earthenware.
diate adaptation of the western world view. Not When in around 1340 the Florentine mer-
one of the world maps produced in the second chant Francesco Balducci Pegolotti wrote down
half of the thirteenth century actually mentions the knowledge he had acquired about business
the Mongols. practices in the course of a life-long experience
The different Mongol empires, kingdoms and (see Box 7.3), he described in detail the overland
coalitions, stretching from China to the Sea of journey from the Venetian trading post Tana
Azov, brought relative stability during more than eastward to China. He never performed this

242
 Th E b E GI NNI NGS Of E U R OpE A N E x pA NSI ON 7 CHAPTER

PLATE 7.3 The silk routes

connecting China with the western
trading posts in the Near East passed
through the south Asian deserts
where only camels could endure the
hard conditions. During the Tang
dynasty (618–907), trading relations
intensified. Earthenware from that
period represents various types of
travellers.

travel himself, but he got his information from food or water. This long, complicated and risky
various colleagues. Overall, about eight months journey could only be profitable for products
were required to cross the chain of mountains of high value and relatively low weight such as
and vast barren deserts over one of the various Chinese silk and spices. The Chinese were eager
routes. They have been used since Antiquity, and buyers of horses, camels, glass, jewellery, jade
in the early Middle Ages, Sogdian merchants con- and slaves. The Tang dynasty (618–907) favoured
trolled most of the trajectory. Very few travellers trading connections with the Turkish and Persian
completed the whole journey of some 3,000 kilo- realms, permitting the settlements of Sogdian
metres, as specific groups controlled particular merchants from central Asia in their northern
sectors and assured the transport of the high- capitals Chang’an and Luoyang; Sogdian temples
valued products. At some stages, wagons could emerged even near the market squares. They also
be used, drawn by oxen or camels, and further on established themselves in minor towns in the
camels and asses had to be packed. Camels were valley downstream of the Yellow River, where
particularly adapted to the harsh conditions of they could deal directly with the silk producers.
the desert. They can carry up to 450 kilos during In Pegolotti’s days, the transit was relatively safe
a journey of 50 kilometres per day, and they are and crucial for the transfer of techniques from
able to go on during several days without any the higher developed Asian cultures to the West.

BOX 7.3 A FLORENTINE MERCHANT’S MANUAL

Francesco Balducci Pegolotti became a representative of the Florentine trading house of Bardi
in 1310. In that capacity he reached an agreement with the duke of Brabant at Antwerp in 1315
that the same favourable excise duties that the Germans, English and Genoese already enjoyed
would apply to the merchants of Florence. From 1317 to 1321 he acted for his firm in London, to
collect the papal revenues in England and transfer them to Avignon. In 1324 he obtained from the

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PART III E XPANSION A ND MAT U RAT IO N, 1000–1500

King of Cyprus the same excise privileges for the Florentines as the Pisans. In the years follow-
ing, he guaranteed the collection of the papal revenues in Cyprus and their transfer to Avignon.
During the long years of his stay in Famagusta in Cyprus he carried out detailed research into the
quality of local syrups and sugar, their pure weight and their packaging. While he was there he
also collected precise information about products and routes in the Levant, Constantinople and
Alexandria. After 1329 he held various positions in the ruling council of Florence. As one of its
most prominent members, in 1347 he was involved in the liquidation of the Bardi firm, which in
the meantime had been declared bankrupt.
During his journeys Pegolotti must have made notes on the quality of products, popular sizes,
weights, coins, excise duties and commercial practices in sundry locations, which would have
been useful to a merchant. Between 1338 and 1342 he compiled these into a voluminous book
that he called the ‘Book about the differences between countries, trading sizes, and other pieces
of information for merchants from diverse parts of the world etc.’
He gives detailed conversion tables of weights and currency, and information about the dif-
ferences in the quality of goods available and about commercial practices in the major trading
towns round the Mediterranean and the Black Seas and in France, Flanders and England. More of
these practical handbooks for merchants were in circulation in north Italy, all written in Italian, but
Pegolotti’s is one of the oldest and certainly the most comprehensive. The modern printed edition
has 383 pages. It contains numerous tables and sketches.
An example in the long survey of weight conversions from Famagusta follows:

With Bruges in Flanders.

One Cyprus cantaro makes 518 pounds in Bruges.
80 Ruotoli alum in Cyprus makes a cartload or 400 pounds in Bruges.
40 Cafissi grain in Cyprus makes 1 hoet in Bruges.
One mark of silver in Bruges, or 6 ounces, makes 6 ounces and 13 sterling in Cyprus.

In his survey of the levies on trade in Constantinople Pegolotti notes:

Remember well that if you show respect to customs officials, their clerks and ‘turkmen’
[sergeants], and slip them a little something or some money, they will also behave very cour-
teously and will tax the goods that you later bring by them lower than their real value.

Source: Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, La Pratica della Mercatura, ed. A. Evans (Cambridge MA: The Medieval
Academy of America, 1936), pp. XVII–XXVI, 42 100.

The transport revolution Although it was no longer maintained by a pow-

erful authority, and surely deteriorated over the
The Roman network of roads was built primarily centuries, much of the system continued to be
to enable the state to fulfil its administrative and used. However, a good deal of the new urban
military functions. In later centuries no political growth from the tenth century onwards occurred
unit was able to build roads on a similar scale and in other locations than the former Roman cit-
with the same technical standards as the Romans. ies, and it was more closely connected to rivers.

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These new locations grew along a waterfront, largely in the reduction of these transaction costs.
while Roman cities outside Italy had as their cen- Shipping overseas took place traditionally along
tre a forum, the square on the crossroads. Most the coast. The Chinese already had a primitive
bulk goods had to be carried by ship, which was ship’s compass, which consisted of a magnetic
much cheaper than overland transport. The needle floating in a wind rose in a bowl of water.
modernisation of country roads was limited to During the twelfth century this instrument
the small territories of trading towns. Medieval became known to Christian seamen through their
towns grew up at traffic junctions with water contacts with Muslims. It was not perfected until
courses, and in the first instance these were then the fourteenth century, when it was mounted
extended, connected and adapted. During the on an axis. The Islamic knowledge of geography
first half of the thirteenth century great efforts was similarly far more advanced than that of
were made to regulate the water level in the Po the Christian world. In the thirteenth century,
Valley and to link all the towns by canals. In through their mutual contacts, and building on
Flanders, in the second half of that same century, their own experience, the Italians and Catalans
Ghent, Bruges and Ypres dug canals in order to learned to draw charts showing the navigational
improve communications with each other, with routes from harbour to harbour along visually
peat production areas (relevant as the main fuel) recognisable coastlines; these were known as
and, above all, with the sea. Florence, situated portolan charts.
on the Arno, with its extremely fluctuating water An even more important discovery was the
levels, elaborated a transport system to ensure rudder, attached to the stern-post and turning on
its grain provision and the supply of other bulk a beam, first introduced along the coast of the
goods. It took three days with seaworthy barges North Sea from which it spread to the south. The
10 metres long and 3 metres broad, and on the most important type of ship in the north was the
way a transfer to smaller boats, to get from Porto cog, a fairly high, single-master with a rounded
Pisano upstream to Signa, 14 kilometres before bow, 30 metres long, 7 metres broad by a draught
Florence. In Signa the city built warehouses and of 3 metres, able to carry a cargo in excess of 200
a paved road to carry the goods to their destina- tons. In the Mediterranean the ancient tradi-
tion by four-wheeled wagons. The costs of this tion of the flat-bottomed galley was continued,
transport meant that in 1284 salt was 28 per cent each propelled by 100–200 oarsmen. Although
more expensive in Florence than in Pisa. it was suited to the windless and mainly calm
At the end of the fourteenth century a fruitless inland seas, the galley did not have much cargo
attempt was made to cut through the 60-kilo- space, and was expensive because slaves or con-
metre-wide neck of land between Lübeck and victs were needed to row: this made it ideal for
Hamburg, in the hope of cutting out the journey transporting luxury goods. To transport goods
overseas round Jutland. Traffic over the Alps was in bulk, the Italians began using the nave dur-
made easier by constructing new roads over passes ing the thirteenth century; this was rather similar
and improving existing ones – the St Gothard in to the cog, but had two masts and triangular sails.
1237, and the Great St Bernard even earlier. The In the fourteenth century the Italians designed
enormous investments required for such under- the coca, a vessel which, with its fixed rudder and
takings could only be recovered through the levy square sails, bore even more resemblance to the
of tolls on the vastly increased flow of traffic. cog. In about 1270 the Genoese were the first to
The market price was under heavy pressure reduce manpower and yet enlarge the cargo space
from the manifold transaction costs of goods on to 450 tons. Thanks to this technical advantage,
their way from producer to consumer. Merchants they were also the first to sail round Gibraltar to
therefore sought their competitive advantage the North Sea and the ports of Sluis/Bruges and

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Southampton. The oldest reference to this was rulers. The best-known of them is the German
found in a notarial contract of 1277, and in the Hanse, in the thirteenth century a conglomer-
early fourteenth century the connection became ate of older, regional merchants’ associations
a fairly regular service, in which Venetian ships from the regions round Lübeck and Westphalia,
joined. Although the distance of the maritime Saxony and Prussia. In 1358 the German Hanse
route was three times that of the one overland, transformed itself into an alliance of towns. At
the greater cargo capacity, better security and its peak it had some two hundred member towns
lower transaction costs underway made it the and extra-territorial settlements, from Novgorod
adequate response to the increased volume of via the Scandinavian coasts to London and the
trade between the Mediterranean and the North Low Countries. It functioned until 1669 on an
Sea area. In addition, Venice also maintained interregional scale to promote the trading inter-
its connection with south Germany and central ests of the citizens of its member towns and acted
Europe via the Brenner pass, as did Milan via the externally as a collective, public body.
Gotthard. In theory, privileges for foreign merchants
meant that they enjoyed the protection of the
authorities. This implied that they could apply
Progress in organisation their own jurisdiction to settle disputes among
themselves, and disputes with the local people
A S S OCI ATI O N The merchant’s major concern would be resolved in accordance with the local
was to reduce the risks to which he and his wares customs and regional maritime law systems. If
were exposed. As long as merchants accompanied that did not succeed, then reprisals were gen-
their wares they sought protection by travel- erally used as a means of applying pressure: a
ling in groups that were linked by reciprocal fellow-townsman or fellow-countryman of the
oaths of solidarity and support. Some of these debtor would be arrested, or his property confis-
organisations were called guilds, others hanses. cated, in the hope that his local authority would
This Germanic word means ‘contribution’, the put pressure on him to settle the matter. Measures
membership fee which was a prohibitive sum of this sort were liable to escalate quickly, so the
for new members, intended to guarantee their solution to trading disputes was sometimes very
loyalty. Merchant guilds and hanses basically complicated and could drag on for years.
met the need for safety. That was essential in
a world of highly fragmented public authority, T R A D I N G P O S T S This system of protection
primarily represented by local lords with their applied both to merchants who went abroad for
heavily armed followers. As collectives they tried just a few weeks and to those who were settled
to obtain guarantees of legal protection and in trading posts of the funduq type on a semi-
exemption from tolls for their members from the permanent basis. In their contracts for the year
local governments in the relevant areas. Traders 1197, Genoese notaries recorded 5,261 sales of
from different regions organised themselves for cloth, for which Flemings were present as sell-
their own protection on certain routes. ers in 2,046 cases, northern Frenchmen in 1,942
Specific associations were formed during the and Englishmen in 258. These foreigners must
twelfth and thirteenth centuries for the Anglo- have been well organised to have travelled so far
Flemish trade, for example, and for the trade with their products. Some decades later, 198 for-
from Flanders, Artois and Brabant to the annual eign merchants were recorded as living in Genoa,
fairs in Champagne. These were private organi- of whom ninety-five were Flemish and fifty-one
sations, formed to provide mutual assistance, French. For their own mutual protection, and so
that were granted privileges by the regional that local authorities could keep check on them,

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foreign merchants lived close to each other in a protect them: after all, their well-regulated activ-
particular building, or in a designated street or ities stimulated the local economy and helped
quarter. Venetians and Genoese had their walled increase the revenues from tolls, mintage and
quarters in ports on the North African and Black the administration of justice. Not only did they
Sea coasts. Merchants of Marseille obtained from bring incentives to the local economy, they
the 1220s onwards commercial privileges in could also be helpful as moneylenders, inform-
Maghrebian maritime ports, especially in Bougie ants and messengers. Influential abbeys, towns
and Ceuta. Also in Bougie and Tunis, in 1261, or large landowners could try to further trading
the Barcelonans enjoyed the jurisdiction of their activities within the areas under their jurisdic-
own consuls and had at their disposal a notary, tion by guaranteeing protection on the road to
their own shops, a bakery, an inn and a chapel. an annual fair, where they proclaimed the market
Similarly, the Venetians housed the south German peace, vouched for safe conducts for the visitors
merchants in their city since 1228 in the fondaco and levied low tolls. Differences could be settled
dei Tedeschi, near the Rialto bridge. Merchants of on the spot in a special court of justice, while
the German Hanse operated in Norvegian Bergen notaries, clerks or a local magistrate were on hand
from a quarter called Tyske brygge (German port), to record agreements in writing. The important
and in London from the Steelyard. abbey of Saint-Denis, a few kilometres north of
The establishment of trading settlements Paris, protected the Lendit fair in this way. In
demanded enduring relationships, based on trust theory, the local saint’s feast day was the occasion
and mutual interests on the part of hosts and for- for holding a fair lasting several weeks. Merchants
eigners alike. A permanent settlement overseas poured in from far and wide with everything they
was only worthwhile when there was a consider- had to offer, but farmers and craftsmen from the
able volume of profitable trade. Such settlements region, on payment of a small levy, could also do
were established on nodal points where territo- business safely and freely with a large and varied
rial circuits, such as caravan routes, met overseas buying public. The main advantage of fairs was
connections. Maritime trade was most developed the concentration of a global supply and a broad
around the Mediterranean, which led to the crea- demand. The proximity to Paris obviously con-
tion of specialised institutional arrangements to tributed to the success of the Lendit fair.
facilitate the fast resolution of conflicts occurring The location of fairs was decided by their prox-
between traders from different origins. Consuls imity to a large town, or their situation on an
assured smooth relations between their Christian important trading route or in a production area.
fellow citizens and with Muslim authorities. In The English wool trade was concentrated in a
Valencia an autonomous port authority, called few places in south-east England, which certainly
Consulate of the Sea, was created in 1283 to deal formed a network by 1180. Individual markets,
efficiently with disputes concerning shipping and some of which were founded by an abbey or a
trade, often by mediation. Specialised officials large cattle-farmer, were associated under a joint
tried to settle issues in application of customary royal privilege that assured visiting merchants
maritime and commercial law, that became codi- of justice throughout England. The dates of the
fied. Similar consulates were erected in Mallorca, fairs in all these places were so fixed that they
Barcelona and other Catalan ports. followed each other in a yearly cycle. In this way,
merchants were able to travel from one market
FA I R S Local and territorial authorities under- to another. The English cycle commenced at
stood that there were advantages in protecting Stamford in Lent, around Easter it was the turn
foreign merchants from being indiscriminately of St Ives, Boston in July, King’s Lynn at the end
plundered by robber barons. It was better to of July, Winchester in September, Westminster in

247
MAP 7.5 Fair cycles in north-western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
 Th E b E GI NNI NGS Of E U R OpE A N E x pA NSI ON 7 CHAPTER

October, Northampton in November and Bury the two latter functions there were smaller fairs
St Edmunds in December. Another fair that was in several places, some of which specialised in a
coupled to a particular product was Schonen particular product, such as horses or linen. The
(Skanör), on the south-western cape of Sweden. locations, which owed their importance mainly
Spurred on by the merchants of Lübeck, fairs to their situation as staging points on a route, fell
flourished in Schonen during the fourteenth into obscurity as a result of shifts in macro-eco-
century, centred around the sale of the enormous nomic and political circumstances. So it was that
herring harvest in the Kattegat. Lübeck supplied the fairs of Champagne lost their role as west-
salt for the brine from the mines in Lüneburg and European meeting places in about 1300, chiefly
was the largest customer for the herrings which as a result of the further growth in the volume
were gutted and packed in barrels, primarily for of trade. The shipping links along the Atlantic
resale. These fairs lost their importance when the coast then became more efficient than the land
herring catch declined sharply around 1400. route, and trading houses began to work through
The other important fair cycles were those in permanent representatives. On top of this, politi-
Flanders (Lille, Ypres, Mesen, Torhout and Bruges), cal vicissitudes around 1300 disrupted the peace
and especially in the County of Champagne (Lagny, of northern France, while the taxes levied by
Bar-sur-Aube, Provins and Troyes; the last two held the king, who in the meantime had inherited
a market twice a year). The Champagne region the County of Champagne, soared sky-high. The
lay fairly central on the overland route between effect was dramatic: tax receipts dwindled down
England and Italy, and was thus an excellent place to one-quarter of their level around 1285. Other
for merchants from all over Europe, in particular fairs came in their place: the duke of Burgundy
from the southern Low Countries and Lombardy. promoted the fair of Chalon-sur-Saône, the duke
In the Lower Rhine region, a cycle was formed of Savoy that of Geneva, and in 1460 the king
around the markets of Cologne, Aachen, Duisburg of France lent his support to the Lyons fair in a
and Utrecht at the end of the twelfth century. sort of economic war. During the late medieval
All these fair cycles allowed travelling mer- period of contraction (see Chapter 10) fairs would
chants to journey in safety and do business with enjoy a new lease of life. In Brabant the cycle of
each other on a regular basis. Mutual trust grew Antwerp and Bergen-op-Zoom prepared the role
out of this regularity, and credit transactions that Antwerp, on the Scheldt, would assume in
from one market to another became common. the sixteenth century as the western metropolis.
The sanction on mala fide practices consisted of The Deventer fairs linked the Rhineland with
defamation and exclusion, which implied that the Hanse and a growing Amsterdam; Frankfurt,
merchant’s ruin. Since Italian merchants profited besides being the gateway to the overland routes
from a structural surplus in their exchanges with to central Europe, was linked to this cycle as well
north-western Europe, they developed their finan- as to that of Brabant.
cial services to grant credit to other merchants as Although the fairs in Frankfurt, Leipzig and
well as to artisans to whom they provided the some other towns still take place every year, their
raw materials, such as wool and dye stuffs for the function as a central location for all products
textile production that they purchased as return- and payments has disappeared. There is a simple
value. Their credit operations gradually extended reason for this: with the further growth of com-
to aristocrats and monarchs. They covered their mercial traffic the short-term meetings no longer
risks by high interest rates, and meanwhile they sufficed and there was a growing need for perma-
avoided the risks of the transport of coins. nent markets. This is why international fairs only
In general, fairs served distant trade and survived in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
regional and local trade at the same time. For in large towns where local production and sales

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already formed a solid basis. Elsewhere, more of risks, overseas trade required forms of coopera-
modern forms of organisation took over their tion between a partner on land and a captain at
functions. The density of the northern Italian sea. The financial risk was assigned to the ‘sleep-
network of towns explains why fairs never played ing partner’ at home. Later, people no longer
such an important role there as in the North: the invested in an entire cargo: to spread the risk of
urban facilities provided a constant and compre- loss, parts or shares were bought in the cargo of
hensive supply and demand. a ship, and then in several ships or cargoes at
the same time. In Genoa forms of marine insur-
C O M PA N I E S As early as the twelfth century ance came into use during the thirteenth century
companies (derived from the Latin cum pane, through notarial contracts. According to various
‘eating bread together’) were forming in the sources and depending on the circumstances, this
towns of Lombardy and Tuscany, whose family cost between 7 and 15 per cent of the value of
core enlarged its capital by issuing shares that the cargo on the route of a Genoese nave from
yielded a proportional share of the profits. All London or Southampton to Porto Pisano (at the
the partners, together with their fortunes, had mouth of the Arno). For journeys on the safer
an unlimited liability for the company, which Mediterranean, a rate of 4 per cent was normal.
naturally presupposes a strong bond. Companies In Venice, where the great merchant families
from Piacenza, Lucca, Siena, Florence and Pistoia exercised their authority over the city in relative
operated collectively at the fairs in the north. harmony, the state took upon itself the collec-
Moreover, their business with the pope was a gold tive protection of the merchant fleets, by having
mine, as they channelled papal revenues from all them sail in convoys, escorted if necessary by
over Christendom to the Apostolic Chamber. It armed galleys of the state. This reduced the cost
suited both parties that the Italian partnerships of insurance to 1 or 1.5 per cent for journeys by
in the north could accept Church monies and galley to Alexandria.
transfer them to Rome. It enabled the merchants The activities of a company had to be put
to buy wool in England, cloth, linen or furs in down in writing so that the trading operations,
Flanders and Champagne, and give the pope as they became more complex, could be run
what they owed him – after the deduction of cer- more efficiently. Shareholders wanted to have
tain expenses, of course – from the sales of those some insight into the trading results in order to
goods in Italy, without having to move or invest calculate their profits. Commercial correspond-
one single penny themselves. It was indeed the ence between partners was another symptom
Church pennies that gave Italian merchants a of this. From 1260 couriers travelled regularly
good deal of their working capital. between Tuscany and Champagne. A century
Italy, thanks to a volume of its trade which later, seventeen Florentine companies together
was considerably larger, more valuable and more set up the scarsella, a private courier service link-
varied than in the North, made further steps ing the major trading towns of western Europe.
in commercial organisation. The general ten- These couriers travelled between 50 and 60 kil-
dency was towards a division of labour between ometres per day, depending on the state of the
the merchant and the transporter, towards an roads. Rapid reporting of the situation of the
increase in the scale of commercial enterprises markets enabled the headquarters of the medi-
and the formation of networks of permanent rep- eval multinationals to make the best deals. Trade
resentatives. Family concerns sent their younger representatives, known as factors or agents, kept
offspring for a number of years to the funduqs their principals informed about exchange rates,
overseas to learn the business. They corresponded the prices of products and political situations
regularly with the home office. For the spreading that might have repercussions on trade. They

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also advised them by letter of the contents of operation: the loan of a short-term commercial
the cargoes they shipped, so that verification was credit, the exchange of currency and the trans-
possible on arrival or in the case of loss. fer of money from one place to another with no
In its heyday in the fourteenth century the coins involved. Some weeks would elapse before
Florentine company, Bardi, had 120 factors in the drawee received the letter and could look for
its service who supplied the headquarters with a the person whom he must reimburse in another
mass of information about hundreds of products currency for the goods bought by his partner in
in more than twenty places. The entire archive of another place. A price to cover the service and
one trading house – that of Francesco Datini from the use of a few weeks’ credit were included in
Prato, who was active between 1380 and 1410 – is the calculation of the exchange rate.
still in existence, and contains many thousands This system could only function if a number
of letters that his correspondents in Barcelona, of transactions could be arranged at the same
Paris, Avignon, Bruges and London sent him time in the framework of an extended network
almost every week. Datini was certainly not one of enduring partnerships. The more frequent the
of the largest merchants of his time, but his busi- operations and the closer the contact between
ness produced a mountain of paperwork – nearly representatives, the easier it became to commis-
500 account books, 300 contracts of partnership, sion an associate or partner elsewhere to settle a
400 insurance policies, thousands of invoices, debt with one of the creditor’s partners. In Bruges
bills of exchange and cheques, and about 150,000 and Barcelona, a bourse, or exchange, was held
letters. The greatest businesses, such as that of every day at a set time and a set place to fix the
the Medici family, were split into different com- rates of exchange. There, anyone who had a bill
panies for production (silk and cloth), commerce of exchange to redeem or pay out could decide if
and banking. Towards the end of the fifteenth the time was suitable to do so. At the exchange
century all the branches were given an independ- it was easy to find the necessary partners with
ent status so that if business was going badly in whom the bills could be traded. In Bruges the
one division it would not necessarily bring the exchange was in the middle of the merchants’
concern as a whole into difficulties. quarter where the ‘nations’ of the Genoese
and Florentine merchants had their houses,
B I L L O F E X C H A N G E The practice of the bill and which was also the site of the famous inn
of exchange for the transfer of money emerged at belonging to the Van der Beurse family. The great
the end of the thirteenth century. In place of the advantage for the users was that they could set-
older declarations of debt, drawn up by a notary tle their business without a gold or silver coin
or town clerk, the Italian firms introduced this changing hands, avoiding the risk of debased
completely informal method of payment. There currencies, and thus avoiding loss. At a time
were four parties in two places, linked to each when precious metals were scarce this method of
other through their regular trading relation- transferring money allowed an unlimited expan-
ships. The drawer gave a bill to the deliverer; this sion of the money supply. The bill of exchange
was addressed to the drawer’s trading agent in considerably simplified international payments,
another place. This drawee was invited to pay as long as one had sufficient reliable contacts.
a sum of money to the party accredited, the The northern border of this critical mass, neces-
payee, who was a partner of the deliverer. The sary for the use of bills of exchange, was formed
bill was of no use to any highwayman empty- by the line London–Bruges–Cologne, then due
ing an agent’s bag of letters, because he was not south to Frankfurt and Geneva.
a partner in the money transfer. Like the bonds Paper currency existed in imperial China,
arranged at the annual fairs this was a combined and Marco Polo was amazed that the Chinese

251
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attached value to this stamped paper. When the market determined the exchange rates applied
Polos were in China, between 1270 and 1290, the for the fiduciary money circulating in the form
Mongol Yuan dynasty issued money with texts of credit notes and bills of exchange. This paper
both in Chinese and Mongolian. The difference money was created by merchants and bankers,
with Europe was of course the unity of authority. and uniquely controlled by them, without any
Europe, on the other hand, found its integration possibility for a ruler to exert authority over that
through the market: Italian gold florins and duc- financial market. At the moment of contracting
ats were eagerly accepted as a means of payment a debt, both parties were free to decide about the
everywhere. Moreover, the commercial networks currency in which, and the place where, the reim-
created their own paper money, the fiduciary cur- bursement would have to be made. They chose
rency circulating among the merchants in the on the basis of the market situation, calculat-
form of bonds, cheques and bills of exchange. ing their best profit opportunities. The financial
In addition transferable money became popu- market was not bound to a territory and thereby
lar: deposits with a money changer or banker beyond the reach of political and ecclesiastical
could be used as a current account from which powers. Moreover, both belonged to their best
money could be transferred by giro (Italian for clients. As one of the largest agents on the finan-
‘by return’) to a different account with the same cial markets in Europe, the Church intensively
or another banker. used the new financial techniques to operate its
Whereas in China it was the imperial bureau- international financial transfers without moving
cracy which determined the value of the paper coins. Its condemnation of usury on loans did
money, which would hold for a considerable not prevent the use of the sophisticated system of
period of time, none of the monarchs in Europe bills of exchange and other credit operations; that
was in a position to control effectively the value rather contributed to corrections which helped to
of his own currency, as trade transgressed all consolidate these practices in the international
borders. They tried to prescribe by ordinances financial system.
the value of foreign coins or even forbid some
to circulate, but it was practically impossible to AC C O U N TA N C Y The system of bookkeeping
control the circulation of coins, and even less to had to be improved so that the complex relations
effectively impose exchange rates on the market. and data could be scrutinised and the chances
These fluctuated constantly, as they do today, of profit assessed. The double-entry system of
on the basis of the factors perceived as positive bookkeeping was devised in Venice in the four-
or negative by the major financial agents. No teenth century. The principle behind it was that
monarch could avoid allowing the circulation of separate accounts were kept per partner, client,
the three dominant currencies – the Genovese associate, etc., per product and per type of trans-
genovino, the Florentine florin and the Venetian action. Every account showed the debit, what
ducat – within his realm and merchants would the person owed, on the left-hand page, and the
always assess all other money against that stand- credit, what the person had, on the right-hand
ard; a trinity which remained unalterable thanks page. Every transaction was noted twice: once as
to the solidity of their dominant economic basis a mutation in the liquid assets of the firm, and
and to the mutual competition between the three once as a mutation in its relationship with a part-
city-states. None of them would take the risk of ner. In this way the manager was able to make up
a depreciation, the infamous practice launched the accounts of a particular partner, a product or
by King Philip IV of France, le roi faux-monnayeur the balance at any given moment.
(‘the counterfeiting king’), and his numerous Merchants had to be very well trained in
profit-seeking followers. In the same way, the arithmetic, knowledge of commodities and

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commercial skills. By the twelfth century, schools companies all over Europe under the generic
in the towns had already broken the Church’s name of Lombards. Unhindered by ecclesiastical
monopoly on education as the merchants prohibitions on usury, they lent huge sums to
demanded practical knowledge. As in the crafts, princes, bishops and aristocrats, as well as to ordi-
boys were given a practical training at the side of nary people. Gradually, local financial experts
experienced family members. Moreover, in Italy and capitalists adopted their techniques, but the
there were textbooks containing information Italians operated on a scale unparalleled by oth-
about a number of different places: how best to ers in the amount of capital, the geographical
travel there, what products could be found there extent of their transactions and the sophistica-
and their quality, what measures of weights and tion of their organisation. Lending huge amounts
coins were in use, and which local customs should of money to princes was always tricky, as their
be respected (such as the payment of bribes to incapacity to reimburse and arbitrary sanctions
customs officers). The fourteenth-century mer- always loomed large. The Florentine banking
chant revealed a mentality that clearly saw the companies of the Peruzzi and Bardi families
rational pursuit of the maximum possible profit went bankrupt in 1342 and 1346 respectively,
as an aim in itself; he was inclined to reinvest a as a consequence of their unwarranted loans
goodly portion of that profit in his business so to King Edward III in the early years of the
that it would surpass that of rival firms and thus Hundred Years War. The bankers learned to con-
make an even greater profit. Such an attitude is solidate their loans by proportionate guarantees,
called a capitalist mentality. often by claims on state revenue.
This actual development of commercial capi-
talism was in sharp contrast with the teaching of
the Church, which still strongly condemned the A negative balance of payments
unrestrained pursuit of material gain and usury.
Some theologians certainly looked for condi- The fact that the Italians controlled the contacts
tions which would justify the application of a with the Levant meant that they were the sole dis-
moderate interest to a loan, such as the risk of tributors of Mediterranean and eastern products
damage. The theory of the ‘fair price’ challenged throughout the rest of Europe. South Germans
exaggerated profits, but accepted nonetheless collected the products themselves directly from
the principle of profit in return for services ren- Venice or Milan. Italians took them to the fairs in
dered. Yet the preachers of the mendicant orders, Champagne, and from the last quarter of the thir-
in particular, gave many a merchant an uneasy teenth century shipped them to Bruges, where
conscience, leading to the introduction of God the spice trade was one of the most important
as a creditor in merchants’ accounts and to many activities, just as it was in the fairs of Antwerp.
account books opening with a short prayer to God What could they offer their trading partners in
‘and the profit He may give us’. And, of course, the East in exchange? For many centuries far
the drawing up of a will gave usurers another less than they bought, and this led to a continu-
opportunity to make restitution. ous outflow of precious metals. In 1983 Eliyahu
The evolution of the instruments of payment Ashtor calculated that the balance of payments
reflects the powerful growth of the movement of between the Levant and the West showed a deficit
goods and services, at least until the middle of the of 56 per cent in the fifteenth century. Expressed
fourteenth century. Italian financial specialists in pure gold, this was an annual outflow of 1,317
were welcomed by north-west-European princes kilos. The West imported goods from the East to
as their councillors, treasurers and mint-masters. a total value of 630,000 ducats, and could barely
Bankers from Piedmont settled their family-based sell 260,000 ducats worth of their own products,

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PART III E XPANSION A ND MAT U RAT IO N, 1000–1500

relationships reaching all the way back to the gold

and silver mines in Saxony, Bohemia, Slovakia
and Hungary. Production flowed from those
lands to Italy and the Low Countries where high-
quality articles and exotic goods were bought.
The Low Countries and, indirectly, England as
well, were thus able to bring their negative bal-
ance of payment with Italy into equilibrium. The
hanse, too, brought silver to the Low Countries
because it imported many finished products and
luxury goods from there, including large quanti-
FIGURE 7.1 Deficits on the balance of payments ties of textiles, French and Mediterranean wine,
between European regions in the fourteenth century arts and crafts, while its own exports consisted
(after Spufford 2002) mainly of cheap bulk goods (beer, iron, wood,
hides, amber, wax and, increasingly, grain).
mostly woollen goods, linen, weapons and wood.
The difference (370,000 ducats) had to be made
up in liquid assets.
Through their commercial ties with the
Maghreb, Iberian and Italian merchants were
able to obtain gold dust from West Africa, which
reached the ports by caravan. In exchange, the
Christians offered textiles, copper objects, food-
stuffs and general cargo trade along the north
coast of Africa. In 1231, this enabled Emperor
Frederic II in Sicily to mint the first western gold
coins since the seventh century, the augustales,
which bore a portrait of him, strikingly modelled
on those of the Roman emperors. Since 650 only
Byzantine and Arabian gold coins had been in cir-
culation in the Christian world. When the Mongol
conquests in central Asia put an end to the supply
of dinars (the Arabian gold coins) in 1252 the great
commercial centres of Genoa and Florence turned
to issuing coins of pure gold with a weight of
3.54 grams. Venice followed in 1284. These three
coins, the genovino, florin and ducat, became the
gold coins in standard use throughout Europe for
centuries. Their stability rested on the economic
domination of the three cities that issued them.
The fact that they were of equal weight and value
was a matter of economic insight.
The West always had to compensate the heavy PLATE 7.4 The drapery market at Bologna in the
negative balance of payment with the East. This fifteenth century, as represented in the drapers’ guild
was only made possible through a whole chain of register.

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 Th E b E GI NNI NGS Of E U R OpE A N E x pA NSI ON 7 CHAPTER

The Italians needed to use their positive bal- drastic reduction of the population led to a rise of
ance of payments with the rest of Europe – the the living standard: the survivors could afford a
unit value of their supply was higher than that higher level of consumption (see Chapter 10). The
of the northerners – productively. They invested demand rose, especially that for artisanal products
the hard cash surplus, preferring to make more and luxury goods. Second, the commercial revo-
profit than run the risk of losing it on the lution brought about a self-reinforcing dynamic
journey home. For this reason they extended that directed profit-seeking investments to ever
relatively cheap credit to their customers, fur- changing opportunities. Larger ships connecting
ther strengthening their dominant position as regions at greater distances fostered the further
wholesale merchants. They rapidly emerged as integration of markets and brought new and more
financiers who provided credit for nobles and supplies within the reach of broader segments of
princes. Naturally, substantial rates of interest customers. The general market of bulk cargoes
were charged for this, although they were gen- for basic foodstuffs such as grain and salt trig-
erally not specifically recorded. A rate of 10 to gered the trade for more expensive trades such
15 per cent was held as entirely reasonable for as beer, wine, wool and cloth. That dynamism of
short-term commercial credit; an interest rate of commercial capitalism proved to be unstoppable.
up to almost 45 per cent was considered accept-
able for risky loans. Only when higher rates were
asked did it become a question of usury, and the The commercialisation of the
Church prescribed severe punishments for usury. countryside
Italian merchants also tried to reduce their
dependence on eastern suppliers by starting to During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the
produce themselves what had not been produced supra-local consumptive demand was increas-
before in western Europe – they introduced the ingly focused on bulk goods. The growth of the
cultivation of rice, cotton, sugar cane, saffron towns created consumptive demand from a pro-
and the silk worm, for example. In the warm cli- fessional and specialised workforce. This was one
mate zones silk was not only a luxury, it was also way in which the use of money penetrated the
much more pleasant to wear than wool or linen. rural economy. Another was by means of dues in
The large demand for silk stimulated production cash owed by peasants to their lords. And, finally,
under their own control and this substituted in the countryside too, an increasing number of
some of the imports. The same applied to cotton people could no longer live exclusively on the
and cane sugar, which were cultivated in certain proceeds of their small plots of land, and looked
Venetian colonies and also, at the end of the fif- for a supplementary cash income as manual
teenth century, on islands in the Atlantic, such workers or labourers. In correlation with these
as Madeira. Paper – which from the thirteenth three developments, and stimulated by the con-
century had to supplement and largely replace solidation of territorial principalities, trade and
parchment which became much too expensive transport improved in various ways so that trans-
as literacy increased – was an eastern product port and transaction costs were lowered.
that the Europeans copied so as not to have to In England the earliest phases of the process
import it any longer. Although the European of commercialisation in the countryside to which
population diminished after 1300 by at least one- we refer are relatively easy to follow, thanks to
third, the volume of trade increased considerably, the excellent sources. Even before the Norman
as it appears, among other indicators, from the Conquest of 1066, Anglo-Saxon England had
impressive increase in the shipping capacity. This a network of more than 150 places in which
paradox can be explained by two trends. First, the markets were held regularly.

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The commercialisation of the rural economy fourteenth century. This strong commercialisation
in England really gained momentum between of the rural economy went hand in hand with a
about 1180 and 1330. In the period when grain broadening of the supply of agricultural products
prices were rising, in particular from 1240 to and an increase in and sophistication of trading
1315, many large landowners preferred to exploit networks, with market places as logical nodes.
the demesne lands on their estates commercially The number of markets increased considerably
with the help of hired labour. This meant that during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and a
many labour services of villeins were transformed certain hierarchy became evident. The ‘interme-
into money payments. When land was developed diary markets’ were of the greatest significance in
outside existing settlements the exploitation the commercialisation of the agrarian economy;
was no longer organised through the manorial every county had a couple of intermediary mar-
system; dues from peasants to their lords were kets that formed the vital links between the direct
predominantly in the form of money payments agricultural producers and the more than fifty
right from the beginning. In the countryside larger regional trading centres found in England
there was a steady growth in the number of peo- around 1300, which in turn were linked to inter-
ple who could no longer supply there own food regional and sometimes even international trade.
needs and were dependent on the market. They The transport of bulk goods of low value (such
constituted as much as 45 per cent of the rural as grain) over large distances was not profitable at
population by about 1300. normal market prices, because of the high costs
The proportion of England’s urban population of transport and transaction. The transportation
increased between the end of the eleventh cen- of grain by cart in England in the thirteenth
tury and the beginning of the fourteenth from century cost 0.4 per cent of the grain’s value per
about 10 per cent to 15 or 20 per cent. London, mile; so transport over 10 miles (more than 16
England’s largest city, grew into a metropolis with kilometres) increased the costs by 4 per cent, and
60,000 to 80,000 inhabitants by the beginning of transport over 100 miles by 40 per cent. This did
the fourteenth century. Such a sizeable concentra- not include the cost of the many tolls on the
tion of people needed a strongly commercialised journey, which would easily have been a couple
agriculture in a wide surrounding area. Regional of per cent of the value of the cargo.
specialisations were also strengthened, partly in Still, in the most densely populated regions
response to the growing foreign demand for raw of Europe, regular interregional trade in grain
materials such as wool and tin. Tin ore had been appeared to be worthwhile. The fertile loam soil
mined in Cornwall since prehistoric times, but and intensive methods of agriculture made very
its extraction was expanded considerably in the high yields possible for the wheat harvest in
twelfth to the fourteenth centuries; by 1300 it Artois, even before 1300. The south–north flow
provided work for more than 2,000 people. In of the rivers enabled the enormous surpluses –
other remote and thinly populated areas, the an average of 1.5 million hectolitres per annum,
Lake District for example, the growing use of enough to feed 400,000 people – to be shipped
water-driven fulling mills similarly led to special- down river to the towns of Brabant and Flanders,
ised industrial activity outside the urban sphere which could never have become so densely popu-
in the same period. lated without such a fertile agricultural hinterland
All in all, a substantial part of England’s agricul- so near by. During periods of grain shortages in
tural production – according to estimates, at least the fifteenth century Flanders imported massive
25 per cent of the yields from arable production quantities of rye from Prussia, because the tre-
and considerably more from cattle farming – was bling of the market price more than made up for
intended for the market at the beginning of the the transport costs.

256
 Th E b E GI NNI NGS Of E U R OpE A N E x pA NSI ON 7 CHAPTER

Raw wool was a different story altogether. ■■ Crusader states and commercial settlements
Already in the first half of the fourteenth cen- in the ports were the first west-European
tury the wool from nine million sheep was large-scale overseas colonial experiences.
exported from England to the continent. Some They established the dominance over the
of this eventually returned in the form of trendy eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
felt hats and trousers cut to the latest fashion ■■ The tremendous growth of cities in northern
in Bruges. At the height of the trade, between and central Italy was boosted by their inter-
1350 and 1360, England exported 30,000 sacks mediary position between Byzantium, the
of wool per year. After 1450 that number varied Maghreb, the Near East and Egypt on the
between 2,000 and 11,000, when protectionism one hand, and west and central Europe on
stimulated the production of cloth. The export of the other.
finished cloth from England rose from 10,000– ■■ Northern and central Italy became the eco-
20,000 pieces between 1355 and 1360, and up to nomic core region in Europe, initiating new
60,000 between 1480 and 1500. When the war techniques of commercial organisation,
taxes, levied by the kings, made English wool too new products and maritime transport with
expensive, merchants from the Low Countries bulk cargoes along the Mediterranean and
began to look for other sources of supply. At the European coasts.
end of the fifteenth century Castile sent the wool
from nine million merino sheep to Bruges, where
it was transformed into richly coloured tapestries, Suggestions for further
and also into cheap clothing that was shipped to reading
Prussia in exchange for grain. This proves that the
European market was already well integrated dur- Britnell, R.H. (1993), The Commercialisation of
ing the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and English Society 1000–1500 (Cambridge: CUP).
Exemplary analysis based on the uniquely pre-
that the effects of commercialisation in advanced
served quantitative data of the deep impact in the
areas could be strongly felt in the periphery.
English economy and society of market-oriented
production.
Hunt, Edwin S. and James M. Murray (1999), A History of
Points to remember Business in Medieval Europe, 1200–1550 (Cambridge:
CUP). The authors explain the forces that shaped the
organisation of the various sectors of the expanding
■■ The Byzantine Empire lost most of Asia Minor
economic life. They deal with the responses of busi-
to the Seljuks in 1071, and conceded strategic
nessmen to the manifold risks and opposing forces.
commercial privileges to Venice in 1082. The success in coping with this hostile environ-
■■ Demographic growth triggered west-European ment was ‘a harvest of adversity’ that prepared the
expansionism in the form of the Christian way for the economic expansion of the sixteenth
advance in Iberia, the western Mediterranean century.
Jacoby, David (2005), Commercial Exchange Across the
and eastern Europe,
Mediterranean: Byzantium, The Crusader Levant, Egypt
■■ The new self-confident spirit in the Catholic and Italy (Aldershot: Ashgate) (Variorum Collected
Church exacerbated the schism with the Studies). A volume of essential articles on the
Orthodox Church and motivated the succes- intercultural exchanges leading to the Italian break-
sive mass mobilisations of the Crusades. through. They underscore the economic vitality of
the countries bordering the eastern Mediterranean,
■■ The devastations by the Mongol raids, cli-
their industrial capacity, the importance of
matic change in Iran and western aggression
exchanges between them and the contribution
led to the reorientation of Islamic trade net- of the merchants based in that region to trans-
works to the Indian Ocean. Mediterranean trade.

257
PART III E XPANSION A ND MAT U RAT IO N, 1000–1500

Lopez, Roberto S. (1976), The Commercial Revolution Spufford, Peter (2002), Power and Profit: The Merchant in
of the Middle Ages, 950–1350 (Cambridge: CUP). Medieval Europe (London: Thames & Hudson). A very
A classic essay on the structural changes in the accessible, well-informed and thoughtful overview
orientations and the organisation of trade during of the role of commerce in the Middle Ages, with a
the decisive centuries. How did an underdeveloped particular interest in monetary issues. Scores of doc-
economic system give birth to the commercial umented concrete situations illustrate vividly how
revolution which shaped Europe? How was com- the European economy functioned in daily practice.
mercialisation diffused, and how did it relate to
agricultural dynamics?

258
8 Thinking about man
and the world

The medieval view of the to pass that movement on to the lower spheres.
Beyond the primum mobile extended the immov-
world and mankind able empyreum, where heaven was located. While
When an educated observer around 1300 went earth then formed the centre of the universe,
outside on a cloudless night and peered into the it was nevertheless fully understood that it was
sky, he might have marvelled at the vast expanse insignificant on the cosmic scale. One estimate
of the star-spangled firmament, and, awestruck, showed that a complete revolution of the stel-
praised the Lord as the creator of the universe. lar sphere round the earth took 36,000 years. An
But he would not have been confused. What he English chap-book (popular book) from the four-
saw was not bewildering chaos, but order that teenth century calculated that a journey from the
made sense. First of all, he would have thought earth to the stellatum would take 8,000 years, at
of himself as being in the middle of things. The an average travelling speed of 40 miles per day.
earth on which he lived was the immovable cen- This is nothing compared to the actual 40 trillion
tre of the universe; around it there moved in kilometres (a 40 with 12 zeros) which separates
concentric order ten transparent convex spaces or our sun from the nearest sun in our galaxy,
spheres, beginning with those of the seven known Proxima Centauri, but was still a vast distance to
planets, in which the Sun and the Moon were imagine for our medieval observer.
included. Beyond the sphere of the last planet, It was presumed that the stars, the planets
Saturn, began that of the fixed stars (stellatum). and the earth, just like the spaces which moved
Then came the vaguer circles of ‘the chrystal- them around, were spherical in shape – the idea
line’, presented as a thin fluid mass encircling the of a flat earth never found favour in intellec-
entire firmament, and that of the primum mobile, tual circles. Planets were seen as animate, often
the first of the spheres to show movement and even as intelligent bodies which influenced life

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on earth. It was the task of astrology to discover embroidered on linen and suspended from a wall
and determine that influence. Astrology in the in a cathedral or a great hall. Some of these pic-
Middle Ages, just as in Antiquity, was accepted as tured the earth as composed of five ring-shaped
a source of rational knowledge, although those zones, three of which – two at the poles and one
elements that were clearly contrary to Christian wide band on either side of the Equator – were
orthodoxy were forbidden by the Church, among uninhabitable because of either extreme cold or
them ‘reading the future’ from the stars and the extreme heat. Only the two temperate zones –
worship of heavenly bodies. It was seriously one in the northern, the other in the southern
believed that the planets had an influence on hemisphere – were inhabited. The antipodes
the formation of metals and on people’s physi- dwelt in the southern hemisphere, but they could
cal and mental state, to give just two examples. never meet the inhabitants of the northern hemi-
Doctors and apothecaries in particular made fre- sphere as it was impossible to penetrate the hot
quent use of astrological knowledge, but kings zone. Some Christian writers found this difficult
and princes of the Church had their court and to believe because the Bible stated that all the
personal astrologers too. people who lived on earth after the flood were
Our observer may have had a rough idea of descendants of Noah, and all the peoples of the
earthly geography if he had seen one of those earth should sooner or later be able to receive
marvellous mappae mundi or world maps, either the word of God. A second dominant image was
a small one inserted in a history book or an ency- a representation of just the northern land mass
clopaedia, or a big one painted on animal skin or divided into three continents, Europe, Africa
and Asia (with Asia on top), separated from each
other by a T-shape of three broad stretches of
water: the Mediterranean Sea (Europe–Africa), the
Don and the Black Sea (Europe–Asia) and the Nile
(Asia–Africa). Its geometric centre was Jerusalem,
the sacred stage where the New Covenant had
started and where human history would end. The
continents’ periphery was rimmed on all sides by
almost uninhabitable areas, where strange, mon-
strous creatures lurked, and no one could really
say whether they were human or animal.
It goes without saying that such mappae mundi
were not made for travelling; they were intention-
ally symbolical representations not just of earthly
geography but also of those essential historical
events, such as the exodus of the Jewish people
out of Egypt, that marked humankind’s des-
tiny on earth which was the fulfilment of God’s
Salvation Plan. We can see all this on the largest
extant map of this kind, which can be admired in
Hereford cathedral (see Plate 8.1). Originally the
PLATE 8.1 Hereford mappa mundi, depicting the map was the centrepiece of a triptych whose side
three inhabited continents, with Jerusalem in the cen- panels represented the Annunciation. The map
tre, directly below the Tower of Babel and the Garden has a Final Judgement scene painted on top of
of Eden. the image of the world, which itself is encased

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between four capital letters: M.O.R.S. – Death, a or temperament. In addition to more or less ‘mel-
clear reference to the (preliminary) destiny that ancholic’ and ‘choleric’ types, there were also
awaits all living creatures on earth. ‘phlegmatic’ and ‘sanguine’ ones. Temperament
Geographically more accurate maps of the not only had a particular exterior and a particular
known world became a possibility once Ptolemy’s physical state, it also generated specific character
standard geographical work, the Geography, was traits.
recovered by a Greek monk in around 1300 and The idea was that someone was healthy as long
translated into Latin a century later. This work as his or her bodily humours were in balance.
propagated and indicated the use of degrees of Should a person fall ill, physically or mentally,
latitude and longitude, showing how the curved then the foremost task of the attending physician
surface of the earth should be reproduced in a was to diagnose how the patient’s balance had
flat depiction. Even before 1300, and just at the been disturbed by studying the colour of his/her
period in which some of the finest specimens of urine or by feeling his/her pulse. The treatment
traditional mappae mundi were made, the tech- could then be adapted accordingly, aimed at
nical improvement of the compass – a Chinese restoring the bodily fluids’ balance, either by put-
invention of the eleventh century – led to the ting the patient on a diet, by prescribing physical
drawing of quite detailed and precise maps of exercise, by giving him drugs or by abstracting
Europe’s coastlines that were meant as an aid for excess fluids by purgation or bloodletting. When
mariners. deciding on the type or form of treatment as well
From the universe to the human individual as on the best moment to start with it, the physi-
was but a small step to medieval man. A human cian had to take into account all kinds of external
being was seen as a microcosmic reflection of the circumstances, starting with the patient’s sex and
macrocosmos: the unity of the universe caused age. In addition there was a whole range of fac-
celestial bodies and human beings to be con- tors that come in combinations of four; think of
nected, and therefore it was thought that planets the four divisions of the day, the four seasons, the
and stars had a direct influence on the well-being four points of the compass and the four gustatory
of the human body and mind – a strange idea qualities (salt, sour, sweet and bitter).
that still exists among those of us who believe in According to medieval people, the human body
casting a horoscope. was not just a bag of bones and intestines, spiced
In a material sense, the human body was com- with a temperament of bodily fluids, and provided
posed of the same four elements – earth, water, with a network of veins, arteries and nerves for the
air and fire – that were detectable via the four transport of all vital physical and mental functions
primary or sensible qualities of which everything to all parts of the body in the form of volatiles
on earth (or according to some, even everything called spiritus (± ‘spirits’). It was also seen as the
in the universe) was made: hot, cold, dry and wet. seat of an immaterial component, the soul (Latin:
Just as four different combinations of the four anima), which all living beings (plants, animals,
primary qualities formed the four elements of humans) possessed and which harboured the
matter, so on the scale of the human body they ability to feed the body and sensory percep-
formed the four humours, or bodily fluids: hot tion. But in two defining respects the human
and wet made blood, hot and dry made yellow soul stood out above the souls of other organ-
bile or choler (cholera in Greek), cold and wet isms: the capacity of reason and its immortality.
made phlegm (flegma in Greek), cold and dry Thoughts about what happened to the immortal
made black bile or melancholy (Greek melan- soul after the body died were highly speculative.
cholia). All individuals had their own mixture of Where did the soul remain until it was reunited
four fluids, which determined their complexio with the resurrected body on the eve of the Last

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PART III E XPANSION A ND MAT U RAT IO N, 1000–1500

Judgement – a central tenet of Christian eschatol- Greek origins

ogy? Did souls have to roam the air as floating
spirits – good and evil – or was there some fixed This is, in a nutshell, how more or less educated
place for them to stay and wait? And what did people viewed the world and themselves; what
this place look like? Was it a resort of ‘refresh- ordinary people thought is less easy to find out,
ment’ or an oven-like prison of purification that and if we could we should immediately have to
would prepare the soul for entrance into paradise differentiate in time and space. Much depended
as was the orthodox position since around 1200? on where one lived and how much access one
Moreover, human souls were not the only had to people who were educated – members of
immortal and immaterial intelligences in the uni- the clergy and the aristocracy, first of all, but also,
verse. Angelic beings (Latin genii, cf. Arabic djini), and increasingly, members of the upper middle
who dwelt in the air above the earth, were pre- classes, and once in a while men from humbler
sent in many antique religions in the Middle East, origins, whom the Church or a lord had offered
including the Jewish, Christian and Muslim. The the chance to enter a school.
Greek word daimon (‘demon’) was used to give The world view just outlined is the simplified
shape to another common idea that also existed version, already tailored to a wider audience, of a
in older Greek philosophy, that is that each indi- more sophisticated, scientific paradigm that was
vidual is accompanied by an invisible good spirit studied within a small intellectual elite of highly
who, in the ancient view, guided every individual educated scholars, and that we are now going to
and was ‘witness and keeper’ of a person’s life. In discuss. To start with, there was nothing originally
the New Testament this personal spirit took on medieval to this paradigm. It was almost entirely
a Christian shape as the ‘guardian angel’, who Greek in its origins. More precisely, it can be
protected every human being day and night from traced back to the great Greek philosophers of the
the tricks and guiles of devils. The latter in turn fourth century bce, Plato (427–347) and Aristotle
had emerged from the evil spirits of Antiquity. In (384–322), the Alexandrian mathematician
the Christian view, however, most angels dwelt in Euclid (323–283), and two Hellenist scholars who
the perfect supra-lunary part of the universe (the both lived in the second century ce: the astrono-
part above the moon); they were purely ethereal mer and geographer Ptolemy of Alexandria and
beings, that is to say, made of ‘ether’, the perfect the physician Galen of Pergamum.
fifth element that only existed there. The image Of these ‘big five’, Plato and Aristotle were
medieval people had of angels was much inspired deemed by far the greatest. It is fair to say, how-
by the work of Pseudo-Dionysius, an unknown ever, that medieval scholars were acquainted with
Christian author from the beginning of the sixth only scraps of Plato’s oeuvre. Plato’s immense
century, who was undeservedly identified with influence on the philosophical shape of Christian
Dionysius the Areopagite, an Athenian convert theology was indirect, via Plotinus, an Egyptian
of the apostle Paul. In one of his works, the Greek who set up a successful school of Platonic
Areopagite divided the heavenly angels in nine thought in Rome around the middle of the third
hierarchically ordered ‘choirs’ whose harmonious century. The later Neoplatonic works of Plotinus
singing reverberated in outer space. This division have been instrumental in providing philosophi-
became the basis of medieval angel devotion and cal support for the Christian belief in God as the
of the serious scholarly study of angels (angelol- sole, transcendent, eternal and perfectly good
ogy), which has left its traces until today (think creator of the universe, as well as in the immortal-
of cherubs and archangels). ity of the human soul. Aristotle stood at the basis
of two other, more earthly, scholarly traditions
in the Middle Ages: the study of formal logic

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 Th I NK I NG Ab OU T MA N A ND Th E WOR L D 8 CHAPTER

(or dialectic, the art of correct argumentation) and aimed at rational understanding of the fun-
and the study of nature on a firmly empirical damental laws of nature – the natural causes of
basis, that is to say, starting from observation, things, as Aristotle would put it.

BOX 8.1 ADVANCES IN MEDICINE? HUMAN

DISSECTION AND SURGERY IN THE MIDDLE
AGES
During the Middle Ages the practice of the medical and paramedical professions was as many-
hued as it was obscure. At one extreme were the better-educated doctors, who were university
trained from the thirteenth century onwards. At the other extreme was ‘folk medicine’, based
entirely on experience, which was handed down and practised by a disordered army of amateurs
and charlatans who promised to cure their needy patients with magic spells, numerical formulas,
little prayers, tarot cards or their own home-made potions, prescriptions and pills. Between the
two extremes, there was a growing professional group of surgeons, apothecaries and herbal-
ists (herbarii), especially in towns, all organised into recognised guilds; in their wake came yet
other artisans and tradesmen who were involved with medical treatments on the side, such as
the barbers who let blood, pulled teeth and performed minor operations – ‘prodding’ a cataract,
for example – bath-house managers and masseurs, who specialised in setting broken limbs, and
midwives who, in an emergency, carried out life-threatening caesarean sections.
The fact that university-educated doctors were not visibly more successful in their treatment of
patients explains why they never managed to gain a far-reaching monopoly over medical practice
or to control it by other means. This again was due to the lack of progress in medical study in the
medieval universities. Just as nowadays, the study consisted of a theoretical and a practical part.
Pathology, governed as it was by the Ancient Greek theory of humours, was central to the theo-
retical part. The tripartite division of the practical part into dietetics, pharmacy and surgery was
borrowed from the same tradition. Most medical textbooks went directly back to the works of the
great Greek physician Claudius Galenos (130–210 ce). Much of the vast Galenic corpus was trans-
lated into Arabic long before it was available in Latin, and it may not come as a surprise that, after
this finally had happened, Arab and Iranian commentaries and textbooks by Abu Bakr Muhammad
ibn Zakariya al-Razi (Rhases), Ali ibn Abbas al-Majusi (Haly Abbas) and Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn
Sina (Avicenna) became set literature in the medical faculties of universities in the medieval West.
Since these books had ample sections on human anatomy, Arabs were also ahead in surgery.
Real progress in one branch of medicine, surgery, seemed to become possible when dissection
of the human corpse, which had met much resistance and aversion in both ancient Greco-Roman
and Arab-Islamic medical science, became tolerated in the Latin-Christian West. The earliest
reports of anatomical dissection in the West are related to the medical school at Salerno and date
from the first half of the twelfth century. The subjects were pigs because it was assumed that a pig’s
anatomy was more or less the same as a human’s. The first reported human dissections are only
from the late thirteenth century; they took place in north Italian universities like Bologna. Despite
regular protests from the Church, secular authorities did allow it from that time onwards. Yet this

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did not immediately deepen the knowledge of human anatomy and physiology. Again the main
reason for this seems to be the authoritative way of thinking: when dissecting corpses, academi-
cally educated doctors were in fact only looking for confirmation of what they believed they knew
already from the textbooks of Galen and Avicenna. There was nothing resembling systematic
anatomical and physiological research, and the gradual advances in surgery seem to have been
made outside the remit of academic medicine.
Research in Italy has shown that the dissection of human corpses took place within four differ-
ent contexts. First, in surgery practicals used in medical training at universities. From the end of
the thirteenth century new manuals were written specially for this purpose by famous academic
surgeons from Italy and France, such as Lanfranc of Milan, Mondino de’ Luzzi, Henri de Mondeville
and Guy de Chauliac. Second, in the exercise of their profession, physicians who were curious and
wanted to know what their patients had died from opened up their bodies. This could be called
real autopsy. It sometimes happened at the express wish of the patients themselves, or their rela-
tives, who hoped thus to avoid dying from the same sickness; in other cases, family members were
opposed to any such post-mortem examination. Third, in the context of forensic autopsy, dissection
could take place at the request of a court of law which wanted to establish the cause of a victim’s
death, hoping for clues about the perpetrator and the weapon used. The fourth context was that
of the disposal of the dead. In the Middle Ages, bodies of important people were embalmed in
a number of ways; the brains and internal organs were removed as a first step in the procedure.
In the case of saints, it was hoped that dissection would reveal external signs of their saintliness,
like the form of a cross that was clearly visible on the heart of St Clara of Montefalco (d.1308), cut
open by her sister nuns. In addition, if people had died far from home but their relatives wanted
to bury them nearby, it was easier to transport mere bones than complete bodies. To this end a
body would be cut up and boiled. Occasionally, the heart would be kept separate.
The bodies of executed criminals were normally made available for scientific dissection; not
so much to make the sentence tougher, but because the criminals often were estranged from their
families and there was therefore little danger of hurting their bereaved relatives. By the end of
the fifteenth century, for the same reason the bodies of people who had died in hospitals without
any family were increasingly used for dissection. At that time there was an enormous increase in
the demand for corpses because of the sudden broadening of surgical education. It was only then
that the study of human anatomy reached a higher level. This is evident from the new generation
of high-quality surgical manuals appearing rapidly one after the other from about the middle
of the sixteenth century – among them those of Jacopo Berengario da Carpi, Niccolò Massa and
especially that of Andreas Vesalius of Brabant who taught in Padua. Painters and sculptors were
often present at dissections in Italian universities; their efforts to emulate Antiquity’s great works
of art made them particularly interested in human anatomy. The brilliant sketchbooks of Leonardo
da Vinci reveal how this custom bore fruit.
It seemed that nothing could quench the passion of university teachers, students and visual
artists for anatomical and physiological research. The great Vesalius was famed for the enthusiasm
with which he seized upon bodies, sometimes, it was said, of people who were not yet truly dead.
Cases are known from Italy in which the courts handed over criminals, sentenced to death, directly
to surgeons, who could then kill them before making a start on dissection. Occasionally dissec-
tion devotees went too far in the eyes of their contemporaries. In his Lives of the Artists, Giorgio

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‘Man with wounds’, from the

manual Surgical Treatment
for Blows, Stab and Gunshot
Wounds.

Vasari (1511–1574) recounts a story of the sculptor Silvio Cosini from Fiesole, rather reminiscent
of the movie Silence of the Lambs; after a dissection he had the complete skin of a criminal made
into a coat, convinced that if he wore it the dead bandit’s physical strength would be transferred
to him. This sort of story, whether true or not, led to a growing opposition to human dissection in
the middle of the sixteenth century.

Sources: Luke Demaitre, Medieval Medicine: The Art of Healing, from Head to Toe (Santa Barbara CA: Praeger,
2013); Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice
(Chicago/London: Chicago UP, 1990); Luis García-Ballester et al. (eds), Practical Medicine from Salerno to the
Black Death (Cambridge: CUP, 1994); Katherine Park, ‘The criminal and the saintly body: autopsy and dissec-
tion in Renaissance Italy’, Renaissance Quarterly 47 (1994), pp. 1–33; Peter E. Pormann and Emilie Savage Smith,
Medieval Islamic Medicine (Washington DC: Georgetown UP, 2007). Illustration: Schipperges, p. 115.

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Athens and Jerusalem The heavy burden of auctoritas

Of course we should ask ourselves why were Greek The handmaiden formula implied that the
philosophers accepted in medieval Christendom authority of the Bible as the fountain of divine
as the wisest men who had ever lived, when they revelation was absolute. Holy Scripture was the
were all pagans? As to this paganism, many medi- unavoidable point of reference for every form
eval philosophers felt that wise men like Plato of intellectual effort. Its main task was to dis-
were monotheists, or even proto-Christians, in close the irrefutable truth that lay hidden in the
disguise long before the Incarnation. But this was Bible. If this fact alone hampered the freedom
an idea that only arose later in time. In the early of scientific research to a degree that would be
Christian communities of the Later Roman Empire unacceptable in the modern world, at the same
there had been heated discussion on the question time it extended the room to manoeuvre with
of how to deal with pagan philosophy. Some, like respect to other authoritative texts. The Fathers
Tertullian at the end of the second century ce, of the Church and the Greek philosophers did
rejected every approach. ‘What has Athens to do deserve respect. However, their textual author-
with Jerusalem? What pagans with Christians? ity was not unassailable. The leading Dominican
Now that we believe we do not want anything natural philosopher Albert the Great (Albertus
else but our faith!’ Others had been prepared to Magnus, c.1200–1280) opened his commentary
accommodate, and rather spoke in biblical terms on the Physics of Aristotle by stating that he had
of taking the spoils of a conquered enemy. Why written his book to enable his readers (first of all,
leave the opulent intellectual resources of the his fellow Dominicans) ‘to understand correctly
pagans untouched? One should take from it what the books of Aristotle’. But Albert did not follow
could be of value to enrich the Christian faith. his intellectual master slavishly. If need be, he
Subsequently, this latter point of view was mixed supplemented his ideas, or corrected those that
up with the conviction that every scientific and he thought of as false. Even the greatest Fathers
scholarly endeavour should always be subservi- of the Church did not go without criticism. Not
ent to the effort of better understanding God and all the works of St Augustine, for example, car-
his message to humankind as it was laid down
ried the weight of auctoritas. It was also realised,
in Holy Scripture. This was the basis of the so-
especially after the twelfth century, that the
called handmaiden comparison, which was first
authority attached to any text other than the
formulated by Augustine and then repeated over
Bible was not absolute, but depended, among
and over again: secular ‘philosophy’ – the word
other things, on the quality of textual tradition
used to indicate the total of scientific knowledge
and the reader’s interpretation of the text. And
– should be the handmaiden of mistress theology.
interpretations did vary. ‘An authority has a wax
Many centuries after Augustine died, much
nose; it can be turned in different directions (in
the same discussion took place in the Arab world,
diversum sensum)’, wrote Alan of Lille at the end
where defenders of falsafa (‘philiosophy’, i.e.
of the twelfth century with a sense of humour,
Greek-rational science), led by such great scholars
for the Latin word sensus means both ‘direction’
as Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi (c.870–950),
and ‘meaning’.
were fanatically opposed by those who were in
This turned scientific research into a cumu-
favour of ‘pure’ theology (kalam), later also by
lative learning process on the basis of a critical
mystically oriented religious purists.
reading of authoritative texts. Its result has been
worded in a chiselled phrase by the renowned
master, Bernard of Chartres:

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We are like dwarves on the shoulders of other authoritative texts could be freely criti-
giants, so that we can see more than they cised. In Arab scientific writing of the ninth and
can, and at a greater distance, not by virtue tenth centuries a whole new genre of scientific
of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any ‘publication’, called shukuk, thrived. Its literal
physical distinction, but because we are car- meaning was ‘doubts’, and its main intention
ried high and raised up by their giant size. was to politely criticise the old Greek masters. A
fine example from the beginning of the eleventh
Such a metaphor testifies both to profound century is the shukuk that Ibn al-Haitham – in
respect and great self-confidence, and that is pre- the West known as Alhazen – wrote on Ptolemy’s
cisely the feeling that must have been in the air works on astronomy. Alhazen wiped the floor
c.1100 when Bernard made his statement. The with the inventive but questionable stereomet-
reverse of the image is also true. When Bernard rics and the absurd physics which the great
was alive, most of the giants had been dead for a Alexandrian polymath had developed to turn the
thousand years or more, but the weight of their summary Aristotelian model of the universe into
authority continued to press no less heavily upon a consistent description of the courses of sun,
intellectual enquiry. From that perspective, it was moon and planets which adequately predicted
the dwarves who dragged the giants as a heavy their continuously shifting positions in the sky.
burden behind them. As we shall see, this is But neither Alhazen nor any other astronomer in
what happened with the works of Aristotle in the the Islamic or Christian world found a real solu-
schools and universities of later medieval Europe. tion to the Greek problems. We had to wait until
They were admired, and adapted, criticised, Nikolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) before the
and at times even rejected, but in the end they penny had dropped, and even Copernicus was
remained unsurpassed. In 1500 the Aristotelian troubled by doubts and fears for years before he
world view seemed unshakeable as never before, dared to have his revolutionary ideas printed –
and it took great effort to make it stagger into the after which he immediately became the object
half century that followed, when an entire new of accusation and derision (see Box 8.2). His
world was discovered. case shows how limited the room to manoeuvre
It was no different in the Muslim world, where really was for medieval intellectuals and how
the Qur’an and hadith were unassailable, but dependent on authority they remained.

BOX 8.2 RELIGIOUS RESTRAINTS ON

SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS
On several occasions, medieval scientists seem to have been on the verge of ground-breaking
discoveries that, if they had actually been achieved and published, would have run ahead of the
early modern scientific revolution by several centuries. However, in the end, there was always a
reluctance to accept what had been found; a self-imposed limitation which must have been the
consequence of either ingrained conservatism or serious fear of sanctions by religious authorities.
We shall give three examples, one from the Islamic world, the other two from Latin Christendom.
At the end of the thirteenth century a Syrian physician by the name of Ibn al-Nafis al-Qurashi
(d. 1288), who worked at the public hospitals of Damascus and Cairo in the Mamluk Empire, gave
the first correct and accurate description of the so-called pulmonary transit of the bloodstream –
that blood in the right cavity of the heart is pumped to the left cavity indirectly, via the lung. It is

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difficult to imagine that al-Nafis could have made his discovery without dissection and close study
of a human body. Also, from that point on, it would have been logical for al-Nafis to chart complete
blood circulation. But this did not happen. Instead, al-Nafis, in his report, repeatedly stressed
that he had not broken shari’a and that he respected the integrity of the human body; there had
been no dissection; he had based his conclusions on rational inference from the works of pagan
predecessors, in particular ‘the excellent Galen’. In this way, al-Nafis disappeared into obscurity
and the medical world had to wait for another three centuries before, around the middle of the
seventeenth century, Harvey and Malpighi correctly described the complete venous and arterial
circuits, and the capillary system that connected them.
Not long after al-Nafis, John Buridan (c.1300–1361), a professor of the arts faculty at the
University of Paris, and his most gifted pupil, Nicholas Oresme (c.1325–1382), argued that a lot
of things in cosmology were easier to explain when one accepted that the earth turned around
its own axis rather than believing that the whole universe made a daily orbit around a stationary
earth. However, Oresme ended his cogent plea with the mysterious comment ‘that which I have
said by way of diversion . . . can be valuable to refute and check those who would impugn our
faith by argument’. So, his whole theory was just a gimmick that could be used as a whip to beat
sense into those who wanted to surmount faith with reason! Many historians of science cannot
believe that Oresme’s closing words were serious; they must have been meant in an ironic way.
Or was Oresme, who ended his career as bishop of Lisieux in Normandy, just afraid of what really
conservative minds could do to radicals?
Something of this fear may still have been present in the Polish canon and polymath, Nikolaus
Copernicus, who defended the real, physical, existence of a rotating earth as a planet in a helio-
centric cosmos by testing the calculations of Ptolemy and a number of late medieval Islamic
astronomers against his own observations (made without the use of a telescope!). Copernicus
first sketched the outlines of this grand new scheme in 1514, in a notebook he never published.
Almost twenty years later, in 1533, a papal secretary who corresponded with Copernicus gave
an exposition of the latter’s ideas to the pope and two of his cardinals, who all seem to have been
fascinated. But another decade would pass by before Copernicus, pressed by close friends, finally
had his revolutionary theory printed – the story goes that he died, at the age of seventy, with the
first printed copy in his hands. Why this endless delay, which is so unmodern? Was Copernicus
just insecure about his own calculations, or was he afraid of what the publication of views that were
irreconcilably inconsistent with the Bible would do to him? The latter concern was not overesti-
mated. Despite earlier sympathy with the pope, criticism after publication of De revolutionibus
orbium coelestium (‘On the Rotations of Celestial Bodies’) was devastating, and it came both from
Rome, and from Wittenberg and Geneva. In 1547, four years after it had appeared, Martin Luther’s
close collaborator Philip Melanchton summarised the three main reasons why the abominable
ideas of Copernicus should be rejected. They ran counter to observation, to scientific consensus
and to the authority of the Bible. Science was back to square one.

Sources: Toby E. Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West (Cambridge: CUP, 2003, 2nd edn),
pp. 167–171; Edward Grant, The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional, and
Intellectual Contexts (Cambridge: CUP, 1996); Thomas S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in
the Development of Western Thought (Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1985, 2nd edn); Peter E. Pormann and Emilie
Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine (Washington DC: Georgetown UP, 2007), pp. 45–48; George Saliba,
Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2007), chapter 6.

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The higher education For all these subjects, there were of course text-
books. For the liberal arts by far the most popular
programme of Late Antiquity was the survey of Martianus Capella, a contem-
and its survival in the early porary and compatriot of Augustine, although
Middle Ages some objected to the fact that the author had
been pagan. Bishop Isidore of Seville (c.570–636)
It must be clear that access to ancient wisdom, borrowed from Martianus in his own treatment of
whether biblical, patristic or pagan, required a the liberal arts in the beginning of his Etymologiae,
formal education that went quite a bit further an encyclopaedic text in twenty books that, with
than learning how to read and write. In the early the help of word definitions, attempted to give a
Middle Ages, the heart of such a programme of systematic overview of all the knowledge availa-
higher education was still the Roman study of the ble at the time, reaching from grammar in chapter
artes liberales (‘free arts’ or ‘free skills’), a broad 1 to ‘cooking, kitchen utensils, wagons and har-
spectrum of disciplines standardised by Marcus ness’ in chapter 20. For the whole of the Middle
Terentius Varro (116–27 bce). Varro distinguished Ages, the Etymologiae enjoyed an enormous popu-
nine of them: grammar, dialectics or logic, rheto- larity, apparent from the more than one thousand
ric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, harmonics manuscripts of this vast work still in existence.
(music), medicine and architecture. Over the cen- Even though the Roman study of the arts
turies medicine and architecture were reclassified remained at the heart of all higher education
as ‘mechanical’ arts. This separation between lib- in the Middle Ages, it served a different pur-
eral and mechanical arts, whereby ‘liberal’ (free) pose than in Antiquity: to provide the resources
referred to the fact that their practice was free from and develop the intellectual skills necessary for
manual labour, may be the most tragic mistake of the ‘real work’ towards which every intellectual
classical and medieval learning. It impeded the effort should be directed: the study of the Bible,
development of a technical infrastructure that of the great Fathers of the Church and of other
would have enabled medieval scientists to system- important canonical texts such as the creeds and
atically experiment under controlled conditions confessions of faith established in Church coun-
and with the aid of more advanced instruments. cils. For therein was every truth worth knowing.
Systematic experiments certainly took place now Much of the meaning lay hidden, however, and
and then, and sophisticated measuring instruments could only be exposed with support from the lib-
were developed here and there, but systematic and eral arts. This was why Augustine cherished the
controlled experimentation never developed into pious hope that every Christian would receive at
a standard procedure of scientific research. To do least an elementary education.
science was largely a combination of reflection In reality, the number of young people who
on authoritative texts, empirical observation and had access to any form of intellectual education
logical inference, with a dash of mathematics. was drastically reduced in the early Middle Ages.
From the Carolingian period the seven liberal Education was only available for a small circle
arts that had remained were usually divided into of young people destined for a life as a monk
two groups, the trivium, the collective name for or a clergyman. Hence, there were two sorts of
the linguistic arts, those connected with the spo- places where an education could be acquired: in
ken and written word, and the quadrivium, the the schools attached to cathedrals and in mon-
collective name for the four mathematical disci- asteries, although it is unlikely that each and
plines. During the early Middle Ages education every cathedral and abbey had its own school.
in the seven ‘liberal arts’ was supplemented by Moreover, the repeated calls to improve educa-
training in the ethica, ethics or moral philosophy. tion heard at councils until into the twelfth

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and thirteenth centuries strongly suggest that particular astronomy. How intensive this study
in many schools little more than elementary programme was, and to what extent it paid off,
grammar and Bible studies were taught; there is difficult to say. All the proof of intellectual
was certainly no question of generally available abilities Charlemagne has left us is his handmade
full education in the liberal arts. The few schools monogram, an ingenious configuration of all let-
that did flourish in the early Middle Ages often ters of the Latin name ‘Karolus’, which he used as
existed in perhaps unlikely places, such as Anglo- a signature. However, Charlemagne’s ambitions
Saxon England. These produced a number of the extended much further; he even may be the first
most prominent intellectuals of the early Middle king in European history who officially prom-
Ages, the greatest of whom was the Venerable ulgated that free elementary education should
Bede (673–735). Bede spent most of his life in be accessible to all young people – well, to all
the abbeys of Wearmouth and Jarrow on the young males – ‘not only children of unfree sta-
coast of the kingdom of Northumbria. Among tus, but also the sons of freeborn men’, as the
his principal works are a history of Anglo-Saxon strange formulation in the capitulary Admonitio
England (Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, Generalis (‘General [Public] Order’) of 789 ran.
‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’), This literacy offensive was meant to function as
written in classical style, and a survey of the natu- the flywheel of a comprehensive moral-religious
ral sciences (De natura rerum, ‘On the Nature of revival. Texts from the time referred to the emen-
Things’), which was partly based on Isidore, but datio populi christiani, ‘the improvement of the
which also betrayed direct knowledge of the most Christian people’. This revival, and the reforms
comprehensive encyclopaedia of natural science of churches and monasteries connected with it,
from Roman Antiquity, the Historia Naturalis transformed the worldly ruler – entirely in the
(‘Natural History’) by Pliny the Elder (d. 79). Roman-Byzantine and also the Arab-Islamic tradi-
Bede’s compatriot Alcuin (735–804), who was tion – into the principal guardian of the religious
equally famed as a scholar and who in his later community. Among his primary tasks was that of
life became a close advisor of Charlemagne, was furthering pietas (‘piety’), a life which was accept-
the product of a cathedral school, that of York. able to God and which would lead his subjects
along the narrow path to salvation.
There was, of course, a wide gulf between
The Carolingian Renaissance such lofty ideals and their realisation. The adorn-
ment of the Carolingian court with the flower of
Besides sending them to cathedral and abbey international scholarship, and the subsequent
schools, wealthy aristocratic households would appointment of many of these erudite men as
have appointed private tutors to cram some of bishops and abbots of important monasteries,
their children for high secular or ecclesiastical cannot shroud the fact that the intellectual elite
offices. The pinnacle of such private schooling remained tiny. Monasteries were hesitant to open
facilities were the court schools of kings. Best their doors for laymen, even the young and ambi-
known is Charlemagne’s court school whose tious. More generally, there was a lack of teachers.
most prominent pupil was Charlemagne him- For that reason there has been some debate over
self, ‘an admirer and great collector of wisdom’, the question of whether it is justified to speak
according to his late ninth-century biographer of a Carolingian Renaissance, as older textbooks
Notker the Stammerer. Charlemagne’s first biog- do. If we understand Renaissance as a period in
rapher and contemporary, Einhard, tells us that which the continuous effort of humanist schol-
the king was instructed by Alcuin in the arts ars and craftsmen to recover, copy and study the
of writing (sic), rhetoric, logic, calculus, and in largely secular intellectual and artistic heritage

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of the ancient Greeks and Romans reached an This so-called geo-heliocentric theory would
extraordinary intensity, there is something to soon be forgotten. Instead, Eriugena himself was
say in favour of maintaining the concept of said to have become a star that roamed the firma-
Carolingian Renaissance. The really energetic ment after he died.
collecting and copying of manuscripts of ancient But soon after things started to shift and the
texts during the Carolingian period, which for a herald of change was a man of simple origins
part logically followed from Charlemagne’s con- called Gerbert of Aurillac. As a boy, Gerbert had
quest of Italy, was of exceptional significance for received an education in the liberal arts in a
western culture. The oldest surviving version of monastery in the Spanish March, where thanks
most ancient literary texts dating from the Roman to Arab influences, a far greater importance was
period can be found in Carolingian manuscripts. attached to the mathematical subjects of the
Without them, knowledge of the famous works of quadrivium than elsewhere in the West. Later, as a
Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Julius Caesar, Tacitus, Seneca teacher in the cathedral school at Reims, Gerbert
and countless others would have been lost forever. created a sensation by using scale models, Arabic
Despite these undisputed achievements, the numerals and figures that were displayed in the
Carolingian Renaissance did not introduce any front of the class on large pieces of parchment
changes to the educational curriculum, nor did sewn together – the earliest known use of a flip-
it bring about the paradigmatic shifts in scien- chart. His familiarity with instruments like the
tific orientation that were sometimes floating abacus and the astrolabe gave him the mystique
in the air. One example is the encyclopaedic of a wizard, while to his enemies he was a ‘serv-
didactic poem of Lucretius, De natura rerum (‘On ant of Satan’. In reality, he became the spiritual
the Nature of Things’; before 55 bce), which was advisor of the Roman king/emperor Otto III (983–
copied and studied in the Carolingian age, but 1002) and architect of his policy for the ‘renewal
then forgotten until it was rediscovered in the of the Roman Empire’. Otto appointed him arch-
fifteenth century. If Lucretius’s work had become bishop of Ravenna and later pope (Silvester II,
the measure of scientific research in the ninth 999–1003).
century, medieval natural philosophy might
have taken a different course or even brought
a scientific revolution closer, because De natura The rationalist turn and the
rerum, besides a materialist concept of the soul twelfth-century Renaissance
difficult to accept for Christian dogmatic, advo-
cates atomist-mechanical physics that anticipates Gerbert of Aurillac was a harbinger of change,
seventeenth-century developments in natural who announced what has been called ‘the ration-
philosophy. Another example is provided by one alist turn’ in the history of learning and science
of the rare ninth-century experts in the field of (Lindberg 2007). This term refers to the sustained
physics, John Scotus Eriugena (‘John, the Irish- and heroic attempts, made by scholars in the elev-
born Scot’) (c.810–877), court scholar and close enth and twelfth centuries, to replace irrational
friend of Charles the Bald. John was one of the and magical explanations of natural phenomena
few western scholars who still knew Greek in with explanations based on rational demonstra-
his time. He translated several works by Pseudo- tion supported by logical argumentation. Wasn’t
Dionysius the Areopagite, but he also, and more God’s greatest gift to human beings the power of
sensibly, proposed that not only Venus and reason, so why not use this power to penetrate
Mercury orbited the sun that circled around the and expose the miracle of divine creation?
stationary earth (a common thought, found in This new, optimistic attitude fits into a broader
Martianus Capella), but also Mars and Jupiter. cultural revolution that is generally called ‘the

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Renaissance of the twelfth century’, after the in establishing new schools in Lombard towns,
eponymous book by the American medieval- as were the popes in central Italy; by the first half
ist Charles Homer Haskins, published in 1927. of the eleventh century Roman law was studied
Contradicting the title of his own book, Haskins in Bologna. But ‘public schools’ are also men-
painted the elite culture of the twelfth century tioned in sources from the same period of time,
not so much as a rebirth of Antiquity, but as a related to English and Flemish towns; they would
magnificent revival of literary and intellectual life, have been instituted by the enlightened Danish
the result of a ‘general quickening of the spirit’. king, Canute the Great, and the local merchants’
Many attempts have since been made to give a guilds respectively. All these new urban schools,
more exact explanation of the concept ‘twelfth- the forerunners of the universities, were at the
century Renaissance’. Some have seen it as a sort very centre of the new humanistic ideas and
of Italian Renaissance, taking place three centu- methods. This close link was aptly expressed in
ries earlier, whose glorious epicentre was France, the term scholasticism, which broadly refers to
not Italy, but which otherwise shared the same the education in the schools (scholae in Latin). In
main features: a flowering of humanism and a addition, scholasticism has acquired a narrower,
clear recognition of human individuality. Others technical meaning in the sense of a particular ana-
have given the twelfth-century Renaissance a lytic method based on Aristotelian logic, which
character of its own by embedding it in the excep- was adopted in every subject in schools and uni-
tional dynamics of the years between about 1000 versities from the twelfth century onwards, both
and 1200. Sustained population growth and rapid in teaching and in the production of textbooks.
urbanisation, increasing geographical and social By the beginning of the twelfth century,
mobility, the hesitant start of state government the Greco-Roman legacy was as yet not fully
and public administration, the growth of inter- exploited, certainly not in the natural sciences,
national trade, the colonisation movements and mathematics and logic. We have already men-
the Crusades formed the background to a new tioned one important reason for this: most
spiritual hunger, to a new openness of mind and elementary texts in these fields were written in
self-awareness, to a drive for intellectual renewal Greek, which, with a few exceptions, was no
and superiority; even to a real belief in progress. longer known by western intellectuals in the
Two aspects of this cultural-intellectual rev- early Middle Ages. Renewed acquaintance with
olution that are of particular relevance are the ancient Greek learning depended, therefore, on
growing importance of urban schools (cathedral an increase in translating. At the end of the elev-
schools or schools attached to urban monasteries enth century, there were two major channels,
and chapters) as centres of learning, and the hunt the Byzantine world and the Islamic world. The
for new translations of Greek and Arab texts to great conquests of the seventh and eighth cen-
satisfy the intellectual appetite. Some of the oldest turies had brought the Arabs into contact with
schools for higher education in the Mediterranean the rich intellectual cultures of Egypt, the Middle
– notably the medical school of Salerno, first East and Iran, where Greek philosophy was still
mentioned in the middle of the ninth century – flourishing. This was avidly absorbed, and then
may have had a continuous existence since Late expanded, especially in such fields as mathemat-
Antiquity, and profited from its commercial rela- ics, astronomy and medicine, in which Muslim
tions with Egypt and North Africa (see Chapter intellectuals showed a serious interest.
7). But the obvious new loci for higher education During the eleventh century, Spain and Sicily
were the thriving commercial centres of northern served as conduits for Arabic knowledge to the
France, the Rhineland and northern and central West. The conquest in 1085 of Toledo, the cen-
Italy. The Carolingian kings of Italy were active tre of Moorish culture, and the establishment of

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Norman power in Sicily at about the same time, often corrupted the quality of the original Greek
were strong stimuli to the intellectual encoun- versions. The Fourth Crusade and the establish-
ter between East and West. The Christian elite’s ment of the Latin Empire (1204–1261) gave a
hunger for new knowledge overcame its aversion further powerful spur to the translation and col-
to Islam, and some openly admired the scien- lection of Greek texts, because during that period
tific achievements of the infidel. One of them, Greece was under western rule and western schol-
the Englishman Adelard of Bath (c.1070–1150), ars had unfettered access to the treasures of Greek
scoured the Mediterranean in his search for Arabic libraries. The Flemish Dominican, William of
knowledge which he equated with independent Moerbeke (c.1215–1286), was one of those who
and critical rational thought and considered far took advantage of the situation. After he had
superior to slavishly following auctoritas. He was been appointed bishop of Corinth, he found
the first to translate the complete text of two ele- the time and opportunity to translate some fifty
mentary mathematical treatises, Euclid’s Elements works from Greek into Latin, including almost
and the Algebra of the Iranian Abu Abdallah all the works of Aristotle and Archimedes. In
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (780–850), the same period, Michael Scot (c.1175–c.1232),
whose name lives on as algorithm, and with rea- a Scotsman who earned himself a reputation as
son. Al-Khwarizmi is counted among the most Emperor Frederick II’s court astrologer, alchemist
influential mathematicians of all times. He is the and personal physician in Sicily, provided trans-
bane of every schoolchild even today and it is lations, all from Arabic, of Aristotle’s Metaphysics.
thanks to him that we use ‘Arabic’ numerals for Several major commentaries on Aristotle by the
counting, although we should not forget that this Andalusian philosopher Ibn Rushd (1126–1198),
notation was brought from Hindu India. generally known in the West as Averroës, were
The most productive of the translators was also translated into Latin.
an Italian, Gerard of Cremona, who in the mid-
dle of the twelfth century spent some time in
Toledo translating between seventy and one Making sense of the world in
hundred Greek and Arab treatises from Arabic new ways
into Latin. In addition to Analytica Posteriora, a
cornerstone of Aristotle’s philosophy of science The two main products of early scholastic schol-
and advanced logic, these included Technè (‘The arship were Platonic naturalism and Aristotelian
Mode of Operation’), Galen’s principal medical logic. Both of these fields of enquiry were, each
work, and Ptolemy’s astronomical compilation, on its own terms, telling symptoms of a burning
The Great Treatise, better known under its Arabic intellectual desire to make sense of the world in
name, Almagest, works which were of the greatest a new way.
importance for the further support and refine- Platonic naturalism, as an attempt to under-
ment of the western view of man and the world. stand the evolution of the natural order of the
Translations made directly from Greek became universe, was quite fashionable among a group
available not much later, thanks to the efforts of of scholars in the first half of the twelfth cen-
Italians from cities with commercial interests tury who were connected to the cathedral schools
in the eastern Mediterranean, such as Venice of northern France. Central to their ideas was a
and Pisa. Even before the middle of the twelfth conception of the creation of the universe that
century James of Venice had translated most of was taken from Timaios, the only one of Plato’s
Aristotle’s logical treatises from the Greek. These thirty-six dialogues that at this point in time was
direct translations were important because Arabic within reach of scholars in the Latin West, thanks
– a non-Indo-European ‘intermediate language’ – to a Latin translation, provided with an ample

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stays outside, or rather functions as cosmic back-

ground radiation – radiating perfection. He does
not interfere with humanity’s fate. In Plato’s view,
the actual ruling of the universe was left to a force
called the ‘World Soul’, which was not meant as
a metaphor. This imagery proved impossible to
fit into Christian orthodoxy, despite all kinds of
attempts in that direction by William of Conches
and other naturalist philosophers amongst oth-
ers, by identifying this World Soul with the Holy
Spirit of the Christian Trinity, or with divine
Providence. So, in the end, William of Conches
was prepared to hang his head if his admired
Greek master proved to be wrong, and to openly
declare: ‘I am a Christian and not a member of
Plato’s Academy.’ William’s soulmate Thierry
of Chartres went even further: after his heroic but
vain attempt to solve the mystery of the divine
Trinity with Platonic mathematics, he voluntar-
ily left the world of learning, dropped his title of
doctor and retired in a convent.
Nevertheless, William, Thierry and their intel-
lectual partners made a signal that could not be
missed, namely that separating the realms of
PLATE 8.2 The ‘three philosophies’ (natural, rational,
science (which was about nature) and religion
moral) reign as a three-headed queen over the seven
(which was about God, who stood above, that is,
liberal arts. Gregor Reisch, Margarita Philosophica
outside, nature) was worth considering. This sig-
(Freiburg 1508).
nal receded into the background for a while, but,
as we shall see, it made a deafening comeback in
commentary, made by the Roman philosopher the second half of the thirteenth century.
Calcidius, who lived at the time of the emperor It was Gerbert of Aurillac who, around the turn
Constantine. There were two reasons why of the first millennium, had struck a new course
Platonist naturalism did not really catch on. First, in higher education by introducing certain nov-
doing physics on the basis of Timaios as a scien- elties in his classroom that improved the quality
tific alternative to Genesis did not enlarge insight of the liberal arts curriculum. Apart from the flip-
into the laws of nature very much. Like Genesis, chart and the scale model already mentioned, he
Plato’s dialogue was too literary, too symbolist, introduced the disputatio or oral debate as a
too imprecise to build a programme of scientific didactic art in his teaching of rhetoric. In addi-
research on it. To get any further, the knowledge tion, he made more room in the curriculum for
base had to be extended. Second, attempts to lessons in logic, or dialectics, in order to improve
accommodate Timaios as an acceptable authori- his pupils’ debating skills. The field of logic or
tative text were doomed to founder in the end on dialectic was first developed by Aristotle, and the
insuperable dogmatic problems. Timaios presents Aristotelian basics of logic had not been entirely
the creator as a divine master craftsman who lost during the early Middle Ages, mainly thanks
after a Big Bang-like creative act at the beginning to Anicius Boethius (c.480–524), a statesman

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and philosopher in Ostrogothic Italy. Boethius of texts. This presented them for the first time
translated Aristotle’s elementary treatises on with the fundamental epistemological question:
logic, together with an introduction by the to what extent does language, processed into
Neoplatonist Porphyrius (end of third century written texts, represent perceptual, ‘objective’
ce) into Latin, and added his own commentar- reality?
ies about the theory of argumentation. However, From the polemic between Master Berengar of
very little of this had permeated the teaching of Tours and Abbot Lanfranc of Le Bec about the
logic in the arts curriculum until Gerbert made essence of the Eucharist (see Box 8.3), it appears
the case for the reintroduction of what later came that Aristotelian logic was given an entirely new
to be known as ‘old logic’. From the beginning dimension when it was applied to matters of
of the twelfth century Aristotle’s more advanced Christian dogma. The value of this application
treatises on dialectics were rescued from oblivion, was contentious from the outset. Its support-
constituting what we refer to as the ‘new logic’. ers believed that God and the divine became
Only one work was still missing, the Analytica more approachable through a process of rational
Posteriora, which was eventually translated thought. Opponents such as Peter Damian
first from the Arabic and soon afterwards (c.1150) (1007–1072), one of the leaders of the Gregorian
from the Greek. Aristotle’s complete works on reform movement, were equally firm in their
logic, sometimes called Organon or ‘Instrument’, conviction that the possibilities of reason were
were available to the West once again. limited in that respect, that the dogmas of the
The enormous importance of the revival of Holy Church were threatened by rationalism or
dialectics/logic as a fully developed academic that God could only be found by a mystic path,
discipline must not be underestimated. In a that of non-rational contemplation. In the mid-
world with very little insight into the workings dle of the twelfth century, these contrasting views
of natural phenomena, at least not at the level were personified in the Cistercian Bernard of
of physical laws and chemical processes, and in Clairvaux, ‘the most vigilant watchdog western
which there were few impulses to expand that Christendom had ever had’ (Southern 2001), and
insight, dialectics – the art of logical reasoning – his opposite, the famous logician and theologian,
provided the best possible intellectual anchor to Peter Abelard. To Abelard’s maxim, ‘we can only
bring order into what must have seemed infinitely come to [rational] inquiry through doubt and
varied and complex. In this light the scientific only through inquiry can we reach the truth’,
work of the first generation of intellectuals, who Bernard’s blistering response was:
combined their extraordinary knowledge of
authoritative Christian texts with a sound train- Be done! Away with the mere thought that
ing in the ‘new’ Aristotelian logic, radiated an the Christian faith knows any of the limits
almost shameless optimism and self-confidence. suggested by those academics who doubt
They thought that all of life could be under- everything and know nothing. I am certain
stood by using logic to make a systematic record of one sentence of Paul, ‘For I know him
of the relationships between man and nature whom I have believed’ (II Tim. 1:12). And
and, above all, between humankind and God. I know for certain that I cannot be brought
The concrete motive was the growing realisation into confusion.
that the traditional authorities (the Bible and
Church Fathers) were in themselves too often But there was no stopping the advance of the
contradictory. Many scholars were convinced new approach. The ultimate confidence in what
that inconsistencies could only be confronted human reason could achieve were the rational
and then eradicated by careful and logical analysis proofs of God’s existence dating from this time,

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BOX 8.3 ‘THIS IS MY BODY’: LEARNED

DISCUSSION ABOUT TRANSUBSTANTIATION
IN THE EUCHARIST
One of the most renowned debates of early scholasticism concerned the real meaning of the
sacrament of the Eucharist. It brought Berengarius, a teacher at the cathedral school of Tours, into
conflict with Guitmund, a monk who later became bishop of Aversa, and with Lanfranc of Pavia,
abbot of the Norman monastery of Le Bec and, from 1066 until his death in 1089, archbishop of
Canterbury. The question was what exactly took place during mass in the ritual commemoration of
the Last Supper, when the priest, while breaking bread and drinking wine, speaks the words, ‘This
is my body’ and ‘This is my blood’. Nobody could maintain that the host had outwardly changed
from bread into human flesh or the wine into human blood, yet nobody dared to deny that Christ
was ‘really’ present after the consecration of the bread and wine. All contestants, therefore, saw
the sacrament of the Eucharist as a figura or similitudo, a symbolically charged metaphor. For
Berengarius, the words spoken at the consecration were a linguistic designation (significatio) of
the living body and the running blood of Christ; ‘my body’ and ‘my blood’ were the sacra signa
(‘holy signs’) in which the bread and wine had transformed. But Lanfranc’s interpretation went
much further. For him, the metaphor referred to the mysterious actualisation of the ‘naked truth’
which is the true, essential Christ.
What is interesting is that both opponents used two fundamental concepts of Aristotelian logic
and metaphysics: substantia and accidentia. Aristotle had introduced these concepts in order to be
able to make a distinction between what we would now call the essential, tangible substrate of an
object (substantia) and its inessential, external features or characteristics (accidentia). Lanfranc’s
contention was that the change of bread and wine was indeed essential (of substance) but not out-
wardly visible (accidental) – hence his solution has been called ‘transubstantiation’. According to
the physics of Aristotle, such transformation of substance without the accidentia changing also was
impossible. Hence it could take place only because God had intervened miraculously during the
consecration of the host and sacramental wine, briefly suspending the laws of nature. Berengarius
refuted this interpretation on logical grounds, and also produced the linguistic argument that in the
formula ‘This is my body’,‘This’ could only refer to the host which at that selfsame moment was raised
on high by the celebrant. Clever as it was, Berengarius’s interpretation did not survive because at
the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) the doctrine of transubstantiation became official dogma.

Sources: Mark G. Vaillancourt (transl.), Lanfranc of Canterbury, On the Body and Blood of the Lord & Guitmund
of Aversa, On the Truth of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist (Washington DC: The Catholic University
of America Press, 2009); Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak, ‘Semiotic anthropology: the twelfth-century approach’
in Thomas F.X. Noble and John van Engen (eds), European Transformations. The Long Twelfth Century (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), pp. 426–467; there pp. 434–437.

such as those made by Anselm of Aosta (1033– human reason was not sufficiently adequate to
1109), who followed Lanfranc first as abbot of fully understand God and that his drive to prove
Le Bec and later as archbishop of Canterbury. that God existed was prompted by his unshake-
In the end, however, Anselm had to admit that able a priori conviction that God did exist! One of

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Anselm’s maxims, taken from the Old Testament analysis, before drawing a balanced conclusion.
book of Isaiah, was credo ut intelligam, ‘I believe in This treatment of quaestiones became an increas-
order that I may understand’. However powerful ingly fixed component of higher education in the
an instrument human reason might be, Anselm course of the twelfth century.
found that deeper insight was not possible with- Nowadays we do not find this very surprising,
out first believing. His other famous dictum, fides but we should not forget that, until then, intel-
quaerens intellectum, ‘faith seeking support in rea- lectuals were much burdened with auctoritas and
son’, stresses the crucial importance of faith. The by modern standards did not have a very critical
difference in nuance between these two maxims approach to their source texts. Numerous errors
expresses perfectly the contradictory feelings of and contradictions in the body of authoritative
devout men like Anselm who struggled with the texts came to light through Abelard’s methodi-
relationship between faith and reason. cal approach. His aim was most certainly not to
Long after Anselm, theologians who were cast doubt upon the deeper truth of the texts
not only trained in Aristotelian logic but also that were so authoritative for Christian faith, but
in Aristotelian physics (which Anselm was not) to critically examine the versions of the text in
made new attempts to prove God’s existence which they survived. Known by friend and foe
by combining reason (logic) with empirical evi- alike as ‘our Aristotle’ and as peripateticus palati-
dence. The most famous of these was Thomas nus (lit. ‘Aristotle’s pupil from Le Pallet [Abelard’s
Aquinas (see p. 287), who construed a number of birthplace]’, but also meaning ‘the paladin of
arguments for the existence of God a posteriori, Aristotle’ or ‘the vagrant from Le Pallet’), the
which means that they all lead from creation (the Breton scholar even surpassed his Greek master;
product) to creator (the producer). According to witness, for instance, his treatment of so-called
modern logic and science they are all flawed by universals (see Box 8.4).
either the refusal to consider the possibility of In addition to being a competent logician,
infinite regress or of the eternity of the universe Abelard was, to say the least, a colourful figure,
(like most Greek philosophers had been prepared as brilliant as he was arrogant, a man who ‘made
to do), or by the assumption that a first and final enemies with the dedication of a stamp-collector’
cause of everything cannot be other than (the (Brooke 1989). ‘Truly, the man takes pleasure in
Christian) God. disputing everything, be it matters of faith or
The man who finally made Aristotelian logic matters of the world’, sighed one of his many
a cornerstone of scholastic rationalism was the critics with a mixture of dislike and admiration.
Breton Peter Abelard (1079–1142). As a young It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Abelard’s
man he acquired a great reputation in Paris, views were twice condemned by the Church, first
first as a freely established teacher of dialectics, in 1121, and then again in 1140 (in the presence
and later as a teacher of theology at the cathe- of the pope); in both cases after he had burnt
dral school of Notre-Dame. His treatise Sic et non his fingers, with logical bravura, of course, on the
(literally ‘Yes and No’, meaning ‘Pro and Con’) treacherous doctrine of the Holy Trinity. On the
shows his approach as a logician and is particu- second occasion, Abelard was declared a heretic
larly interesting from a methodological point of and sentenced to eternal silence. It was Bernard
view. For the first time the scholastic method of of Clairvaux who voiced the accusations, closing
working can be seen in action. The text consists his speech with the words, ‘Peter Abelard, from
of 158 theological topics, quaestiones; each now on stick to your schoolboys and your young
one opens with a question, after which the pros ladies.’ The latter was a malicious reference to
and cons of the possible answers are weighed up the event which brought Abelard more fame
systematically and using the technique of logical during his lifetime than his philosophical works

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BOX 8.4 MAKING SENSE OF THE WORLD

THROUGH CONCEPTS: LOGIC, METAPHYSICS
AND THE STATUS OF UNIVERSALS
Two ways to get a firmer grip on reality are the study of physics (which is aimed at establishing
the laws of nature, and understand their working) and the study of language (which is aimed at
understanding how we process cognitive information from the world around us into a system of
arbitrary signals directed towards communication). In the development of both fields giant strides
were made by the Greek philosopher Aristotle.
Let us have a closer look at the language part. If we want to confront reality with language it
makes sense to distinguish between ‘words’ and ‘thoughts’, between words for concrete things
and abstract concepts, and between ‘propositions’ (assertive statements) that are valid and those
that are not. This is the task of logic.
Aristotelian logic divides all that can be over four classes: there are particular things of two kinds
and there are universal things (or concepts) of two kinds; particulars are either non-accidental
(like ‘this horse’) or accidental (like ‘[this horse’s] whiteness’), whereas universals are either
essential (like ‘horse’ [as a species]) or accidental (like ‘whiteness’ [in general]). Now according
to Aristotle, who contradicted Plato on this point, only particulars exist in physical reality – we
can see ‘this horse’ walking around, and admire its (particular) whiteness, but not ‘whiteness’ in
general, nor the species ‘horse’.
Most of us will probably agree with Aristotle on this point. Still, Aristotle’s point of view may
raise problems of internal contradiction, and some of these have been tackled – and solved – by
the two most brilliant logicians of the European Middle Ages, the Breton Peter Abelard and the
English Franciscan, William of Ockham.
Consider for instance the sentence ‘Fido is a dog’, in which ‘dog’ is an essential universal
because ‘is a dog’ means ‘belongs to the species dog’. Consequently, the rule ‘only particulars
exist’ seems to be false, because if Fido really exists, so does his dog-ness. However, Abelard
argued that the universal ‘dog’ is connected to the existing Fido only by ‘signification’, that is to
say by attaching meaning to Fido in two different ways: by nomination (by calling Fido ‘dog’), and
by mental imaging (by intentional thinking of Fido as a specimen of the species ‘dog’). This makes
it possible for us to accept that there are universals without attributing to them any real existence
or ‘ontological status’ as philosophers would say.
For this reason, Abelard is sometimes numbered among the ‘ontological reductionists’, phi-
losophers who wanted to reduce the categories of being(s) that according to them really existed.
Foremost among them was William of Ockham who went much further than Aristotle and Abelard
by stating that of all particulars only non-accidental ones (‘this horse’) had real existence, plus
only one of the nine categories that Aristotle distinguished among the accidental particulars,
namely those of quality (such as ‘[this horse’s] whiteness’). His slogan for ‘ontological parsimony’,
known as ‘Ockham’s razor’, is famous: entia non sunt multiplicanda preter necessitatem (‘plurality
is not to be posited without necessity’).
One of the paths Ockham followed to implement his reductionist programme in formal logic
was the development of his theory of intentiones animae (lit. ‘intentions of the soul’), meaning

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the ‘inner words’ that (according to medieval philosophers) we use to silently denominate our
mental images. Ockham believed that both such ‘mental/inner words’ and spoken/uttered words
referred directly to objects/things in the extra-mental world. He also believed that there were two
types of intentiones animae: ‘primary’ ones to signify existing particulars (such as ‘this horse’),
and ‘secondary’ ones to refer to universals that did not really exist (such as ‘horse’ [as a spe-
cies]). In a similar manner he distinguished between ‘terms of first imposition’ to indicate spoken
words referring to things/particulars and ‘terms of second imposition’ to indicate spoken words
referring to concepts/universals.
In an even more subtle and sophisticated way than Abelard’s theory of mental imaging,
Ockham’s theory of intentiones animae enables us to conceptualise, that is to refer in different
ways to universals or general concepts, without having to accept that they really exist.

Sources: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. ‘Aristotle’s Categories’ by Paul Studtmann (2013) and
‘Substance’ by Howard Robinson (2014); John Marenbon, Medieval Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 2006),
pp. 139–143, 297–300.

– the turbulent relationship he had earlier with was thus always internal and personal. External
Heloise, niece of a canon of the Notre Dame in penance without internal repentance and recov-
Paris. When she became pregnant he married her ery of one’s own moral integrity was completely
in secret and was castrated by Heloise’s enraged meaningless. These ideas resonated with con-
relatives after they found out. Both Heloise and temporary spirituality (see Chapter 6), with the
Abelard then retired to a convent. We know of revival of theological interest in the matter of
this from Abelard’s frank autobiography, Historia predestination and with the greater emphasis
calamitatum (‘The Story of my Calamities’) and put on admission of sin and repentance in the
from the passionate, but above all devout, let- confessional. At the same time, they reveal the
ters that the now separated couple wrote to each existence of a realisation that human individu-
other. Although their authenticity sometimes als are complex, self-conscious and responsible
has been questioned, these documents are proof personalities who have interior lives and who are
of the existence of a great sensitivity that was equipped with diverse and unique characteristics.
directed not only towards God and the saints but
also towards personal introspection and interper-
sonal relationships. The formation of universities
In this connection, another tract by Abelard,
Scito te ipsum (‘Know Thyself’, a reference to a We have seen that the only avenues of intellec-
saying from a Greek oracle and also the motto tual advancement during the early Middle Ages
of the Roman emperor-philosopher, Marcus were the schools attached to cathedrals and mon-
Aurelius), is considered a milestone. For the first asteries. Considered in this light, the formation
time in western Christian thought it is clearly of the universities can be seen as an emancipatory
contended that in judging sins (or crimes), the movement, gradually detaching higher education
intention of the sinner (or criminal) – or more from the monopoly of monks and bishops. This
specifically, the conscious decision of a person to happened against a background of three very dif-
commit a sin (or a crime) – should weigh as heav- ferent situations. First, there was a tendency in
ily as the sin/crime itself. For Abelard, morality the great scholae for teachers or students, or both

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together, to organise themselves into corpora- bishop’s secretary disputed the infringement of
tions in order to look after their own interests. his unique authority to grant the licentia docendi
The common medieval Latin term for this type of which he would never give up. That the share
corporation was universitas, which could very of the monastic schools in higher education
well be translated as ‘guild’. Second, the growing decreased was partly the fault of the monks them-
demand for higher learning led to a broadening selves, for they had been severely critical of the
of the supply of education. Outside the scope of direction in which higher education was moving.
the liberal arts, specialised schools began to We already mentioned how Bernard of Clairvaux,
appear for the study of medicine and written law, the eloquent and intimidating leader of the new
that is Roman Justinian law or Church canoni- monastic order of the Cistercians, hurled abuse
cal law. The special teaching of the Bible and at Abelard, calling him a danger to society and
Church Fathers, which traditionally had crowned a heathen and a monster. But eight years later,
the study of the liberal arts, gradually developed in 1148, Bernard himself was discredited after he
into a separate theological discipline, whose aim had attacked another master logician, Gilbert of
was not, as it had been before, to investigate the Poitiers, because Bernard had never been prop-
nature of God, but in addition, more generally, erly trained in the schools and therefore did not
to study the Church and its doctrine. In those grasp the intricacies of the new dialectics. This
towns where there was more than one schola, was exactly the problem. Since canon law for-
this diversification in higher education led quite bade the Cistercians and other monks to attend a
naturally to their working together, so that the school outside the monastery, they ran the risk of
first large schools with a number of faculties or becoming intellectually isolated by not respond-
branches came into being. Larger schools, which ing to the new directions that the study of the arts
attracted students from far and wide, now started was taking. The mendicant orders, especially the
to call themselves studium generale (‘principal Dominicans, recognised this problem and solved
centre of study’) to distinguish themselves from it by founding their own schools in large towns
the small ones. Third, following the resolution like Paris and Cologne, which, strictly speak-
of the Third Lateran Council in 1179, the Church ing, remained outside the universities. They had
relinquished its monopoly on education when it their own teachers but in this way they could still
compelled the bishops to yield their exclusive keep in touch with what was happening on the
rights to issue ‘licenses to teach everywhere’ frontier of science. These schools were intended
(licentiae ubique docendi) to recognised schools in primarily for members of their orders, but very
their dioceses. soon opened their door to other interested stu-
The teaching establishment that we now dents. The example set by the mendicant orders
know as a university evolved gradually from all was copied in time by other religious orders,
these developments, although it is difficult to including the Cistercians. It would soon turn out
say exactly when this happened. Nor did the lib- to be a recipe for a new round of conflicts with
eration of higher education sketched above take the secular scholars.
place without a struggle. From the beginning, the The process of trial and error, of support and
schools were assured of the not insignificant sup- opposition in the realm of administration and
port of the popes and of many rulers who made organisation can be best explained in the light
higher education the spearhead of their policy to of developments in the two most important
improve the quality of government and the offi- centres of learning in western Europe, Paris and
cials involved in it. There was fierce opposition, Bologna. In twelfth-century Paris there were, next
however, from bishops, chapters and the monas- to the old cathedral school of Notre-Dame, two
tic world. In Paris, for example, the chancellor or other schools on the left bank of the Seine which

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attracted crowds of students: that of Saint-Victor on an equal footing with ‘real’ clergy, of which by
(a convent of regular canons) and the public now there were large numbers. This measure was
school that was connected to the Benedictine to have far-reaching consequences, for it became
abbey of Mont Sainte Geneviève. In addition, a the norm for all recognised universities of Europe
number of small schools appeared, many of them when the pope confirmed the Paris privilege in
no more than a gathering of students with one 1231 in the bull Parens scientiarum. It meant that
teacher. Even before 1150, Paris was a mecca for members of university communities everywhere
young people from all over Europe; by 1200 it stood outside the episcopal as well as the secular
had between 3,000 and 4,000 students, perhaps system of justice, and enjoyed clerical status.
10 per cent of the town’s population. There were The oldest known statute of the Paris univer-
nearly 150 magistri teaching there, more than sity, issued in 1215 by the papal legate Robert of
100 in the arts, twenty each in medicine and law, Courson, despite its messy make-up, regulated a
and eight in theology – these fields of study were number of things that were vital to the universi-
called ‘faculties’ for the first time in 1220. All ty’s functioning, such as minimum qualifications
masters, whether teaching in one of the schools for teachers; the minimum number of terms a
or practising privately – which was perfectly teacher had to stay; the composition of curric-
allowed provided one had a licentia docendi – had ula; rules of good behaviour; the submission of
joined together to form a guild of teachers, first students to teachers; and last but not least, the
referred to in 1208. It may have been created to funerals of masters who had passed away. In addi-
guard over professional standards and professo- tion to bringing clarity to what may have been
rial behaviour, but doubtless also to form a united unclear for too long, these rules also stressed the
front against possible interference of the bishop new institution’s corporate identity by articulat-
of Paris and his chancellor. ing some of its common objectives and values.
Moreover, the influx of students caused all sorts As to its internal organisation, the University
of problems, varying from the organisation of of Paris basically developed into a federation of
teaching programmes and the form that lectures four faculties, of which the arts faculty was by far
and exams should take to strained relationships the largest. Before the middle of the fourteenth
between town and gown (including soaring room century the number of its masters had risen to
prices and regular street fights between students over 500, at least five times the total number
and shopkeepers). All parties concerned (bishop of masters connected to the other three higher
and secular authorities, townspeople, teachers and faculties (theology, law and medicine) together.
students) realised that matters concerning edu- This explains why the arts faculty alone was led
cation in the schools required better regulation. by a rector and not, like the other three, by a
This did actually happen in around 1200, for in dean, while its thousands of students were subdi-
that year ‘the commonality of the masters and vided into four ‘nations’ (the Gallican, English,
students’ received a number of royal privileges, Picardian and Norman nations), each with their
that were somewhat toned down ten years later. own procurator or proctor, and beadle, who was
Two provisions were of immense significance. responsible for the day-to-day running of teach-
First, the scolares (‘scholars’, being masters and ing activities. All things concerning curricula,
students) were placed under special royal pro- syllabi, examinations and degrees were organised
tection from physical violence and damage to at the faculty level. The university as a whole was
property. Second, they were placed under Church governed by a board, led by the rector of the arts
law if they themselves did wrong. Only the trial faculty; its other members were the three deans
of very serious crimes would be heard in the royal of the other faculties and the four proctors of the
court of law. This in fact put the scolares legally arts nations. Since the bishop of Paris had always

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refused to cede his power to confer degrees (the Italians and one for non-Italians. They rapidly
licentia docendi), the chancellor of the cathedral grew into powerful organisations which, if nec-
chapter remained vital to the ratification of essary, would enforce demands made on the
degrees; the actual work, that is, the conferring teachers or Bologna’s commune government
of degrees, was traditionally left to the chancellor by shutting everything down through strikes
of St Geneviève who also acted as the university or threatening to leave the town and continue
board’s financial expert. their studies elsewhere. Two of these threats were
In these early days, the University of Paris did actually carried out and the academic exodus led
not yet have its own buildings, let alone a uni- to the foundation of the universities of Vicenza
versity ‘campus’. Teaching space was always a in 1204 (which was not a success) and Padua
problem. Teachers did their lectures and disputa- in 1222 (which would become one of the most
tions at home, in halls or churches, or in empty reputable universities of Italy). However, this did
rooms that were rented in convents or private not break the reputation of the legal schools of
houses. Often only the teacher had a chair; the Bologna that were tacitly recognised as a univer-
students would sit on straw on the floor. The sity at about the same time. A law school existed
first piece of real estate the University of Paris in Montpellier as early as 1160, allegedly founded
acquired was a meadow, to be used for recreation! by experts who had come from Bologna. At that
The background to the University of Bologna’s time, a medical school was already functioning
foundation was very different and had its ori- in Montpellier; it was first mentioned in 1137.
gins in the training of lawyers unrelated to the That may have been influenced by the advanced
Church. The Roman custom of recording busi- medical knowledge in Islamic Spain.
ness transactions between private individuals Besides the great universities of Paris and
in writing had never disappeared in Italy. It was Bologna, the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
done by professional scribes, notai (Latin notarii, saw the origins of dozens of other universities.
whence ‘notary’), who were trained in the use of One would expect them to have originated in
correct, legally valid notation. The revival of the large towns or densely urbanised regions, but
study of Roman Justinian law in the second half this was only partly so. The two oldest univer-
of the eleventh century gave a powerful stimulus sities in England, for example, those of Oxford
to notarial training (which was initially part of and Cambridge, were established in relatively
the trivium curriculum). Since Roman law was small, albeit old, towns that had no bish-
imperial law, the development of these notarial ops (and therefore no cathedral schools), and
schools into a university was closely connected not in urban centres of more importance like
to imperial intervention, evident in the events London, Winchester, York or even Canterbury.
of the Diet of Roncaglia in 1158, for which the The University of Cambridge was founded in
emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, had received sup- 1209 after a secession of masters and students
port from lawyers from Bologna (see Chapter from Oxford, following a violent riot which had
4). Shortly afterwards, and in appreciation, the ended in the execution of a number of students.
emperor put all students of law in the Empire The German Empire, by no means a backward
under his special legal protection. region in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
Unlike the University of Paris, which formally was devoid of a university for a long time. The
started as a guild of teachers, Bologna was a typi- oldest was at Prague, in Bohemia (1348), followed
cal students’ university, because student unions in the second half of the fourteenth century
had a firmer grip on the local law schools than by Vienna, Erfurt, Heidelberg and Cologne,
the teachers’ guild had. By 1200 the number although Cologne already had two illustrious stu-
of student guilds was restricted to two, one for dia for higher learning long before – the cathedral

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MAP 8.1 European universities in the late Middle Ages

school and the already mentioned school of the broader range of subjects (Paris and Oxford). It
Dominican order, founded in 1248. The relatively is estimated that between 1350 and 1500 a total
densely populated Low Countries did not have a of 750,000 students registered at universities – all
university until 1425. It was established not in male; women were not allowed. Then, as now,
Flanders but at Louvain, in Brabant. Of a special many students did not stay at one place, but took
type were universities that were created ‘out of courses in several centres of learning, following
nothing’, which means that they were founded specialisations or going to teachers of renown.
on royal initiative and always with royal or papal This gave rise to the image of wandering students
approval. The oldest were the universities of or vagantes; they were sung of in bawdy songs.
Salamanca in Castile (1218) and Naples in the Many peripheral phenomena that are still
kingdom of Sicily (1224). characteristic of student life date back to this form-
All in all, between 1200 and 1500, around ative period, like the positive relation between
seventy-five universities were set up all over numbers of students and numbers of pubs, ritu-
Europe. Some were small and specialised (such als of ragging, student housing problems and the
as the medical school at Salerno and the legal tricky business of private visits by members of the
school in Orléans), others large and offering a opposite sex. By the beginning of the fourteenth

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century the small university town of Oxford had mobility through intellectual study, loathed the
over two hundred ale houses, while in 1340 firm consequences of the broadening appeal of higher
measures against excesses committed at the rag- education that was taking shape during his life-
ging of freshmen were taken by the University of time: the lack of motivation and the laziness of
Paris. In the same city, members of the Sorbonne many students, the appointment of mediocre
college – admittedly, all of them theologians – teachers and their ever narrower specialisation,
who received ladies in their private room were the inevitable relaxation of the reading list that
fined sixpence. In fifteenth-century Heidelberg followed. But most appalling in John’s eyes was
teachers or students who were caught in a brothel that fashionable flirt all these students had with
were not just fined but also blacklisted. logic, which threatened to downgrade the study
In agreement with their formally clerical status of the arts, and especially the trivium part, to a
students were required to be tonsured and dress ‘frying pan of verbiage’ (sartago loquendi). Logic
uniformly, in clerical style. Of course, this precept could only be saved as a decent academic dis-
was interpreted most liberally; in Cambridge, cipline if it would be firmly reconnected to the
students were soon accused of sporting long hair two other subjects of the trivium: grammar and
and long beards, of dressing in fur and wearing rhetoric.
chequered pointed shoes (that incomprehensi- Although quite a lot of students may have
ble whim of late medieval fashion), of adorning been aristocrats, there were few obstacles for
themselves with rings and other jewellery, and inquisitive young men of modest means to enter
of wasting precious time at the tennis court. In university. Of course they had to be able to read
general, medieval student life was far more vio- and write, and to understand Latin (all courses
lent than it is nowadays, probably because many were taught in Latin), but entrance fees in both
medieval students had a noble background, and grammar schools and universities were low, and
were used to thrashing things out when their from early on there were scholarships for poor
privileges were infringed or, worse, when they students. Universities could even have a gradu-
felt their honour was offended, certainly by ordi- ated system of (yearly) entrance fees; in Valence
nary townspeople. Sometimes, innocent brawls this ran from nothing at all for poor students to
or verbal disputes ended in real street battles, in three florins for wealthy students of noble birth.
which people were killed, as in Paris in 1200 and An alternative way for poor young men to get
in Oxford in 1306. educated was to enter a religious order; the men-
Up to a point, and also quite recognisable dicant orders especially were easily accessible. The
for those of us who have witnessed the explo- reverse side of this relative accessibility was that
sion of university education over the last half universities tended to be poorly equipped and
century, universities were prepared to answer that teachers were not normally salaried. Secular
the enormous influx of students with an eas- masters often lived from (multiple) prebends, but
ing of study programmes. And then as now this they also accepted fees from their students. Only
touched on a sore spot with conservatives. A in Italy did university professors receive salaries,
revealing testimony can be found in the works at least in the late Middle Ages. These could vary
of John of Salisbury (c.1115–1180), a man of widely (depending on the master’s reputation
humble origins who in one way or another had and experience) and were paid by the communal
managed to become a student in the schools of governments, who contracted masters for periods
Paris and then started a successful career as a sec- of four to five years (but these terms could be
retary and diplomat. In one of his books, called renewed). If lectures were missed or attracted less
Metalogicon (‘In Defense of Logic’), John, despite than a minimum of students, this was deducted
being himself a shining example of upward social from the master’s salary.

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In the north, the foundation of so-called col- out after a couple of years or else settled for a
leges must be seen as an answer to several of notarial diploma or the baccalaureate. Twelfth-
these problems: the housing shortage, the lack century satirical texts may tell a different tale,
of esprit de corps, the large differences in earnings but for a long time even a baccalaureate would
of teachers and in the income of students. This have offered considerable prospects for a good
also means that the objectives of colleges were position in society. There was a growing demand
quite different, even if they all were charitable for academically educated clergymen, physicians
institutions in the sense that they were founded and lawyers. The University of Naples was estab-
by private benefactors. In Paris, colleges were lished with the explicit purpose of satisfying that
originally student hostels that offered free board demand.
and lodging to poor students; the oldest one was On the reading list of the arts curriculum,
the Collège des Dix-Huit (‘College of the 18’), Aristotle’s preponderance was not limited to his
founded in 1180 by a wealthy Londoner, whose works on logic. The great Greek philosopher had
example would be followed by dozens of oth- also written extensively on natural phenomena,
ers. However, the famous Collège de Sorbonne, metaphysics and ethics. This entire corpus was
founded in 1255, was built as a communal resi- translated into Latin between about 1150 and
dence for teachers in theology. It would become 1250. It comprised, first, the libri naturales or
the model for colleges at English universities, the ‘books on nature’, a series of treatises on physics,
oldest of which was Merton College in Oxford cosmology, meteorology, zoology and on sleep,
(founded in 1274). They were communities of dreams and memory. Of no less importance was
‘fellows’, university teachers from various facul- Metaphysics. The term ‘metaphysics’, which liter-
ties who were incorporated as members for life ally means ‘what comes beyond physics’ refers
and hence were assured of board and income. to Aristotle’s treatment of what he himself had
called ‘being as being’. Metaphysics is the philo-
sophical search for the foundations of ‘being’,
University scholarship in action: separate from sensory experience. It deals, for
grades, curriculum, teaching instance, with the status of universals (general
methods concepts) and the difference between substance
and particular, with the nature of the universe,
University studies in the Middle Ages took a long and with epistemology (the study of the nature of
time. A minimum of seven years was originally knowledge, and the accepted methods of acquir-
prescribed for a full education in the liberal arts: ing knowledge). Some commentators of Aristotle
two years for undergraduate courses, three to four argued for a close connection between metaphys-
years for the baccalaureate (bachelor; BA) and ics and theology, others for the very opposite – in
then another two to three years to obtain the title any case, Metaphysics is the only book of Aristotle
of magister artium (master of (liberal) arts, MA) that speaks of God as ‘first principle’.
with the teaching qualification, licentia docendi, Aristotle’s contribution to ethics includes
attached to it. Higher studies were equally long a broad moral guideline, known as the Ethica
– certainly theology, which normally took at Nicomachaea, presumed to have been written for
least ten years. Since most students, at least until his son, Nicomachos. It stood as a model for the
into the fourteenth century, studied the arts second and most elaborate part of the Summa
before embarking upon advanced study, those Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas. The last important
who stayed spent a considerable part of their work of Aristotle that was received in the West
lives at university. They probably formed a fairly was Politics, translated by William of Moerbeke
small group, however, as most students dropped around 1260. It has been described as the pinnacle

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of naturalist thinking in the sense that it prop- Collections of these glosses had been made, but
agated the idea that the secular state was not their quality was improved with the compilation
instituted by God, but was a logical product of of the Glossa Ordinaria (‘Standard Gloss’), for a
man being a zoon politikon, a creature that by its long time attributed to Walafrid Strabo, but actu-
nature lives in a political community. The exege- ally only begun in 1100 by Anselm of Laon and
sis of Politics helped to sharpen the distinction completed some years later by Gilbert of Poitiers
between Church and state in the fourteenth and Peter Lombard. In about the middle of the
century, without solving it (see Chapter 12). twelfth century the latter produced an extensive
The towering authority of Aristotle led to collection of the teachings of the Roman Church
radical changes in the liberal arts curriculum of concerning Christian dogmas, all treated in
the universities. They took the form of superim- accordance with the new format of logical argu-
posing the three so-called philosophies on the mentation. This compendium, based on about
traditional teaching of the seven subjects of triv- 5,000 extracts from the Church Fathers, major
ium and quadrivium: natural philosophy (around councils and papal letters, was called the Quattuor
Aristotle’s libri naturales), metaphysics (around libri sententiarum (‘Four Books of Sentences’) after
Aristotle’s Metaphysics) and moral philosophy its four sections, dedicated to the nature of God,
(supplementing existing ethics with Aristotle). the creation, the Incarnation and the holy sacra-
Of these three, natural philosophy needs some ments, respectively. It rapidly achieved the status
further explanation, because rendering it as of the standard university textbook for theology.
‘physics’ could easily create wrong associations As an aid to the study of the Bible in about the
with modern physics. (Aristotelian) natural phi- same period a new handbook of biblical history
losophy was aimed at the rational investigation (a summary of the supposedly historical books
of the four ways or modalities by which ‘natural of the Bible) came into use. It was the Historia
bodies’ (physical objects) can change in conjunc- Scholastica by Peter Comestor (‘Peter the Eater’),
tion with the four basic ‘causes’ or principles of a compatriot of Peter Lombard and, like him, a
movement or change in the universe: the form prominent member of the clerical elite of Paris.
(external appearance) of a thing, the matter of The bibles for the study of law were the
which it is made, the agency by which it changes Justinian Corpus Iuris Civilis for Roman-secular
and the end to which change occurs. As such, law (see Chapter 1), and the greatly enlarged and
the study of natural philosophy comprised the complex corpus of canonical texts, such as council
entire fields of cosmology and astronomy, as well decisions and papal decrees, for canon law. In the
as physics, biology and psychology. 1140s the Italian monk, Gratian, brought some
While Aristotle dominated the liberal arts cur- order to the chaos in canon law with the publi-
riculum – his works made accessible for students cation of his Concordantia discordantium canonum
in innumerable manuals and commentaries – in (‘The Harmonisation of Contradictory Laws’),
the theological training everything revolved which soon became known as the Decretum
around the study of the Bible and Church Fathers. Gratiani. It dominated the study of Church law
For the first time, useful aids to Bible study were to such an extent that graduates often were
produced, facilitating systematic access to the referred to as ‘decretists’. The most important
text, such as a standard division into chapters medieval addition to this corpus, the Liber Extra,
and verses, subject indexes and concordances. In was completed in 1234. To simplify the study of
the intellectual tradition of the early Middle Ages Roman law, Accursius, a leading Bolognese jurist,
the Bible had of course been annotated countless in the middle of the thirteenth century compiled
times in the form of extensive treatises and com- a glossa ordinaria (‘standard gloss’), a systematic
mentaries and short marginal notes or glosses. overview of nearly 100,000 glosses to the Corpus

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Iuris Civilis produced over the years in the law topics’ or disputations) and quaestiones quodlibet-
schools of Bologna. And, finally, the works of ales (‘arbitrary topics’). Ordinary quaestiones were
Hippocrates, Galen and their two most impor- completely dealt with by the master himself.
tant medieval epigones, the Muslim convert During disputations two students, or a student
Constantine the African (c.1010–1087) and the and a bachelor or a fresh master, were asked
Persian physician and philosopher Avicenna (Abu to present the objections and responses to the
Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina, 980–1039), dominated quaestio under discussion, after which the lectur-
the study of medicine. ing master ‘determined’ the disputation. Since
The course of an academic career in the early about the middle of the thirteenth century, every
days of the medieval university is well illus- baccalaureus or ‘bachelor’ had to determine a dis-
trated by the life of the great theologian, Thomas putation as part of the final examination for the
Aquinas (1224–1274). He was a descendant of a bachelor’s degree. While ordinary quaestiones and
high noble family near Monte Cassino, where he disputations treated more or less set subjects, for
was sent at an early age to prepare for a career lectures on so-called quaestiones quodlibetales stu-
in the Church. Between 1239 and 1244 he stud- dents suggested topics, which could be as unusual
ied the arts at the recently founded University of as ‘Whether it is better for a crusader to die on
Naples and then, very much against the will of his his outward journey than on the journey home’
family, he entered the Dominican Order. There, – one gets the impression that such sessions were
his intellectual gifts were immediately recognised primarily meant to give students the opportunity
and he was sent to Paris and Cologne. Thomas to put their masters’ logical abilities to the test.
immersed himself in the works of Aristotle and To underpin his lectures, Aquinas, just like
studied theology under the first Latin-Christian many other masters, wrote a number of treatises
intellectual in the Middle Ages who fully mas- in quaestio form, one of which was the Summa
tered all aspects of Aristotelian philosophy, Theologiae, intended for those embarking on
Albertus Magnus (c.1200–1280). As an advanced theology. He also put down in writing the 253
student in Cologne, Thomas held the function of quaestiones disputatae which he had conducted,
cursor biblicus, which meant that he had to teach and for which there was great demand amongst
elementary Bible studies to beginning theological his audience. At the beginning of the fourteenth
students. At the age of twenty-seven he became century this collection, in forty-six loose quires,
a baccalaureus in theology. Now he was allowed could be rented for copying at the price of four
to give instruction in Peter Lombard’s Sententiae silver coins. Understandably, in the pre-printing
and to assist the magister residens (professor with age, books were extremely expensive. It has been
a tenured chair) in holding disputes. Finally, in calculated that purchasing a book of two hundred
1255, Thomas himself became a magister in Sacra folios (four hundred pages) took half the yearly
Pagina, professor of biblical studies (i.e. theology). salary of an Oxford fellow. It was not uncommon
The main teaching tasks of a magister con- to lay down the acquisition of a book in a written
sisted of giving lectures (recitationes-cum-expositio) deed. The high prices of books must have made
and treating quaestiones. In the former, the master a university study for many students prohibitive,
read out an authoritative text – say a treatise by unless they could earn their own books by doing
Aristotle – while offering a commentary, passage copying work for others. It is also true that the
by passage. The latter, as we have seen, required number of set texts mandatory for exams was
the systematic treatment of a topic (quaestio) very limited.
in accordance with the dialectical method. A
distinction was made here between ordinary
quaestiones, quaestiones disputatae (‘disputed

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The ‘war between science period a study of theology was only initiated after
the completion of a master’s in the arts, so they
and religion’
knew perfectly well what science was all about.
When, despite his young age, Thomas Aquinas Tensions increased in the 1260s and 1270s,
received his master’s degree, his order appointed and they came to a head in 1270 and 1277 when
him to one of the two chairs of theology held by the bishop of Paris, Stephen Tempier, had a list
the Dominicans at the University of Paris. Even of short propositions published, which were
then the number of chairs per faculty was limited. condemned by the Roman Church and would
In 1255, the faculty of theology had twelve chairs, therefore be forbidden to teach. The list of 1270
half of which were allocated to the secular clergy, numbered only thirteen items, but that of 1277
two to the Dominicans, one to the Franciscans, numbered no less than 219, and whereas in
and the remaining three to the regular canons of 1270 the word buzzing around was ‘error’, in
the Paris cathedral chapter. This division was the 1277 this had been changed to ‘heresy’. Without
result of heated discussions on the place of the really mentioning their names some of the most
new mendicant orders that would remain domi- popular secular masters of the Paris arts faculty
nant in theology in the long term. Of the close to were targeted, two of them in particular: Siger of
two hundred teaching licenses in theology that Brabant and Boetius of Dacia (= Denmark). Some
were granted by the University of Paris in the months before the publication of the list of 1277,
last quarter of the fourteenth century, about half Siger and two associates had been summoned to
went to friars against a quarter to secular clergy. appear before an inquisition. Wisely, they failed
Related to the controversy between secular to turn up and fled to Italy.
masters and mendicants was a deeper-seated To make matters worse, the two Parisian lists
conflict that has sometimes been labelled as a did not stand alone. Several influential masters
‘war between science and religion’. It all started of theology from the mendicant orders – the
when in 1210 Aristotle’s freshly translated ‘books Augustinian Egidius Romanus and the head of
on nature’ were banned for teaching natural phi- the Franciscan order, Giovanni Fidanza, better
losophy in the arts curriculum at the University known as Bonaventura – supported the lists by
of Paris, because their contents were irreconcil- producing treatises that specified these heretical
able with the Catholic faith. The prohibition ‘errors’. Bonaventura (1221–1274) did not reject
was reissued several times, and maintained until the work of Aristotle on principle. On the con-
around 1255. It means that students who wanted trary, he happily used it in his own writings, but
to hear the latest in the field of science had to he was opposed to its excessive use in theologi-
go elsewhere, to Oxford or Bologna, for instance, cal education, realising that Aristotle only offered
or become a Dominican and go to Cologne, or limited possibilities to reach a deeper knowledge
stay in Paris and follow clandestine lectures on of God. According to Bonaventura, this knowl-
physics. Meanwhile, a papal initiative to find edge could only be reached by a mystical path
a solution by purging the libri naturales from and necessitated a burning desire for God and a
undesirable content failed, but this created new blind faith in divine grace that would rise above
problems as soon as the ban was lifted. From every call upon reason.
that point on, conservative theologians started Bonaventura had a point. It was immedi-
to act as watchdogs over the masters from the arts ately clear that many items on the lists could be
department as well as over their own more pro- traced back to Aristotle’s ‘books on nature’ and
gressive colleagues in theology, and to denounce Metaphysics, or to their most prominent Muslim
each and every suspect teaching. Theologians commentator, Averroës. There were three of
were well equipped to do so, because at this Aristotle’s ideas in particular that could not be

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squared with Christian dogmatic: the eternity of of scientific research in the right direction. If
the world, the idea that God’s power had limita- Aristotle had declared a lot of phenomena ‘impos-
tions (for instance, by the exclusion of internal sible’ according to his conception of the laws of
contradiction) and the mortality of the individual nature, conservative theologians argued: God can
soul. These were all long known, and until then do or make anything he wants; so anything is
no master teaching Aristotle had made an insur- imaginable and, more importantly, should be the
mountable obstacle of them, as none of them object of scientific investigation, except for God
intended to do now. The defensive line they took himself and the mysteries of the Christian faith.
up was a sensible one. They argued that doing This was more or less the position of the famous
physics in the arts department was a completely Franciscan logician and theologian, William of
different ball game from doing theology in the Ockham (before 1287–1348).
theology department. They adapted Tertullian’s For Ockham, theology was not a science,
slogan, as it were, to their own profit: what had based on rational proofs supported by logic or by
Athens (here: Aristotle) to do with Jerusalem natural philosophy; nor did it allow him any cer-
(here: Catholic orthodoxy), what reason with tain statements about God. The only thing that
faith? Were these not separate avenues of enquiry he knew with any certainty was that God was
into separate truths – meaning that what held perfectly transcendent and autonomous. God
true in natural philosophy was on principle open was powerful in the sense that no power could
to doubt or contradiction, and did not need to compel him. His freedom of action was circum-
be true according to the Catholic faith? So what? scribed only by the requirements of internal
Of course, they were immediately prepared to consistency and order: even God could not do
duly recognise that, in the end, faith always is anything that lacked order or that at the same
superior to reason; they were even prepared to time was the opposite of what was happening.
swear an oath that they would never consider The creation was no more and no less than the
any theological questions – which was what the contingent product of a choice made by God out
Parisian masters of the arts faculty actually did in of an infinite number of options, but within the
1272. two limitations he had set for himself.
This idea of a ‘double truth’ fostered an atti- In Ockham’s eyes, only faith could lead to
tude among natural philosophers that bordered insight into the sort of higher truths that were
on ‘intellectual schizophrenia’ (Pedersen 1997). indispensable for achieving eternal salvation,
Witness the famous master of arts John Buridan not because such truths were possibly irrational,
who, when wanting to investigate the possibil- but because human reason was restricted. Faith
ity of a vacuum in nature (impossible according could not be achieved solely by study, theological
to Aristotle), had to state beforehand that to his or otherwise; an essential part of it was instilled
regret he had to consider the vacuum phenom- (infusa in Latin) as it were through the grace-
enon from two different starting points, one the giving sacrament of Holy Baptism. With this
Aristotelian, the other the possibility that God proposition, Ockham openly stood against the
created a vacuum supernaturally (i.e. miracu- rationalists, such as Aquinas. For Ockham, reason
lously). Similarly, Buridan argued that there was and faith were two separate sources of know-
no evidence in the Bible for the assumptions that ing, and therefore science and theology should
Greek philosophers had made about the move- be separate knowledge domains as well. Science
ment of celestial bodies, or that those bodies were should be directed towards reason and the ‘natu-
animated beings. In such cases, one might argue, ral’ forms of proof that reason could reach, while
the Church’s prohibition to follow the ancient theology should be directed towards faith, and
Greeks may have encouraged a reorientation faith towards divine revelation.

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Ockham’s impact on higher education in the ming over present-day mathematics of infinite
late Middle Ages must not be underestimated. sets. But in the end, no final leap into modern
Based on his innovative approach, schools were science was made, because medieval natural phi-
formed soon after his death, which caused a true losophers were like steeplechase horses refusing
divide in the arts faculties of late medieval uni- to jump over an obstacle. In the end, they always
versities. On the one hand, there was ‘the new respectfully (but also sincerely?) deferred to the
way’ (via moderna), also called the Ockhamist authority of the Church – and also, although to
school (doctrina or scientia okamica), because it a lesser degree, to that of Aristotle.
followed Ockham’s proposal to strictly separate So, if it is true, as Grant argues, that late medi-
natural philosophy from a more spiritualised- eval theology was far more indebted to natural
mystic theology. The ‘old way’ (via antica), on the philosophy than vice versa, the reverse side was
other hand, was associated with the writings of that science could not shake off religion. Many
Aquinas, and offered more room for interference theologians seem just to have used theological
between natural philosophy and theology. The questions – even essential articles of the faith –
difference between these two schools of thought, as an excuse to plunge into exercises on natural
that also revealed an intellectual rift between the philosophy, mathematics and logic, whereas the
Franciscans and the Dominicans, dominated the other way around, natural philosophers were not
university arts curriculum until well into the six- equipped, and were not allowed, to venture into
teenth century. Universities made it quite clear theological problems. John Buridan, the secular
whether they followed the via moderna or the via arts master already mentioned, ended a quaes-
antica, or both, but obviously a lot depended on tio on infinite magnitude that touched upon
the personal preferences of individual masters. the nature of God with the humble admission
The University of Erfurt in Germany, for exam- that ‘with regard to all the things that I say in
ple, traditionally followed the via antica, but by this question, I yield the determination of them
the time young Martin Luther studied the arts to the lord theologians’. This forced marriage
there, the resident professor, Jodocus Trutfetter, between science and religion caused theology to
had switched to the via moderna. remain analytic, inquisitive and rational rather
Historians of science such as Edward Grant are than spiritual and emotional but at the same
convinced that the relative separation of science time it prevented science from leaping over
and religion that started to take hold in the 1270s God’s shadow. It slowed down the development
worked: certainly in the via moderna, natural of natural philosophy towards a natural science
philosophy was left on its own. This meant that focused less on metaphysical and theological
science was no longer drenched in theological or problems and more on observation, experimenta-
dogmatic issues; natural philosophers always had tion and measurements related to purely physical
the excuse that what they argued was done by phenomena.
‘speaking in terms of natural philosophy’ (loqui There always are rare birds, like, in this case,
naturaliter). But there was another benefit: by the works on optics and refraction of light by
stressing the dogma of God’s omnipotence sci- the Englishmen Robert Grosseteste (c.1170–
ence was also freed, as it were, from Aristotle’s 1253), and his eccentric pupil, the Franciscan
burden. This led on the one hand to a new wave Roger Bacon (c.1214–c.1294). Grosseteste, who
of openly criticising Aristotle, and on the other first taught arts and then theology at Oxford
hand to some extremely interesting speculations University from about 1220, later becoming
on problems of infinity and infinite regression bishop of Lincoln, could read Greek and was
among such brilliant natural philosophers as influenced by both Plato, the Neoplatonists and
Gregory of Rimini (c.1300–1358), who was skim- Aristotle. In studying a wide range of scientific

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phenomena he developed his own research

The humanism of the late
methods, including the formulation of model-
like hypotheses for which he used mathematical
Middle Ages
descriptions – Grosseteste is perhaps the spiritual
father of the scientific hypothesis. He also did Studia humanitatis and the new
more or less controlled experiments. He applied humanism in Italy
these methods in a ground-breaking study of the
refraction of light in rainbows that would later While scholasticism was reaching its zenith in
be refined by Bacon and the German Dominican the course of the fourteenth century, an entirely
Dietrich of Freiburg. It is true that the theory does new educational ideal was being propagated in
not correspond on all points with current theory, Italy. Contemporaries spoke of the studia humani-
but Grosseteste and his followers proved that in tatis. Instead of the strong accent the scholastic
barely fifty years it was possible to make great liberal arts course put on technical logic, natural
advances in the physical sciences with the help philosophy and metaphysics in the Aristotelian
of experiments and mathematics. tradition, the studia humanitatis programme was
But Grosseteste and Bacon were the exceptions constructed around five disciplines – grammar,
to the general rule of academic conventional- rhetoric, history (not then a separate discipline),
ity. Only such a mental disposition may help to knowledge of poetry and moral philosophy
explain why the unique breeding ground that (meaning philosophy focused on ethical, non-
was established with the foundation of universi- metaphysical or theological questions). The basic
ties for a fairly autonomous scholarship in the texts for the subjects were by classical, primarily
European Middle Ages did not lead to a scientific non-Christian, Roman writers, in due course fol-
revolution until the seventeenth century. Before lowed by the Greek giants Homer, Hesiod and
that time, the Greek model of the universe, which Sophocles. Favourite genres became discursive
had reigned supreme for almost 2,000 years, was dialogues and speeches.
challenged far less from the bulwarks of science The new programme certainly did not take
than from the adventurous world beyond. Two of the world of higher learning by storm. Quite the
the most important discoveries of the thirteenth contrary, it only very slowly gained a firm foot-
century, the mechanical clock and spectacles, hold in the grammar and rhetoric departments of
were developed, as far as we know, outside the the arts curriculum. Initially, prominent human-
university. And it was merchants and navigators ists thought little of teaching in a university; the
– helped by such practical inventions as the astro- honour was small and the pay was poor. Only in
labe (probably of Hellenistic origin, but vastly the latter part of the fifteenth century did sev-
improved in the eleventh century), the magnetic eral universities – those of Florence, Bologna,
compass, the double compasses and the calcu- Rome and Ferrara, in particular – succeed in hir-
lation of coordinates – who made it clear that ing famous humanists as professors of grammar,
many Aristotelian laws were simply incorrect. It rhetoric and literature/poetry, either full time,
explains the joke circulating in the middle of the against often princely salaries, or part time when
sixteenth century that you could learn more from teaching duties were combined with functions in
the Portuguese in one day than from the Greeks chanceries or as private tutors at courts. Lectures
and Romans in a hundred years. by renowned humanists were very popular, and
attracted large audiences, not only from among
students but also local civic elites.
Although in the long term, the studia humani-
tatis would not triumph in the university syllabus,

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they were successful at a lower level; that is, in the as he did. Cicero’s writings also taught that elo-
Latin schools founded in large towns all over late quent expression or rhetoric was an important
medieval Europe to educate children from the skill through which to achieve moral wisdom,
upper echelons of the bourgeoisie, but not neces- because only clarity of expression in the written
sarily to prepare them for a university education. and spoken word could lead to the correct formu-
At first sight the demand for the studia humani- lation of that wisdom.
tatis appears to have been a plea for a reactionary, The renewed interest in Antiquity’s literary
not revolutionary, shift of emphasis in intellec- treasures led to important methodological inno-
tual formation, a return to the arts programmes vations in textual criticism. For the first time the
from before the Aristotelian revival. In reality, a authenticity of a text was questioned through a
substantial change in mentality lay behind it. systematic study of such characteristics as the
The new humanists wanted above all to expand writer’s style and vocabulary, supplemented by a
the practical value of higher education that they number of exterior features. In addition, context-
felt was lacking in scholastic learning. In addition bound interpretation was given a wider range
to a direct focus on the human condition, the than had been common since Abelard’s time. It
revolt against scholasticism therefore reflects a was realised that what a writer intended to say at a
new sort of ‘utilitarian thinking’ that was emerg- certain place in the text could not be determined
ing among the urban elites and higher middle solely by a semantic analysis of the vocabulary. In
classes. In contrast to our own times, this way of a philological study, the complete text had to be
thinking did not aim to extend individual mate- used as well as its author’s other works or works
rial well-being but to develop those character by others writing at the same time, or other pos-
traits which enabled individuals to make sensible sibly relevant historical information. The new
moral, business and, above all, political decisions philological criticism, the prelude to modern
in a pragmatic way. In the communes of north- scientific philology, was thus both comparative
ern and central Italy, where the new mentality and historicist in nature. It achieved resounding
first took root, both the degree of civic partici- results, including the definitive exposure of the
pation and the amount of informal association Donatio Constantini as a forgery by the papal sec-
were far greater than in western society today. For retary, Lorenzo Valla, the German humanist and
that reason, we ought to be wary of putting too cardinal, Nicholas of Kues, and the controversial
much stress on the individualistic and secularis- English bishop and royal councillor, Reginald
ing trends in the new humanism, as was done Pecock, who reached the same conclusion inde-
particularly by nineteenth-century historians pendently. It helped the new humanists to reject
like Jakob Burckhardt. On the contrary, direct the medieval Christian idea that their own time
involvement of the better-off in local political was the depressing lowest point, the very nadir of
life furthered a feeling of collective responsibility world history. Without breaking with the inevi-
and a natural readiness to do one’s best for the table scheme of Christian salvation history they
public good. Neither was this endeavour seen as began to take more heed of history’s discontinui-
primarily secular, as opposed to Christian piety; ties and vagaries – which true leaders should try
rather, it was regarded as its complement. to surmount or bend to their will.
Cicero, already very popular among German It is impossible to imagine the flowering and
humanists in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, enormous growth of the humanistic education
now replaced Aristotle as the great classical exam- programme without a new stress on the study
ple for the new humanists as well. No other figure of Latin. The new humanists were convinced
in the ancient world so effectively combined high that classical Latin was the only vehicle worthy
public morality with unrestrained political activity of expounding their ideals. They were horrified

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by the ‘barbaric’ Latin of the scholastics, which and lent his half-hearted support to the ‘revolu-
admittedly was contorted by the need to give tion’ of Cola di Rienzo, the parvenu tradesman
modern Latin equivalents to the very complex who seized power in Rome in 1347 in the belief
and often obscure terminology of Aristotle’s that he could restore the eternal city to its for-
Greek and which often resulted in rather ugly mer glory. Meanwhile, Petrarch journeyed from
neologisms. But even the sophisticated Latin of one princely court to another in an Italy torn by
the twelfth-century men of letters was not good political strife, trying to put his talents as an ora-
enough. It was a source of pride for the new tor and diplomat to use. He died in the summer
humanists to master Latin so perfectly that it was of 1374 at his house in the hills above Padua,
indistinguishable from the best literary Latin from while reading a book – the most beautiful death
classical Antiquity. The choice of material or gen- a poet and a scholar can imagine. The Canzoniere,
res was also based on classical models, not always a collection of 366 poems in Italian, is considered
to the satisfaction of the modern reader, who to be his most important literary legacy.
can perhaps recognise the ingenuity but not the Petrarch’s friend and kindred spirit, the
pleasure of interminable imitations of the great Florentine Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375),
epic poems of Virgil or Lucan, of incomprehen- died not long afterwards. He is best known as
sible mythological imagery in rigid metric verse, the author of the Decameron, a collection of
or of bombastic letters and speeches inspired by short stories written in the vernacular, but like
Cicero or Seneca. No wonder then that of the Petrarch he was a passionate Latinist, philologist
works of the most illustrious of the early human- and collector of manuscripts of classical litera-
ists, Petrarch and Boccaccio, only those written in ture. The two shared a profound admiration for
Italian (which were also very much appreciated in the works of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), who
their own time) are read nowadays, and their far in no way can be considered a humanist; he was
more numerous and extensive works in classical much more an exponent of the scholastic tradi-
Latin have been all but forgotten. tion. The Florentine magistrates gave Boccaccio
Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca [1304–1374]) was the first teaching commission to lecture in pub-
surely the most remarkable of the two. He was the lic on Dante’s masterpiece, the Divina Commedia.
son of a lawyer from the neighbourhood of Arezzo, Even more important, however, was that he made
who settled in Avignon where the papal court Florence the heart of the new humanistic move-
was in residence and where he made influential ment. It is telling that the two most prominent
friends who helped him obtain his first position spiritual heirs of Petrarch and Boccaccio, Coluccio
in the household of the renowned Colonna fam- Salutati and Leonardo Bruni of Arezzo, were
ily. As a cleric in the lower orders he enjoyed both chancellor or town secretary in Florence.
income from various ecclesiastical benefices in Salutati was the first humanist to use the studia
Tuscany and Lombardy which he fulfilled nomi- humanitatis for political gain, for he employed his
nally. Petrarch soon became known as an orator rhetorical gifts as a mighty weapon in Florence’s
and poet and was perhaps the first writer since struggle with Milan in 1401–1402. His reflective
classical Antiquity to achieve celebrity status. The prose works show strong secular leanings and a
highpoint of his career undoubtedly occurred in genuine dislike of ivory-tower intellectuals and
1341, on the Campidoglio (the Capitoline Hill religious contemplation. ‘Must I call someone
of ancient Rome), where, after his poetic abili- learned’, he wrote in a letter, ‘who knows eve-
ties were tested by King Robert of Naples, he was rything the human intellect can grasp about
crowned with the laurel wreath, the symbol of heavenly and divine matters but who never looks
the writer’s glory. Thereafter Petrarch became the at himself? Who has never done anything use-
eloquent advocate of the popes’ return to Rome ful for his friends, his family, his parents or his

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town?’ This sophisticated attitude was not imme- were determined by self-interest, by a desire for
diately representative of the intellectual climate gain and glory, by opportunism and hypocrisy.
in which the new humanism took root. Petrarch, To be sure, human nature could not be changed;
for example, favoured a withdrawn, contempla- what could be manipulated and reformed, though,
tive existence, a sort of Christian version of the was ‘character’, constituting that part of man’s
Roman ideal of otium, and he looked to Augustine disposition that was dependent on circumstances
as his spiritual guide even more than to Seneca and free will. People did indeed have free will,
and Cicero – a preference shared by many later but they could only determine half their fate, the
humanists. other half being in the hands of fortune. A good
Intellectual life in Florence during the fifteenth ruler was one who succeeded best in adapting to
century, then, was not dominated entirely by the historical circumstances either by trying to mas-
moral humanism strongly oriented towards pub- ter fortune or by presenting the state’s interest as
lic service that Salutati and Bruni propagated. the self-interest of (the majority of) its subjects or
No less popular among the elite in the second by bending their characters to serve the common
half of the fifteenth century was the so-called good of the state rather than his will. Machiavelli
‘Florentine Platonism’, an esoteric brew of origi- was rather ambiguous about the best possible
nal ideas of Plato, widely known since by then type of government; while in one of his principal
his works finally had been translated from Greek, works, The Prince (Il Principe), he argues in favour
mixed with a dash of Neoplatonism and a good of monarchy, in the other, Discourses on the First
measure of magical and occult humbug taken Ten Books of Livy, he seems to prefer a republic
from the Jewish Kabbala and the Hellenist cult of with a mixed, aristocratic-popular regime.
Hermes Trismegistos. The result resembled some Machiavelli’s ideas about the limits of force
of today’s New Age philosophies, for Florentine that a state may use are best known from The
Platonism, sponsored by the Medici family, had Prince, a mirror of princes tinged with Aristotelian
a strongly egocentric and apolitical slant. A typi- ideas on psychological motivation of human
cal product of this thinking was the work on the action. It evokes two kinds of comments. First,
dignity of man by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola a good prince is never a tyrant, but on the other
(1463–1494), published posthumously. It defends hand allows himself to be guided by his subjects’
the extremely voluntaristic view that the human preferences only if expedient. When necessary –
individual, with no limitations to his own free that is to say, when laws did not work properly
will, creates his own personality. Visual pointers – he should be prepared to take an uncompro-
to the ideas of this philosophical current can be mising and unambiguous stand, combining the
seen in the early paintings of Sandro Botticelli strength of a lion with the cunning of a fox. The
(1444–1510). man whom Machiavelli believed to possess all
The work of Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) the desired qualities, and who was held up as an
was less high-brow and more akin to the early example to the reader of Il Principe, was Cesare
political-moral humanism of around 1400, but it Borgia (1476–1507). The son of Pope Alexander VI
lacked the optimistic view of human nature and (1492–1503), Cesare was an unscrupulous scoun-
human potentialities that was so characteristic of drel but also a gifted strategist and commander of
early moral humanism and Florentine Platonism. the papal army. In Machiavelli’s eyes, he was the
One of the aphorisms of Machiavelli, also a chan- embodiment of the right character of a forceful
cellor of Florence but thrown out of office in 1512 ‘prince’, being a combination of virtù (personal
after the political comeback of the Medici, is that ability), ingegno (innate talent or ‘genius’) and
‘People only do good when they are compelled fantasia (power of imagination) – all three
to.’ Humans were by nature evil and their actions keywords of the Italian Renaissance to describe

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the individual. Second, if in The Prince the idea of the Italian Renaissance, which nonetheless
of an amoral raison d’état in which the actors are played an important role in the debate about the
allowed almost unlimited latitude and freedom unique nature of this period of Italian history. At
of action is expounded for the first time, it must a cursory glance the link with humanism is plain
be made clear that Machiavelli only approved of and uncomplicated. Just as in the study of let-
amoral actions (which could also imply immoral ters, so too in the language of forms, geometrical
actions) if they served the public interest of the proportions and the solving of problems of per-
state. Good Christian that he was, Machiavelli spective in architecture, sculpture and painting
strongly condemned immoral actions motivated there was a conscious and direct return to the
by self-interest. models of Antiquity. The watershed between ‘old’
We will only briefly discuss the relationship and ‘new’ art came in the 1420s when Filippo
between Italian humanism and the visual art Brunelleschi completed the dome of the cathedral

PLATE 8.3
Astronomical
clock originally
constructed in 1344
by Jacopo Dondi in
Padua.

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church in Florence, Donatello made his first Catholic Church than in Italy. The influence
free-standing sculptures of human figures in of northern humanism was originally found in
a natural pose (known as the contrapposto) and comparable, densely urbanised regions such as
the painter Masaccio applied the technique southern Germany and the Low Countries, but it
of vanishing-point or optical perspective and has now become clear that the intellectual elite
made considerable efforts to ensure that his fig- elsewhere – England, France, Spain and Poland
ures were anatomically correct. As the technical – also came into contact with the programme
mastery of Renaissance artists grew, so did their of the studia humanitatis at an early stage. The
social ambitions. They were no longer content networks which existed between universities and
with being seen as craftsmen, practitioners of the the personal connections between intellectuals,
artes mechanicae; they wanted to be considered as kept up by travels to Italy (the iter Italicum as
scholars, practitioners of the artes liberales. The part of the intellectual formation of artists and
techniques and constructs applied and the elabo- aristocrats), by correspondence, by employment
ration of subjects and motifs surely demanded and by diplomatic missions apparently were far
more than just a superficial knowledge of dif- more important than strictly socio-geographical
ferent disciplines of the trivium and quadrivium. structures. Peter Luder (1415–1472), the German
This claim was honoured only in part. On the humanist who as a young man travelled to Italy
one hand, leading artists like Leonardo da Vinci several times to study, is a good example. He dis-
(1452–1519) and Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475– covered the studia humanitatis and transferred
1564) were considered ‘universal’, even divinely his enthusiasm to his students and colleagues
inspired geniuses (and this was reflected in the in the many universities of the German Empire
level of their fees); on the other hand, Leonardo at which he taught. The most important north-
was frustrated throughout his life that he was ern humanist was undoubtedly Rudolf Agricola
never accepted by the learned humanists as one (1444–1485), who studied in Pavia and Ferrara
of their own. for more than ten years before taking an offi-
Unlike the new humanism, the new Italian cial position in Groningen in the northern Low
visual arts were not received north of the Alps Countries, from where he originated. Among
until relatively late, with a few exceptions such as his writings is a textbook inspired by humanis-
Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), the south German tic thought, De inventione dialectica (‘On How to
graphic artist and painter. A unique and dis- Learn Logic’) which was widely used for teach-
tinctive realistic style of painting and sculpture ing philosophy in the sixteenth century. Agricola
developed in north-western Europe during the argued that the humanistic ideal of a pragmatic
fifteenth century, finding its most sublime expres- search for plausible solutions to everyday ques-
sion in the works of the Flemish painters Jan van tions was worth more than all the speculation
Eyck (c.1390–1441) and Rogier van der Weyden about things that could not be experienced to
(c.1400–1464). Their works were highly appreci- which scholastic dialectics was devoted.
ated and bought throughout Europe, including Through men like Luder and Agricola the
Italy. new humanism permeated the circles of higher
education and the governments of towns and
principalities outside Italy, though it also encoun-
The new humanism outside Italy tered objections. The propagation of ancient
‘pagan’ virtues aroused particular suspicion in
From Italy, the new humanism gradually spread conservative clerical circles, and for this reason
over the Alps, where it was linked more closely the humanists failed to get university curricula
to the intellectual debate about reforms in the adapted to their educational ideals, even though

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they certainly tried often enough in the German Erasmus wrote a sort of moral guideline especially
Empire during the second half of the fifteenth for the purpose entitled Enchiridion militis Christi
century. From time to time their efforts procured (‘Handbook of a Christian Knight’), advocating
the appointment of a humanistic teacher to lec- knowledge and prayer as weapons to be used in
ture in rhetoric or classical poetry. Martin Luther the fight against vice and sin.
was closely connected to one of the attempts at Erasmus and Luther belonged to the earliest
reform which bore some fruit. Luther was not a generation of intellectuals who were able to dis-
humanist in the strict sense – he was not inter- seminate their views through a revolutionary
ested in pre-Christian Latin or Greek literature new medium, the printing press. Erasmus was
– but he had an intense dislike for the scholas- the very first to recognise its enormous potential:
tic teaching of philosophy and theology. In his twenty-three editions of his Enchiridion appeared
view, the teaching of theology should be based between 1515 and 1521. He could often be found
solely on the Bible, and good teaching of the in the offices and workshops of the Swiss and
Bible benefited from humanism’s new historical- Italian printers who published his works, and
philological methods. without ever having held a public office of any
Other northern humanists shared Luther’s significance Erasmus achieved the status of a best-
attempts to use the studia humanitatis to imple- selling writer and cultural megastar. At the height
ment necessary reforms in the Church, and they, of his fame, around 1515, his name was on the
too, saw the establishment of a historically and lips of every intellectual of importance in Europe.
philologically sound new text of the Bible as the
first desideratum. The most famous of them was
Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (c.1467–1536). Points to remember
His religious ideals, which he referred to as the
‘philosophy of Christ’, were greatly influenced by ■■ The medieval world view, at least for edu-
his upbringing in the spirit of the Devotio Moderna cated people, was basically ancient Greek.
(see Chapter 12). Erasmus found that the basis The reception of ancient pagan knowledge
of faith could never be learned theology; it was was secured in Late Antiquity through the
a personal and unbounded trust in God, driven development of the ‘handmaiden’ doctrine.
by internal experience and complemented by a ■■ The same doctrine assured that the Bible and
morally pure life. He found the Church’s out- the great Church Fathers of Late Antiquity
ward show of minor importance, and in Praise of remained the unquestionable benchmark of
Folly, a work still popular today, he used his most all medieval science and scholarship.
feared weapon, satire, to poke fun at the carni- ■■ The basis of any programme of higher edu-
valesque features of Catholic religious life of the cation in the Middle Ages consisted of the
time and at the greed and tyranny of prelates and study of the seven artes liberales (‘free/intel-
monks. Yet Erasmus never wanted to break with lectual skills’). These could be studied in two
the Church of Rome. He was more in favour of types of schools that were connected to mon-
a rebirth than a reformation of Christianity, and asteries and cathedrals, respectively.
that was precisely where he differed with Luther, ■■ The quality of higher education and schol-
from whom he openly distanced himself in 1520. arship changed dramatically with the
Education was at the heart of the rebirth of ‘rationalist turn’ that was taken in the elev-
faith envisaged by Erasmus, education aimed enth and twelfth centuries. Its core was a
at the moral improvement of individual believ- growing trust in the power of human reason.
ers in the spirit of early Christianity, and not at Its two first ‘products’ were the reintroduction
rejecting the Church’s doctrines and institutions. of (Neo)Platonic cosmology and Aristotelian

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logic in the cathedral schools of northern

Suggestions for further
France.
■■ A further boost to higher education was given
reading
by the formation of universities from the Grant, Edward (2004), Science and Religion, 400 bc to
end of the twelfth century onwards. These ad 1550: From Aristotle to Copernicus (Baltimore: the
developed from professional organisations Johns Hopkins University Press). Expert survey of
for teachers and/or students into full-blown the history of science that is also comprehensible
for non-scientists (which most historians are), with
educational institutes with fixed curricula,
a focus on the fateful relationship between medieval
teaching – and examination requirements,
science that remained deeply rooted in non-Christian
and grades. Both teachers and students were traditions, and the Christian faith and its Church
regarded as clergymen, and therefore enjoyed that dictated a world view that could not always be
benefit of clergy. reconciled with science.
■■ In universities, the study of the artes liberales Jaeger, C. Stephen (2000), The Envy of Angels: Cathedral
Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950–
would remain by far the most popular disci-
1200 (Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania
pline, but its programme was fundamentally Press). Eye-opening monograph on the awakening
altered by the addition of the ‘three philoso- of scholastic science and scholarship in the cathe-
phies’ (physics, metaphysics, ethics), which dral schools of Germany and France, with a focus
were all three dominated by textbooks of on schools and their teachers, on the new human-
ism and its spiritual opposing force, and on the link
Aristotle.
between scholarship and court culture.
■■ Repeated tensions at the University of Paris
Nauert, Charles (2006, 2nd edn), Humanism and the
between ecclesiastical authorities and theolo- Culture of Renaissance Europe (Cambridge: CUP).
gians on the one hand, and secular masters Updated edition of exemplary, succinct treatment
of the arts faculties on the other hand, of the concept of civic humanism and its dissemina-
contributed significantly to a fundamental tion outside its Italian city-state cradle.
Pedersen, Olaf (1997), The First Universities: Studium
separation of science and religion at the end
Generale and the Origins of University Education in
of the thirteenth century. Europe (Cambridge: CUP). This engaging history of
■■ In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the early universities, besides discussing intellectual
Italian humanists propagated a new educa- climate, curricula and degrees, is concerned with all
tional ideal, sold as studia humanitatis (‘study kinds of institutional aspects, including housing and
financial structure. It also pays ample attention to
of the humanities’), that was far removed
student life.
from scholastic university learning and more
Starr, S. Frederick (2013), Lost Enlightenment: Central
directed towards the pragmatic formation of Asia’s Golden Ages From the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane
virtuous and politically involved citizens. (Princeton: Princeton UP). In this engaging book
■■ In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centu- Starr convincingly qualifies in two important
ries, Italian humanism spread over the Alps, respects the cliché that in the Middle Ages ‘the Arabs
were well ahead of the Christian West’. First, the
where it took on a more concentrated form,
‘Islamic Enlightenment’ was seriously undermined
often with a narrow focus on biblical study in the twelfth century by the rise of conservative
and Christian ethics. theological ideas which discouraged innovative
research in the field of natural philosophy. Second,
the most influential intellectual spokesmen of the
Islamic Enlightenment were not Arabs (in an ethnic
sense) but men from central Asia (present-day Iran,
Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan).

298
9 Towns and the
urbanisation of medieval
society

The phenomenon of the tion and relative density of habitation, by the

predominantly non-agrarian nature of economic
pre-industrial town activities and by the exercise of all kinds of cen-
No other phenomenon in European history tralised functions, ranging from economic and
before industrialisation has had such a profound political to cultural. Second, the expansion in size
influence as the process of the growth of towns of existing towns. Third, the increase in the pro-
that started during the tenth century. Like most portion of the total population living in towns
features of development undergone by Europe (the so-called urbanisation rate), which was only
over the centuries, this transformation appeared possible if food production rose in equal meas-
earlier and was more intensive in the southern ure. This points to the fact that the countryside
and western regions of the continent than in the was deeply involved in this process. For lack of
north and east. data, neither of these three developments can
be captured in exact figures, let alone specified
in time and space. However, the tendencies are
The scale of towns and of undisputed. Between 1000 and 1300, the total
urbanisation population in Europe doubled, and simultane-
ously the percentage of people living in towns
By urbanisation in this context we mean three increased as well.
different things. First, the growth of the num- Also undisputed is that in Europe between
ber of settlements that could be called towns roughly 1000 and 1300 all three tendencies coin-
– places characterised by the spatial concentra- cided; after that, the size of most towns stagnated,

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TABLE 9.1 Estimated population of Europe, in millions nent, while the larger towns developed mainly
along the coasts and major rivers. The reason for
Year Population
this was that for the supply of bulk goods such
1000 38
as grain, building materials and raw materials for
1300 78
1450 50
other industries, accessibility by ship was of over-
1500 61 riding importance. Transport by ship was many
times cheaper per unit of weight than transport
by land. All the big towns in Europe were of
or even fell. While this ties in with general popu- necessity ports, therefore. Only massive surplus
lation decline in the late Middle Ages (see Table extraction through coercion by a strong central-
9.1), quite remarkably the share of the urban ised state could overcome this rule, as in some
population in the whole kept increasing, judg- Chinese and Islamic capital cities.
ing by the growth of the number of small and In 1500 the really large towns were still around
medium-sized towns during that same period (see the Mediterranean Sea, where during Antiquity,
Table 9.2). Moreover, regions where urbanisation Rome probably had a population of one million,
had been weak before 1300, such as the north- and, in the early Middle Ages, Constantinople
ern Low Countries, central and northern Europe, and Córdoba grew to half a million.
now experienced a modest take-off. What was the reason for the existence of towns
By 1500, some 10 per cent of Europeans lived of such exceptional size in the Mediterranean
in towns with a population of at least 5,000. In region? The explanation must be sought in the
Iberia and Italy this share was clearly above the productivity of agriculture in the region, accessi-
average, namely 14 per cent – and in Italy it had bility for large ships, availability of raw materials
been much higher two centuries before. The scale for a large-scale export industry, the stimulating
of medieval towns remained relatively modest: connections with the higher developed regions
in 1300 only Venice, Florence, Milan and Paris in the East and the attraction or pressure that a
had (slightly) more than 100,000 inhabitants. capital city could exert on an extensive hinter-
By 1500, Florence was reduced to 40,000 inhab- land. In Europe north of the Alps and Pyrenees
itants, and only around 150 towns had above only one or two metropolises had as many as
10,000. The population of the great majority – 100,000 inhabitants before the sixteenth century.
about 3,500 of the 4,000 places which enjoyed Antwerp, then the heart of the economic world
town rights – varied from a few hundred to a system, was one of them by 1560. The other one
few thousand. The numerous small towns were was Paris, the capital city of a large kingdom,
mostly situated in the land mass of the conti- which attracted the population surplus from a

TABLE 9.2 Urban population by size of towns

Number of towns Urban population (thousands)

Population in 1300 in 1500 in 1300 in 1500
>100,000 4 4 (400) 450
40,000–99,000 15 14 (750) 704
20,000–39,000 33 37 (890) 981
10,000–19,000 73 99 (950) 1,306
5,000–9,000 ? 363 ? 2,468
Totals ? 517 ? 5,909

Note: parentheses denote estimated figures.

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wide countryside where no other important cities town’s inhabitants could eat only if there were
grew. A century later Amsterdam reached a new sufficient food surpluses in the surrounding
threshold – 200,000 – which was easily surpassed countryside to be sold in the town. As the town
by London in the eighteenth century. These were grew, food had to be brought from a wider hin-
the unique centres of the world economy in their terland, and the market took on interregional
time; they could only grow to such a size because dimensions. Townspeople had to be produc-
they formed the core of an ever-expanding tive themselves, of course, in order to buy their
economic system. food and raw materials. In this way, every town
Not all towns had commerce as their primary was entirely dependent on its supply lines and
function: a number of them came into being potential markets for its own products. Hence,
or were founded to provide services to a cathe- the more a town grew, the more its control
dral or some other administrative centre. The over longer trading routes through an extensive
capitals of reasonably centralised states, such as hinterland became necessary.
Constantinople, Paris and London, had a spe- Conversely, the presence of an urban mar-
cial attraction because central administrative ket stimulated the rural economy: the demand
organs could concentrate their resources there. encouraged market-oriented production, in the
On a far more modest scale episcopal towns and sense of both enlargement and diversification of
the administrative centres of territorial princes the supply. Purchasing power was concentrated
served as concentration points for the consumer in the town for a variety of foodstuffs, such as
expenditure of the elites and their clients. The meat and dairy products, as well as for the raw
taxes centralised there on the spot created a materials from the countryside needed for indus-
separate market for specific goods and services. try – brewing grains, flax, wool, leather, building
During the Middle Ages, towns with such one- materials, fuel, dyes and more. The townspeople
sided functions were usually relatively small, themselves contributed directly to diversifica-
like the archiepiscopal seats of Canterbury, Sens tion in rural production by buying up land as a
and Esztergom. Iberian towns derived their great safe investment, in order to make certain of their
freedoms as well as an extended territory from own supply by buying rents in grain and keeping
the Reconquest, led by the kings, and thus func- livestock, and by becoming owners of peat-lands,
tioned as bases of conquest and occupation. lime kilns, stone quarries or vineyards.
As a consequence, the land-owning aristocracy Some scarce goods, such as wine, certain sorts
dominated the cities since that time. of wood, metal and stone, could be brought
We can conclude that a town could never from much further afield. Urban demand had a
be considered without its hinterland. A town profound effect on its immediate surroundings,
population was formed in the first instance by but for specific products the effects were felt at a
migration from the countryside; we know from distance too. Sheep-farming in rural England, for
later centuries that pre-industrial towns always example, was greatly stimulated by the demand
had a mortality surplus, so that a town’s popula- for wool from the cloth industry in northern
tion could only remain level or increase through France and the Low Countries from the eleventh
immigration. The primary explanation for the century onwards, and later also in Italy. Alum
growth of the towns must always be sought in the (used for fixing colours in textiles) was mined in
countryside or in smaller towns, through chain Asia Minor, amber collected on Prussian beaches,
migration. and pitch and tar gathered in Poland’s forests to
From an economic perspective, every town be worked in industries in the West. This created
was both a market and a production centre for a need for long-distance transport. In this way
industries and services. In the first place, the relatively few urban merchants and entrepreneurs

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brought about the transformation of a consider- per cent in the great region between London,
able part of the economy’s primary sector. the Loire and the area of the lower Rhine; the
The interlinking of town and hinterland can Rhône valley and the coastline of the Ligurian
be seen in the correlation between the degree Sea also appear to have had a fairly high urban
of urbanisation and the population density of a growth. Very low ratings applied in the Iberian
specific region. Where there were relatively many peninsula, with the exception of the north-east
townspeople, the density of population in the and Andalusia, central and north Europe and the
hinterland was also proportionately high. This Celtic periphery of the British islands. In north-
is logical because only an overpopulated rural ern Italy and the coastal and river regions of the
area could afford to lose people to the town, but Low Countries one in three inhabitants lived in
also because the proximity of the town, with a large town. In central Europe this was less than
its demand and investment capital, led to an one in ten. This is a significantly marked contrast,
intensification of agriculture. revealing clearly the enormous regional diversity
In 1984, the American historian Jan de Vries within Europe.
published a sophisticated method to express in Of course there are some drawbacks to the
one single standard the growth of the towns in method used by de Vries. In particular, his
pre-industrial Europe (omitting the Balkans for decision to consider only settlements with a min-
source-technical reasons). It is based on three fac- imum of 10,000 inhabitants as towns means that,
tors: 1) the absolute population numbers of towns for the Middle Ages, too many smaller places
with more than 10,000 inhabitants; 2) the distances which actually functioned as towns are ignored.
between these towns; and 3) the geographical De Vries made his choice in order to be able to
location, expressed in a quotient. For each one of maintain an equal measurement gauge in his
the 154 towns with at least 10,000 inhabitants in long-term perspective until 1800. In the period
about 1500 he calculated what he called an ‘urban before 1750 the thousands of towns with just a
potential’ at different moments in the three cen- few thousand, or even just a few hundred, inhab-
turies between 1500 and 1800. By charting the itants formed points of reference in their area
measured ratings it was possible to reconstruct a for economic and administrative activity. Some
geography of town growth moving through time, had a special significance for a particular branch
one which was not determined or defined by con- of industry, as a fishing port or a market for an
tinually changing and often random political units important agricultural hinterland, for example.
but by the socio-geographical reality. The role of small towns was particularly impor-
In 1500 Venice scored the highest absolute rat- tant in areas with very low levels of urbanisation.
ing. This is not surprising: with possibly 120,000
inhabitants it was the biggest town of its time;
there were several other large towns nearby, and The morphology of the
it was a port. Three regions stand out with the medieval town
highest relative ratings, namely 80 per cent of
that of Venice: the Po Valley including Milan Contemporaries of the medieval towns were
and Genoa; the southern Low Countries and clearly aware of their distinctive character, and
the Gulf of Naples. These three regions formed in many cases archaeological remains still bear
a large area of high consumption, emphasising witness to their typical manifestations. Town
even more the enormous predominance of the walls, ramparts and gates marked the separation
northern Italian belt of towns. between the urban space and the surrounding
After these three peaks the ratings drop quickly country. The urban community shut itself off from
to just above 50 per cent around Paris and 50 the environs both literally and metaphorically.

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Its walls protected it from attacks and invad- always offer protection. As towns continued to
ers. The model of a town’s defences was actually grow, they had to provide their own security:
an enlargement of a castle’s defences: walls one originally an earthen wall with a palisade and a
could walk around, battlements, watchtowers, moat, later on a stone wall. In Cologne a wall was
fortified gates and drawbridges. The urban com- built around a suburb, the Rheinvorstadt, in 948:
munity came into being in a world dominated by the name recalls that this was a settlement on
feudal warriors, like a foreign body that had to the Rhine outside the walls of the ancient town.
use the same means to defend itself. Verdun, on the Meuse, an important centre of
In the early Middle Ages the old provin- the slave trade in the early Middle Ages, seems to
cial capitals, civitates within the former Roman have had a fortified commercial settlement before
Empire, still retained some administrative func- 985.
tions as episcopal seats and thereby some urban The chronology of the growth of the towns
characteristics of a town, albeit greatly reduced in in size can be seen in the succession of walls,
comparison to the situation in the third century. still often recognisable as concentric circles in
Rheims, the metropolis of the province of Belgica the ground-plans of city centres. The city wall
Secunda, spread over some 30 hectares; Cologne, of Paris, dating from the beginning of the thir-
the capital of Germania Secunda, enclosed more teenth century, was 2.8 kilometres long on the
than 96 hectares within its ancient walls. Many right bank of the Seine, 2.5 kilometres on the left
of these ancient towns were at the heart of the bank and encompassed 253 hectares. When these
medieval expansion. fortifications were extended at the beginning of
The oldest town communities that were formed the fourteenth century, the town covered 439
spontaneously grew up on new locations with fea- hectares. In Flanders, towns were fairly spread
tures very different from those of the Roman towns. out, less densely built and, above all, buildings
Many of the Roman towns had been planned from were not as tall as in the south. Ghent was the
a centralised empire with a substantial network of most spacious, with a surface area of 644 hectares
roads. Most of the medieval towns were unplanned and walls of almost 13 kilometres in circumfer-
but developed, so to speak, organically, and their ence in 1300.
location was primarily determined by navigable Two things stand out at this point: urban com-
waterways. Favourable locations were river con- munities made very considerable investments in
fluences (Ghent, Mainz, Coblenz, Dordrecht), these fortifications, for which they must have col-
river mouths (Pisa, Marseilles, Hamburg, Danzig), lected financial resources. The first public works,
small islands which made a crossing easier (Paris, with their own bookkeeping, were thus created
Strasbourg, Lille, Leiden), natural harbours in the name and under the control of the com-
(Southampton, Venice, Genoa, Rouen, Antwerp), munity. On the other hand, the increased size of
fords (Bruges, Utrecht) and junctions of rivers and the towns made it more difficult to lay siege to
roads (Frankfurt, Maastricht). them during wars.
The earliest urban settlements were populated In general, the morphology of the medieval
mainly by merchants and artisans. They often set- town was the result of a natural process of growth
tled in the vicinity of an older centre of authority, that, according to the condition of the terrain,
such as the seat of a bishop, an abbey or a fortress, expanded concentrically out from one or more
as well as in geographically favourable locations. cores in all possible directions. This made the
The demarcation of the spheres of influence of ground-plans of medieval towns irregular, but
the established lords might involve much nego- either semi-circular or circular (on one or both
tiation and not infrequent struggles, but, in the banks of a river) in form, bisected by axes run-
event of a threat, an existing fortification could ning from the central market-place to the gates.

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Only those towns founded and built at one time that stretches out in front of it, neatly divided
revealed the chessboard pattern of the Roman into nine equal wedges, representing the city
towns: examples of these in the Low Countries magistrates who point their fingers – and bend
were the harbour towns of Nieuwpoort, Damme their minds – in harmony to the city hall.
and Gravelines, founded by Philip, count of
Flanders, in the 1160s, while King Alfonse VIII of
León founded a series of harbour towns on the The beginnings of urban
Cantabrian coast, such as Santander (1187) and society
Laredo (1200) with the aim to link the Castilian
economy to the Atlantic trade. The duke of lower Merchant guilds and urban
Austria built Wiener Neustadt in 1194 as a bul- patriciates
wark against the Hungarians, financing it with
the ransom that shortly before had been paid for As towns grew rapidly by immigration of new
Richard the Lionheart (see Chapter 7). As part inhabitants having various social and geographi-
of the eastward expansion, German colonists cal, and sometimes also ethnic, backgrounds,
shortly after 1200 settled in a series of towns the primary concern was to establish law and
along the south coast of the Baltic Sea, among order within the expanding community. Many
them Stralsund, Greifswald, Rostock, Danzig and immigrants had fled the relatively overpopu-
Riga. Some of these had older Slavic roots, which lated countryside, where they had been subdued
led to the juxtaposition of urban settlements by in unfree status, in search for new opportunities.
the different ethnic groups separately. Colony In the initial development, lords still held vari-
towns, newly founded by the Teutonic Order in ous kinds of powers on the urban soil and in the
Prussia (Torun/Thorn and Elblag/Elbing on the environment, which urged the town dwellers
Vistula) had a more geometrical ground-plan. to seek protection in their unity and solidarity.
If the general tendency was one of unplanned, A core group of propertied free citizens involved
spontaneous development, rich old towns some- in trade tried to create trust networks in order
times spent large amounts of money on carefully to protect themselves and their fellow members
planned embellishment of public spaces. A against outside risks, and to reduce transaction
famous example is the Tuscan town of Siena, costs. Trust could be built upon acquaintance,
whose council, the College of Nine, at the end rooted in family ties and secured by a guarantee
of the thirteenth century decided to completely of solvability, and an oath of allegiance to the
redesign and rebuild the city centre. It would urban community, imposed on newcomers.
take about half a century and the spending of During the early stages of urban growth, mer-
tens of thousands of lira of public money before chant guilds, also named hanses and confraternities,
the entire project was completed. Special com- were closely interwoven with the government
missioners were appointed to watch over the of towns. The guildhall was the seat of public
aesthetics of the reconstruction works, whose authority, and eligibility for office depended on
main aim was to add to ‘the beauty of the city membership of the trustworthy guilds. Economic
for the delight of both citizens and foreigners’. and public power were thus vested in the same
To this end, houses in the city centre had to be class. In the oldest surviving statutes of such
aligned and the design of the facades of buildings merchant associations – such as that of the con-
along the main streets was strictly controlled. The fraternity of Valenciennes, dating from between
results leave the visitor dumbfounded even today 1051 and 1070 – membership was still com-
when his eyes travel from the majestic Palazzo pletely open, and most attention was given to
Comunale to the magnificent, shell-shape square religious ceremonies, to mutual assistance on

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the journeys undertaken in armed groups to members were viri hereditarii, hereditary men,
distant markets. Solidarity was a bare necessity, meaning that they owned land in the town.
especially for the travelling merchants who were In Bruges, the London Hanse, the association
exposed to robbery and arbitrary treatment by of merchants engaging in trade with England,
foreign authorities. It also helped to pacify dis- formed the heart of the town’s government; in
orderly behaviour and fights that might occur Florence and Louvain, meanwhile, it was impor-
during the drinking bouts, aimed at strengthen- tant to be a member of one of the guilds of cloth
ing social ties. In contemporary regulations of merchants. An extreme example of this was the
the merchant guilds of Saint-Omer and Arras in Council of Venice in 1297: the names of a thou-
northern France, particular attention was given sand notable families were entered in a Golden
to maintaining order and setting standards of Book; in the course of the centuries many fami-
behaviour during the meetings and binges. lies died out and fewer and fewer survived, but
Charitable gifts of wine were also prescribed for no new ones were admitted until the end of the
the clergy, the poor and the lepers of the town. Republic, conquered by the French in 1796.
Community spirit had to be strengthened by the The new elite had enough capital at its dis-
oath compulsory on joining the sworn alliance of posal to buy up freehold land in the town. The
burghers. phenomenal rise in the value of such land result-
It is clear that, over several generations, a mix- ing from urban development formed a new
ture of merchants and local noble families were source of wealth, and possibly also of prestige,
able to emerge as a new social elite, labelled in the for whoever could build a big stone house with
scholarly literature as patriciate, after the urban towers, battlements and embrasures in the heart
elite in Roman Antiquity. Its superiority was no of the old town was indeed a real seigneur. Such
longer based on physical force or other people’s a lord looked beyond the town walls for even
lack of legal freedoms. It was founded on profits greater status by copying the lifestyle of the
earned in long-distance trade and on the eco- nobility. He travelled on horseback, so that he
nomic dependence of artisans from merchants. was literally higher than the ordinary people, and
The merchant guilds were in control of produc- surrounded himself with a retinue of squires and
tion in various English towns by the beginning servants decked out in the colourful livery of his
of the twelfth century, and in Cambridge, for family. He bought property, if possible a feudal
example, as early as the eleventh century. It was benefice with seigneurial rights and the prestig-
the merchants who as entrepreneurs coordinated ious obligation to serve the prince in his wars,
the production process and delivered the semi- on horseback and with a number of followers.
finished articles to the various specialised artisans He used a personal seal, assumed a coat of arms,
for completion. And, finally, it was these same and even dreamed of a noble title, or at least of
merchant-entrepreneurs who were responsible for marrying his children to aristocratic heirs. The
exporting the finished products. In this way, all noble lifestyle, which actually dated back to the
the artisans in their workshops were dependent stylised forms of medieval chivalry, continued to
on the orders and price-fixing of the merchants. exercise a great attraction for socially climbing
In every town, the urban patriciate had its burghers until the nineteenth century. In north-
own name. In Paris the elite organised itself ern and central Italy, the integration between
into a guild of merchants who controlled the the merchant elite and the old landed nobility
river trade; they elected the merchants’ provost took place much earlier and more quickly than it
and four aldermen who, in addition to holding did further north, because in Italy noble families
certain powers in the city, issued economic regu- traditionally had urban residences and were not
lations and administered justice. In Ghent the loath to financial involvement in commerce.

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Social differentiation and conflict Roman Empire the ‘council families’, as they
were called, meaning the old patriciate, generally
Merchant guilds gradually acquired an exclu- retained their authority or even their monopoly.
sive character whereby the less wealthy, perhaps In Nuremberg, Zürich and Strasbourg, their posi-
also the less well-behaved, and certainly the less tion was not threatened until the nineteenth
powerful townspeople were excluded from what century, and in Lübeck revolts at the beginning of
would thenceforth be a club for top people. The the fifteenth century were crushed. The extent to
explanation for this process of closure and exclu- which town authorities could be forced open to
sion is twofold: it was about numbers – firm allow in new generations of merchants and arti-
solidarity does not work above a critical limit – sans depended on the relationships of numbers
and about saturation. After the initial, immense and power inside a town and on the opportuni-
possibilities for growth, as competition became ties to form a coalition. As was the case with the
fiercer the longer-established burghers tried to acquisition of town privileges, the result varied
keep the privileges they had won for themselves considerably from region to region and often
and their children. The dominant class of mer- also from town to town. As social movements
chants and entrepreneurs monopolised town occurred mainly on a local scale, law and gov-
government and used that power in their own ernance largely remained specific for individual
interests. towns.
This strategy would not remain uncontested.
During the second half of the thirteenth century
there were uprisings in several towns, caused by Autonomy and liberty
popular anger at a falling economy or new taxes.
It was not the worst-off who stood to benefit Medieval towns are often thought of as isles of
from these revolts, however, but the newly rich liberty and peace amidst oceans of lordly vio-
and the higher middle classes. Until then, they lence and suppression. What really mattered is
had been excluded from power, but, by placing the degree of autonomy, which depended on the
themselves at the head of a popular movement, relative power as expressed by the size of the pop-
they were able to force a breakthrough. In north ulation and their capital accumulation. German
and central Italy the middle classes organised ‘free imperial cities’, especially those in the north,
into the so-called Popolo, which in many city- hardly felt any interference by the emperor and
states succeeded in grabbing power from around the larger ones were well positioned to keep
the middle of the thirteenth century. In Florence off the local and territorial lords, at least until
in 1293, a popular revolt broke the monopoly the middle of the fifteenth century. Also, urban
of the local patriciate, called the magnati. The liberty was not so much liberty to do whatever
Genoese patriciate had to share one-quarter of citizens would have liked to do with their place
the seats in the council with representatives of as it was liberty from too much interference by
the crafts that had revolted in 1339 under the any lord or bishop. The autonomy that towns
leadership of Simone Boccanegra. Often, like pursued in the eleventh and twelfth centuries
in Florence, Popolo regimes were closely con- precisely was the aspiration to govern themselves
nected to the major merchant and craft guilds. without the direct interference of their lord.
In Flanders the liberation movement against the Even this limited idea of liberty should not
French occupation broke the patrician monopoly be confused with any ideal of equality, let alone
in 1302. In the industrial city of Ghent, twenty democracy. Certainly in the early stages of urban
out of the twenty-six seats of aldermen would be development, neither were all inhabitants legally
occupied by members of the crafts. In the Holy free by definition (town dwellers could be serfs

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PLATE 9.1 Ypres was a large centre of textile production and one of the cities where international fairs had
been held since well before their first mention in 1127. At the height of its development, the local government
decided to construct a worthy drapers’ hall to facilitate the trade. Works started in 1260 and in 1304 the largest
civic building of the Middle Ages was finished. Its façade was 133 metres long and its surfaces totalled 5,000
square metres. The heavy belfry tower was 70 metres high. Originally, a belfry was a symbol of seigneurial
power, but the cities of Flanders and Hainaut adopted this model as a watchtower where bells signalled alarm
as well as working hours. The building was nearly destroyed by the bombardment in November 1914, but
entirely reconstructed after the war.

or slaves of some native landlord or, in the officially registered, and newcomers could only
Mediterranean area, slaves from non-Christian register against payment of a substantial entrance
origins bought on the slave market), nor were fee. Finally, in considering all these basic charac-
all inhabitants treated as equals. Ethnic groups teristics of medieval towns it is worth realising
were openly discriminated or privileged. More that the differences with villages were graded and
in general, as far as we can see, towns had oli- relative, not essential and absolute. For instance,
garchic governments (see further on p. 311), and as we saw in Chapter 5, in their (often successful)
the large majority of inhabitants, starting with aspiration to establish autonomous local govern-
the female population, were kept from exercis- ment, that is to say, government without direct
ing full rights to participate in government either interference of the local lord, villages were not
actively or passively. In most cases full citizenship unlike towns. Like towns, villages could also be
was only obtained (if not by inheritance) by being chartered, or walled, for that matter.

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Urban law and privileges spirit of the early townspeople is understandable,

although for different reasons in northern and
The physical demarcation of urban space by walls southern Europe. In the north, most towns were
was a symbol of the separate legal status of the new; their first inhabitants had come together
town community. One of the characteristics of the from near and far. Many of them had escaped from
pre-industrial town in Europe was that it enjoyed dependent relationships of serfdom, and forced
its own set of customs and laws, specifically tai- return to their (former) lords was still a possibility.
lored to each urban society in particular. The The ‘statute’ of Valenciennes, originally referred
origin of this can be found in the sworn pact that to as a ‘peace’, came to be called a ‘community’
the earliest townspeople made with each other for or ‘commune’ in later charters, meaning the com-
their mutual protection. They swore to help each munity of sworn burghers who enjoyed the full
other should they be attacked in the town or on a privileges of the town. These citizens were legally
journey, and they arranged a peaceful coexistence. free, without any of the limitations attached to
These sworn communities, coniurationes, put into the status of serfs on a demesne: no labour tasks,
practice a very old legal remedy, typical of most no servile dues in cash or kind, no restrictions to
illiterate societies and groups of people who react their freedom of movement or choice of marriage
against the dominant order, namely the collective partner. For this reason, the urban area was also
oath, sworn on holy objects so that the threat of known as the ‘freedom’ of the town. Town privi-
divine retribution as well as human punishment leges were personal: they did not apply per se to
hung over the violator of the oath. Such coniu- all inhabitants of the town area but to all its regis-
rationes are also known from rural communities, tered, honourable burghers, wherever they might
but the threat they posed to the authority of lords be, inside the town or elsewhere.
was many times bigger when towns and wealthy On the other hand, in the south, and espe-
merchants were involved. The close community cially in Italy, most medieval towns were

BOX 9.1 THE ‘PEACE’ OF VALENCIENNES

An early example of a comprehensive town statute is the so-called ‘peace’ of Valenciennes, which
was granted by the count of Hainault in 1114. The grant followed a whole series of enactments
of town privileges in what is now north France: Cambrai in 1077, Saint-Quentin in 1080, Beauvais
in around 1099, Noyon in 1108 and Laon in about 1109. These first written documents generally
mean no more than the recognition by the lord or bishop of an already existing situation, where a
‘community’ or ‘commune’ with its own (customary) law had been formed on the basis of a sworn
association. The designation ‘peace’ indicates the primary concern of the citizenry: protection
from the violence of the world of the knights. The peace movement that had been set in motion by
the bishops and abbots of south France shortly before 1000 had paved the way for the foundation
of more specific territorial jurisdictions where peace could be established in accordance with
their own, non-feudal law. Towns were thus islands of peace in the midst of a world where legal
uncertainty and lack of safety reigned.
On reaching the age of sixteen, every burgher of Valenciennes had to swear faithfully to
observe the ‘peace’. Should he refuse to do so, even after a day’s grace to reconsider the mat-
ter if necessary, then he was required to leave the town immediately and his house was pulled

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down. The community was based on compulsory mutual support and solidarity, inside the walls
and outside. The ‘peace’ formulated punishments typical for the towns, in which private revenge
was replaced as far as possible by officially imposed fines. Exclusion from the ‘community’, later
systematically worked out as banishment, was one form of punishment. Corporal punishment was
imposed exclusively on strangers – described as those who did not belong to the circle of ‘men
of the peace’. The ‘peace’ aimed to replace irrational proof (trial by ordeal and the judicial duel)
whenever possible by the testimony of at least two ‘men of the peace’ or fellow burghers. This
is one of the oldest non-ecclesiastical texts where such a procedure is provided for. The articles
below (there were fifty-seven articles in the oldest version) shed a clear light on the burghers’
concerns.

1. It is solemnly observed and agreed in peace that every merchant who comes to the market
in Valenciennes or goes from it may be secure at all times, himself and his wares, the only
exception being the burghers of Douai. Whoever contravenes this, even if he is a knight, and is
caught in the act or charged through the evidence of two men from the peace of Valenciennes,
shall firstly be required to make good the damage that he has done to the merchant and fur-
ther pay a fine of 60 shillings, of which the merchant shall receive 20 and the chancellor of
the peace 40. […]
2. Any person, be he knight or not, who takes commodities or other goods, movable or not, from
men of the peace of the town of Valenciennes on their way to the market at Valenciennes or
elsewhere, and who is caught in the act or charged through the evidence of two men of the
mentioned peace, must make amends as laid down above. […]
3. If a person from the surrounding countryside comes to and departs from the market of
Valenciennes between sunrise on a Thursday and sunrise on a Monday, his lord may not
arrest him unless it is to bring him to the count’s law court. […] Should the governor or the
lord maltreat the man it shall be considered a violation of the peace for which there is a fine
of 60 shillings for the count and his chancellor. […]
4. Should a person who is a member of the town peace be accosted or molested at a market
elsewhere because of the administration of justice of the town or for another cause, then shall
his accuser be charged with violation of the peace as if it had happened in our own town.

Source: P. Godding and J. Pycke, ‘La paix de Valenciennes de 1114. Commentaire et édition critique’, Bulletin
de la Commission royale pour la publication des anciennes lois et ordonnances de Belgique XXIX (1981).

continuations of Late Antique cities, under the North. Both struggles took place in the eleventh
nominal lordship of the local bishop. Of old the and twelfth centuries and were often violent,
regional nobility had (fortified) houses in major because after all this was a world dominated by
towns, which made their presence very much knights and private warfare. The trial of strength
felt. So, when the urban upper classes of noble between Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, also king
families and rich merchants in Italy started to of Italy, and the towns of Lombardy which, as
aspire to liberty and administrative autonomy, communes under the leadership of their own
this emancipatory movement was completely dif- elected consuls had won their freedom from the
ferent from the struggle for urban liberties in the territorial power of the bishops in about 1100,

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is well known. Despite his military victory over balance. Similarly, the privileges of a town were
Milan, Barbarossa could not hold on to his power continually subject to revision and adaptation,
in the face of the league of Lombard towns, and prompted by the evolution of society and chang-
in 1183 he was forced to recognise their factual ing power relations.
autonomy. In the twelfth century the German Hence the customs and law of a town con-
kings also recognised the rights to freedom sisted of an odd mixture of privileges granted
of the inhabitants of the old episcopal towns in writing by various authorities in the course
along the Rhine, but here there was no question of centuries, and their interpretation and exten-
of real autonomy for a long time. In about the sions in daily practice. In tangible form, it could
same period of time the kings of France granted be seen as a heavy chest full of solemnly sealed
rights with local autonomy to several towns in documents and deeds from diverse authori-
the north of their kingdom, partly with an eye ties – from popes, emperors and kings to local
to strengthening the monarchy against the great lords. Everyone had his say on specific mat-
feudal lords who until then held these territories ters and sometimes the ruler granted extensive
in their grasp. King Louis IX explained this in so statutes dealing primarily with criminal justice
many words in the Enseignements (‘Instructions’) and economic rights. There did not seem to be
to his son: ‘I well recollect that Paris and the good much system to it. Because many statutes stated
towns of my kingdom helped me against the that the magistracy had the right to interpret
barons when I was newly crowned.’ the statute and to alter it if necessary, unwritten
Bishops who had been lord and master in customary laws grew up alongside the written
their episcopal seats since the establishment of laws. This was a sort of jurisprudence based on
the bishoprics were the least inclined to give up the force of precedent. Customary law could be
any of their rights to the urban community. The reconstructed only from the records of a town’s
struggle was primarily about the personal free- juridical actions, or by appealing to the memory
dom of all the residents of a town, a recognition of old officials. This gave rise to frequent disputes
that they were no longer tied to the duties and between rulers and town councils or among local
restrictions resting on them as serfs. Agreement officials. The situation changed only very slowly
was reached that the inhabitants of that town from the fourteenth century onwards with the
would acquire their freedom under law after liv- development of a judicial hierarchy, whereby
ing in a town for a period of a year and a day. the rulers’ central courts were allowed to review
An important step in the movement towards the verdicts of local courts of justice.
the emancipation of the towns consisted of their Urban law was both territorial, or rather, local,
claim to have the right to formulate their own in that it applied in principle to everyone inside
customs and laws and regulations for their own the walls and in the surrounding banlieu of a
community, and to exercise jurisdiction over it. few miles which fell under the town’s jurisdic-
This meant that the lord of the district in which tion, and personal, in that citizens of towns often
the town originated had to relinquish his direct appealed to their own law when they were sum-
authority over the area. Most lords set a price moned for law courts outside their town. The
for this, receiving compensation in the form of personality of the law meant that a person fell
perpetual rents or levies and a share in the grow- under a specific judicial system either because
ing yields from the taxes and administration of he or she belonged to a privileged estate (clergy,
the law. The results of these struggles varied from noble, royal official) or was a burgher of a particu-
place to place, depending on the proximity and lar town or village with privileges. Unfree persons
power of the town’s lord and how far the size depended on their lord’s jurisdiction. Not until
and wealth of the town commune could tip the after the French Revolution was the geographical

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extension of the law to the state territory. It is princes – the government of a town from the late
interesting to note that the terms ‘burgher’, ‘bour- eleventh century onwards was always vested in
geois’, ‘citizen’, all of which nowadays indicate the community of burghers, which initially coin-
state citizenship, came from the environment in cided with its patriciate or local elite of wealthy
which the concept of public law was reinvented merchants and noblemen. Later on, as we saw,
in Europe: the town. the well-to-do middle class and master-artisans
In the urban environment, the idea of res succeeded to a limited degree to get access to
publica, in its narrow sense of republican state, administrative bodies, but urban government
acquired a very real and original meaning for in the Middle Ages remained oligarchic as even
the first time since the Roman era. In fact the the most influential craftsmen tended to become
medieval concept of a commune referred to the part of the ruling elite. However, in two impor-
community that formed a collective identity and tant respects, the situation in the north differed
organised its affairs in a public context. In this greatly from that in the cities of north and central
respect, the towns went much further than the Italy. First, in the former, town governments com-
monarchies, which found it difficult to make monly consisted of a president or bailiff and a
the distinction between the public domain and fixed number of aldermen (scabini), in the latter
the ruler’s private patrimony. Yet the fundamen- of boards of consuls or, later, priors. The bailiff or
tal constraint of the town’s concept of public sheriff in the north was an official appointed and
government was its particularism; every town salaried by the territorial prince or lord, who in
enjoyed its own laws and no more wished to this way kept a say in urban government. Second,
have them meddled with than it wished to share whereas in the north, city councils exercised undi-
them. This desire to be separate and to remain so vided legislative and executive as well as judicial
became characteristic of urban societies all over power, in Italy the powers actually were divided
pre-industrial Europe. If they occasionally did from the end of the twelfth century onwards.
reach some form of mutual cooperation, then it Judiciary power – including elementary police
usually happened either on a very unstable basis functions – was separated from the legislative
or through the subordination of smaller towns and executive authority of town governors, and
to larger ones – such as in the Italian regional consigned to a special magistrate, called podestá.
states dominated by metropolises like Florence, To safeguard neutrality and independence, these
Milan and Venice and in the colonies controlled podestás were always noblemen who came from
by Genoa and Venice. Citizens focused on their elsewhere and were appointed for a relatively
own immediate interests and were unwilling to short period, from six months to six years. They
share their privileges with others. Even within brought their own staff of trained judges, lawyers,
the towns themselves, fierce conflicts broke out bailiffs, policemen and servants with them – the
between clans, classes and occupational groups. costs were met by their employers, of course.
Corporative egoism was thus the outcome of the Already in the thirteenth century the authority
townspeople’s originally egalitarian concept of of the podestás was undermined to some extent
community. in cities where the Popolo succeeded in dominat-
ing government. One of its predictable demands
always was to appoint its leader, called capitano
Urban government and public del Popolo, both as a member of the city council
order and as commander in chief of the city’s army,
a task that until then was often assigned to the
As a result of the successful struggle for autonomy podestá. From the fourteenth century onwards,
with city lords – whether they were kings or other the role of the podestá was further weakened

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PLATE 9.2 Republican theories of power emanating from the citizenry were formulated in Tuscany both in
treatises and in monuments. In the town hall of the autonomous city of Siena, with its impressive 120-metre high
tower, the meeting room of the Council of Nine Governors (Signori), elected from the merchants’ oligarchy,
was decorated with frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, painted between 1337 and 1340. They illustrate the city’s
good government, based on the constitution and the commune’s desire for peace, concord and justice. This
idealistic view of a city shows various artisans at work in their shops, in construction and transport.

by bureaucratisation or by the establishment sounding of the city bells to approve major deci-
of ‘tyrannical’ regimes (signorie), such as that of sions or measures taken by the city government,
the Visconti family in Milan, and that of the and often they had a role in the election of new
Scaligeri in Verona (see Chapter 1). In 1313, magistrates.
Dante complained in his Purgatory (VI, 124–125) In urban law, the rule of peace, at least in
‘the towns of Italy are full of tyrants’. theory, prevailed. It means that all kinds of legal
In the larger towns, councils of limited size measures were taken to contain the pernicious
as just mentioned were flanked by political practice of feuding. In medieval society, feuding
advisory boards. These were often manned by could refer to two different phenomena that were
ex-magistrates and could have a permanent or loosely related: first, to taking blood revenge after
an ad hoc character. Finally, most towns had so- somebody had been killed or gravely injured.
called ‘General’ or ‘Great Councils’ that originally This right was strictly reserved to the victim’s
may have consisted of all (male, adult, registered) recognised kin group. In addition, feuding had a
citizens, but which for practical reasons, at least second meaning: making private war on someone
in large cities, were reduced to still large, round after a formal declaration of enmity for reasons
numbers of several hundred or sometimes even of grave injustice or heavy insult. Feuding in this
several thousand. They met occasionally, at the second sense may have originated as an unwritten

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right of the nobility, but ended up being prac- which period it was strictly forbidden to retali-
tised more widely by townsmen, and by ordinary ate; on the contrary it was meant to be used by
peasants as well. Feuding in the first sense – tak- victims and perpetrators to negotiate a satisfying
ing blood revenge – was more often than not settlement that could lead to reconciliation.
prevented from being executed by an old judi- The juxtaposition of reconciliation proce-
cial procedure aimed at reconciling both sides dures, in which town magistrates acted mainly as
involved and centred on an appropriate financial intermediaries and observers of negotiated settle-
and moral compensation of the victim and his/ ments in cases of homicide and the infliction of
her kin to be paid by the perpetrator and his/ heavy physical injury, and the active, public pros-
her kin. On the continent, city governments ecution of crimes ex officio, disappeared entirely
may have added to the rigidity of this procedure from western Europe between the fourteenth and
by forcing both sides involved in such ‘cases of sixteenth centuries. This presupposed, however,
vengeance’ by having ‘peace’ – actually more a that peace, still an exceptional circumstance
truce – imposed on all parties involved in violent in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, would
rows and fights in public spaces and places. This thenceforth be considered the normal situation.
‘peace’ or truce had to be observed during a set It could only be maintained effectively if a gov-
number of days – often forty or a quarantine – in ernment had sufficient superior strength, based

PLATE 9.3 The relatively small Tuscan town of San Gimignano still features a number of impressive medieval
towers belonging to the fortified houses of the patrician families. Originally they expressed the pride of the
dominant families, and in times of conflict they served a military purpose. Most of these towers here and in
other towns collapsed over the centuries or were torn down by order of the local authorities.

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on the recognition of its use of force as the only denounced as magnates. Eventually, magnate
legitimate one. The criminal ordinances issued by families in such cities as Florence were excluded
Emperor Charles V in 1530–1532 in the German from political power altogether and expelled
Empire and the Low Countries formally ended from the city at the slightest provocation.
toleration of the right of retaliation. In regions
where government authority was weak, the Tyrol,
south Italy, Sicily and Corsica, for example, blood Common good and public
vengeance remained common practice for several domain
centuries.
Feuds in the sense of acts of private warfare Faced with such challenges, town authorities all
were far more difficult to curb. They tended to get over Europe strengthened their legitimacy by
entangled with larger political issues, such as the taking on an intermediary role and presenting
party strife between the Ghibellines and Guelphs themselves as defenders, not of private interest,
in Italy (originally the adherents and opponents but of the common good. A number of terms
of the House of Hohenstaufen, whose major were used to express the abstract ideal, linking it
stronghold near Stuttgart was called Waiblingen, to the principles of Roman law: bonum commune,
hence Ghibellines), and most likely very power- utilitas publica, quod interest civitati: in short, the
ful persons or families were implicated. This type common weal, the public good. This may sound
of violence was far more a nuisance in the city- like an abstract term but actually it did hide a
states of Italy, where noble families traditionally programme of action which made it clear that
lived in towns, than in the north, where this was city councils claimed a monopoly on the use of
less the case. These noble families were organ- violence, and that those who defied the council’s
ised as clans, with a strict hierarchy of descent authority could expect to be severely punished,
through the male line and surrounded by other irrespective of their social background.
kin, associates and livery servants who were often As city governments could better appeal to such
armed. We are strongly reminded of the knightly general principles in individual decisions, their
culture when we consider such clans in the towns actions acquired greater authority while the cohe-
of Italy and Flanders, decked out in the heral- sion of the elite and the town was also enhanced.
dic colours of the family, exhibiting the reckless The support given to city councils by professional
group virility as a means of affirming their hon- lawyers helped the former to rise, as an institution,
our and status and, if necessary, of showing their above parties. Their role as judge was decisive,
superior strength. The magnificent stone-built because it demonstrated the effectiveness and
houses of these clans dominated the townscape. credibility of the establishment and maintenance
With their obvious ability to withstand a siege of public order. Criminal proceedings brought
their solid construction, battlements and towers by the officer of justice ex officio on the grounds
radiated strength to one and all. In the towns of of offences against the common good, such as
northern and central Italy, with San Gimignano breaches of the peace, placed greater demands on
still a good example, all the great aristocratic the ability of city governments to trace offenders
houses had tall towers, which had both a military and build up a legitimate case against them.
and a symbolic function. However, most of them In less politically sensitive areas, city govern-
have been destroyed when Popolo regimes came ments were able to create public functions much
to power from the second half of the thirteenth more quickly. In the north, the city magistrate
century onwards. They took severe action against usually carried out tasks which in Italy and
those noble families who refused to submit to the France were vested in notaries in the Roman
public authority of the city council and who were tradition, in particular the acting of private

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agreements and testaments. Another case in served as public buildings; they were often largely
point is the construction of town walls, which financed by monies from the town community,
obviously required enormous investments in although they were managed by the clergy and
both money and time. A system of taxation had local Church councils made up of laypeople. As
to be created for the purpose, raised mainly by an orderly architectural entity, the town formed
levies on consumer goods. The burghers knew, a framework for the lifestyle which gave tangible
therefore, that they were making efforts for their and visible shape to the concept of community.
own community, just as they had done for the It is interesting to consider the extent of the
raising of taxes or ransoms for their lords. By public domain in the towns. Social care was
the late thirteenth century, management of the originally in Church hands, but through founda-
collective resources was already a bone of conten- tions by citizens it came increasingly under the
tion between the established oligarchy and the control of representatives of the town authori-
artisans, who were beginning to organise them- ties. They supervised the financial management
selves into guilds and demanding accountability and also laid down regulations; their three-way
for how the tax money was spent. After revolts relationship with private donors and religious
by the craft guilds in 1279–1280, Count Guy charitable care was much respected. This was also
of Flanders forced the magistrates of his major true of hospitals, whose management was left
towns to keep accounts of public income and to the religious orders, and of poor relief which
expenditure, and thus to be accountable for their rested mainly with the parishes. The care of old
policies. At that time, and a century later than in people, widows and orphans, in so far as it was
Lombardy, artisans had already been organised in not covered by these two categories, was in the
militias in defence of the whole urban commu- hands of guilds and confraternities. The numer-
nity. Grouped behind their banners by craft guild ous unskilled workers who were not eligible for
or neighbourhood, they gave a forceful expression guild membership depended in times of hardship
to the citizens’ self-awareness. on alms-giving by parishes, convents, hospitals,
In addition to walls, towns erected stone almshouses and individuals, which support could
buildings with a public function: the town hall, not suffice during economic crises and in cases
of course, but also often free-standing bell towers, of sickness and old age. In times of crisis, urban
the belforts, belfries of France and Flanders. They governments took measures for the common
served diverse purposes: that of watchtower, toll- good, such as the acquisition of large quantities
ing the bells to mark public events, mobilisation of grain in years of famine, to sell it at a fixed
of the militia, and the start and finish of the day’s price, picking up from the streets and burying the
work; they bore sundials or mechanical clocks; dead bodies of plague victims left in the streets,
the chest containing the town’s charter was kept issuing sanitary measures, and the appointment
there under lock and key. In time, the impressive of physicians and midwives.
tower became a symbol of the town itself. Other In short, life in town was an all-inclusive,
building works with a public function included cradle-to-grave arrangement, at least for its ‘full’
trade halls, halls for the sale of foodstuffs, ware- citizens. The levels of personal involvement, and
houses, harbours, canals, locks, bridges, roads, of political and social participation that were
cranes, weigh-houses, water conduits and foun- required, were far higher than in any modern
tains. Moreover the town created public spaces: city. We saw that in Flanders, parts of Germany
in the first place the markets, the primary func- and Italy hundreds of citizens were members of
tion of the town, but also streets and squares the Great Councils. More in general, town dwell-
which were the stage for public demonstrations ers were incorporated into all sorts of local and
or everyday urban life. The churches similarly sublocal associations that were organised on

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the neighbourhood level. Most people worked where they exerted considerable influence on gov-
at home or on building spots or in workshops ernment. They were able to expand this position
close by. All went to church in their neighbour- of relative autonomy if their own development
hood that often coincided with a parish and was took place before royal power had been consoli-
the abode of other religious houses (chapels, dated, particularly in coastal areas. Moreover,
convents) that offered specific forms of spiritual metropolises were concerned primarily with mat-
well-being and social welfare. This is where peo- ters that were not of interest to rulers, such as the
ple were baptised and morally educated, this is safety of traffic routes, the protection of travelling
where their relatives who had passed away were merchants, negotiating business agreements with
buried and commemorated in prayer, this is were diverse partners and providing efficient regula-
holy days were celebrated. All sorts of entertain- tions for conciliation and jurisdiction. Neither
ment were organised at the neighbourhood level, the feudal lords nor their ecclesiastical advisors
ranging from Church processions and fairs to rit- knew much about such matters, so that it was
ualised street fights and games, including horse merchants directly involved who developed the
races, of which the famous palio of Siena is a spec- relevant institutional rules and even put them
tacular relic that has survived to this day. In larger into effect, in some cases with the formal seal of
towns, districts or neighbourhoods also provided a neighbouring prince.
the basis for the recruitment and training of the Good examples are Pisa, Genoa, Barcelona
city militia. and Valencia which developed their maritime
In most of these social arrangements and network since the eleventh century, chiefly in
types of association, the town authorities only the western Mediterranean, with settlements
exercised a supervisory function, which was in the Balearics, Sardinia and Sicily and consu-
sometimes formalised. In many towns, gover- lates in the main harbours on the North African
nors appointed by the city council supervised the coast. Their primary aim was to organise markets
guardianship of orphans. This was done to keep and ensure the safety of trading routes and the
check on any quarrels between and within fami- protection of their own citizens abroad. For this
lies with an inheritance at stake and a feud as a purpose, concessions were made with local rul-
likely outcome. The guardianship of the mentally ers, including those in Islamic areas. Practical
ill was seen as a public-order problem which, like experience of shippers and merchants became
the prison, was looked after by the town. With formalised in codes of maritime law applied by
the new increase in population there was a keenly the local specialised judges. The king of Aragon
felt need for rationalisation. In the fourteenth left his metropolises entirely free to handle their
century a number of towns had already set up business, as long as he shared in the profits.
one or more schools, a clear break with the tra- Groups of towns employed a variety of means
ditional monopoly of the Church. The spread of to arrange their own protection in a world that,
the Reformation accelerated this, because now all with the fragmentation of effective authority, had
denominations rushed to win the soul of a child. become extremely unsafe for travellers. Because
good traffic links with their hinterland and other
markets were essential for these towns, the safety
Urban networks and hierarchies of the roads was a continual concern. Small feu-
dal lords found it very tempting to exploit their
The largest commercial metropolises enjoyed a control over a particular area through which a
wide degree of autonomy with respect to their strategic route passed by threatening travelling
surrounding states until well into the eighteenth merchants with robbery and violence if they
century. They were often situated in small states refused to pay the toll demanded. In the best

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case, tolls were the going price for what in a posi- rights from the German king or emperor. The
tive sense was called protection: if the toll was first major alliance of the Rhine towns dated from
paid then the merchant could be certain of safe 1254, when the Interregnum (the period between
passage. The amount of the toll was often a sub- 1254 and 1273 when there was no king generally
ject of controversy, for it was difficult to rule out recognised in Germany) created problems in the
arbitrariness on the part of either the ruler or his field of public order. By forming a sworn alliance
toll collector. which placed them directly under the protection
A vital traffic axis such as the Rhine was strewn of Christ, the allied towns tried above all to main-
with local rulers who profited from the busy river tain peace, to resolve conflicts by legal means or
traffic. From the thirteenth to the fifteenth cen- by arbitration, to organise the joint prosecution
turies it was common for towns in this region of peace-breakers and to limit the tolls on rivers
and in Alsace and Swabia to join together to seek and roads. These agenda points were clearly in
protection from assaults on their safety or that conflict with the activities of noblemen, yet the
of their citizens and their commercial traffic. In movement did succeed in persuading a number
a number of cases they were even able to involve of territorial rulers in the region, archbishops and
some feudal lords in their alliance or, in exchange bishops, the count palatine of the Rhine and a
for financial support, were given guarantees or few counts and lords to join the alliance. Just as

PLATE 9.4 Venice was the largest and wealthiest medieval metropolis, heading a huge maritime empire. The
cathedral, the bell tower and the palace of the doge are in the centre of the image; the arsenal and shipyard
is a walled area with docks on the extreme right.

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PART III E XPANSION A ND MAT U RAT IO N, 1000–1500

the Peace of God movement had done earlier, the century, the largest cities entered a fierce compe-
alliance thus took upon itself a task that was in tition for the domination of a wider hinterland,
essence the province of the king, namely main- the contadi or city-states. The conquest and sub-
taining peace and justice in the public interest jection of Pisa by Florence, in 1406, meant that
and stopping the nobility from feuding and tak- Florence finally gained control over a harbour.
ing the law into their own hands. Such alliances Its contado gradually expanded to a territory of
between towns did not last long, however, and about 12,000 square kilometres. Between 1404
their rare joint military actions met with only and 1428, Venice captured a huge area in the Po
limited success. The great exception was the Valley, measuring some 30,000 square kilometres
German Hanse, which up to 1358 was primar- and reaching as close as 20 kilometres to Milan.
ily an organisation of regional merchant guilds, The subordinate towns came under an admin-
only later becoming an organisation of trading istration appointed by the capital, but local law
cities belonging to the Empire which survived and government were largely left intact. The capi-
until the seventeenth century (see Chapter 7). tal’s law courts enjoyed precedence throughout
What did unite or divide towns were their trade the entire countryside, the contado; in legal mat-
interests. But towns also had to support and safe- ters townspeople received preferential treatment
guard a flow of people and goods to and from over country dwellers, rural goods were taxed
the surrounding rural areas to provide for their more heavily than those from the town, town
livelihood. guilds enjoyed more privileges than the country
Relationships between the towns were even artisans, and urban landownership penetrated
less idyllic and were strictly defined by their deeply into the country. In this way political
mutual dependency in a hierarchy of markets. hegemony numbed market relationships which
Every town made efforts to protect its own still offered more scope to the larger centres than
production by prohibiting similar activities in to the small.
its vicinity. Larger towns exercised as stifling a In those parts of Europe where the formation
hegemony over smaller ones as they did over the of feudal and monarchic power did not take place
rural areas. The larger towns also fulfilled special- early and did not penetrate deeply, towns thus
ised functions in a particular region. As we have developed their own political and social struc-
seen in the case of Florence, these were only prof- tures in order to look after their vital common
itable in large centres where they could attract interests. Using the maintenance of the peace
enough customers from a wide hinterland. The as a pretext, they arranged to protect their trade
region that relied on this sort of specialised func- independently, locally and along the routes link-
tion of a town is called its service area. Towns ing them. Where they enjoyed superiority, they
and villages fulfilled central functions for their formed hegemonic market systems of colonial
own service areas at different levels, depending dimensions. Outside Italy, the relationships of
on their size and the diversification of specialised power were less emphatically to the advantage
productions and services. A hierarchy of markets of (large) towns, and other configurations were
to three or four levels was a common phenom- formed, in which kingdoms and comparable
enon. This insight helps us to understand the principalities would prevail. As these expanded
diverse forms of interdependence that existed their territory and power, they naturally came
between town and country and between towns into contact with the power systems that urban
of unlike size within the same system. networks had already built up in some areas.
The most sharply crystallised relationships Conflicts of competence and open power strug-
were found in the most urbanised region, that gles arose between them, yet various forms of
of northern and central Italy. In the fourteenth cooperation also proved to be possible. What

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is clear is that the urban communities gave the materials and finished products. It was not dif-
history of Europe a unique character, thanks to ficult to realise that the middlemen made more
their relative autonomy and their corporative profit from their labour than they themselves did,
organisation. and that interruptions in trade as a result of wars
or boycotts were the work of humans. Unlike
the farming communities, a more rational and
Urban society and secularised insight into the causes of life’s uncer-
economy in the later tainties developed in the towns where there was

Middle Ages direct evidence of human behaviour. So a specifi-

cally burgher mentality grew up, different from
A burgher world view that of clergymen, noblemen and peasants. The
French medievalist, Jacques Le Goff (1980), has
The concentration of thousands, or even tens of strikingly illustrated the pragmatic mentality of
thousands, of inhabitants within a town’s walls the medieval town by pointing to the change in
made life there extremely vulnerable, a conse- the awareness of time. In the country, nature,
quence of the often unhygienic living conditions. with its cycle of seasons and the unequal division
The spread of leprosy during the twelfth and thir- of light and darkness, determined the rhythm
teenth centuries was certainly connected to this. of life. The farmer arranged his daily activities
Moreover, the supply of food, grain in particular, according to the position of the sun and moon,
was precarious. There were famines throughout and the seasons. There was the Church, whose
western Europe in 1125 and again in 1195–1196. bells tolled in the rhythm of the services and feast
In both cases, chronicles describe how people’s days. In the towns nature and Church had far
stomachs were swollen from undernourishment, less influence on the rhythm of life. The town
how bread prices increased tenfold or even bell towered above the churches, and rang out
twentyfold in a short time, and the mass of starv- the working day. Mechanical clocks appeared in
ing people dying on the streets in search of food the late thirteenth century. They divided the day
and alms. The large concentrations of people into hours of equal length, determined by the
dependent on grain supplies from their hinter- people themselves. Time was no longer in God’s
land heightened the vulnerability of the towns hands.
to natural fluctuations in harvest yields resulting This more businesslike world view fostered the
from changing weather conditions. While farm- idea that the reality was not a God-given order
ers could attribute the failure of a harvest to the that could not or should not be challenged, as the
will of God, town-dwellers saw that the price of theologians had maintained. If society was the
bread in times of scarcity rose more sharply than work of humans then it could also be changed
seemed to be justified by the dwindling supply. by humans. A challenge to the established social
They also saw, or suspected, that large religious order was then no longer blasphemous. It can
institutions, grain dealers and burghers who were even be assumed that the fervent preaching of the
comfortably well-off had well-filled grain lofts mendicant orders, in particular the Franciscans,
that they kept for their own use, or that they sent against amassing worldly wealth and supporting
only small quantities of grain to the market in the ideal of poverty in imitation of Christ, had
order to fetch the highest prices. Human actions contributed to the fact that the urban proletariat
were visible in the events which threatened the now became more articulate, condemned exploi-
existence of the poor townspeople. tation by ‘the rich’ and started to make demands
The artisans were also affected by changing sit- (see also Chapter 12).
uations in the international markets for their raw

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Professional structures Christians, there were countless Muslims and

people of a mixed religious background who
The question of how an urban society was struc- would be systematically persecuted under Philip
tured can be approached from both a legal and a II and in 1609 were deported en masse to North
socio-economic point of view. Legally speaking, Africa. They worked mainly on the land and
there were a number of categories of townspeople, were unflatteringly known as mudéjares (‘tamed
each of which fell under its own statutory laws. animals’ in Arabic). There were large numbers
Many of them were unable to fulfil the financial of Jews, too, particularly in the Mediterranean
conditions for citizenship, but remained in the towns. The 25,000 Jews of Catalonia represented
town to carry out low-paid work. Because chances almost a seventh of the urban population there.
to survive extreme poverty were greater in towns In Carpentras it was one-tenth. Among them
than in the countryside (as were, paradoxically, were not only merchants and moneylenders but
chances to die), medieval towns, and certainly the also doctors and scholars. They lived in their
large towns, always had many marginal inhabit- own neighbourhoods, known as juiveria, juderie
ants who could not afford to register – think of or calls, depending on the local language. Legally
armies of day labourers, beggars, criminal gangs, they enjoyed the protection of the king or prince;
pimps and prostitutes – and therefore were seen in return for payment of a sum of money to him,
and treated as second-rate citizens. This group they were his ‘servants’. In the north-west, Jewish
formed a mobile mass that could react quickly to presence was much smaller because of an early
fluctuations in the economy and moved to where lack of tolerance (Chapter 6, pp. 208–209).
the opportunities seemed most favourable. In the cities of central Europe, such as Prague
There were also diverse categories which were and Cracow, diverse ethnic, religious or social
not, or not fully, subjected to the civic authori- categories lived inside the same agglomeration
ties because they had a different legal status; they in separate, adjacent townships, with their own
included members of a prince’s court, members institutions and often also their own walls, town-
of the clergy, nobles with their retinue, foreign- hall, market square and more. There was greater
ers, Jews and Muslims. In those parts of the integration in the West. In Italy and Iberia, slav-
Iberian peninsula that had been recovered by ery continued to exist throughout the Middle

TABLE 9.3 Division of occupations in Florence, Pisa and the small towns of Tuscany

Florence Pisa Small towns

(%) (%) (%)
Agriculture 0.3 6.0 32.7
Selling of food 4.7 5.9 1.9
Cloth 16.3 7.0 2.1
Other textiles 4.7 3.4 0.5
Paper 0.1 0.2 0.2
Leather, skins 5.7 9.3 2.6
Spices 1.2 2.0 0.7
Metalworking 2.8 3.2 1.9
Wood, masonry, etc. 4.0 5.0 1.1
Service industries 16.3 13.5 7.1
Unknown 43.9 44.6 49.3
Total number of households 9,722 1,714 6,262
Source: D. Herlihy and C. Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and their Families (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1985), p. 127.

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Ages, particularly for members of the household On the other hand, certain commercial activities
staff. Slaves were also used to a limited extent on were responsible for a large share of the employ-
the Italian sugar plantations in Cyprus and Crete ment opportunities, particularly in towns with
and for salt production on Ibiza. more than 10,000 inhabitants.
From a socio-economic viewpoint, the popu-
lations of the towns could be distinguished in
economic sections, categories of well-being, and Craft guilds and guild regimes
so forth. Some insight is possible through statis-
tical data, thanks to the rich documentation of In the larger towns, artisans were organised into
the towns of Tuscany (see Table 9.3). The social occupational groups from the thirteenth century
structure according to occupation was more var- onwards. For some specialised activities, such as
ied in large towns than in small ones. In other goldsmiths, basket-weavers or leather-workers,
words, there were more different and more spe- this involved living in the same street. For expen-
cialised occupations in a town like Florence than sive products, the central location was critical
in the small towns of the region. The larger the because of the basic price and the proximity of
town, the smaller the proportion of people there customers. In Florence, the street of the tapestry
who made a living from agriculture, and the weavers, the arazzieri, is just one block away from
larger the proportion who made a living from the the Medici palace, and two from the Dome. As
service sector. Craft specialisation in one sector is well known, goldsmiths were concentrated on
was only profitable on a large scale: in Florence, the old bridge, close to the palaces of the nobles.
with a total population of 44,000 in 1427, the For other, sometimes polluting, activities the
textile sector represented at least 21 per cent of availability of sufficient flowing water and the
the workforce (but the real percentage was prob- actual distance from the town centre to limit
ably considerably higher); in Ghent around 1356 environmental damage were deciding factors.
as much as 63 per cent of a total population of This applied to tanners in particular, while fullers
64,000; in Pisa, only 10.4 per cent and in small and brewers were dependent on clean water. For
Tuscan towns barely 2.6 per cent. reasons of hygiene and also to facilitate quality
The capital resources of the members of control, town authorities concentrated the ven-
diverse occupational groups varied greatly: the dors of fresh foodstuffs in one street or market
wealth of the Florentine bankers was on average hall. There is still a very large meat hall in Ghent
eighty-three times larger than that of a transport dating from the early fifteenth century, Brussels
worker, that of a wool merchant about thirty- has its Butchers’ Street, and vegetable, fish and
one times greater, and of a spice merchant ten cattle markets are familiar everywhere.
times. Among the artisans themselves, there was In the earliest stages, in Milan before 1068
a considerable difference in status between the and in Florence, the members of the local aris-
specialised occupations which required a certain tocracy and the merchants seem to have taken
amount of capital and skill, the ordinary skilled the initiative to organise the artisans, in order to
trades and the jobs which required no skills at all. have a better grip on them. In time, town mili-
The greatest differences were found at the top of tias would be formed on the same basis. In a
the social pyramid. The thousands of small towns number of French towns, Toulouse for example,
of late medieval Europe still had a much more some craft guilds already were recognised by the
agrarian character. One can understand why authorities in the twelfth century; notably these
Louis IX instructed the city council of Bourges were in the sectors for food and leather-working,
in 1262 to ‘drive all the roaming pigs out of the most sensitive to deterioration and environmen-
town because they are completely ruining it’. tal pollution. The members of these craft guilds

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were obliged to take an oath promising to obey apprenticeship was completed, the apprentice
the regulations. During the thirteenth century became a journeyman, a skilled worker in the
artisans formed religious and charitable fraterni- employ of a master. In some cases, recorded from
ties in Catalonia and Flanders, as the first urban the thirteenth century onwards, the journeyman
merchants had done two centuries earlier. The could then qualify as a master after submitting
aim was mutual assistance and religious services, a ‘masterpiece’ to the guild masters as proof of
with a view to counteracting the uncertain- his professional skill. To be recognised as a mas-
ties of life such as disablement, unemployment ter artisan a man was required to be a burgher
and widowhood. During the fourteenth and fif- of the town, to pay an entrance fee, to provide
teenth centuries large fraternities and craft guilds a banquet and to have his own workshop and
founded homes for their aged and needy mem- tools. Here, there was a class distinction between
bers. For those working in industries dependent master and journeyman, because a master owned
on long distance trade for their raw materials his own production means.
and the export of finished products, the hazards Just as in the thirteenth century the merchant
of international relations and business cycles guilds became more exclusive as the competition
could suddenly deprive them of their income for became stiffer, so in a period of a stagnant or
protracted periods of time. Under such circum- contracted market the legal and material require-
stances, up to half the population of an industrial ments to become a master worked as a barrier,
town dropped into poverty from one year to the which the established masters could use to pro-
next. tect their own positions against newcomers. This
happened particularly during the demographic
COR P O R ATI V E O R G AN I S ATI O N Control of decline of the fourteenth century. The right of
production and of the artisans themselves was a entry was made considerably more expensive for
strong motive for the town authorities to prescribe members from outside the town or from the coun-
a certain organisational form to corporations. try and cheaper for the sons of existing masters.
Price controls and the hallmark of product qual- There was thus a tendency for a craft to become
ity were in the interest of traders and consumers hereditary, especially in those sectors where the
alike. Even in the period of exclusive patrician potential markets decreased. In the German
rule, therefore, craft guilds received legal recogni- Empire, where most towns were relatively small
tion as monopolistic occupational groups: only and the chivalric ethic still largely determined
members of the guilds were allowed to practise a the pattern of values, many craft guilds set the
particular craft, and training was arranged by the requirement of ‘honourable’ conduct as a con-
artisans themselves. dition of entry: ‘honour’ there was concerned
Town authorities laid down regulations for with the exclusion of unmarried cohabitants or
working hours and technical matters to guar- people of Slavic origin. Among those professions
antee the standards of quality and to combat considered lacking honour, and thus not permit-
unfair competition between fellow artisans. For ted to form guilds, were those of executioner,
a prescribed number of years (often two to four, gravedigger, barber and bath-house master.
eight to ten in many cases in Paris in 1268, some-
times as many as twelve) an apprentice lived and C L A S S C O N F L I C T Under the rule of the
worked with a recognised master artisan, and patricians, the merchants-entrepreneurs-adminis-
so learned his trade in practice. In that sense, trators exerted close control over the craft guilds.
workshops had a decidedly family character, con- They had an interest in social and economic regu-
tributing to the close ties which existed between lations and tolerated the charitable and religious
master artisans and the lower ranks. When the activities of guilds. For entrepreneurs, these had

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the useful effect that the artisans held them- government from 1293 on. Whoever was then
selves in reserve when there was not much work. finally allowed to converse with the old aristoc-
In large towns with a dominant textile industry, racy in the Palazzo del Comune, the City Hall,
there were many thousands of workers in the belonged to what we would call the labour aris-
same objective circumstances. The masters in tocracy: small, independent entrepreneurs and
the sector could hardly act as small independent merchants who were only too keen to forget their
entrepreneurs because the raw materials remained modest origins and, like the old patricians, enjoy
the property of the merchant-entrepreneurs dur- the respect accorded to the seniors.
ing the production process. Even though their The breakthrough of the artisans in Flanders
primary aims may have been charitable and was more radical and more general than else-
religious, and even though they were strictly con- where because, in 1302, their militias had played
trolled by the patricians, the existence of craft a decisive part in reversing the French occupation
organisations nevertheless provided a framework of the county at the Battle of the Golden Spurs
within which artisans could share experiences at Courtrai. This was the first time that an army
and invent alternatives. This explains the fact of urban foot soldiers, mustered for the occasion,
that in the typical textile towns of Douai, Ypres defeated a mighty king’s army of knights. Even
and Ghent, the earliest collective actions of work- though the townsfolk may have been helped by
ers organised into guilds took place in periods of the marshy terrain, their victory made a great
recession or other encroachments on their stand- impression on their contemporaries, and they
ard of living. In 1274, the weavers and fullers of capitalised on it by appropriating political and
Ghent deserted their town in protest against bad social rights for themselves. In some textile guilds
working conditions. The entrepreneurs reacted to not only masters but journeymen as well could
this by making an agreement with employers in be elected to be governor of their guild, or their
other towns not to employ strikers, an early form voice was heard indirectly. This revolution in
of lock-out. In 1302, another strike broke out in Flanders was imitated in neighbouring regions,
Ghent among all the artes mechanicae, the arti- so that artisans in Liège, Middelburg, Dordrecht
sans who worked with equipment, in reaction to and Utrecht won a considerable share of political
a tax increase imposed by the patrician authori- power and were able to hold on to it for centuries.
ties. By 1300, the social contrasts had become In Ghent by 1360, the majority of the seats in
sharpened in all the large towns partly because the city council were awarded to the artisans: as
the economic downturn interrupted the power- many as twenty out of twenty-six. In the Empire,
ful growth of the preceding centuries, making only in Cologne and a few other towns along
incomes insecure, while entrepreneurs tried as far the upper reaches of the Rhine (Worms, Speyer,
as they could to shift their risks on to the artisans. Freiburg, Basle) did the artisans triumph.

P OL IT ICA L PAR TI C I PATI O N In some towns, C O R P O R A T I V E P R O T E C T I O N I S M What

upheavals resulted in some artisans winning a could artisans do with the political and social
certain degree of autonomy and a political voice. power they had won in this fashion? In the first
Control of a craft guild was then no longer in place, they could defend their standard of liv-
the hands of patricians but of members elected ing when their purchasing power was eroded
from their own circle. The guilds themselves had as a result of the steady devaluation of gold
gained the right to exercise authority over their and silver coin during the fourteenth century.
members, impose and collect fines and issue They placed restrictions on the combination of
regulations. In Florence the twenty-one main wholesale trade and entrepreneurship. This ena-
guilds were permanently represented in the town bled the weavers, who technically controlled the

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entire production process in the textile sector and high-quality and fashionable products, of which
formed by far the largest occupational group in the famed Flemish tapestries were the glorious
towns like Ghent and Leiden, to work their way masterpieces. In the new production centres,
up to become small entrepreneurs (drapers) and whether rural areas or small towns, that were
employ other specialised workers, such as dyers, aiming at the production of cheaper textiles,
fullers and shearers, on a piece-work basis. From the small scale made it impossible to impose the
that moment, however, like all free entrepreneurs, labour sharing and specialisation that was nor-
they were faced with a recession all over Europe, mal in the large towns and, partly as a result of
so that the margins to improve the lot of their this, to achieve a similar quality.
workers became narrowed. In villages and those During the Middle Ages there were no craft
areas where there were no craft guilds or where guilds specifically for women, yet many women
the craft guilds had little power, wages remained followed a skilled occupation and even took
low. This made them attractive to entrepreneurs. the lead in some occupations, such as spinning
It was easy for them to shift their activities to and selling foodstuffs in the market-place. In
the countryside because in the common putting general women were under someone’s guardi-
out system, the burden of the costs of the means anship: of their father, uncle or brother as long
of production, the workplaces and tools in par- as they were unmarried, of their husband, or of
ticular, was largely shouldered by the artisans a priest (male, of course) if they were in a con-
themselves. Under this system, an entrepreneur vent. Only widowhood could emancipate them.
brought the raw materials or semi-finished arti- An artisan’s widow, who had been accustomed
cles to the cheapest workers in the country. The to work with her husband in his workplace or
deindustrialisation of the once-leading areas and shop, could carry on the business as an equal and,
the industrialisation of low-wage areas took place in that capacity, could enjoy all the rights of a
on a large scale during the fourteenth century. guild member. As long as they did not remarry,
The rural areas of Flanders and England and the widows in ‘s-Hertogenbosch could acquire the
towns of Brabant and Holland, where the cor- title of master in the dyers’ guild and in Breda
porations were weaker, eagerly took over a large in the victuallers’ or grocers’ guild. Around 1470,
share of the cloth production that had become there was even some rivalry among the fullers
too expensive in the old Flemish centres. of Leiden between women and the apprentices
The response of the craft guilds worsened the who found that the women were taking the bread
situation: they sought salvation in a restrictive out of their mouths. There were also, however,
protectionism and the exclusion of newcomers. specifically female occupations, that of midwife
In this way, the established workers used legal being the most obvious. To become a recognised
and economic discrimination and even force midwife, one had to follow a practical training
to try to hold on to their share of the market. under an established midwife, after which a skills
They took prohibitive measures against imita- test gave entry to the profession and membership
tions and imports in the vain hope of salvaging of the guild, often the guild of surgeons.
their own position. In those crafts for which As entry to the craft guilds became more dif-
the markets became increasingly weak due to the ficult for newcomers, the journeymen began
dramatic population losses during the fourteenth to look for alternatives. In some towns they
century, the hereditary position of master was organised themselves in separate journeymen’s
even laid down in the statutes. In the long run, associations (compagnonnages), which in time
market forces proved stronger than regulations, also received recognition. Furthermore, countless
and the old textile centres could only survive in unskilled workers remained outside the organisa-
a slimmed-down form by focusing on refined, tional framework of the craft guilds. Employment

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for them was often as uncertain as it was flex-

Points to remember
ible: if there was a large construction project
somewhere, a dike to be reinforced or a military ■■ Until 1300, towns grew substantially and
expedition undertaken, then hundreds of labour- many new ones were formed or founded, as
ers were required. Farmers needed temporary a consequence of the general growth of the
workers at harvest time. Out of sheer necessity European population.
unskilled labourers moved around to wherever ■■ Urbanisation levels differed substantially
they could earn a living. As they had to be very through Europe, with the highest density in
mobile and could not organise themselves in any north and central Italy and the southern Low
town, their position remained weak. Countries.
The system of guilds, or corporatism, was orig- ■■ Under the impulse of their local merchant
inally a form of social organisation endowed with elite, urban communities fought success-
varied powers and rights which would continue fully against the aristocratic powers for their
to exist in France until 1792 and elsewhere until autonomy and self-government.
the nineteenth century. In general it can still ■■ Merchant elites formed supra-local organi-
be seen that the organisation per occupational sations to protect their trading interests in
group of apprentices, journeymen and masters their immediate hinterland as well as over
had far-reaching consequences for the nature of long distances and overseas, in conjunction
social differences in the late Middle Ages. Craft with, but fairly independent from, monar-
guilds formed the framework for their members’ chical and aristocratic powers.
way of life, within which they saw not only the ■■ Class conflicts exacerbated in the thirteenth
expression of their social, political and economic century between the governing merchant
rights and responsibilities, but through which elites and the artisanal masses. In many
they also took part in town festivities or organ- cases, the latter were allowed to organise
ised their own Church celebrations or secular themselves in confraternities or guilds to
rites. Furthermore, they could count on support control and guarantee the quality of the
in times of need. The craft guilds built imposing craft’s products. They also fulfilled charitable
guildhalls in which they held their meetings and and military functions. This resulted only in
stored the banners that the members carried in the largest industrial cities in some level of
processions and battles. Artisans thus identified political participation.
themselves very closely with their guilds. Inside ■■ The corporative organisations defended
this framework they focused their hopes of social social security for their members but tended
promotion, of becoming masters and ultimately to become exclusivist and highly protection-
of achieving positions of authority in the guild or ist for their own craft and town.
even in the town itself. Such vertical organisation
per occupational group meant that social conflicts
were not defined in terms of class distinctions Suggestions for further
(capital versus labour) but rather according to
reading
rivalries between the sectors. This fact, as well as
the entire working of craft guilds, leads us to the Frugoni, Chiara and Arsenio Frugoni (2005), A Day in a
conclusion that this form of organisation, in spite Medieval City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press)
(orig. Italian, 1997). A vivid and captivating descrip-
of all the conflicts that it brought, contributed in
tion of all aspects of daily life in a late medieval city.
the long term to the social stability of the larger Jones, Philip (1997), The Italian City-State: From
towns of pre-industrial Europe. Commune to Signoria (Oxford: Clarendon). The
fundamental book on the evolution of the Italian

325
PART III E XPANSION A ND MAT U RAT IO N, 1000–1500

cities (civitates) since the sixth century, via the self- theory, of the economic ‘efficiency’ of a wide range
governing communes to the signorie (princely rule) of organisations. Were these institutions beneficial
expanding over considerable territories and smaller to the whole economy? Or did they simply offer an
towns. effective way for the rich and powerful, the estab-
Lynch, Katherine A. (2003), Individuals, Families, and lished and the insiders, to increase their wealth, at
Communities in Europe, 1200–1800. The Urban the expense of outsiders, customers and society as
Foundations of Western Society (Cambridge: CUP). a whole? Why do institutions exist, which types of
Examining the family at the centre of the life of ‘civil institution made trade grow and how are corporate
society’, on the boundary between public and pri- privileges affecting economic efficiency and human
vate life, the author traces a pattern which emerged well-being?
in the late medieval period through the nineteenth Pounds, Norman (2005), The Medieval Town and Social
century. Women and men created voluntary asso- Change (Westport CT: Greenwood Press). An intro-
ciations outside the family – communities, broadly duction to the life of towns and cities since the
defined – to complement or even substitute for Roman Empire’s urban legacy. Deals with advan-
solidarities based on kinship. tages and hazards of urban life, planning or lack
Ogilvie, Sheilagh (2011), Institutions and European Trade. thereof, and the various aspects of the urban way of
Merchant Guilds, 1000–1800 (Cambridge: CUP). A life, including sketches of street life and descriptions
highly systematic and very broadly source-based of fairs and markets.
analysis, inspired by the ‘new institutional economics’

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Part IV
The late Middle
Ages, 1300–1500
10 Between crisis and
contraction: population,
economy and society

War, famine and pestilence abode of the dead followed him. And they ‘were
given authority over the fourth part of the earth,
In the fifth chapter of the last book of the Bible, to kill with sword, and with famine, and with
the enigmatic Revelation of St John of Patmos, death, and by the wild beasts of the earth’. This
there is a reference to a scroll ‘written within and image of apocalyptic terror, of an army of skel-
on the back, sealed with seven seals’. The scroll etons sowing death and destruction through war,
is held in the right hand of God who is sitting famine and pestilence (bellum, fames et pestis),
on his throne in heaven. It announces the seven was often found in the literature and visual arts of
disasters that the Lord has in store for mankind at the late Middle Ages. It is not difficult to under-
the end of the world. An angel speaks with a great stand the reason for this: between the beginning
voice saying, ‘Who is worthy to open the book, of the fourteenth and the middle of the fifteenth
and to loose the seals thereof?’ Only one creature centuries, Europe, with terrifying frequency, was
felt called to do this, a lamb with seven horns and struck by the disasters foretold in the fourth seal
seven eyes – a mystical symbol for Christ himself, (only the wild beasts were lacking).
who had been crucified (slaughtered like a lamb)
and risen from the dead. The lamb broke open
the first four seals and each time a horse and rider Famines and subsistence crises
appeared. When the fourth seal was opened the
horse was a ‘pale horse’ and the name of its rider In the pre-industrial period, food shortages were
was Death, and a crowd of dead people from the a regularly recurring nightmare for large groups

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of people. Even the failure of just one harvest was and then raised prices by bringing the harvest
enough to cause serious problems, making the on the market in small portions. If the crops in
formation of reserve supplies uncertain. This hap- the field looked bad, and shortages could thus be
pened about once every ten years in pre-industrial expected on the market, then grain prices started
agriculture with its low yields and absence of any to climb even before the harvest.
effective defence against vermin and diseased No wonder that the popular culture of the
crops. Such disruption is generally referred to late Middle Ages fantasised over a land of plenty,
by modern scholars as subsistence crisis, a term Cockaigne where roast chickens flew through
which usually is related to the disastrous effects the air. Rebellious peasants and craftsmen often
of harvest failures on market prices. The English plundered the storerooms and wine cellars of
statistician Gregory King (1648–1712) described abbeys and rich burghers. Unlike nowadays, trade
the effect whereby differences in the size of the was hardly able to compensate for shortages in
harvest were magnified in the market. This was one region by large-scale imports from another.
due to three mechanisms. First, even in the late Because of highly imperfect roads, means of
Middle Ages only a part of the grain harvest was transport and trading networks, especially for
intended for the market, with the result that bulk cargoes, there were significant regional dif-
there was much greater fluctuation in the annual ferences in the price of grain. Nevertheless, in the
market supply than in the size of the annual har- late Middle Ages, price fluctuations throughout
vest. A reduction of the grain yields by 10 per north-western Europe were more or less equal
cent could push up market prices by 40 per cent. as a result of increasing commercialisation of
Second, large price fluctuations attracted shifts agriculture and growing market integration.
in consumers’ behaviour because they had to In other words, if grain was expensive in Paris,
choose for the cheapest way to survive. Normally, it was also expensive in Cologne. This did not
in pre-industrial Europe, a typical artisan fam- mean, however, that the price in Paris was the
ily with four to five members spent 44 per cent same as in Cologne. The price could vary con-
of its income on bread. If grain suddenly rose siderably, depending on how far the large towns
in price then such consumers needed to spend were from the production areas supplying them
even more of their income on grain in order to and the actual volume of the supplies. Market
have the largest quantity of calories at the low- integration could only help to remove extreme
est price. Calories in grain were always cheaper imbalances in supply, because the volume of the
than those in vegetables, fish, meat or dairy prod- international grain trade was still far too small
ucts because these had a heavier footprint on to remove them entirely. The shipping of grain
the ecological system. This further increased the required large ships and was profitable only when
demand for the cheaper qualities of grain which the price difference largely made up for the trans-
pushed their price up, while demand for other port cost. Such services functioned effectively
foodstuffs, artisanal products and services fell. between Genoa and the grain-producing areas in
Through this mechanism every major increase in Sicily and the Crimea. Regular exports of large
the price of grain resulted in a general depression quantities of rye from Prussia to north-western
as one branch after another was dragged into an Europe became increasingly important from the
avalanche of declines in spending. Third, mar- 1480s onwards.
ket prices – at least in the spring – were partly Yet real famines, with widespread mortality
determined by the expectations of the forthcom- as a direct result of undernourishment, occurred
ing harvest. Grain dealers speculated on these relatively seldom even during the late Middle
foresights, for example by cheaply buying large Ages. The greatest killer was without any doubt
quantities while the grain was still in the field, the notorious famine of 1315–1317, caused by

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a series of serious harvest failures in three suc- Government intervention in removing the
cessive harvest seasons in north-western Europe negative effects of grain shortages was character-
due to exceptionally abundant and continuous istic of the strong ruling authority developing in
rainfall. To be able to appreciate the magnitude the states at this time. In England the king and
of the disaster, we must remember that the low diverse town governments took steps to control
average yields of medieval agriculture meant that prices and prosecute hoarders and speculators.
the grain harvested was consumed in the year fol- Great effort was made to import as much grain
lowing the harvest: storage for a longer period as possible from English possessions in south-
was out of the question. Overall, the yields in western France, which had been spared the poor
1315 and 1316 were about 40 per cent below the harvests. But powerful government also showed
long-term average for 1270–1429. In 1316, the its darker side in these circumstances. In France
second of consecutive harvest failures, the yield and the Holy Roman Empire food riots were sup-
of wheat, which was the principal bread grain in pressed by force. During those calamitous years,
England, fell to 60 per cent below average. The King Edward II continued to raise taxes for the
harvest failed again in 1321 and in 1328, with 33 war against the Scots, while Scottish armies
per cent below that average in both years. raided northern England and invaded Ireland.
The consequences of the situation are easy to His French counterpart used hunger as a weapon
surmise. Worst hit were the urban populations in the struggle against the rebellious Flemings,
that were entirely dependent on the market for hindering the export of grain to Flanders in all
their food supply. Grain prices soared to unprece- manner of ways. The authorities of Bruges reacted
dented heights – in Hainault at the height of the by purchasing as much grain as possible from
famine wheat was between twenty-five and thirty Italian, Catalan and Scottish merchants. By sell-
times more expensive than during normal years. ing these extra supplies to local bakers at regular
Moderate wage increases could not keep up with intervals and at fixed prices, price speculation
such rising prices. But there were shortages in the could be avoided. However, this kind of interven-
countryside too, and even peasants went hungry. tion was only possible in an international seaport
After a while, many of them could no longer pay town.
their rents and were obliged to sell their land The successive grain shortages between 1315
and their farms for next to nothing, or to bor- and 1322 did not produce equally disastrous effects
row money at an exorbitant rate. ‘Those squeezed in the Mediterranean regions. However, in the first
hardest during these crisis years forfeited the land decade of the fourteenth century, seven years pro-
upon which their subsistence depended and were duced poor harvests, leading to famine in Florence.
relegated to the ranks of the landless’ (Campbell The commune then organised large imports of
2016). Records in several English counties reveal grain from Sicily and Apulia in Genoese ships.
the massive selling of small plots of land during Southern Europe, too, had more catastrophic years.
and shortly after the crisis years. Not surprisingly, There was famine in Catalonia, for example, in
court rolls also show a sudden upsurge of cases 1333–1334, in Navarra and Tuscany in 1346–1347,
for theft of property. Even the great landowners the years immediately preceding the Black Death.
suffered. They were able to ask high prices for Chronicles and other written sources dating
any grain they could still bring to the market, from the time show how the protracted grain
but the quantities available were far lower and – shortage of 1315–1317 threatened the lives of
especially in the case of ecclesiastical landowners large groups of people. The symptoms of seri-
– falling incomes contrasted sharply with rising ous undernourishment were clearly described.
expenses necessitated by the enormous increase Horrifying stories circulated of emaciated peo-
in the demand for charity. ple, their stomachs swollen from hunger edema,

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BOX 10.1 THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH

One of the most remarkable architec-
tural spaces created in the Middle Ages
was the ‘square’ or ‘field of miracles’
(Piazza or Prato dei Miracoli) in the cen-
tre of Pisa in Tuscany. Three separate
buildings were constructed there dur-
ing the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
all in pure white stone: the cathedral
church, the round baptistery (baptiste-
rium) and the bell tower (campanile),
the world-famous ‘leaning tower of
Pisa’. A graveyard was laid out on the
north side of the square at an early date
and incorporated sometime after 1278
into a monumental new building, the
camposanto (lit. ‘holy field’). This was a
square construction which looked from the inside like a cloister around a central open space, the
original burial ground, containing earth brought from Golgotha, the hill outside Jerusalem upon
which Christ died on the cross. At some date after 1330 the inside walls of the ambulatory were
decorated with frescos painted by the first of the Tuscan artists, including Benozzo Gozzoli. One
of the frescos was known as ‘The Triumph of Death’. The theme of the fresco was a traditional
story – three young men, in the prime of life and enjoying the pleasures of the hunt, were sud-
denly confronted with three corpses in various states of decomposition in which they recognised
themselves. The death theme was enlivened by the young men’s female companions, a hermit who
displayed a biblical text about the futility of worldly pleasures, a skeleton flying overhead and an
aerial battle between angels and devils fighting for the souls of the dead.
For a long time it was believed that ‘The Triumph of Death’ was painted soon after 1348, when
Pisa was stricken by the Black Death. Nowadays an earlier date, about 1330, has been assumed and
the painting has been connected with either the visit to Pisa of Emperor Louis in 1328 or the preach-
ing activities of the Dominicans in Pisa; the scene on the fresco apparently was borrowed from a
passage in the collection of saints’ lives by the Pisan friar, Domenico Cavalca. There is also dis-
agreement about the artist. It used to be thought that the Pisan, Francesco Traini, was the painter, but
a more detailed study has suggested other possible artists, in particular the Florentine, Buffalmacco.
Many of the frescos were severely damaged during the twentieth century, by local youths play-
ing football in the camposanto and by the American bombardment of German positions during
the Second World War. Fortunately the frescos were known in detail from old engravings and
photographs which were used in the recent, successful restoration.

Sources: The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols (Oxford: OUP, 2003); SVV ‘Pisa’ and ‘Masters, anonymous. 1. Master of
the Triumph of the Death’; Camposanto monumentale di Pisa. Affreschi e sinopie. Guiseppe Ramalli (pres.)
(Pisa: Opera della Primaziale, 1960); Joseph Polzer, ‘Aspects of the fourteenth-century iconography of death
and the plague’, in The Black Death. The Impact of the Fourteenth-Century Plague edited by Daniel Williman
(Binghampton: Center for Medical and Early Renaissance Studies, 1982), pp. 107–130.

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grazing like cows or resorting to cannibalism. wool must have diminished sensibly for years.
Eating unusual or rotten foods led to epidemics Much less oxen were available as draught ani-
of diarrhoea or ergotism. Ergotism, which was mals, less manure could be spread on the fields,
known during the Middle Ages as St Anthony’s which would logically have a negative effect on
Fire, was caused by eating rye poisoned by fungi. the agricultural production. As the surviving cows
Precisely how many people died during the Great were weakened and gave less milk, dairy products
Famine is not known, but the best estimates became scarce and expensive, just as meat. This
suggest an extra mortality of about seventy per implies that the human generation after the fam-
thousand (7 per cent) in the stricken regions for ine remained undernourished in qualitative, and
1316 alone, which is about twice the normal at occasions also in quantitative, terms, while
rate in late medieval populations. And the Great they were already vulnerable to infections. It is
Famine, although exceptional in its ferocity, did shocking to realise that King Edward III decided
not stand alone. The dreadful situation of general under these circumstances to launch a major war
harvest failure in successive years occurred again against France.
in the north-west in 1437–1438, 1481–1483 and
1527–1534. In many regions, military conflicts
worsened its effects. War implied economic The Black Death and its echo
blockades and disrupted normal supply routes. epidemics
And movements of troops could accelerate the
dissemination of contagious diseases. The Black Death is the name traditionally given
The long-term consequences of famines are to the great epidemic that raged throughout
difficult to guess. On the one hand, famines have Europe between 1347 and 1353 and which,
very little effect on female fertility. On the other according to a cautious estimate, cost the lives of
hand, epidemiologists have established that chil- more than one-third of the total population of
dren who have been seriously undernourished for about 78 million in 1300. In England, where the
a long period of time run a high risk of incurring best quantitative sources have been preserved,
infectious diseases like lung infections, tubercu- the losses are now estimated at 46 per cent of
losis, diarrhoea and malaria. the total population at least. Losses in the same
The problems of grain shortages in these disas- order of magnitude were suffered in China and
trous years were aggravated by another catastrophic the Islamic Middle East. This earned the Black
effect of the heavy rains: they soaked the meadows Death the reputation of being one of the most
and caused shortages of hay and fodder for the cat- fatal disasters ever to affect mankind. The Black
tle. The accounts of English demesnes show that one Death is usually thought to have been the plague,
in five animals died during the famine. Moreover, a contagious disease that is caused by the bacte-
in 1316, a highly contagious epizootic mortality rial strain Yersinia pestis, named after the Swiss
broke out in central Europe and spread across fam- physician Alexandre Yersin, a student of Louis
ine-struck northern Europe, to England and Ireland. Pasteur. Yersin was the first to identify the bacte-
Between 1319 and 1321, half to two-thirds of the rium during a plague outbreak in Hong Kong in
cattle, sheep and pigs on English demesnes died. 1894, imported from Mongolia through China.
Since adequate restocking took a number of years, The bacterium persisted dormant for centuries
the resulting ‘protein famine’, due to a substan- in sylvatic rodent populations (like marmots) in
tially reduced intake of dairy products and meat, is the semi-arid interior of Asia (the enzootic stage).
estimated to have lasted for over a decade. Fleas living as parasites on the rodents were the
It is not easy to calculate the multiplier effects vectors transmitting the pathogen into the blood
of the epizootic. The production of leather and of their hosts.

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PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

MAP 10.1 The spread of the Black Death

The original nidus of infection can be located break among humans in the Kipchak Khanate of
on the vast steppe lands to the north of China. the Golden Horde in 1345–1346. The transition
Various independent indicators show that in the to the pandemic, as it occurred in the 1340s, is
1340s more abundant precipitations favoured still a matter of ongoing scientific scrutiny. In
the growth of grasslands which in its turn led addition to the dramatically increased humidity
to the extension and greater density of the recorded since 1341–1342, it is highly probable
rodent population. These conditions triggered that the intensification of human intercontinen-
the epizootic stage of the Yersinia pestis infec- tal communication facilitated the spread of the
tion in which greater numbers of rodents died, contagion. The overland caravan routes under
and the pathogen might have been transmitted the Mongolian rule connected central Asia with
to commensal rodents living in the immediate north China, the Black Sea, and with Syria. In
vicinity of humans. Incidentally, humans hav- the last two areas, west Europeans had settled
ing contact with them, for example as hunters, their trading posts in the course of the thirteenth
might also be infected (the panzootic stage). century.
Cycles of infection and dying out of populations The Black Death was brought to Europe from
of rodents and fleas succeeded each other with- the Crimea to the Mediterranean region at the
out autonomous infection occurring between end of 1347. From that moment, its triumphant
humans. The Black Death found its first out- progress through Europe can be closely followed,

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from Messina it headed northward to the har- streets or certain quarters where disease had bro-
bours along the Italian west coast, to Marseille ken out could be completely closed off. These
and further on. It spread from the harbours to methods were applied successfully in Milan, a
other trading cities inland, and from there to the city with a population of 100,000, which the
countryside. The extraordinary travelling speed Visconti family ruled with an iron hand. It is
of the Black Death, 3.2 kilometres per day or estimated that no more than 15 per cent of the
1,170 kilometres per year, points to dissemina- population of Milan died during the epidemic.
tion through direct contacts between humans. The magistracy of Nuremberg went a step further,
The human flea, Pulex irritans, is therefore the for Nuremberg experienced virtually no extra
obvious carrier. From Italy the disease reached mortality because of its hygienic regulations,
Paris, the heart of medieval Europe, in the sum- which seem almost modern and which were not
mer of 1348; southern England followed shortly introduced specifically in connection with the
afterwards. From there it spread further north- epidemic. The roads were paved and the streets
ward through the British Isles and Scandinavia, were swept; the inhabitants were expected to dis-
and eastward to the Low Countries, the Empire pose of their own household refuse; the town had
and eastern Europe. By the end of 1350 the Black fourteen public bath-houses which were carefully
Death reached Russia after a long roundabout supervised and were frequented by local civil
journey. Thinly populated regions like Norway servants who received a salary bonus in the form
and remote island groups such as the Faeroes, of bath money. In later outbreaks other towns
Shetlands, Orkneys and Hebrides were hit as introduced similar policies. Dalmatian Ragusa
hard as the densely populated metropolises of (modern Dubrovnik) was the first town to exper-
Constantinople, Cairo and Florence. The fact iment with a system of quarantine in 1377. It
that the plague spread into the northern regions, was soon followed by Venice, where quarantine
while its outbreak normally depended on a became compulsory during the fifteenth century.
warm climate, and that it even reached Iceland This meant that everyone who wanted to visit
(in 1402–1404) where no rats were living, shows the city during periods of contagious disease had
again that its pandemic dissemination had passed first to stay on an island in the lagoon for forty
from an infection through rats to one between days (quarantine means ‘a period of forty days’);
humans. whoever was alive and well after this term was
On the other hand, entire regions, such as allowed to enter Venice.
Bohemia, and a number of major towns are Despite quarantines and hygienic regulations,
known to have suffered relatively little. As far as the Black Death struck mercilessly and repeat-
the former are concerned, there must have been edly, in 1361–1362, 1369, 1375, 1382–1384 and
an ecological reason (Bohemia, for instance, 1400–1402 and on other occasions in the fol-
did not have the niches suitable for foreign rat lowing centuries. Between 10 and 20 per cent of
populations). The towns that were spared owed the population of Europe succumbed in every
this above all to sensible government. Although epidemic. After 1402 the length of time between
medieval doctors had not the slightest idea about epidemics increased, and they were less wide-
the bacterial origins of diseases, nor of how they spread. Nevertheless, the frequency with which
spread, people did realise that they could be the sickness reared its head continued to hinder
highly contagious and, therefore, that it was best demographic recovery, the more so because it
to keep the disease at a distance. This could be sometimes appeared together with other apoca-
done in two ways: a town could be isolated from lyptic horrors. This was the case, for example,
the outside world by strictly controlling the traf- in 1437–1438, when war, famine and disease
fic entering, and within the town itself, houses, stalked the land together, in that precise order,

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and, at least in part, in that order of causation. The damage and suffering of war
In Normandy, where the effects of the Hundred
Years War were felt most harshly, the population It is difficult to calculate the demographic effects
decreased by one-third at that time. Nor should of wars on the late Middle Ages. Compared with
we forget that various diseases could take on wars in our own time even protracted conflicts
epidemic forms in more or less the same period. such as the Hundred Years War did not directly
Although the vague descriptions found in sources cause many civilian casualties, until the French
do not always permit a proper medical diagnosis, king, Charles VIII, set a depressing new standard
we do know that, besides plague, various forms of during his invasion of Italy in 1494. Actual hos-
typhus, diphtheria, dysentery, malaria and occa- tilities were limited to a number of years, armies
sionally influenza proved fatal to many of their were relatively small when compared to those in
victims. later centuries, and the theatre of war changed
The more data are being collected about constantly. It is true that large battles did claim
climatic conditions (fluctuations in the sun irra- the lives of thousands of soldiers, a relatively
diation, temperature and humidity), correlations high number. For this reason there was a high
can be established with effects in animal popu- mortality rate among the nobles who took an
lations and vegetation. In their turn, the latter active part in war during the late Middle Ages.
affected living conditions, while, on the other For common people, however, the consequences
hand, human behaviour fostered and acceler- were more local, depending on the movements of
ated some natural processes. It is still debated armies and war bands; many only felt the effects
whether the mortality of the Black Death was so of war indirectly and in the long term.
extremely high because the plague hit a popula- A common tactic was to lay siege to a city, and
tion weakened by malnutrition as a consequence thus to starve its inhabitants. In addition, it was
of the famines and livestock diseases which had usual to make raids into the enemy’s territory,
infested large parts of western Europe during the to pillage and ravage whatever the soldiers could
preceding forty years. However, in the present reach. In the countryside, they would steal cattle,
stage of scientific research, it is established that plunder granaries and burn farms, which implies
the first half of the fourteenth century saw, from the destruction of essential means of production.
central Asia to the Nile valley and north-west Troops on campaign or people escaping from the
Scotland, an extraordinary conjunction of cooler violence of war increased the risk of contagious
temperatures and exceptionally high levels of diseases spreading. In those areas through which
precipitation, with repeatedly bad harvests as a armies crossed or where mercenaries remained
direct consequence. The cattle murrain had a bio- once the campaign was over in the hope of find-
logical cause, but its dissemination was certainly ing new employment, there was no end to the
precipitated by the preceding climatic hazards misery, for all was pillaged and ravaged relent-
and failed harvests, as well as by trading routes lessly. This would have affected the fertility rate
through Europe, and it worsened the living con- more than mortality. Yet the war-stricken popu-
ditions for the humans. These humans actively lation of France recovered from the economic
contributed to their problems by massively engag- depression of the late Middle Ages sooner than
ing in long-distance trade, pilgrimages, wars and that of England, which was spared the violence
revolts. Under these conditions the plague spread of war – civil war – until 1455.
extremely rapidly over the continents, but its ori-
gin certainly lay in a rare combination of climatic
and biological factors.

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PLATE 10.1 From cardinal to

minstrel, everybody is dragged into
death by skeletons. The theme of
the danse macabre became popular
after the recurrent outbreaks of the
plague. Early fifteenth-century mural
painting in the church of La Ferté-
Loupière (France, Dep. Yonne).

Demographic decline and of about 1300 would again have been reached by
1550. In certain strongly urbanised regions, such
economic development as Flanders and Holland, the population level of
There is not the slightest doubt that the size of 1300 was probably reached even before the end
the population during the fourteenth century of the fifteenth century; but others, among them
decreased markedly all over Europe. It is generally Tuscany, would only approach the estimated
assumed that the population of Europe around population density of the thirteenth century in
1450 was approximately two-thirds of what it the course of the nineteenth century.
had been in 1300. It then made a hesitant recov- This difference in the phases of demographic
ery, with considerable regional differences. In recovery cannot be ascribed to large regional
1520 England still only had about half the esti- discrepancies in the mortality rate. There must
mated number of inhabitants it had at the end have been other factors at work, for instance,
of the thirteenth century; that number was not differences in labour relations related to marital
reached until about 1600. Demographic recovery fertility, and cultural differences. For England it
started earlier in France, and the population size has been demonstrated that after the Black Death

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young women often took jobs for a while, which came under pressure, and the rate of urbanisation
had a negative influence on fertility. Cultural flagged. Colonisation and land reclamation came
factors may well have played a role in Tuscany, to a standstill. Together these indicators support
where it was no longer customary for young the picture of a relatively overpopulated Europe.
widows to remarry. That, too, helped keep the It is impossible to say whether the tensions
fertility rate low in a period of high mortality. between population growth and means of sub-
In his influential Essay on the Principle of sistence would ever have resulted in a Malthusian
Population of 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus put discharge, for the Black Death intervened as an
forward the theory that each population tends exogenous factor in its origin, not a positive
to grow more quickly than does the amount of check in the Malthusian sense raised by inter-
food that it can itself produce. Sooner or later, nal circumstances. The same is only partly true
population growth is thus restructured to remove of the Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the cattle
the tensions between population pressure and plague of the 1320s and 1340s. The exceptionally
food production. This can happen favourably, by bad weather conditions were their primary cause,
means of what Malthus called preventive checks, but their severity depended on human factors,
or unfavourably through positive checks: favour- namely the high urbanisation with question-
ably, by limiting the number of children, that able hygienic provisions, the limited transport
is the number of births (a fall in the birth rate), facilities, the high concentrations and mobility
which in pre-industrial Europe implied lowering of cattle.
marital fertility; and unfavourably, as a conse- From that perspective, population in some
quence of disease, famine and violence in an parts of Europe may indeed have reached a
over-full world (increased mortality). threshold level around 1300. Moreover, from
According to modern development econo- recent historical climate research we know with
mists, such as Esther Boserup, a population certainty that the extremely bad weather in
coming under sufficient demographic pressure 1315–1317 and 1348–1351 fit into a century-long
will try to expand food production through phase of global cooling. During the twenty-five
increasing labour intensity and technological years after the Black Death, cooler, wetter and
innovation. ‘Necessity is the mother of innova- stormy conditions persisted and had a negative
tion’, is one of her slogans. Others have added impact on agricultural production, tree growth
that under such circumstances commercialisation and salt evaporation (which is an indication of
will help peasant producers in pre-industrial econ- lower solar radiation). Massive environmental
omies to give up their subsistence strategy, which dislocations worsened the nutritional conditions
is aimed at self-sufficiency and generates poverty. of entire generations which may have enhanced
Despite critical objections and qualifica- the impact of infectious diseases, whose quick
tions, the neo-Malthusian view of demographic dissemination was promoted by frequent wars.
developments during the first half of the four- Again, human activities worsened the effects
teenth century is still accepted in general. There of the natural disasters that struck humankind
appear to be enough indications of growing during the fourteenth century.
demographic pressure towards the end of the
thirteenth century. Regulated agriculture had
penetrated agro-ecological marginal regions, The agrarian crisis of the late
such as the Alps and the Scottish Highlands. In Middle Ages
more densely populated areas the pieces of land
owned by peasants were radically split up, the This brings us to the next component of the neo-
communal use of pasture, wood and waste land Malthusian view of the economic history of the

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late Middle Ages that raises questions. It rests on hard. Second, this economic crisis was an impedi-
two suppositions. First, long-term mortality rates ment to rapid population recovery because of its
caused by the recurrent plague epidemics set in negative effects on marriage patterns and mar-
motion a deflationary economic spiral which in riage fertility, and thus on the birth rate.
particular struck the agricultural sector extremely

Desertion frequency for farms

(and in Denmark, villages)
during the late Middle Ages
Insignificant or none (<15%)
Significant (15–25%)
Extensive (25–40%)
Very extensive (>40%)
Unknown
Miles
0 150 300

0 150 300 450

Kilometres

Regions in England that were dominated by open

fields and villages during the high Middle Ages.
The combination of these regions contains
the large majority of deserted villages.
According to Rackham (1986)
According to Roberts and Wrathmell (2002)

Extent of desertion
Negligible Average
Small High

MAP 10.2 Lost villages. Map by Hans Renes, Utrecht University (reprinted with the author’s permission)

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PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

S Y M P TO M S The drastic reduction in popula- bread but of more expensive foodstuffs. This
tion numbers after 1350 changed the land-labour structural change in consumer preferences can
ratio, the relationship between the acreage avail- partially explain the tendency towards low grain
able for cultivation and the number of people prices. But it was only a tendency. We have seen
working on that land. This led to agricultural that the market prices of grain could fluctuate
land being used more extensively, or even being under the influence of great variations in the size
entirely neglected, if the land was in an unfa- of the harvests from one year to another and that
vourable location or of poor quality. A typical crises of subsistence continued to occur on aver-
late medieval phenomenon was that of deserted age once in seven years until the late eighteenth
land, which often resulted in entire villages being century.
abandoned. In the German Empire 40,000 out
of a total of 170,000 settlements, almost a quar- S O L U T I O N S The new scarcity and price rela-
ter, were lost. To be sure there may have been tions that came into existence after the Black
other reasons behind the loss of these villages, Death did not have the same effect on every social
administrative or military, for example, but there group involved in agricultural production. Those
is no doubt at all that the need for farming land hardest hit were the traditional large landowners,
decreased. It led everywhere to a radical fall in the the nobility and the monasteries in particular.
rents and sale prices of farmland. Falling incomes, either from surpluses which
A second consequence was linked directly they brought to market or from rents or leases
to the first. The severe decline in the size of the in cash or kind, contrasted with soaring wage
population pushed down the price of grain, the costs and the rising expenses of non-agricultural
basic foodstuff, after a while. This seems logical goods. In sum, this group found itself trapped in
because the falling size of the population made it a price-cost squeeze. In such circumstances many
possible to concentrate grain production on the landowners felt forced to capitalise on parts of
most suitable land so that the average yields per their land. Others, private individuals rather than
unit of area rose. Now, perhaps the first of these (ecclesiastical) institutions, tried either to ‘marry
things did happen, but the second one certainly money’ or find an alternative source of income
did not, because the fields were worked less inten- in the growing official, diplomatic or military
sively than previously as a result of the shortage apparatuses of kings and princes.
of labour. Moreover, at least in some parts of Less drastic solutions allowed large landown-
Europe the number of people living in towns ers to keep their position intact and sometimes
increased, which means that more people had to even to strengthen it. One such way included
buy food on the market. every attempt to counter market forces by keep-
Why then did market prices of grain tend to ing wages low, obstructing the free movement
go down in the long term? There are two main of labour or increasing all sorts of traditional
reasons. First, because land was cheap, many payments in spite of their inalterable charac-
smallholders or even landless workers succeeded ter. Such solutions were applied under pressure
in acquiring enough land to avoid being depend- in Catalonia, but not often in north-western
ent on the market for buying grain. Second, the Europe where lords attempted to placate peasants
shortage of labour caused wages to rise. This by offering them favourable levies and leases or
favourable development in wages in relation to dangling the prospect of improvements in their
prices led to an improvement in the standard of legal status before them. In England, the two
living of those groups who were largely or entirely reactions followed each other: landlords first used
dependent on wage income. The improvement legal means to compel people to work and to fix
was reflected in greater consumption, not of a maximum wage. This solution was probably

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initiated by the Commons in parliament, the flavourings) were generally far more stable than
representatives of the lower nobility and the pros- the price of grain. Because the cultivation and
perous middle class, both groups which could not processing of cash crops was particularly labour-
compete with the wealthy higher nobility and intensive, this provided a solution for smaller
ecclesiastical landowners who simply used force peasants who did not have to hire labourers.
if they found it necessary. The earliest of these Large landowners profited more by specialis-
legal measures was the Ordinance of Labourers ing in extensive forms of pastoral farming, which
issued by Edward III on 18 June 1349 when the required plenty of land but not much labour. There
Black Death caused havoc in England. Special was a phenomenal growth in sheep farming during
judges, the justices of labourers, were appointed the Middle Ages, especially in the more sparsely
to enforce the ordinance. Less than two years populated regions of England and Castile. It has
later, a more systematic law dealing with the same been said that sheep changed from being a peas-
issue was introduced, the Statute of Labourers. ant’s animal to a lord’s animal, even if this had
Several stricter measures followed, among them been the case in the coastal regions of Flanders for
the petition ‘against rebellious peasants’, passed many centuries. By the beginning of the fourteenth
by the Commons in 1377. England was not alone century, England had already exported the wool of
in taking such steps. Similar measures were taken an estimated eight million sheep. A further expan-
elsewhere in the same period, including France sion of sheep flocks was prevented for the time
(for the Paris region), Castile and Austria. being as a consequence of the draconic increases
When the passage of laws to ensure that in the export taxes on wool. Large landowners
agricultural labour remained affordable proved had to wait until the second half of the fifteenth
ineffective, many English landlords abandoned century, when domestic cloth production started
the direct exploitation of their estates. It often booming, before it became profitable to switch
meant that they leased out the demesne parts to sheep-farming. Then, English landlords soon
or réserves (the parts of manors reserved for found themselves clashing with peasants, who
the lord) and made written contracts, known traditionally had grazing rights allowing sheep
as copyholds, with their bondsmen for the to use the vast tracts of wasteland. This heralded
possession of their holdings in a form of heredi- the breakthrough of the enclosure movement,
tary lease. This in fact finally brought an end to whereby the landlords enclosed grazing lands and
serfdom in England. The Catalan peasants were shut them off to common use. In the kingdoms
equally successful in their resistance to the reac- of Naples and Castile, the growing number of
tionary attitude of their landlords, albeit over a sheep led to increased transhumance, the seasonal
longer period. migration of livestock between the higher-lying
Those landlords who continued to exploit summer pastures and the plains and valleys. This,
their land and turned to the market had to make too, caused all sorts of problems. In an effort to
sure that they profited from altered price rela- deal with them, sheep-owners sometimes organ-
tions. Not all agricultural products showed the ised themselves into associations, the best known
same tendency to drop in price. As a result of of which is the Mesta in Castile. Dominated from
the changes in consumer preferences and the the beginning by noble landowners and knightly
expansion of urban industries, the prices of ani- orders, this brotherhood by 1360 exploited a total
mal products (wool, beef, leather and butter in of one million sheep; by the middle of the fif-
particular), luxury foods (wine, vegetables and teenth century that number had increased to three
fruit) and any variety of crops that could be used million, and by 1500 to five million.
as raw materials in urban industries (flax, hemp, In addition to a more extensive land use, the
barley and hop for brewing, vegetable dyes and application of labour-saving techniques sometimes

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brought relief because they kept wages down small-scale farming was combined with a medley
while the capital investment needed was not of non-agricultural activities: shipbuilding, ship-
exceptionally large. Two of these innovations ping and fishery, peat and salt extraction, reed
were developed in Flanders: the light plough, cutting and brick-making. There, too, was always
which needed fewer horses and labourers, and a great demand for wage work in the construction
the reaping hook, or short scythe, which replaced and maintenance of dykes, ditches and sluices.
the sickle for harvesting. It was possible to work As a result, more than half the rural population
far more quickly with the reaping hook and also of Holland had become heavily dependent for its
to harvest more straw, used as a roofing material income on wage earnings by 1500. The same pro-
and in the preparation of manure. portion has been mentioned in connection with
And what of the peasants themselves, the East Anglia, where wages were usually earned
direct agricultural producers? In order to assess by labour on large farms in the region. In those
what happened to them it is best to divide them parts of England rich in minerals (coal, tin, cop-
into three groups: a middle class, which had per, lead), such as Durham, Devon and Cornwall,
just enough land to support itself; above that, a the exploitation of smallholdings was often
(small) group of peasants with substantial hold- combined with work in the mines.
ings who regularly produced surpluses for the The middle group of peasants, in possession
market and who employed labourers; and, at the of its own land, always remained vulnerable,
bottom, a broad underlayer of smallholders and because it had difficulty in building up financial
people without any land at all, dependent more reserves. These peasants were not only unable to
or less entirely on irregular or seasonal wages. As profit from the low price of land, but if they were
wages were relatively high at the time, the late particularly vulnerable to damage from war or
Middle Ages was generally a favourable period natural disasters such as failed harvests, storms
for this last group. They often had to find extra and floods, for they had no resources on which
income from non-agricultural or para-agricul- to fall back, then they were also easy prey for
tural sources. Urban traders and entrepreneurs large farmers and landowners. Their pitiful situ-
found it attractive to move some aspects of cloth ation worsened in many parts of western Europe
production, such as spinning and weaving, to the when their tax burden increased rapidly after the
countryside where the wages were lower than in fifteenth century.
the towns with their guilds and collective pro- The prospects for the third group, that of
tests against excessive exploitation. In some parts large farmers, were better in this respect. They
of fifteenth-century Flanders and England, com- were able to create a financial buffer and, through
pletely new centres for the production of cheap diversification, could gear production to market
woollen cloth emerged, such as Hondschoote and demand better than those peasants whose pri-
Poperinge in West Flanders or Castle Combe in mary occupation was simply to subsist. Certainly
Wiltshire. In the vicinity of Ghent, large numbers some peasants ended up in the grip of the nega-
of smallholders specialised in the labour-inten- tive price scissor, but not to such an extent as the
sive cultivation of flax. After the harvest, they great landowners. The peasants had a far more
added extra income by combing, retting and modest pattern of consumption and they could
spinning the raw flax themselves. Only then keep the costs of hired labour to a minimum by
was the flax thread sent to the linen-weavers as a getting members of their family to help or by
semi-manufactured product. taking in farmhands and helpers as boarders or
The integration of non-agrarian activities into paying them in kind. In this way, many better-
the rural economy is not necessarily limited to the off peasants managed to enlarge their fortunes
textile industry only. In the County of Holland, and invest their savings in cheap land. The trend

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continued during the period of renewed expan- given a primarily regional function. Hundreds
sion, starting around 1450. A class of prosperous of new fairs were introduced, for example. The
large farmers then emerged in England, the yeo- largest and most important – at Antwerp and
men, whose social status was just below that of Bergen-op-Zoom each twice per year, Lyons,
the lower nobility or gentry. Frankfurt-am-Main, Geneva, Vienna, Nuremberg,
Cracow – became part of dynamic new cycles of
annual fairs with an international character. They
Economic crisis or contraction? were just the tip of the iceberg, however, show-
ing that more and more small places were linked
Many authors who have studied the economic up with trading networks into the continent,
history of the late Middle Ages use the terms crisis enabling people of modest means to buy simple
and contraction rather indiscriminately, which goods from other places. By the same token, these
we think is wrong. We have preferred to typify same people could try to find bigger or more dis-
the period as a whole as a phase of contraction, tant markets for their local produce. Information
and not as a crisis. Demographic shrinkage is from Flanders shows how well they succeeded
not disputed, nor the resulting fall in the total in this: cheap woollen materials produced in
production of goods. To what extent and why the new rural textile centres found their way to
this situation was detrimental for certain forms Russia as early as the fifteenth century. It is there-
of income has already been discussed. It became fore generally accepted that the total volume of
clear that not all social groups who could lay claim trade was far larger in 1500 than it had been at
to income from agriculture found themselves the end of the period of expansion two centuries
in a crisis situation. earlier. Even in this optimistic scenario, however,
Approaching the question from other angles, cyclical movements and regional differences in
we can put the alleged late medieval crisis even tempo still must be taken into consideration.
further into perspective. Wage-earners – first Regions that did well at a relatively early date,
and foremost urban groups – saw a considerable such as Castile and southern Germany, formed a
increase in their real earnings, and thus in their contrast with those that only got under way later,
standard of living. Not without reason, the fif- such as Normandy and England.
teenth century has often been referred to as the
golden age of the labourer, and the improve-
ment, in addition to free time, would have been Characteristics of late
reflected in the purchase of more expensive food- medieval society
stuffs and products of industry. This development
stimulated the production of and trade in goods Openness and closure
of mass consumption for the first time in medi-
eval history. There are clear indications that, by With its high mortality rates, the late Middle Ages
and large and despite the horrors of chronic crises was a period of intermittent dynamism. Apart
of existence, late medieval people, by and large, from the social and psychological disruptions,
were better fed, better clothed and better housed which at times must have been unimaginable,
than their forefathers. This can be deduced from the lottery of death – it was impossible to predict
certain economic-institutional developments as who would die or who would survive – led to radi-
well as from an archaeological and art-historical cal rearrangements of capital. No wonder that the
study of the material culture. ancient theme of vicissitudes of fortune enjoyed
During the late Middle Ages, economic such popularity. That was true of another new
institutions such as markets increasingly were motif as well, the dance of death, the procession

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of rich and poor, young and old, man and wife, that Clinton’s income was only twelve times the
led by death (often depicted as a skeleton holding minimum annual income of £5 necessary to be
a scythe), which was intended to make all mortals counted a gentleman.
realise that death was no respecter of persons and The nobility was never hermetically sealed off,
could carry anyone off, at any time. however – had that happened it would have soon
If the mortality crises furthered geographical died out everywhere! One road open to it was to
and social mobility, paradoxically enough they embrace people who were closest to the nobility
also advanced the tendency to social closure. The in wealth and lifestyle: in England the ownership
paradox is admirably illustrated by the develop- of extensive property largely determined entry,
ment of the late medieval English nobility. Under in the Low Countries often the possession of
the influence of the Hundred Years War in par- seigneurial rights. Vice versa, nobility and knight-
ticular, the nobility was considerably enlarged hood excluded members who were no longer able
through the recognition of two additional noble to maintain their position, whatever the reason.
ranks, those of (e)squire and gentleman. The More or less fixed mechanisms were in place to
number of nobles tripled. This new nobility then regulate this: one important criterion to exclude
became increasingly exclusive. Taxation was an individual was whether he himself performed
the background to this development: when the farm work or other forms of manual labour.
Crown taxed the nobility it had to be clear who A similar paradox applies to urban settings. On
belonged to the group. the one hand, urbanisation increased rather than
Even after enlargement, therefore, the English decreased during the late Middle Ages. Moreover,
nobility remained a select group, comprising no life expectancy was shorter in towns than in the
more than 1.6 per cent of the taxable popula- countryside. For both reasons, there always was
tion at the middle of the fifteenth century. Table a steady flow of migrants into the towns result-
10.1, with an overview of the English nobility in ing in greater flexibility and mobility of labour,
1436, clearly shows the enormous differences in which in the large and medium-sized towns led
income within the nobility, especially within the to the formation of a highly mobile, almost float-
highest category of nobles, the peers. The richest ing, underclass of people who did not have the
peer in England in that year was Richard, duke of formal status of burgher, were employed on a
York, who had a taxable income of £3,230. This daily basis or not at all, and who thus lived from
was more than fifty times greater than the £60 hand to mouth. On the other hand, the increas-
listed for Lord Clinton, the least well-off peer in ing organisation and regulation of labour and
the tax records. Further, the records also show production in the crafts, the retail trade and the

TABLE 10.1 Stratification of the nobility in England according to income tax demands in 1436. The total
number of taxpayers was about 450,000

Range
Category No. Taxable annual Average annual
income (£) income (£)
Peers 50 60–3,230 865
Knights (knightly class) 933 40–600 88
Esquires 1,200 20–39 24
(Larger) freeholders 1,600 10–19 [14.5]
(Ordinary) gentlemen c.3,400 5–10 [7.5]
Source: Calculated from S.H. Rigby, English Society in the Later Middle Ages: Class, Status and Gender (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan,
1995), p. 190.

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services reinforced the tendency to exclusion. (lit. ‘sermons addressed to the [social] orders’).
This was particularly the case in sectors which The tendency was articulated even further dur-
suffered from the decrease in demand for their ing the late Middle Ages. One famous literary
standard products, such as butchers and tradi- witness of the extreme boxes mentality of this
tional urban weavers. They tried to uphold their period was Geoffrey Chaucer’s verse narrative,
market share by protectionism and exclusion of The Canterbury Tales; this story of a company of
newcomers. In spite of that, some sectors proved pilgrims on their way to the shrine of Thomas
able to adapt to the shifts in demand, discover Becket at Canterbury formed a perfect frame
new markets and develop new products such as for an ironic parade of pilgrims each of which
the cheap woollen cloth in England, Holland and represented a recognisable social type.
south-west Flanders, linen and fustian in Swabia.
In regions with a booming trade, such as Holland,
the region of Antwerp, south-west Flanders and The position of women
Swabia, more liberal regulations and openness to
newcomers were required to meet the demand What influence did the socio-economic climate
for labour. of the late Middle Ages have on the position of
This entire development fits in with the more women in society? The answer to this question
general tendency in western European society must begin with the observation that virtually no
during the later Middle Ages and the early mod- one during the period ever got beyond the essen-
ern period towards social compartmentalisation tially ambiguous attitude that has in fact been
and the formation of what Max Weber called sta- characteristic of the entire history of Christian
tus groups. By this he meant groups which were European culture, from ancient times right up
clearly separate from each other socially and to the present time. The misogynous undercur-
sometimes even legally, and reinforced that sep- rent within it went far back in time, to Greek
aration by their way of life and their own codes philosophers like Aristotle, and was reinforced
of behaviour. The origin of this tendency to clas- in late ancient Christian theology. Along the
sification must be sought in the twelfth century, way the negative image of women became firmly
when all sorts of new urban groups and associa- embedded in medical, theological and legal views.
tions had to find their places in the social order According to those views, not only were women
which, according to medieval social ideology (cf. inferior to men in a physical respect, they were
Chapter 5), had to be firmly and hierarchically also less intelligent and less inhibited emotionally.
constructed and able to function organically; as Nevertheless, Christianity set a positive counter-
society became increasingly complex, however, current in motion by admitting women from
the social order showed symptoms of emancipa- the outset to the heart of the gallery of Christian
tion and mobility that were difficult to reconcile saints, beginning with the Virgin Mary, mother
with this ideology. The listings and plans of social of Christ. This counter-current was reinforced
groups from that time betray the need felt for an under the influence of the new religious and
appointed place; all segments of society had to be courtly sentiments that came to the fore from the
absolutely certain concerning what was expected eleventh century onwards and by changes in the
of them, by which external signs they could be Church’s ideas on marriage. A Christian marriage
recognised, the sort of behaviour fitting for their could only be founded on the agreement of both
members, and so on. All sorts of social catego- marriage partners, and mutual affection between
ries were even provided with ‘typical’ virtues and spouses became the basis of a good marriage.
vices. Moral group assessments of this sort were But all this brought little change in the pre-
imprinted through the so-called sermones ad status vailing negative attitude towards women in

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medieval society. Through their assumed lesser therefore better paid. A noticeable exception was
nature, women had an essentially different func- a midwife, whose professional training was regu-
tion from that of men. They always needed the lated by municipal authorities and who could
protection of a guardian who had authority on become a member of craft guilds and enjoy the
them, protected and represented them in law: status of master/mistress.
the father, brother, uncle, husband, priest and From a purely legal viewpoint, widows were
confessor. As a rule, women had no place in pub- the best off. As long as they did not remarry, wid-
lic life, and had no business there. Outside the ows had far more control over their own affairs
private sphere, women had only limited rights. than did married women. For economic reasons,
They could not hold public office, except for that however, many women could not afford to per-
of abbess or the temporal ruling positions such manently escape ‘a man’s rod’, in the words of
as queen, duchess, countess or dame of a lord- the Antwerp poetess Anna Bijns (1493–1575),
ship, often connected with considerable genuine and thus they remarried unless there were strong
power. Ordinary women, on the other hand, cultural prejudices against remarriage, as was
could act independently on their own behalf or the case in the Mediterranean area. Not without
on behalf of another, without the aid of a male reason widows were placed under the special
guardian, or appear before ecclesiastical or secular protection of the Church as personae miserabiles
courts only in very precisely described, excep- even into the fourteenth century. Only the well-
tional cases such as expert witness as a midwife. off widow, with sufficient means to carry on or
Full emancipation was acknowledged only for possibly rent out the business of her deceased
widows who were entitled to inherit and con- husband, could gain recognition as a full master
tinue their late husband’s business. (or mistress) within a craft guild. It is also notice-
From a socio-economic point of view, there able how many widows were among the creditors
was less inequality between men and women in mentioned in countless loan letters dating from
the lower classes than in the upper classes. In the the late Middle Ages.
lower classes, a woman normally was actively Whether the position of women improved or
involved in income-earning, there was little worsened during the late Middle Ages is a much
property or capital for men to manage, and men discussed matter. One theory broadly suggests that
had few or no public (administrative or judicial) women’s chances in life were much improved in
responsibilities which gave them a sense of supe- the late Middle Ages in comparison with the early
riority. The relative degree of autonomy allowed period. Their negotiating position on the marriage
to women who were active in trade or the retail market had weakened, however, because they had
business in towns was particularly remarkable. become far less scarce. Such demographic reason-
In Flanders and Cologne, every generally recog- ing may appear rather far-fetched, but the idea
nised coopvrouw, female merchant, was allowed to of a relative surplus of women in the late Middle
carry on business on her own account and at her Ages is by no means absurd, so long as it is applied
own risk, whatever her civil status. Most working only to towns. Comparatively large numbers of
women, however, were employed on the fringes women lived in towns. Wealthier households
of the economy and not in association with generally had many live-in female servants. Older
guilds. They often performed undervalued tasks widows from the countryside often moved within
in the textile trade, such as spinning, combing, the protection of the town walls if they could
knotting and knitting, or they peddled foodstuffs afford to do so. For similar reasons the towns
on the street, sold cheap cloth or ran a junk housed many women’s convents and, especially
shop. Many women worked as domestic servants in the Low Countries, beguinages (see Chapter
while others cared for the sick, clearly risky but 12). This form of open cohabitation of single

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BOX 10.2 A WOMAN FIGHTS BACK WITH

THE PEN: THE LIFE AND WORKS OF
CHRISTINE DE PIZAN (1364–c.1430)
Perhaps the most remarkable example of a
successful widow in the late Middle Ages
was Christine of Pisa (Christine de Pizan)
(1364–c.1430), daughter of the Venetian
court astrologer to the French king, Charles
V. After the death of her husband, the royal
secretary, Étienne de Castel, Christine
became a public figure with an extensive
literary oeuvre consisting of poems in the
lyrical, courtly style, biographies and didac-
tic works. The Livre de la cité des dames
(‘Book of the City of Ladies’) and Epistres
sur le Rommant de la Rose (‘Letters about the
Roman de la Rose’) are considered her most
important works. The first, completed in
1405, was a very free translation into French
of De claris mulieribus (‘Concerning Famous
Women’), a poetical work written in Latin by
Giovanni Boccaccio. While Boccaccio had
included only the biographies of exemplary
Christine de Pizan writing in her study. She presented
women from pagan Antiquity, not consid-
her writings, Oeuvres, to Isabeau, queen of France,
ering it fitting to describe the saintly lives
in 1407.
of Christian women in the same context,
Christine had no hesitation in doing just that.
And after a comparative enumeration of virtues that were mirrored in the lives of those famous
women from the past, she proffered a philosophical defence against the misogynous mainstream
of medieval intellectual thought. The city of ladies was built under the supervision of Reason,
Rectitude and Justice; its citizens had proved that they contributed at least as much as men did
to the formation of an ordered Christian society. Women were different from men, but it was not
possible that they were less perfect creations of God, and for that reason their natural weaknesses
were amply compensated for by positive characteristics. In Christine’s view, the withholding of a
proper education from women was the main reason for their seeming inferiority.
The same themes were dealt with in the Epistres, though in a less veiled way, for in this polemic
Christine took the side of female honour and honesty against the uncomplimentary treatment of
women in the immensely popular Roman de la Rose. The interminable Roman was an allegorical
treatment of courtly love. It was begun around 1240 by the northern French knight, Guillaume
de Loris, and continued in a much more satirical, and anti-female, vein by Jean de Meung, a poet
of bourgeois origins, a quarter of a century later. Christine’s criticism provoked heated public

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discussions about the value of the Roman, in which she could count on the support of the famous
preacher and chancellor of the University of Paris, Jean Gerson, who called Christine ‘a woman
like a man’ (femina ista virilis).
On her own, Christine de Pizan was of course no more a proof of the existence of wide sup-
port for the emancipation of women than was Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orléans whom Christine
praised in one of her poems. Moreover, Christine’s works were traditional in form and, above all,
encouraged conventional marital virtues and female codes of conduct. Nonetheless, they had
an emancipatory tenor, especially because they propagated the idea, previously defended only
by Abelard, that women too may have auctoritas, and that they deserve a full and valued place
within the community. In this connection Christine also urged that elementary education be made
available to women.

Sources: Maureen Quilligan, The Allegory of Female Authority: Christine de Pizan’s ‘Cité des dames’ (Ithaca NY:
Cornell UP, 1991); Liliane Dulac and Bernard Ribémont (eds), Une femme de lettres au Moyen Age. Etudes autour
de Christine de Pizan (Orléans: Paradigme, 1995); Alcuin Blamires, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).

lay women in individual houses protected by a which more and more emphasis was laid on the
wall and a gate, met in some way the desire for moral reputation of individuals – and the reputa-
emancipation from patriarchy. tion of a single woman was easily besmirched.
Towns then were places where there were And, finally, the gradual professionalisation of
concentrations of women without them neces- medical and pharmaceutical care and the rise
sarily forming an economic or social problem of a professional care sector (again, mainly in the
for urban society, a perspective suggested in towns) would have played a part as they tried
German historiography in particular. The sup- to submerge all forms of popular medicine and
posed excess of unmarried women, all of whom magic, which came to be seen in an increasingly
secretly desired a husband, was often ridiculed bad light. In short, by the end of the Middle Ages,
in the satirical literature of the time. It also pro- there were clear signs of a religious-psychological
vided a fertile breeding-ground for another, by climate of fear and rejection that would end in
no means harmless, phenomenon: the demoni- the great witch hunts of the early modern period.
sation of single, elderly women. The stereotype
of the ill-tempered old woman who used magic
spells to cause harm had been around for much Social contrasts and social
longer – there was a continued demand for prac- conflicts
titioners of magic throughout the entire Middle
Ages – but now a new element was added, one Town and country
which was particularly dangerous for those con-
cerned: that malicious people could make a pact In addition to the old antithesis between peas-
with the devil. This demonisation of women who ants and aristocratic lords, the rise of the towns
were wrongly suspected of practising magic had a created a new contrast, one between town and
variety of backgrounds. The ubiquitous presence country, between farmers and townspeople,
of death and decay certainly contributed to it, between a rustic and a civic culture. It seemed to
as did the boxed-in mentality discussed earlier be a logical consequence of the tendency of the
and the growing moralism in public life through towns to dominate the surrounding countryside

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judicially, economically, politically and militarily. the violent discharges of social tensions that
That tendency was reinforced in the late Middle were hidden behind the ideal of harmony in
Ages in those parts of Europe with an increased an organically functioning society professed
degree of urbanisation. by the clerical elite. The late Middle Ages were
Late medieval urban imperialism caused the no exception in this respect: there were a num-
distinct, multidimensional interrelation between ber of large uprisings in both the country and
town and country to widen rather than to nar- the urban sphere. It appears that three factors
row the social and cultural gulf between country seem to promote rebellion. First, the structural
people and town-dwellers. In 1525, Wolfgang shortage of labour was the cause of tensions
Königstein, a canon of Frankfurt, could refer to between serfs and lords, landowners and lease-
the Peasants’ War which had just broken out holders, and between employers and employees.
as an uffruer von ein folk, genannt die bauern (‘a Sometimes these tensions revolved around the
revolt of a people, known as the peasants’), as if claim to abolish unfree personal status and the
he were talking about the Huns or the Mongols. limits to mobility, sometimes around wage levels
A revealing remark. The urban elite had a pro- or political representation. Second, there was a
found dislike of everything rustic, and this dislike rapid growth in fiscal demands imposed by rul-
was translated into stereotypes which sometimes ers upon their subjects at this time. This teething
merely repeated the old aristocratic prejudices trouble of the early modern state was without
against peasants and sometimes reflected new doubt one of the major reasons for revolt. Finally,
ones. Peasants were seen as clumsy, churlish, the call for Church reformation, and especially
dirty and stupid, lacking any sense of proportion the repulsion against the papal appointments of
and self-control either in eating and drinking foreign prelates in the Empire, punctuated with
or in dealing with conflicts. An Italian proverb widespread anti-clerical feelings and linked with
summed it up: la città buon’ huomeni de’ fare, la a desire for far-reaching social change fuelled
villa buone bestie (‘the task of the town is to make some major revolts, such as that of the Hussites
good people, and of the village to make good in Bohemia in the 1420s and the Peasants’ War
beasts’). In the eyes of literary historians, the in Germany in 1525–1526. So, what we see as
‘burgher culture’ was rooted in the positive view the basis of revolts is a mixture of grievances
that contrasted with the negative characteristics against landlords and more or less ideologically
of rustic life. If we are to use the term burgher cul- driven resistance to rising demands of the state
ture, we must remember that it refers exclusively and abuses in the Church. The last two seem to
to the culture of the urban elite. This was a reac- have been conditional to scaling-up local strug-
tion against both the noisy nobility abhorrent of gle to something bigger, something that could set
manual labour and the common folk, particularly alight entire regions, districts or principalities. It
the peasants in the countryside. There was con- explains why there have been many more large-
tinual social interaction between the nobility and scale popular revolts from the fourteenth century
the patriciate in the towns, which not only led to onwards than there had been before.
marriages and political or economical unions but Large-scale revolts of peasants, which also
also brought about a cultural blending. linked up with some urban movements, stood
out as a strikingly new phenomenon in the late
Middle Ages. The Flemish Peasant Revolt of 1323–
Peasants’ revolts 1328, the French Jacquerie in 1358, the English
Peasants’ Revolt in 1381, the German Peasants’
Throughout the Middle Ages internal peace and War in 1525–1526 and the Catalan remensas
order was cruelly broken from time to time by movement – which was not limited to just one

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PLATE 10.2 Rebel peasants, carrying their union’s standard, arrest a knight. Woodcut, 1539.

year (and for that reason alone was rather differ- taxes were levied. When the count, Louis of
ent) – are all classic examples of peasant uprisings Nevers, imposed a heavy fine on the rebels, the
in the late Middle Ages. Most of the late medieval peasants’ hatred was directed at the lords in gen-
social revolts underlined the differences between eral, including the great abbeys with their large
town and country, for a real coalition between estates and revenues from tithes. The aristocrats
peasant rebels and urban rebels occurred only reacted as they usually did, answering violence
occasionally, although at times there was a feeling with more violence. Meanwhile, the third and
of mutual sympathy or inspiration. In Germany, politically most important social party – the major
for example, there were riots in several towns in towns – was split by internal rivalries: Bruges
1525, clearly inspired by the peasants’ rebellion. joined the rebels, while Ghent remained loyal.
Yet none of them led to joint action, or even to a Supported where necessary by Bruges militias,
joint programme of action. the peasant armies had a number of impressive
The Flemish revolt of 1323–1328 was the military victories in what is now West Flanders.
only exception. The basis for the revolt was In Courtrai and Ypres, the peasants could count
the extremely high land rents and the serious on massive help from the local people at the
complaints made by the well-organised peasant crucial moment. They even captured the count
communities in the district round Bruges about and held him hostage for six months. In the
the unfairness, abuse of power and corruption of meantime, alternative administrative structures
the country nobility and village notables when were put in place, and they managed remarkably

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well to keep customary law and order on the basis willing to make concessions, the peasants stormed
of a representative government. Parish priests no the Tower of London, the royal fortress. At a sec-
longer obeyed the interdict, imposed in 1325 ond meeting outside the city walls, this time
on the whole region by the bishops, which had at Smithfield, the mayor of London struck Wat
exacerbated the anti-clerical feelings. But without Tyler dead as the latter, in the king’s face, rinsed
the cooperation of Ghent, and with the eventual his mouth with water and then ordered a mug
intervention of King Philip VI of France, who of beer. The king succeeded in regaining control
according to feudal law was obliged to come to over London and severe repressions followed.
the help of his vassal, the insurgents stood no The petitions of Mile End and Smithfield give a
chance. When the uprising threatened to radical- good idea of what the rebels actually wanted and
ise again, the king mustered a formidable army why, especially outside London, the great abbeys
of knights on the Flemish border in the summer formed the target of the peasants’ aggression.
of 1328, which crushed the peasants. From the The most important demands were the definitive
confiscations of almost 3,200 of them who were abolition of serfdom to which many peasants in
killed in battle one can infer that the rebels came south-east England were still subject, the repeal
from every layer of society. of the labour laws limiting wage increases passed
The Jacquerie – the name is derived from after the Black Death, participation of common
the traditional nickname for a French peasant, people in the government of the country and the
Jacques Bonhomme (Jack Goodfellow) – was dismantling of the worldly riches of the Church
first and foremost an outpouring of anger at the in England. The last point was less radical than it
nobility, who were considered responsible for the may appear, in view of John Wycliffe’s ideas on
depression in the countryside resulting from low Church reformation that were circulating at the
grain prices, the growing tax burden and a wage time – and to which the hated duke of Lancaster
freeze. To make matters worse, the countryside was reputed to be sympathetic.
was being ravaged by disbanded mercenaries of The Catalan remensas movement, which began
the French army which had suffered a humiliat- during the third quarter of the fourteenth cen-
ing defeat by the English at Poitiers in 1356 – yet tury, evolved from persistent protests by the
another reason for bitterness. The ferocious insur- peasantry against the policy of the spiritual and
rection, in which the peasants raved like mad temporal lords to end the popular practice of
dogs, according to the anti-peasant chronicler, allowing peasants to buy off all seigneurial obli-
Jean Froissart, was crushed swiftly and bloodily. gations (the sources speak of payese de remensa,
The immediate cause of the great Peasants’ literally peasants of redemption, hence remensa).
Revolt of 1381 was what many peasants believed In addition to this, the resettlement policy of the
was an unreasonable increase in the poll tax, a owners of large estates who took on migrants
tax introduced a few years earlier and levied on from beyond the Pyrenees met with widespread
every individual. Rebellious peasants from Kent resistance. Curiously enough the Catalan peas-
and Essex marched on London where the gov- ants were supported in their fight by lawyers who
erning council around the young king, Richard believed that, in the case of the remensas, the
II (1377–1399), deferred military action. Led by lords were acting contrary to natural law – peas-
Wat Tyler, the peasants forced their way into the ants, too, were by nature free! Even the king of
city and razed the Savoy, the palace belonging to Aragon shared this view. In spite of such power-
the duke of Lancaster, the unpopular regent and ful allies, however, the peasants had to wait until
uncle to the king. At Mile End, not far outside the 1486 for satisfaction when, after a long struggle,
city walls, the rebels handed their demands over most of their demands were acceded to in the
to the king in person. Although the king appeared Compromise of Guadalupe.

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There were several causes for the great two aspects. On the one hand, the insurgents
Peasants’ War that blazed through southern and demanded a voice for the common people,
central Germany (including parts of present-day gemeine Mann. By this they did not mean every
Austria and Switzerland) in 1525. Many peas- Tom, Dick and Harry, but the more substantial
ants in the area were still serfs, weighed down peasants and craftsmen who owned their farm-
by the heavy burdens attached to their personal house or workplace, the rural equivalent of the
status. Moreover, everyone, free or unfree, was citizens in Marsilius of Padua’s Defensor Pacis
faced with the spread of local lordships, for (‘The Defender of Peace’) (see Chapter 12). In this
these areas were swarming with the so-called respect the peasant revolt was more conservative
Reichsunmittelbare, minor lords holding the title than revolutionary. On the other hand, there was
of count, abbot or knight. Subject only to the a revolutionary zeal, grafted onto the ideals of
purely nominal authority of the German king/ the Reformation. What the peasants envisaged
emperor, these lords had autonomous rule over was a drastically improved society in which the
territories the size of a few villages where they common good would be defined in evangelical
were often important landowners or landlords as terms and no longer derive from the interests of
well. It was this combination of lordships that the lords; a society, too, in which divine justice
caused such antagonism. and not the arbitrary rulings of the lords would
The rebellion of the south German peasantry be the guiding principle of regulation and justice.
was remarkable in that it involved not only pub- The leaders of the Reformation did not always
lic violence but also a propaganda offensive of an welcome the socio-religious ideals of the discon-
almost apologetic nature. The hotbed of the revolt tented peasants. After initial hesitation, Luther
was upper Swabia where the peasant communi- decidedly rejected the ‘rebels’. Yet others, such
ties printed their tersely formulated demands and as Thomas Müntzer in Thuringia and Michael
spread them as a manifesto. The so-called ‘Twelve Gaismair in Tirol, sided wholeheartedly with
Articles of Memmingen’ were so well known that the peasants. Gaismair, a ‘tireless advocate of
they served as a model for countless other ‘article the Christianisation of the state and society’,
letters’. The demands were concrete and succinct, in Blickle’s words, wanted to turn Tirol into a
varying from a village’s right to choose its own radically egalitarian society modelled on the
pastor to the abolition of serf taxes, curtailment Old Testament. Müntzer, a frustrated disciple
of the tithe levy, the autonomous right to decide of Luther, was a substitute pastor in a village in
over the use of unshared woods, meadows and Saxony with no hope of a glittering career in
waters, and the guarantee that justice in local the Catholic Church. His theological views were
courts would be administered in accordance influenced by mysticism, but he was increasingly
with local customs and not following the statutes prone to apocalyptic delusions to which he bore
mixed with Roman law that many lords had pre- witness in a violent vocabulary where the key-
scribed for their subjects on their own authority. words were purification and destruction. The
The new medium of the printing press in end of the world was at hand, but a thousand-
particular ensured that the uprising spread like year reign of evangelical purity before the Last
wildfire. Some historians, Peter Blickle (1998) Judgement was in the offing. It would emerge
among them, believe that it took on the char- after a terrible struggle in which countless true
acteristics of a revolution solely because of this believers would die a martyr’s death. On the bat-
medium, for it was only in this way that the tlefield of Frankenhausen it became clear whom
radical ideas about social renewal hinted at in Müntzer had preordained for that martyrdom: the
the ‘article letters’ could be so widely dissemi- 8,000 Thuringian peasants who, singing psalms
nated and discussed. This social renewal had and brandishing cudgels and pitchforks, were

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sent to face the trained lancers of the Landgrave of the town council were chosen from among the
of Hessen. merchants and craft guilds. The sottoposti were
At Frankenhausen the German princes sent powerless against the arbitrary decisions of offi-
out a horrifying signal of what was in store for the cials when it came to taxation and against every
subjects who failed to obey them. Nearly 100,000 form of exploitation by the great entrepreneurs.
peasants perished on the battlegrounds and exe- The fiasco of an expensive war against the pope
cution sites of Thuringia, Hessen, Franconia and was the last straw. The ciompi took to the streets
Swabia in 1525–1526. Many German historians and forced three new craft guilds to be estab-
consider the failure of the Peasants’ War a decisive lished. The place given to the three new guilds
moment in German history. The development in the various organs of public administration
towards autonomous territorial principalities was negligible, however, and their leaders, one
which had begun under the Hohenstaufen was of whom was the wool-carder Michele di Lando,
from now on irreversible. The noble and eccle- were hedged in and rapidly neutralised. The
siastical owners of local lordships were the great ciompi felt betrayed by their comrades, and the
losers, not the peasants. Further on, it was out of result was a revolt-in-a-revolt, the revolt of the
the question that central and southern Germany popolo di Dio (God’s people). Michele di Lando
would switch to the Reformation. refused to back down and led the bloody reprisals
in person. The ciompi revolt lost its momentum
soon afterwards, although relationships in the
A new culture of revolt? governing council of Florence did not return to
normal until 1382.
In a recent survey, the British [art] historian, In the postwar period there was a trend to
Samuel Cohn (2006), counted no fewer than see the great social upheavals of the late Middle
1,112 social revolts in Europe between 1200 and Ages as the resistance of peasants and craftsmen
1425, and the latter date marked in no way an to either landlords and capitalist employers or to
end to the phenomenon. Among these, urban ever more exacting states. Yet, without wishing
uprisings were by far the most frequent, and it to detract from the importance of the socio-eco-
cannot be accidental that they occurred most nomic and fiscal motives that were undoubtedly
often and most violently in the highly urbanised very real, we do not want to use the term class
regions and in the largest cities. So northern and struggle in the classic Marxist sense. First of all,
central Italy, the Low Countries, the Rhineland most rebellions showed remarkably little social
and the north German Hanse cities stand out as homogeneity – this was equally true of the peas-
the most virulent herds of recurrent revolt. The ants’ movements and of the ciompi revolt in
pre-eminent example of urban rebellion took Florence. There always seem to have been consid-
place in Florence in the summer of 1378. The so- erable differences in the economic position and
called revolt of the ciompi (‘fullers’) was in fact the well-being of the insurgents. Second, class inter-
outburst of the disaffection that had smouldered ests were mixed with other binding social ties of
for a long time among the lower craftsmen and a more vertical nature, cutting across classes. In
workers (sottoposti in Italian, meaning ‘the lowly this context we can consider national feelings,
placed’) in the textile industry, an estimated factions or parties, clientage-like networks, pro-
13,000, most of them without their own means of fessional, neighbourhood or religious groupings.
production. These true proletarians were named Third, there was no consistent revolutionary ide-
after the largest group among them, the ciompi. ology reflecting class consciousness, an essential
The sottoposti were not organised into guilds and ingredient of class struggle in the Marxist sense.
thus had no political influence because members Most of the late medieval uprisings did not seem

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to have been aimed at overthrowing the exist- resources were too small to have to pay
ing social order. The only serious exceptions were taxes. Taxation records from various parts of
the rising of the Hussites, the German Peasants’ the Low Countries in the fourteenth and fif-
War and episodes in the Flemish Peasant Revolt. teenth centuries show that they would have
In these cases, the rebels pressed for a new, bib- formed between 20 and 30 per cent of the
lically inspired society of autonomous peasant total population.
communities and urban republics. 2. People who could be considered eligible for
Contrary to what one might think, peasant poor relief, meaning occasional support from
uprisings were generally better organised than charitable institutions. Such support usually
urban revolts. This proves how strong and self- was in the form of food rations, sometimes
assured village communities had become by then. with other basic necessities, such as shoes,
The peasants of the Jacquerie in the Île-de-France clothing and fuel.
were probably the only ones not to operate out 3. Marginal people who did not have any
of their own village communities, hence their resources of their own and lived on the
rapid defeat. The Flemish, English, Catalan and fringes of society. They would include
German peasants in the other uprisings men- unskilled labourers, vagrants, beggars and
tioned here were most emphatically based in prostitutes with no fixed place of residence
village communities. It also meant that rebellious and no fixed income.
peasants were not just desperados, driven by hun-
ger and poverty; on the contrary, many of them, Institutionalised care for the poor as it existed
starting with their leaders, belonged invariably to in the late Middle Ages first started at the end
such village elites as well-to-do peasants, smiths, of the twelfth century. Before then it had been
innkeepers and local bailiffs or judges. a matter for the parish churches, convents and
bishops who at specified times doled out food
and clothing to paupers waiting at the gates.
A world of ubiquitous poverty New religious sentiments ensured that laypeo-
ple became increasingly involved in poor relief,
Because of technological and economic under- resulting in the creation of various types of facil-
development and the regular occurrence of ity. The first of these consisted of hospitals and
subsistence crises allied to it, as well as the lack hospices. Hospitals were originally institutions
of anything at all approaching our modern sys- for the care of the sick, aged, pilgrims, travellers
tem of social security, the medieval world was on a journey and the poor. In large towns the
one filled with undisguised, grinding poverty. care became more specialised in the thirteenth
Poverty never is a clear and unequivocal con- century, but the sick and the poor were often
cept. Even if we were to start from the seemingly housed in the same institution. The oldest urban
simple definition that the poor are in every case hospitals were staffed by religious orders specially
people who cannot or can only barely obtain the trained for this purpose, such as the brothers of
minimum biological necessities of life, it would the Holy Ghost and the Trinitarians. Many hos-
still be impossible to get a true impression of the pitals were partly financed though legacies and
extent of poverty in the Middle Ages from the gifts – not seldom with the condition that the
sources available. In those sources roughly three donor or legator would enjoy a pension for life.
sorts of poor appear, that only partly overlapped: The second type of facility was formed by local
parish funds for poor relief called Tables of the
1. The fiscally poor, meaning permanent resi- Holy Ghost, which were supported by the local
dents of villages and towns, whose capital community and intended for the needy of the

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particular parish only. These were mostly the allowed themselves to be governed by the sin
housebound poor, people who were either struc- of greed (avaritia) and showed no interest in
turally poor, such as elderly widows, or people the Christian duty of charity. In this ‘clash of
who had only occasional or insufficient work – two value systems’ (Mullett 1987) poverty was
people who could not find work in the winter, for defended loudly and publicly by socially con-
example. Research into care for the urban poor scious preachers from the mendicant orders.
in the Low Countries in the fifteenth century
shows that relief was very meagre and, even more
alarming, tended to shrink just when demand
was greatest. The main reasons for this were the
lack of funds and too much religiously motivated
overhead costs. The situation was especially dis-
astrous when the economy remained weak for a
prolonged period of time. Poor tables then had
less chance to replenish their coffers from lega-
cies, gifts and suchlike while the number of the
poor could rise alarmingly and with frighten-
ing speed. Those afflicted could only hope that
emergency measures set in place by religious
institutions or rich individuals would offer some
help, or leave the place, searching for a better life
elsewhere.
Through their presence, the poor offered to
everyone who could not live an authentically
destitute life in direct imitation of Christ and
his apostles the opportunity to relieve the trou-
bled soul by means of ‘good works’ (alms-giving)
and thus to shorten the length of time spent in
Purgatory. On the other hand, the commerciali-
sation of the economy, aimed at financial gain,
gradually created a mentality in which (manual)
labour was regarded in an extremely positive
light and poverty was seen as the consequence of
an unwillingness to work, thus, if not as a pun-
ishment for sin, as something for which many
indigents had only themselves to blame.
During the late Middle Ages these contradic-
tory views became sharper for several reasons.
The demographic contraction caused a structural PLATE 10.3 Distribution of bread to the poor, one of
shortage of labour, which easily gave the impres- the panels representing the Seven Works of Charity
sion that there was work for everyone who could commissioned in 1504 by the confraternity of the Holy
and would work. By contrast, among the increas- Ghost in Alkmaar (North Holland). Various religious
ingly loud calls for reformation in the wealthy institutions distributed food and other necessities to
Church there were bitter complaints that too poor people, whose numbers might grow in years of
many Christians, above all the Catholic clergy, bad harvests to one-quarter of the population.

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They appear in the sources as champions of a his audience of believers to deeds of collective
truly moral revolution, by which the old aristo- self-mortification bordering on mass hysteria. In
cratic gift-exchange economy with its conditional one solemn public meeting his wealthy followers
grants would have to make way for a real alms went so far as to throw their sumptuous luxu-
economy, based on voluntary and unconditional ries – from jewels and cosmetics to playing cards
giving, which in fact was no more than restitu- and perfumes – onto a great bonfire of vanities
tion by the rich of what belonged to the poor. while Savanarola did his utmost to give the whole
The observant Franciscan, St Bernardine of Siena show a feeling of mutual solidarity and social har-
(1380–1444), did not shrink from using apocalyp- mony. Not long afterwards, during the traditional
tic threats against the rich in his sermons, which carnival, he persuaded well-to-do young men to
also were interspersed with communist ideas dress in rags and go begging for the poor. Finally
even before the concept existed: Savonarola’s activities sowed more hatred than
harmony, even resulting in the formation of
The poor call for alms and only the dogs anti-Savonarola groups in Florence. Savonarola
react . . . You, rich people, who have so much himself ended his life on the gallows.
wheat lying in your warehouses that you can- The opposed value system found eloquent sup-
not even keep it clean so that the stuff rots porters in humanistic circles. Poggio Bracciolini
and is eaten by worms and starlings, while (1380–1459), for many years attached to the
the poor suffer the pangs of hunger – what papal Curia as a secretary and thereafter chancel-
do you think God will do with you? I tell you lor of Florence, was the first to publicly put the
that your surpluses belong not to you but to sin of avarice into perspective, even though he
your poor neighbours. was himself a cleric. He considered the desire to
acquire more and more as something productive.
His no less celebrated compatriot, the ‘Money’, wrote Poggio, ‘is a necessary good for
Dominican Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498), the state, and for that reason people who love
aired similar ideas by pleading for economic money are the foundation of the state.’ Several
rights for the poor. Not only did he preach, great humanists from the beginning of the six-
he also took action. After the expulsion of the teenth century, men like Erasmus, Juan Luis Vives
Medici from Florence in 1494, under the pres- and Thomas More, spoke disapprovingly of beg-
sure of the French royal army, Savonarola led a ging and believed that everyone who was able
popular movement to establish a popular repub- to work had the moral duty to do so. These sen-
lic. A new constitution enfranchised the artisans, timents, inspired by classical texts, echoed the
opened minor civic offices to selection by lot and ideas behind acts of legislation in the years fol-
granted every citizen in good standing the right lowing the Black Death and repeated numerous
to a vote in a new Great Council. He breathed times in the century thereafter.
new life into the monti di pietà (‘mountains of Poverty, unemployment and vagrancy were
charity’), the credit banks where the needy could always knowingly put in the same category. The
borrow money at a low rate of interest. He also poor were all idlers and layabouts, lazy scum who
agitated for a tax on the extravagance and luxury needed a heavy hand to make them improve their
in which the rich Florentines lived at the time ways. This view gradually became more firmly
of the Renaissance; if the Dominican had had fixed in the mentality of the upper levels of soci-
his way, the famous museums of Florence would ety as the early modern period advanced, and the
not now be stuffed full of the works of art which poor were increasingly stigmatised. Poor relief was
we so admire today. With the demagogic arsenal seen more and more as a minimum provision, to
of a modern American televangelist, he brought be used solely to lighten the needs of the poor

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in their own community who really could not ■■ The recurrent hazards of living conditions
be blamed for their situations. In that light, one made one-quarter to half of the population vul-
understands that, in the period of long-term ris- nerable to extreme deprivation. Institutional
ing grain prices and occasional shortages between poor relief could only marginally help as their
1522 and 1541, the authorities in no less than resources shrank when the need was highest.
sixty European cities reorganised their poor relief
system through centralisation, stricter control on
morals and incentives to seek employment. Suggestions for further
reading
Points to remember Benedictow, Ole J. (2004), The Black Death 1346–1353:
The Complete History (Woodbridge/Rochester NY:
■■ The concatenation of hazards in the form Boydell & Brewer). The most recent and well-
documented overview.
of famines, livestock diseases, the plague
Campbell, Bruce M.S. (2016), The Great Transition.
epidemics, wars and revolts reduced the
Climate, Disease and Society in the Late-Medieval World
European population by one-third to a half (Cambridge: CUP). The most recent encompassing
in the course of the fourteenth century. The analysis of all the natural hazards and their conse-
frequent recurrence of the plague prevented quences on societies in Europe and far beyond. The
a quick recovery of population sizes to author provides abundant statistical information
from all kinds of sources about climatic fluctua-
pre-1300 levels.
tions, biological hazards and their interaction with
■■ Famine and plagues of livestock and humans human reactions, ways of living and mobility. An
have their origins in climatic and biologi- impressive state-of-the art comprehensive and
cal circumstances, exogenous to human thought-provoking interpretation of the long-term
societies. Their impact and dissemination, ecological evolution and societal transition from the
thirteenth century to the fifteenth century.
however, are related to human factors such as
Dyer, Christopher (1998), Standards of Living in the Later
mobility and concentration of populations.
Middle Ages. Social Change in England, c.1200–1520,
■■ The huge population losses led to a dra- 2nd edn (Cambridge: CUP). A detailed analysis of
matic labour shortage and, in the longer the incomes and spending of the various social
term, improvement in the standard of living classes, and the differentiated effects of inflation
of labourers and artisans, as well as greater in the thirteenth century, crises in the fourteenth
century and apparent depression in the fifteenth
personal freedom and mobility.
century.
■■ Larger peasants and greater landowners Hatcher, John and Mark Bailey (2001), Modeling the
felt the need to reduce their labour cost by Middle Ages: The History and Theory of England’s
switching to lease-holding and more exten- Economic Development (Oxford: OUP). A readily intel-
sive cattle raising. ligible introduction to medieval economic history,
an up-to-date critique of established models and a
■■ Middle-sized peasants could profit from new
succinct treatise on historiographical method, writ-
types of consumer demand by turning to
ten by eminent specialists well-founded in empirical
diversified, market-oriented and partly non- studies. The most powerful of these guiding inter-
agrarian production. pretations are derived from theories formulated in
■■ Rural and urban revolts were often triggered the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by Adam
by fiscal pressure by landlords and growing Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo and Karl
Marx. Historians moulded these ideas into three
states. Insurgents demanded better living
grand explanatory models which focus on ‘com-
conditions, personal freedom, righteous mercialisation’, ‘population and resources’ or ‘class
treatment and in some cases they were moti- power and property relations’ as the prime movers
vated by anti-clerical and national feelings. of historical change. The authors provide not only

357
PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

detailed reconstructions of the economic history of Shahar, Shulamith (2003), The Fourth Estate: A History
England in the Middle Ages, but also discussions of Women in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (London/New
of the philosophy and methods of history and the York: Routledge). Study of the varying attitudes to
social sciences. women and their legal and social status in western
Jordan, William Chester (1996), The Great Famine. Europe between the twelfth and the fifteenth cen-
Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century turies, as religious persons, married or noble, and in
(Princeton: Princeton University Press). A detailed urban or rural settings.
account of the cause and effects of the famine, and
the reactions to it.

358
11 The consolidation
of states

From suzerainty to character. The penetration of officialdom made

public authority more present and effective.
sovereignty Around 1500, the states that were effectively
If a state is generally defined as an autonomous independent showed great diversity in size, form
polity with a relatively centralised administrative of government and internal structure. They are
organisation, claiming to control a specific terri- listed here in ascending order of extent:
tory, and having at its disposal superior means
of physical force, then few would deny that the ■■ free peasant communities joined in a loose
kingdoms of the early and central Middle Ages, as federation (East Friesland, Graubünden);
described in Chapters 3 and 4, were states of some ■■ autonomous towns with a more or less exten-
immature sort. However, during the late Middle sive agrarian hinterland (German free imperial
Ages, European states underwent a rapid and cities such as Nuremberg and Hamburg; Genoa,
fundamental process of change. The monarch Novgorod, Ragusa/Dubrovnik);
and his or her relations with powerful vassals did ■■ local lordships which may at some point
not any longer determine a state’s development. have been elevated to a higher status such as
Monarchs became bound by law and institutions, a duchy or principality (Salins, Liechtenstein,
including in many cases participation of subjects Mechelen, Monaco, San Marino, Andorra);
in the decision-making. The territorial expansion ■■ federations of autonomous towns and
and the societies’ increased complexity unavoida- rural communities (Swiss Confederation,
bly brought about the formation of a hierarchy of Friesland);
officials who would impose rules and procedures. ■■ regional states dominated by one large city
The exercise of power lost much of its personal which subordinated other towns, lordships

359
PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

and rural communities to it (Venice, Florence, relations. Insofar as the exercise of power was
Milan); still mediatised, a king was just a feudal overlord,
■■ ecclesiastical principalities: the Papal State in the suzerain of vassals with mutual obliga-
central Italy, the states of the German Order in tions: the king had to protect and provide for his
Prussia and the states of the Order of St John, men, the vassals had to serve their lord loyally,
later the Maltese Order, prince-bishoprics which meant that they had to support him in
(Cologne, Münster, Utrecht, Liège); governing his land, go to war with him and give
■■ effectively autonomous (secular) territorial him council (see Chapter 5). In many kingdoms
principalities (the duchies of Brittany, Saxony this added up to suzerain kings ceding the full
and Ferrara, and the County of Toulouse exercise of public authority over parts of their
before 1271); kingdom’s territory to aristocratic vassals with a
■■ personal unions of territorial principalities in princely status. In technical terms this was a form
which each of the constituent entities kept of mediatisation of public authority. The kings of
its own institutions, but the prince deter- England and France succeeded in gradually incor-
mined a common policy (Hainault, Holland porating their great vassals’ powers, but in the
and Zeeland under the houses of Hainault Empire, Italy, the Spanish and central European
and Bavaria; the Low Countries under the kingdoms feudal power relations prevailed over
houses of Burgundy and Habsburg; Jülich, the central monarchical institutions until deep
Marck and Berg); into the nineteenth century.
■■ kingdoms (England, France, Portugal, We’ll now discuss four cases of feudal states
Scotland, Sweden); where the kings were only moderately capable
■■ personal unions of one or more kingdoms and/ of imposing their sovereignty. Attempts by the
or territorial principalities (Poland–Lithuania; German kings at forcing back the mediatisation
Bohemia–Moravia–Lausitz; the Crown of process by appointing bishops and archbishops
Aragon, comprising Aragon–Catalonia– as counts or as dukes were to little avail. In the
Mallorca–Valencia (1412), since 1442 Sicily thirteenth century the kings formally accepted
and the kingdom of Naples, and Sardinia, all that the Holy Roman Empire was in fact a con-
united by marriage with the Crown of León– federacy of territorial states; from that point on,
Castile in 1469; Denmark–Sweden–Norway in the German kingship meant little more than
the Union of Kalmar (1397–1523); the theoretical supreme authority enjoyed by the
■■ empires (Byzantine Empire, Holy Roman office-holder; the king’s real power rested on the
Empire, Ottoman Empire). resources which he had at his disposal as a territo-
rial prince of his own, his Hausmacht or princely
Emperors and most kings considered their domain (for instance, the County of Luxembourg
power as sovereign, which implied that they and the kingdom of Bohemia for the German kings
did not recognise any superior authority. By from the House of Luxembourg). Meanwhile, the
definition, sovereignty implies an indirect and counts, dukes, margraves and prince-bishops in
impersonal relation between a ruler and all his the Empire faced the same problem as their king/
subjects. A sovereign claims the supremacy on emperor. Because their principalities were first
such basic components of public government as and foremost feudal states, they left a substantial
legislation, the administration of justice, taxa- part of their public authority on the local level to
tion, the use of physical violence, and public be mediatised by their vassals.
administration. The gradual introduction of a More successful in counteracting this ten-
denser and more professional officialdom did dency was the policy of the French kings from
not lead to the disappearance of feudal power the second half of the twelfth century to enlarge

360
 Th E C ONSOL I DATI ON O f STATE S 11 CHAPTER

their royal domain (that is, the area over which of royal, ‘common’ law and royal justice, which
they themselves could exercise full public author- made even less room for royal vassals to exercise
ity) by marriage, inheritance or sheer conquest at public authority. In the kingdom of Castile large
the expense of the territorial princes in France. landowners (be they aristocrats, religious institu-
Still, the French royal domain did not yet cover tions, military orders or also cities) often acquired
more than about half the territory of the king- such far-reaching public authority over the peo-
dom by the beginning of the fourteenth century. ple living on their land that they were territorial
Of the principalities that formed the other half, princes in all but name. As a result, the Castilian
two, the duchy of Guyenne in the south, and crown exercised direct jurisdiction over no more
the County of Ponthieu in the north, were pos- than 55 per cent of the Castilian population by
sessions of the king of England. The French the beginning of the fourteenth century. This
king’s aggressive attempts to end this situation had been the direct outcome of the extraordi-
and make his suzerainty, if not his sovereignty, nary circumstances created by the Reconquest,
felt there were the major causes of the Hundred which forced the Crown to be generous with
Years War (see pp. 362–363). New problems arose privileges, not only towards the warrior aristoc-
when this successful domain policy was thwarted racy but also towards towns (whose governments
by the granting of principalities to younger sons generally consisted of hidalgos, knights). Towns
or brothers of the ruling king. These were called in the reconquered territories acquired extensive
apanages if certain conditions were stipulated for freedoms with the aim of attracting Christian
their return. But occasionally grants in full pos- immigrants to replace the Muslims who had fled.
session were made as well. Most consequential Besides, some towns were given extensive tracts
from hindsight was the enfeoffment of Philip the of land. Seville is an extreme case: this large,
Bold, a younger son of King John the Good, with wealthy city was conquered in 1248 and its new
the duchy of Burgundy in 1363. His subsequent Christian government received 9,000 square kilo-
marriage to Margaret of Male, daughter of, and metres of land. Quite logically, therefore, Castile
heiress to, the count of Flanders, brought him developed relatively early representative assem-
the County of Artois in France, and the so-called blies – called cortes (courts) – in which municipal
Free County of Burgundy (or Franche Comté) in councils (concejos) played a forceful part when the
the Holy Roman Empire, followed after the death king needed their support.
of his father-in-law, by the counties of Flanders, In sum, in all four feudal kingdoms just
Nevers and Rethel. This was the beginning of the discussed the ruler’s suzerainty remained
Burgundian composite state that would expand undisputed, but at the same time his claim to
further, especially under Philip’s clever grandson, sovereignty was undermined by various forms
Philip the Good (1419–1467), who took over a and degrees of mediatisation of public authority.
number of principalities in the north-western Around 1300, neither of the essentials of sover-
part of the Empire (on a disputed legal basis), eignty was anywhere near being fully completed,
later known as the Low Countries, and started but substantial efforts in that direction were in
to transform them into a federate state. At that the making everywhere. In late medieval Europe
point, the power of the dukes of Burgundy, in the word sovereignty danced in the air, and the
coalition with the king of England, became a concept of sovereignty was redeveloped in politi-
threat to the continued existence of France itself. cal theory from the end of the twelfth century
In England and Castile royal vassals never onwards. Its aim was partly to get rid of the feu-
received public offices in fief, but only land. In dal hierarchy in monarchical positions that had
England, after 1066, the Norman and Angevin always been silently accepted in medieval Europe
kings succeeded in further extending the reach (the Roman emperor on top, then kings, then

361
PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

dukes, margraves, counts, etc.), and partly to bol- monarchy could only be inherited through the
ster up the supreme power of all types of kings male line. They chose the side of Philip, a son of
and princes within their own polities. This meant Charles of Valois (a brother of Philip the Fair),
that the first-rank position of the Holy Roman who was crowned Philip VI (1328–1350). In 1337,
Emperor no longer went unquestioned. Shortly both issues came together when Philip seized
before 1200 lawyers in the service of kings started Guyenne, whereupon Edward pressed ahead with
to use the formula rex imperator in regno suo (‘the his title, proclaiming himself king of France.
king is emperor in his own kingdom’) to define The first stage of the ensuing Hundred Years
the theoretically sovereign power of kings. In the War (1337–1453) was convincingly to the advan-
early fourteenth century this was analogously tage of the English. The French army of knights
extended over territorial princes (prince-bishops, suffered dramatic defeats at Crécy in 1346 and ten
dukes, counts), and city-state governments years later at Poitiers. Here, the Black Prince, the
within the Holy Roman Empire. heir to the English throne, captured the French
king, John the Good, for whom an enormous
ransom had to be paid. In 1358 the craftsmen of
The course of events Paris rose in revolt, followed by peasants north
of the city (see Chapter 10), all against the pres-
State-making and nation-building sure of high taxation and the economic slump
through warfare: English and resulting from the war. In this disastrous period
French kingship united? the Estates General were summoned to approve
emergency taxes. The peace of 1360 consolidated
When one thinks of late medieval political his- a considerable expansion of the English pos-
tory, the first event that springs to mind is the sessions in central France, which now became
Hundred Years War. The causes of this titanic sovereign, in exchange for the renunciation of
struggle between the two most powerful king- the English claim to the French throne.
doms of the time, France and England, were
twofold. First, there was the matter of Guyenne,
the new name for the quite reduced, coastal part
of the old duchy of Aquitaine that was still held
by the English crown as the last continental rem-
nant of the once glorious Angevin Empire. The
fact that the king of England held Guyenne in
fief from the king of France became a matter of
discord between the two monarchies; sooner or
later it was bound to lead to war. Second, the king
of England, Edward III (1327–1377) attempted to
claim the French throne after the house of Capet
died out in the direct male line in 1328. His claim
was based on descent through the female line
(King Philip IV, the Fair, of France was his mater-
nal grandfather). However, the pairs de France,
the twelve peers (equals), the six highest prelates
and six dukes in the realm, rejected the idea of
the dynastic union of France and England, raising
the argument, based on Salic law, that the French FIGURE 11.1 Kings of France, 1285–1547

362
 Th E C ONSOL I DATI ON O f STATE S 11 CHAPTER

Whereas the successful struggle had provided peasant’s daughter from Lorraine who claimed
the English nobility with exceptional opportunities to hear divine voices that called on her to liber-
to enrich themselves, the war caused a profound ate France. Through the agency of a nobleman
economic crisis in France, partly as a result of a (of the Armagnac party) living nearby she was
series of devaluations of coinage meant to cover moved to the king’s court in 1429. There it was
some of the costs of the war. Even so, between decided to make use of the girl’s charisma and
1369 and 1380 relatively small French armies suc- to put her at the head of an army that had to
ceeded in recovering most of the territory that had relieve the town of Orléans that was besieged by
been lost during the previous decades. the English. By taking over leadership of an army,
Because of the failures to prevent this, and Joan, or la Pucelle (‘the virgin maiden’) as she was
with a king, Richard II (1377–1399), who lent called in documents of the time, broke through
his ear to peace doves while not tolerating any two privileges: one of male superiority, the other
opposition, tensions mounted in England too. of the lofty position of noblemen, who by tradi-
The king’s cousin, Duke Henry of Lancaster, engi- tion held the command. But it worked: Orléans
neered the deposition and execution of Richard, was relieved and after a daring chevauchée (cavalry
and then became king himself as Henry IV (1399– march) through enemy territory the dauphin was
1413). He attempted to legitimise his usurpation crowned in the cathedral of Rheims as Charles VII
by relaunching the offensive in France. This was (1422/1429–1461). One year later Joan was cap-
continued with great success by his son and suc- tured north of Paris by the Burgundians who sold
cessor, Henry V (1413–1422), who inflicted defeat her to their English allies. After a show trial she
on the French at the field of Agincourt in 1415 and was burned at the stake in Rouen in May 1431.
then occupied Normandy and Paris. The French In spite of this setback the French had regained
ruling elite had brought part of this misfortune self-confidence, which was expressed in various
on itself, for after King Charles VI (1380–1422) forms of national sentiment and underpinned by
had gone insane in 1392, a struggle for control the introduction of permanent general taxation.
of royal power had broken out. Soon, two par- The systematic recovery gave the king consider-
ties stood out: one led by the king’s uncle, Philip able prestige and new means of exercising power.
the Bold, and his son John the Fearless, dukes In 1435, at Arras, he made a separate treaty with
of Burgundy; the other by the king’s younger Duke Philip of Burgundy to whom important
brother, Louis, duke of Orléans. John planned his territories and rights were ceded. This ensured
rival’s murder in 1408, but was slain in revenge that the English lost their most important ally.
in 1419. His son, Philip the Good, decided to side In their turn, the English now found themselves
with the English. He brought about that dauphin in trouble: changes in political fortunes brought
Charles was disinherited by his insane father in their intense economic relations with the Low
favour of Henry V of England, who also married Countries under pressure. By 1453, the English
the king’s daughter, Catherine. The kingdom of had lost all of their French possessions except the
France was now at rock bottom. After the death port of Calais.
of Charles VI in 1422, the authority of the young Almost immediately the control of the
Charles VII residing in Bourges was recognised English crown became a matter of contention
only south of the Loire: the north-west was in between the two main branches of the house of
the hands of the English, under the king’s brother Plantagenet, York and Lancaster, and the baron
and uncle, duke of Bedford; the north-east in the factions that formed around them, and tensions
hands of the duke of Burgundy. started to build up. They boiled over in the Wars
What followed was the remarkable appear- of the Roses (1455–1485), so called after the
ance of Joan of Arc, a seventeen-year-old white and red roses of the Yorkist and Lancastrian

363
 KINGDOM
OF ENGLAND

R.
London

Rh
F

ine
YO T
R. Thames
COUNTIES OF H
C A N
FLANDERS DURAB
Calais B
AND 1
ARTOIS
Agincourt
ish Channel
Engl Crécy
(1415)
(1346)
2

Rheims

R.
ei

E M P I R E
S
ne

Paris
DUCHY OF Domrémy
BRITTANY
(not loyal) Orléans

R O M A N
re
R. Loi
4
3

Poitiers

H O LY
ôn
(1356) R h
R.
Atlantic
Lyon
Ocean

Miles Bordeaux
R.

G
0 50 100 ar
on
E

ne
NN

0 75 150
YE

Kilometres
Avignon
GU

SPANISH
KINGDOMS
Mediterranean
Border between Holy Roman Empire and France Sea
Area occupied by English
Part of French territory loyal to Charles VII 1. Duchy of Limburg
Principalities under the control of the main 2. County of Rethel
3. Duchy of Burgundy and Counties
English allies, the House of Burgundy
of Nevers and Charolais
Crécy (1346) Major battles (with date) 4. County of Burgundy

MAP 11.1 The kingdom of France in the second stage of the Hundred Years War, 1428
 Miles
0 50 100

0 75 150
Kilometres

Lübeck
Marienburg

R.
Braunschweig

Vi
stu
la
Magdeburg
Cologne

R.
Aachen Erfurt

Elb
e

R.
Breslau
Frankfurt

O
de
SI

r
LE
Mainz Prague

SI
A
ine

Würzburg
KINGDOM BOHEMIA
Rh

Nurnberg
Strasburg
R.

MORAVIA
Ulm R.
Da
Augsburg nu
be
Vienna
Basel
Salzburg

Milan

House of Luxemburg
House of Habsburg Rome
House of Bavaria-Wittelsbach
Borders of the Empire
Free imperial cities

MAP 11.2 Territorial basis of the main princely houses in the Holy Roman Empire in c. 1378
PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

The Holy Roman Empire

and Italy: stalemate
From a historical point of view it may be of no
great importance to know which house ruled
the Holy Roman Empire after the Interregnum
ended. For contemporaries, however, it did mat-
ter, because the emperor still enjoyed enormous
prestige. In the late Middle Ages the emperorship
certainly was not something to be scrambled
for. In fact, for most of the time since 1273,
the emperors came from only two families: the
Austrian Habsburgs and the House of Luxemburg;
the two exceptions, Louis IV (1314–1347) and
Rupert (1400–1410) were both of the Bavarian
Wittelsbach dynasty. Moreover, the election of
Louis was heavily disputed, and he ran into seri-
FIGURE 11.2 Kings of England, 1272–1547 ous conflict with successive popes in Avignon
as soon as he tried to recover imperial rights in
Italy. In a late echo of the papal claim to pri-
coats of arms. The wars were devastating for the macy of power, the popes pulled out all the stops
baronage rather than for English society as a against the recalcitrant Bavarian: excommunica-
whole, and only ended after three decades with tion, deposition, interdict, declaration of heresy,
the general recognition of Henry VII (1485–1509) call for a crusade. Louis retaliated by marching
of the eminent Welsh House of Tudor, that was
connected to the Lancasters. Henry had prevailed
on the battlefield and was also acceptable as a
compromise candidate because he had married
the heiress to the York dynasty.
In the long term the Anglo-French dynastic
struggle exhausted both sides, of course, although
agricultural production was disrupted more
severely in France simply because that was where
the fighting occurred. Institutionally, the French
monarchy emerged from the struggle stronger, as
the saviour of the country, at the expense of the
dukes and the Estates General, which were rarely
summoned again after that. Louis XI (1461–1483)
expanded the territory by 40,000 square kilo-
metres by occupying Picardy, Artois, Burgundy,
Provence and Roussillon. In England, the Crown’s
efforts brought neither fame nor fortune, and
parliament and the barons continued to be
formidable adversaries to the king.
FIGURE 11.3 Kings of Germany, 1273–1531

366
 Th E C ONSOL I DATI ON O f STATE S 11 CHAPTER

on Rome where he installed an anti-pope who princes (the duke of Saxony, the count Palatine
crowned him as emperor. His court in Munich of the Rhine, the margrave of Brandenburg and
became an attraction pool for anti-papist intel- the king of Bohemia – which had been part of
lectuals, among whom were Marsilius of Padua the German Empire since 1158). Not only did the
and William of Ockham. In 1338, mindful of Golden Bull prevent further confusion over the
Matthew 22:21 (‘Render to Caesar the things election of the king/emperor, as had happened
that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that in 1314, it also excluded any interference by the
are God’s’), Louis issued a decree, labelled Licet pope. Notwithstanding the principle of election,
iuris, which laid down that the German king, Charles IV had surely in mind to be succeeded by
once elected, became automatically Holy Roman his son, and establish a royal dynasty. But his son
Emperor; the pope’s role was reduced to his cer- Wenceslas lacked his father’s prestige and diplo-
emonial coronation. This would remain practice macy; he was not crowned as emperor and he was
until the coronation of Charles V in 1530. Louis even deposed in 1400. It would be the Habsburgs
died in office in 1347, while Charles, the grand- who effectively succeeded in manipulating the
son of his predecessor Henry VII, of the House elections in favour of their House from 1438 until
of Luxemburg, had already been elected and 1792.
crowned. It shows how much further the conflict All this did little to change the actual author-
that had lasted for more than twenty years had ity of the emperor, which remained largely
undermined the German king’s position. symbolic if only because anything resembling a
Charles IV (1346–1378) would reign in relative centralised bureaucracy was lacking. Territorial
peace during thirty years, during which time he princes ranking from prince-archbishops, prince-
restored much of the prestige the German kings bishops and many dozens of dukes, margraves
and emperors had lost since the decay of the and counts of all those autonomous principalities,
Hohenstaufen dynasty a century earlier. From his together with numerous independent urban and
Hausmacht as King of Bohemia, he considerably rural communes, made up Germany until 1806.
expanded northward the territories under the The further development of state institutions
direct rule of his own dynasty with Brandenburg therefore occurred primarily on the level of the
and Silesia. Part of his success can be connected territorial princes, not on that of the Empire. That
with the exploitation of the silver mine of Kutna also explains why, in spite of all the efforts made
Hora, at 80 kilometres east from Prague, which by the Habsburg emperor, Charles V, to uphold
had produced huge profits for the Crown in the the unity of the Catholic Church, the outcome in
first decades after their discovery in 1298, and the Augsburg Religious Peace of 1555 was that the
continued to be a sizeable source of income. Estates of territorial principalities and free impe-
Charles’s personal qualities prevailed, how- rial cities were entitled to decide themselves about
ever. He clearly wanted to put an end to the the confession within their territory.
disruptions that had caused so much damage dur- In northern and central Italy – the southern
ing his predecessor’s reign. He came to terms with part of the Holy Roman Empire – autonomous
the papacy and was crowned in Rome in 1355. city republics or ‘communes’ had emerged as the
One year later he felt sufficiently secure to issue predominant type of government in the elev-
a fundamental law code called the Golden Bull enth and twelfth centuries. A few of them were
which definitely restricted the number of electors still fiefs held from the emperor, such as the vast
of the German king – traditionally the preserve duchy of Savoy-Piedmont, united since 1418,
of the highest-ranking princes – to seven. Three which stretched along both sides of the western
were ecclesiastical princes (the archbishops of Alps. Most of the communes, however, turned
Mainz, Trier and Cologne) and four were secular into signorie (‘lordships’) from the middle of the

367
PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

BOX 11.1 CHARLES IV, A CULTURED EMPEROR

Charles IV was elected German king on 11 July 1346, crowned in Aachen on 26 November, and
crowned as king of Bohemia on 2 September 1347. His antagonist, Emperor Louis, died on 11
October of that year. Soon thereafter, the new king launched an extraordinary cultural programme
which included the foundation of the University of Prague, which was the first in the Empire, the
New Town of Prague, the Emmaus Monastery where a Slavonic liturgy was celebrated, and the
castle called Karlstein. Later on, he patronised the building of more castles named after him,
he had the Royal Palace in Prague adapted and the St Vitus cathedral expanded. The famous
bridge on the Moldau river, showing statues of Charles and his son and successor Wenceslas on
the tower facing the Old Town, dates from 1357, two years after his imperial coronation in Rome.
Interestingly, several of these building projects were realised under the leadership of Peter Parler
with his relatives and workshop. He was attracted from Swabia as a young talented architect, and
created a particularly elegant late gothic style in Bohemia.
Under the influence of his father John, count of Luxemburg and (by marriage) king of Bohemia,
Charles was educated at the French royal court. At the age of thirteen, in 1329, he married Blanche
of Valois who belonged to the new royal dynasty. He was a true intellectual and polyglot who
stimulated the use of Latin, German and Czech for literary expressions at the court in Prague,
which favoured the translation of the complete Bible into Czech shortly after the German version,

Karlstein castle, Czech Republic.

368
 Th E C ONSOL I DATI ON O f STATE S 11 CHAPTER

around 1350. He wrote himself an autobiography until his election as German king, and a Life of
the Czech national saint Wenceslas, both in Latin. By character he was a cunning diplomat who
restored good relations with the papacy und intensively used dynastic marriages to strengthen his
position amidst the complex international relations of the Hundred Years War and the papacy in
Avignon. In his endeavour to foster Prague’s centrality, he failed to persuade Venetian merchants
to prefer the overland route to Flanders via Linz, the Moldau and the Elbe to Hamburg, and further
overseas. Effectively innovative was his support to the import of cotton from the Mediterranean
into Swabia, where it was woven with local linen into fustian.
Charles’s monumentum aere perennius (‘monument more robust than bronze’ (Horace)) was the
castle Karlstein, constructed within about ten years from 1348 onwards, on a remote mountain 30
kilometres south-west of Prague. This unassailable place comprised a residence for the viscount in
charge of defence, an imperial palace, a tower with two chapels, and a second, specially protected,
great tower, where the imperial and royal coronation jewels and Charles’s personal relics would
be kept. The graded scheme of the four buildings, dominated by the great tower, was inspired by
the Temple Mountain in Jerusalem. Pilgrims would have to climb to reach the symbols of salvation
in successive stages, the individual shrines being ordered in a precise way. The highest stage was
on the second floor of the great tower, attainable through a winding staircase, decorated with wall
paintings representing the life of the Czech saints Wenceslas and Ludmila.
At Karlstein, Charles IV built his Holy Chapel, inspired by the Sainte Chapelle in Paris he knew
so well. That had been constructed under King Louis IX as an architectural shrine for the pres-
ervation of the most precious relics of Christendom, including the Crown of Thorns. In Karlstein,
a fragment of the Holy Rood would be kept, which King Charles V of France had offered to the
emperor with the coronation jewels. The chapel’s walls are inlaid with semi-precious stones set in
gilded plaster, where Charles’s initials, the imperial crown, the Czech lion and the imperial eagle
were moulded. The vaults are completely gilded and covered with lenses in Venetian glass and
precious stones which made the whole look like a shrine, glowing in the sunlight. One hundred
and thirty panel paintings showed saints, ordered in a strict hierarchy, as guardians of the depos-
ited treasures. These were removed during the Hussite wars in the 1420s, and Karlstein lost its
extraordinary symbolic role.

Source: Zoe Opacic (ed.), Prague and Bohemia: Medieval Art, Architecture and Cultural Exchange in Central
Europe (Leeds: Maney Publishing, 2009).

thirteenth century onwards when local noblemen Ferrara, the Gonzagas in Mantua, the Malatestas
or, more often, condottieri, mercenary captains in in Rimini and the Montefeltros in Urbino. This
the service of cities, staged coups and constituted pattern of ruling signorie was resisted by Venice,
princely regimes. The most famous of these new Genoa and Siena, which maintained their repub-
lords acquired presumptuous titles such as duke lican forms of government run by councils. After
or marquis and succeeded in establishing dynas- a long struggle, Florence was forced to abandon
ties which sometimes remained in power for its republican ambitions when it finally gave
centuries. The Visconti family controlled Milan way in 1512 to the signoria of the Medici family,
until 1450, followed by the Sforzas, while the which had in fact governed the republic, with
Scaligeri ruled in Verona, the d’Este family in short interruptions, since 1434.

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PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

After the collapse of Hohenstaufens, southern Iberia: kings and cortes

Italy continued to be governed by a monarchy, at
first under the house of Anjou which enjoyed the State formation in Spain was affected dramati-
support of the popes. During the Sicilian Vespers, cally by the progressive Reconquest – which in
a popular rising against the French occupation reality was as often a matter of negotiation with
that broke out in 1282, the king of Aragon, Peter Muslim leaders as it was of military victory – and
III, occupied the isle of Sicily on the basis of a the vital issue of repopulation that followed in
dubious claim to the succession. The Angevins its wake. The kings fostered close common inter-
stood firm in the kingdom of Naples, which com- ests with the aristocracy, the military orders and
prised all of the Italian peninsula south of the the urban elites by granting them extensive
Papal State, until 1442, when Aragon took the conquered territories.
crown there as well. As a result of the personal Despite that unity of interests, a long-term
union between Castile and Aragon (effective tendency to strong royal power soon set in.
since 1504), southern Italy came under Spanish- Although the ability of the Castilian cortes to
Habsburg rule for a long period of time. curb royal power was on the increase in the sec-
In the first half of the fifteenth century, the three ond half of the fourteenth century when a war
major cities of northern and central Italy – Venice, of succession broke out between King Peter the
Milan and Florence – conquered large territories Cruel and his illegitimate half-brother, Henry,
in order to protect their economic interests and count of Trastámara, there was a return to strong
strengthen their position in the ongoing competi- kingship soon afterwards. In the fifteenth century
tion between states. In 1454, these three ‘regional the Castilian cortes had less and less to say.
states’ concluded a non-aggression pact: the Peace In Aragon, on the other hand, a contractual
of Lodi. One year later, the Papal State, the kingdom relationship remained intact between the king
of Naples and a number of smaller city-states were and the greater number of his subjects, with
admitted to this new stable political order, which mutual obligations to be fulfilled. It fuelled a
was then called the Italic League. The resulting bal- tendency that has been termed pactism between
ance of power would hold all along the second half Crown and people, whereby the exercise of royal
of the fifteenth century and was only disrupted by power was conditional to the king’s recognition
the invasions of the French kings, Charles VIII in of the customs and privileges of his subjects,
1494 and Louis XII in 1499, who laid claim to the also and especially against possible intrusions
crown of Naples and the duchy of Milan. They set by feudal lords. A major reason was that Aragon
in motion a whole new system of international actually was a confederacy of several older king-
alliances in which the Habsburgs, both as emper- doms (Aragon, Valencia, Mallorca) and a county
ors and kings of Spain, would play a major part. (Barcelona-Catalonia), which were all keen to
As a result, Italy became the main battleground of preserve their own customs and have their own
Europe for fifty years, a disastrous period for the cortes – with incidental meetings of the General
peninsula’s economy and society. The French had Cortes, for the first time in 1289. Typically, in
to withdraw after the battle of Pavia in 1525, where 1412 King Fernando I had to be formally elected
King Francis I became the prisoner of Emperor by representatives of the cortes of Aragon and
Charles V. The House of Habsburg managed to Catalonia, although he was the rightful successor.
rule, directly or indirectly through vassalage, most From early on in Aragon, all the monarch’s major
of the regional states, with the notable exceptions decisions, especially those relating to finance
of the Papal State in central Italy and the Venitian and taxation, were submitted to the cortes for
Terraferma in the north. Little changed in this approval, and the cortes were also involved in
pattern until Napoleon’s invasions in 1796–1797. legislation. With the purpose to keep an eye on

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 Th E C ONSOL I DATI ON O f STATE S 11 CHAPTER

the collection and spending of taxes the cortes, contrast in their economic and social structures.
dominated by representatives of the wealthy mer- To simplify, one could characterise Castile as a
chant elite in the coastal cities, set up a special land of grain, olives and sheep, dominated by
agency, known as the Generalitat, that acquired aristocratic and ecclesiastical large landowners,
permanency in the second half of the fourteenth whereas Aragon was the heart of an overseas com-
century. In addition, the king was obliged to mercial empire that encompassed not only the
answer all grievances brought forward by the eastern part of the Iberian peninsula, but also the
cortes, and there was no royal interference what- Balearic Islands (conquered around 1230), Sicily
soever with the appointment of representatives (from 1282), Sardinia, Corsica and for a while
of the third estate. One of their main ideological even stretches of Greece. However, Aragon’s for-
spokesmen, Friar Francesch Eiximenis (c.1340– tunes as a major sea power started to wane around
1409), more than once expressed the idea of 1400 under the competition of the Genoese and
popular sovereignty. the Portuguese who dominated the Atlantic route
It is clear that the third estate in the cortes was towards the North Sea. Cantabrian harbours prof-
dominated by the rich merchant elites of the most ited from the rapidly growing northward export
important port cities, Barcelona and Valencia. In of Castilian wool.
addition to the cortes, their interests were also,
and jealously, guarded by the so-called consula-
dos del mar (‘consulates of the sea’). These were Scandinavian dynastic unions
powerful merchants’ guilds that came into exist-
ence around the middle of the thirteenth century Scandinavian politics in the late Middle Ages
and held important jurisdictional autonomy by were governed by the establishment of a number
the end of the fourteenth century, making them of personal unions that bound the Scandinavian
virtually independent of the royal courts of jus- kingdoms together. In 1319, Norway and Sweden
tice in all matters of maritime trade and shipping. were unified under the same Swedish royal
This resulted from the technicality of the meth- dynasty. Denmark was drawn in some decades
ods to solve the specific problems, ranging from later. In 1387–1388, Margrete, the youngest
setting rules for exchange, mediation between daughter of the Danish king Waldemar Atterdag,
foreign and indigenous partners, the application and widow of King Håkon of Norway, was for-
of maritime law, and the protection of overseas mally recognised as ‘almighty lady and husband
relations. Both cities created their own codifica- and guardian’ of the kingdoms of Denmark,
tion of maritime law, applicable on the important Norway and finally also Sweden. Margrete’s
routes along the Iberian east coast. appointment was the logical outcome of her self-
The last stage of the Reconquest was led by the assured action as mother-regent to her minor
so-called Catholic kings, Queen Isabella of Castile son Oluf in the preceding years. After his death
and King Ferdinand II of Aragon, united by mar- she did not act simply as a transitional figure,
riage in 1469. In 1492 they conquered the last but rather revealed herself as the ruling monarch
Iberian territory under Muslim rule, the kingdom in all but name. Rather than trying to produce
of Granada, and so they created the basis of the another heir herself, Margrete adopted her great-
centralist tendency in Spain. Under the dynastic nephew, Bogeslav of Pomerania, who on that
union, which became real only with the succes- occasion received the Christian-Scandinavian
sion of Charles of Habsburg in 1516, the crowns name of Erik, and pushed through his desig-
of Castile and Aragon jealously maintained their nation as the royal heir. This was all the more
own legal systems and institutions, including remarkable since in both Denmark and Sweden
the cortes. These were a reflection of the huge kingship had always remained dependent on

371
PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

election; only in Norway was rightful hereditary European dynasties that were linked by marriage:
succession sufficient. Margrete’s appointment the House of Anjou in Hungary and Poland, and
had not gone uncontested in Sweden because the House of Luxemburg in Bohemia.
Oluf had never ruled there, whereas the actual Hungary in László’s time was much larger than
king, Albrecht of Mecklenburg, was alive and the present-day state of the same name. After the
well and had no intention of stepping down vol- beginning of the twelfth century it comprised
untarily. Worse still, Albrecht had equally good Croatia and its Dalmatian coast, whereas the
claims to the thrones of Norway and Denmark. possession of Bosnia was constantly disputed
But Margrete was not a person to allow anything between Hungary and the kingdom of Serbia.
or anyone to stand in her way, so this meant war. Only after Hungary came under Angevin rule
Margrete had her adopted son Erik crowned king (1310–1387) did it lose its hold on its Balkan-Slav
of Denmark, Norway and Sweden in one cere- territories with the exception of part of Croatia.
mony at the royal castle of Kalmar in July 1397. The accession to power of the House of Anjou was
At the same time, a document was drawn up, but not without problems. The first Angevin king,
never sealed, setting out the terms of this Union Charles-Robert, neatly shortened to Carobert, a
of Kalmar. The essence of it was that the three grandson of an Árpád princess, had to be crowned
kingdoms would never again be separated, while three times in ten years before he was finally
at the same time each would be governed accord- generally accepted. But Carobert succeeded in
ing to its own laws. Real power remained in the turning anarchy into order and stability, and the
hands of Queen Margrete, who died in office in long reign of his son Louis (1342–1382), Lajos in
1412. King Erik had far more difficulty than his Hungarian, radiated ambition. He gave shape to
stepmother did in fending off growing German this ambition in the construction of sumptuous
influence in Scandinavian affairs. For instance, palaces and costly military expeditions into south
his introduction around 1425 of the so-called Italy, the Dalmatian coast, the Balkans or to the
Sound Tolls, a tariff on all Baltic shipping trade, north, in support of his Polish ally. More than by
ensured the permanent enmity and meddling of taxes, the costs of his expeditions were defrayed
the Hanseatic League. Nor did he succeed in pro- by the huge share the king could take from the
ducing any offspring. Only because of substantial revenues of several new gold and silver mines
juggling with the rules of inheritance was it pos- that had been discovered in northern Hungary.
sible for the Union of Kalmar to remain intact Louis became king of Poland in 1370, but for all
after Erik’s death. After a bloody civil war, Sweden his ambitions, the days of the illustrious House
went its own way in 1523, but Norway remained of Anjou in eastern Europe were numbered when
united with Denmark until 1814. Louis died in 1382 without leaving a son. Now
the way was clear for Sigismund of Luxemburg,
a younger son of Emperor Charles IV and mar-
Central Europe and the Baltic ried to Louis’ daughter Maria, to take over – after
having paid the staggering amount of 565,000
In the fourteenth century three of the venerable gold florins. Even then it would take Sigismund,
royal dynasties that had ruled huge stretches of who assumed the crown in 1387, another fif-
central Europe since the tenth century died out in teen years to smooth over the fierce opposition
the direct male line: first, in 1301, the Hungarian of the Hungarian nobility to the ‘Czech swine’.
Árpáds, followed shortly afterwards, in 1306, by Thereafter, his power and prestige began to rise,
the Bohemian Premyslids, while the last king especially after he was elected Roman king in 1410
of Poland from the house of Piast died in 1370. and king of Bohemia in 1419. With Sigismund,
All three were succeeded by prominent western the Luxemburg House attained a second glorious

372
 1. Lands of theTeutonic Order in Kurland,
Livonia and Estonia
Lake
Ladoga 2. Lands of theTeutonic Order in Prussia
3. Grand Duchy of Tver

NORWAY
4. Grand Duchy of Ryazan

KINGDOM OF
OW
5. Duchy of Austria
Stockholm 6. Principality of Bosnia

SC
Reval CITY REPUBLIC

O
KINGDOM OF NOVGOROD
OF SWEDEN

FM
Novgorod

YO
Visby 3

CH

a
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DU

Se
D
Kalmar

c
A
Riga

lt i
KINGDOM R
OF Ba G
DENMARK Moscow
s
te
a
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Königsberg 4
a

Smolensk
Danzig
kh

2 Minsk
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go

Warsaw
on

GRAND DUCHY OF LITHUANIA

KI
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NG
DO
M
st

O
F
R. Volga

po

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KINGDOM OF
Kiev

LA
BOHEMIA
s

Krakow

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Area of uncertain
R.
D dominion

nies
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KINGDOM OF HUNGARY
DUCHY OF
MOLDAVIA Caspian
Sea of Sea
Border of Holy Roman Empire Azov Miles
e 0 150 300

Black Sea 0 150 300 450

6
. Danub

Kilometres

MAP 11.3 Eastern Europe around 1450

PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

period, after that of Charles IV, crowned with the western European standards, simply because
imperial dignity in 1433. even Corvinus proved unable to extend the royal
When Sigismund died in 1437, after a long domain, that part of Hungary’s territory in which
reign, Hungarian history repeated itself: since the king could exercise direct lordship and display
there was no living male heir, the kingdom royal power to the full. After his death, the mag-
became the plaything of the great dynasties of the nates elected the weak king of Bohemia, Vladislav
age, in this case those of the Austrian Habsburgs Jagiello, who was unable to unite forces to protect
and the Polish/Lithuanian Jagiellons. In the end, the territory against the Ottoman pressure. His
however, it would be a noble Hungarian family, son Lajos II died young and childless in the bat-
the Hunyadi, which took the prize. This was all tle near Mohács in 1526, by which the Ottomans
thanks to János Hunyadi who made a meteoric conquered the greater part of Hungary, includ-
rise to power in the first half of the fifteenth ing the capital Buda. Through Lajos II’s spouse,
century, starting as a rather obscure member of the Habsburgs claimed the kingdom for Emperor
the lesser nobility and ending around 1450 as Charles V’s brother Ferdinand, but the Hunyadis
the most powerful magnate in Hungary and the and other magnates effectively controlled a large
owner of a fortune beyond belief – his landed part as well, under a kind of Ottoman vassalage.
possessions alone would have comprised about Poland enjoyed a revival under its last Piast
2.3 million hectares of land and included count- kings, Wladislaw the Short (1320–1333) and his
less villages, towns and fortresses. However, son Casimir III the Great (1333–1370). Even so
what contributed most to the enhancement of there were territorial losses. Most of the old Polish
Hunyadi’s position, as well as to his virtuous duchy of Silesia was taken over by Bohemia,
reputation, which has remained untarnished while Pomerelia, the rich rye-producing plains
right up to the present day, were his relative suc- along the Vistula, with important towns such as
cesses as a military leader in the hopeless struggle Torun/Thorn and the harbour of Gdansk/Danzig,
against the Ottomans. It is a tale of lost but leg- was annexed to the Prussian lands of the Teutonic
endary battles, such as Kosovo’s famous Field of Order. At the same time, relative peace in the
the Blackbirds in 1448 – the second battle on that north and west gave Casimir the opportunity to
spot – where Hunyadi stood shoulder to shoul- expand Polish territory in the east (Mazovia) and
der with Vlad ‘the impaler’ Dracula, the governor south (Ruthenia, which included Polish Galicia).
of Wallachia. Even if it did not bring victory, it Besides, Polish expansionism to the east could
eventually brought the Hunyadi the Hungarian always count on papal support, mainly because
crown, which in 1458 was placed on the head of it could be seen as an extra defence against the
János’s younger son, Mathias Corvinus (‘raven- non-Catholic world: together with its most loyal
like’) (1458–1490), who, like his father, would ally, Hungary, Poland extended and reinforced
attain legendary status. Mathias was in every the Catholic barrier against pagans (Lithuanians,
respect ‘made of the stuff of a great Renaissance Mongols) and Christian schismatics (the
prince’ (Molnár): a great patron of the arts, a Orthodox Russians).
politician capable of reform and change, a tal- Perhaps most astonishing in the later medi-
ented diplomat, a dauntless warrior. Supported eval history of central and eastern Europe was
by his so-called ‘black army’ of 20,000 soldiers of the rapid rise of the grand-duchy of Lithuania.
fortune, Corvinus was able not only to keep the In western eyes, it emerges – not unlike medi-
Ottomans at bay but also to form a serious mili- eval Russia – as a loose confederacy of numerous
tary threat to Bohemia and Austria. Nevertheless, small lordships under the nominal leadership of
despite Corvinus’s efforts to curb private violence, princes who, at least as early as the thirteenth
for example, Hungary remained a weak state by century, styled themselves grand-dukes of upper

374
 Th E C ONSOL I DATI ON O f STATE S 11 CHAPTER

Lithuania. Further unity and some degree of (Novgorod and Moscow), as well as the western
centralisation were reached under the grand- fringes of the Golden Horde, the Mongolian
ducal dynasty of the Gediminids, so called after power base in the vast steppe area to the north
Gediminas, the younger of two brothers who suc- of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Not until
cessively ruled Lithuania between 1295 and 1342. the beginning of the sixteenth century did
They succeeded in consolidating Lithuanian the Lithuanian Empire start to crumble under
power in a period when the brunt of Teutonic Russian (Muscovite) pressure; the important
Order aggression had shifted from Prussia and town of Smolensk fell into Russian hands in
Livonia, now conquered, towards the only area 1514, for example. By that time, a long-lasting
left in Europe that was not yet Christian and involvement in Russian affairs had left a deep and
therefore formed the potential spoils of legiti- enduring Slav mark on Lithuanian society and
mate crusade. To that end the Order repeatedly culture.
recruited western princes, who with substantial The remarkable expansion of Lithuania must
followings of knights came to ‘hunt pagans’ on a have been supported by a well-organised, state-
kind of crusade during wintertime – the only sea- like society with a strong army and capable of
son when it was possible for armies to approach mustering considerable resources. Although the
the impenetrable forests and marshes of western grand-ducal dynasty still had to rely heavily on
Lithuania. its possession of land, organised in large estates,
The Gediminids stood their ground, how- the Lithuanian nobility owed military service and
ever, and they continued to adhere to their was involved in public administration. In addi-
native polytheistic religion. Even if there was a tion, trade was taxed in exchange for efficient
clear Christian presence in Lithuania from the protection of traders and trade routes. Military
thirteenth century on (friars were active as mis- organisation had a high level of sophistication.
sionaries and the wives of many noblemen were Military strategy was aimed at avoiding pitched
Christians), the grand-dukes only converted battles with clearly stronger enemies, such as the
officially in 1387. This was the only occasion Teutonic knights and their allies. The Lithuanians
in medieval Europe when Christianity played preferred to counter them by making use of
no part in the formation of a state. Even so, guerrilla tactics adapted to the difficult terrain,
Lithuania only reached the zenith of success after operating in relatively small but swiftly-moving
its conversion. Under Grand-duke Vytautas the intervention forces built around a core of light
Great (1392–1430) it grew into the most powerful cavalry, constructing fortresses, by excellent mili-
principality in the east and in area was the largest tary intelligence work and the use of diplomatic
state of late medieval Europe. skills, and by impeding enemy efforts to consoli-
The extension of Lithuanian power from date any military victory.
the late thirteenth century onwards – through
military strength, clever marriages and force-
ful alliances – was set in motion by commercial Riurikid Russia
interests and land hunger. It happened largely at
the expense of the western and central Russian When speaking of medieval Russia we in fact refer
principalities of what is now north-west Russia to a confederation of principalities that emerged
(the Pskov district), White Russia and Ukraine – from the original Rus’ or Viking principality
including the original Rus’ capital of Kiev, first around Kiev (see Chapter 3). Typically for eastern
captured in 1323, and later again in 1362. In Europe, only male descendants of the quasi-leg-
due time Lithuanian imperialism even threat- endary first Scandinavian ruler of Kiev, Riurik,
ened the stronger territories farther to the east could qualify for lording over one of the changing

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PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

number of territorial units that were formed over important commercial centre in the region: the
the centuries in a combined process of territo- axis in all trade between the Baltic on the one
rial expansion, subdivision and loss. Hence the hand, and the Black Sea area, with its connec-
common denomination for medieval Russia as tions to the Italian and Byzantine markets of the
Riurikid Russia, which lasted uninterruptedly Mediterranean, the souks of the Muslim Middle
until 1598, when Feodor, the feeble-minded son East and the great silk route to China, on the
of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, died without leaving any other hand. Novgorod was also the capital of a
heirs. By that time, the original tradition of col- vast northern territory, extending from the Gulf
lateral succession per generation had long been of Finland to the shores of the arctic White Sea,
replaced by vertical succession in the male line. and an eldorado for such prized forest products
A certain measure of unity between the Riurikid as squirrel furs, wood, honey and wax. Within
principalities was maintained by the recogni- the Russian confederation Novgorod had suc-
tion of their dynastic leader as grand-prince ‘of ceeded in taking an autonomous position; it
All Rus’, a title first connected to the lordship functioned essentially as a quite oligarchic, city-
of Kiev, later of Vladimir in the Suzdal area, east state. During the fifteenth century, however,
of Moscow. This reallocation of the titular base of pressure on this autonomy started to build up,
the grand-principality was significant for the from both Muscovite and Lithuanian sides, until
gradual north-eastward shift of actual power in finally, in 1478, Novgorod was incorporated into
Riurikid Russia, a tendency further stressed after the new Muscovite state, which was followed
many of the western principalities became sub- by large-scale confiscation and reassignment of
ject to Lithuania and the remainder came under landed property to the conquerors. The Hanse
Mongolian suzerainty. The latter development merchants were chased, which brought the city’s
was the consequence of the conquest of the west- commercial function to a standstill.
ern steppe lands of central Asia by the Mongolian Moscow could rise as the centre of Russian
army of Chinggis Khan’s grandson, Batu, who principalities and succeed in that role to the
established an iron dominion over the entire more eastward capital Vladimir, as it was better
area west of the Urals. This dominion, known protected against Mongolian invasions. In the
as the Golden Horde, located its headquarters in fifteenth century, that dominance had declined
the city of Sarai, near the mouth of the Volga, and Constantinople had fallen under Ottoman
and was to last until the early fifteenth century. rule in 1453. Moscow set itself up as its successor
For the Russian principalities, even those which and as the new leader of the Orthodox Church.
in due time were conquered by the Lithuanians, Grand-prince Ivan III (1462–1505) married the
the Golden Horde hegemony meant that no Byzantine princess, Sofia Palaiologa. From the
prince could rule without a formal and written 1520s onwards, claims were elaborated into a full-
Mongolian consent and that all were obliged to blown Third Rome theory. Around the middle
pay tribute to their Mongol masters in the form of the sixteenth century the Muscovite-Russian
of money, goods or soldiers. During the Golden Empire stretched from the Ob river in the north-
Horde period the most trusted Riurikid allies of east to within a short distance of the Sea of Azov
the Mongol khans emerged as the most powerful in the south. At that time, the Lithuanian pres-
rulers of Russia: these were the princes of Moscow, sure had lost its eastward momentum. In 1547
until that moment an insignificant town. Ivan the Terrible was not the first Slav prince to
A key factor in the rise of Moscow, apart be crowned with the title tsar (caesar). He was
from its unstinting allegiance to the Mongols, preceded by several rulers of Bulgaria and Serbia
was its control of the southern trade routes since the end of the twelfth century who wanted
from Novgorod. Novgorod was by far the most to express their equality with the Byzantine

376
 Th E C ONSOL I DATI ON O f STATE S 11 CHAPTER

emperor – but by taking on the same title, the The end of Byzantium and the
first tsar of Russia clearly presented himself as the
formation of the Ottoman Empire
rightful heir and successor to the Roman emper-
ors. His capital, Moscow, may have been a pale In 1261 the so-called Latin Empire, founded in
reflection of Constantinople at the pinnacle of 1204 by a crusading army that had lost direction
its glory, but it definitely was a booming city, and conquered Constantinople, came to an end.
with probably well over 100,000 inhabitants at One Greek reconnaissance patrol, led by a gen-
the beginning of the sixteenth century – certainly eral about to retire, was all that was needed to
three times as many as Novgorod at the time. enter the city deemed unassailable and reoccupy
The Muscovite state developed some of the the empty imperial palace (the emperor and his
characteristics of an early modern state: there was bodyguard happened to be out of town). This
some form of centralised, bureaucratic govern- nebbish event set the stage for the last episode of
ment with a high level of written documentation Byzantine history, which would prolong the life of
to support taxation and public administration; the Empire by another two hundred years, under
there was a clear jurisdictional hierarchy (with the leadership of a new imperial dynasty, the
the grand-prince himself acting as supreme Palaiologi. The splendour of its court ceremonies
judge); territorial principalities were replaced by and the pompousness of its state rhetoric could
provinces and rural districts led by appointed not mask the paltry reality of the late Byzantine
governors and district chiefs, who had their own Empire. Its leading families did not care much
small staffs; and officials were centrally appointed for emperor or state; they had their own, quite
for special tasks. General taxes were levied and the autonomous, local or regional power bases, main-
army was gradually modernised by centralising tained by private armies. The Empire’s territory
recruitment and command, by assigning to the around 1260 was confined to a shrinking part of
tsar greater control over military resources, and by western Asia Minor and the northern part of pre-
reducing the importance of the private military sent-day Greece, including Constantinople and
retinues of princes and boyars (high noblemen). its surroundings. It would never even succeed in
The core of the Muscovite army consisted of pro- a lasting reconquest of the remainder of Greece,
fessional soldiers who, from Ivan III onwards, despite repeated campaigns. In all these regions
were increasingly rewarded with confiscated Greek landlords (with unsteady loyalties towards
lands. Constantinople) had to share power and posses-
The most remarkable feature of the Muscovite sion with a colourful and constantly changing
political system, however, was undoubtedly its international assemblage of competitors for land
idea of loyalty to the state, according to which and lordship: western noblemen who had decided
the entire elite was assumed to be ministerial in to stay after the fall of the Latin Empire; French,
the literal sense of being a servant of the grand- Slav and soon also Turkic princes; military orders
prince or tsar. A service hierarchy was devised and such as the Hospitalers, that tried to make up for
each member of the political elite had his place the loss of their bases in the Holy Land; Venice
assigned via an intricate ranking system with and Genoa, with huge commercial interests to
meritocratic features. The tsar appointed mem- protect in the eastern part of the Mediterranean;
bers of the high nobility in court offices, while companies of foreign mercenaries in search of
the council or duma consisted of ten to fifteen of employment; the occasional private adventur-
the highest-ranking noblemen. This high nobil- ers, usually wealthy Florentines, Venetians and
ity was partly recruited from old Riurikid princely Genoese, greedy for greater fortune; and finally,
families, partly also from untitled aristocratic but more difficult to picture, the many thousands
families. of Albanian immigrants, who settled in Epirus

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PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

MAP 11.4 The Byzantine Empire, 1350

and the Peloponnese, in the course of the four- measured in the surface of land he added to his
teenth and fifteenth centuries. Any attempt at kingdom by military conquest, probably was the
detailed historical reconstruction of the political greatest European conqueror of the late Middle
situation in late medieval Greece is a recipe for Ages. Even before Dušan became king, there was
headache. a clear drive among the most powerful, land-
Overall, the Palaiologi emperors were not hungry barons of Serbia to extend Serbian power
able to cope with such dazzling fragmentation to the south. Under Dušan, Serbian armies, within
of lordship, the more so because the dynasty fifteen years, conquered all of Albania and Epirus,
was plagued by internal dissension, repeatedly and the larger part of Macedonia, Thessaly and
leading to serious civil war and because they Chalkidiki. While doubling the size of his empire,
constantly had to face new foreign invasions and Dušan halved that of the Byzantines. He gained
intrusions. During the first half of the fourteenth these victories without delivering a single pitched
century, the Serbs turned out to be the most battle; his trademark was siege warfare, aimed at
dangerous enemy of the moribund Byzantine taking over fortresses and fortified towns. The
Empire. Largely responsible for this fact was the rich silver mines of Serbia enabled him to pay
Serbian king, Stefan Dušan (1331–1355), who, for long campaigns or to buy support wherever it

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 Th E C ONSOL I DATI ON O f STATE S 11 CHAPTER

was for sale. To eternalise his military successes, The Ottomans are named after a quasi-legend-
and maybe also to express even higher ambitions, ary eponymous Turkic clan leader, called Osman,
Dušan in 1346 had himself crowned ‘tsar of the who in the 1280s established a Turkic lordship in
Serbs and the Romans’. In accordance with such Bithynia, the north-western part of Asia Minor.
high dignity, he started to present himself as a For a long time, this dominion of the Osmanli
patron of culture and religious life, of which the dynasty would remain just one among a myriad
famous monastic communities on Mount Athos of Greek and Turkic lordships and principali-
profited most. Serbia fell prey to internal wars ties as well as more or less autonomous coastal
after his death in 1355, and Albania and many towns. In a sense, the Ottomans were lucky that
Greek territories were lost. At that infelicitous the Byzantine emperors directed most of their
point in time, the Serbian armies had to con- attention and military effort to the west (Serbia)
front the last new enemy to enter the stage of late and south (Greece), while nourishing a viper in
medieval Byzantine history: the Ottoman Turks. its backyard, so to speak. The Ottoman lords in

MAP 11.5 The rise of the Ottoman Empire

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PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

Bithynia proved to be as capable rulers as they Even in the 1380s and early 1390s, when the
were capable generals. Murad I (1362–1389) was Ottoman Turks had left their true marks fur-
the first to assume the title of sultan. He had a keen ther north, Byzantine generals and pretenders
eye for developing governance, the organisation continued to hire Ottoman mercenaries to fight
of border control, taxation and state bureaucracy out internal wars, and more than once Turkish
(with both military and civil officials). During troops were actively present within the walls of
his reign Ottoman rule expanded over the west- Constantinople – in fact, Ottoman exiles were
ern half of Asia Minor/Anatolia as well as over among the defenders of Constantinople in 1453!
Bulgaria, northern Greece and the Balkans up to The third often mentioned driving force
the Morawa river. Murad was assassinated during behind Ottoman expansion into Europe is also
or shortly after the famous first battle against the the most debated: religious motivation. As fairly
Serbs and their allies on the Kosovo Polje (Field recent converts to Islam, the Ottoman Turks
of the Blackbirds) in 1389. Murad’s son and suc- would have been especially sensitive to the reli-
cessor, Bayezid I (1389–1402), soon laid siege gious duty of defending the faith by combining
to Constantinople, which was now completely raiding with harming the infidel on the frontiers
isolated. with Christendom. Be that as it may, it would
Even so, the will to conquer Constantinople be wrong to interpret Ottoman frontier warfare
certainly had not been the main driving force as merciless jihad; on the contrary, sources from
behind Ottoman expansion into Europe. Rather, the time underline the ‘plasticity of identities’
this was threefold. First, one has to realise that in in such dynamic frontier environments and the
the fourteenth century the Ottoman Turks were acceptance of all kinds of accommodation and
still nomads, with a pastoral economy based on alliance, on both sides.
transhumance of large herds of sheep between That Constantinople did not already fall
mountainous summer meadows and valleys with around 1400, however, was only thanks to a new,
enough fodder to winter. Such thinly populated redoubtable enemy, who crossed the Ottomans’
areas could be found in the Balkans, and that path when they tried to extend their power over
is why the first major Ottoman raiding parties eastern Anatolia. This was Timur Lenk (Timur
were directed towards Bulgaria, Macedonia and the Lame), or Tamerlane, the Turco-Mongol con-
Serbia, not Greece proper. All three great battles queror of a vast empire that reached from east
that decided the fate of south-eastern Europe in Anatolia in the west to the Indus river in the east.
the last quarter of the fourteenth century were In 1402, Timur beat the Ottomans in the battle of
fought in this area: against the Serbs and their Ankara and military defeat was followed by civil
allies at the Maritsa river in 1371 and at Kosovo war between the three sons of Sultan Bayezid,
Polje in 1389, and against an international cru- who died in Timur’s captivity. These fateful
sading army led by the King of Hungary near the events brought a halt to Ottoman expansion for
town of Nikopolis on the Danube in 1396. some twenty years. Only under Murad II (1421–
The second major factor that attracted the 1451) did a new wave of conquests start, first in
Ottoman Turks to south-eastern Europe was the Anatolia and then in the Balkans. Despite their
large and continuous demand for mercenaries fierce resistance, the Hungarians and Albanians
in both the Balkans and Greece, and Turkish suffered resounding defeats in 1444 and 1448
horsemen from Asia Minor – not just Ottoman which paved the way for the incorporation of
Turks – were very much appreciated. Already Serbia, Albania and the Peloponnese into the
in the 1260s Turkic mercenaries were active in Ottoman Empire. Despite desperate attempts
Greece, and demand for them would remain by the Byzantine emperor to get help from the
high until the very end of the fourteenth century. West at the price of uniting the Byzantine and

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Roman churches, Constantinople was lost now. over every aspect of religious life. Mosques and
Deprived of its hinterland and surrounded by Qur’anic schools were established everywhere;
Turkish galleys, it could offer no more resistance the subjected peoples were free to choose their
when Sultan Mehmet II (1451–1481) laid siege religion, but by relating choice of religion to per-
in the spring of 1453 and after his artillery had sonal law (in legal dealings everybody was treated
breached the ancient walls. Constantine XI, the in accordance with the laws of his or her reli-
last emperor, fought to the death in the streets gious community) the Ottomans created a form
of the city named after his great homonymous of apartheid that made it possible at all times to
forebear, while the victorious sultan added kaysar identify non-Turks/non-Muslims. Most Ottoman
to his many titles. In the decades that followed sultans were born from female slaves, harem
the Ottomans took hold of the coasts of the Black favourites who often originated from Greece or
Sea, including the Genoese trading colonies. The Georgia, and were provided with such official
Venetians would need to fight for their settle- titles as khatun (± ‘queen’) or sultana.
ments on the islands and along the coasts of the
Adriatic and Aegean for years to come. After tak-
ing the Mamluk territories Syria and Egypt, with Driving forces in the
the holy places of Islam in 1517, the Ottomans formation of states
mounted a new offensive in the direction of cen-
tral Europe. The king of Hungary was killed at Dynasties, territories, institutions,
the battle of Mohács in 1526, and Bosnia and the nations
greater part of Hungary fell into Ottoman hands.
The systematic Ottoman conquests over two Princes were constantly devising strategies to
centuries had a spectacular result – the creation acquire new lands without much effort, either
of an Islamic imperium that extended over an through marriage and succession, possibly
immense area and lasted for five centuries. Tight through purchase or as security. The formula of
military organisation was the key to this suc- the double marriage, by which a male and a female
cess. The sultans recruited a permanent, personal descendant of one dynasty were married to a
guard of foot soldiers, known as the janissaries female and male descendant of another dynasty,
(from the Turkish yeni cheri meaning ‘new men’). was designed to tie the bonds between two houses
They were levied through a system of enforced as tightly as possibly. Bavaria and Burgundy
recruitment of young boys – in fact legalised kid- were united in this way in 1385, so that later
napping by the Ottoman state – from subjected Hainault, Holland and Zeeland (Bavarian posses-
Christian territories on the Balkans. Cavalrymen sions) came under the same ruler as Burgundian
were mostly ethnic Turks. As a remuneration Flanders and Artois. In 1496 there was a double
for their service they were given the right to marriage between Spain and Habsburg, laying the
revenues from circumscribed units of land. The foundations of the European empire of Charles
sultans recruited important civil servants from V. By 1500 similar dynastic strategies had made
among their servants at court, often castrated the number of truly independent political units
slaves (eunuchs), who would remain loyal and in Europe considerably smaller than three cen-
did not immediately form a warrior aristocracy. turies previously. During the competition most
They were also able to involve local people in ‘winners’ became larger and more powerful. The
government and war, through which their loy- constant efforts of princes and feudal lords to
alty was assured. In their public appearance, the expand their territories and the revenues they
sultan and his household manifested themselves provided formed a driving force in this process.
as religious leaders who kept a careful watch Dynastic continuity played a large part in systems

381
PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

that were focused so strongly on the person of the jects in both lands for many centuries to come, in
ruler. Problems arose when there was no direct particular the resounding voice of the English par-
adult, male and reasonably sound and competent liament in contrast with the virtual elimination of
successor at hand. More distant relatives could the French Estates General. The path trodden by
raise equally qualified claims, and subjects may a society in its confrontations betweens its mem-
see opportunities to strengthen their influence bers and with its rulers and neighbours gradually
and privileges. gave shape to the institutions which together
Dynastic ambitions and opportunities, how- formed the state; likewise it was imprinted in
ever, cannot explain everything. Much depended the collective memory of the communities con-
on the geographic conditions and society in the cerned, which through their common fortunes,
territory involved. During the late Middle Ages imperceptibly formed a national loyalty in
society was no longer composed almost solely of addition to a local and dynastic one.
peasants, serfs or otherwise; there was, as we have One of the characteristic state structures of
seen in Chapter 9, considerable differentiation the late Middle Ages was the development of a
through the development of the towns, com- civil service apparatus, which expressed public
munities of free peasants, the commercialisation authority in a more abstract sense and also more
and sometimes even the industrialisation of the effectively than before. The king’s person and his
countryside. Their interaction gave shape to the relations with powerful vassals were no longer
states that were formed out of the power strug- the sole determinants of the fortunes of a state.
gle, in relation both to their territory and to their Kings were bound by laws and institutions and in
internal organisation. The enlarged scale of the many cases by representation. They were obliged
competing units, the broadening of the resources to create a hierarchical organisation of officials
at their disposal and, in particular, the increase who would tie them to rules and procedures. The
in the power of military destruction made con- exercise of power became more complex and less
flicts more drastic. The numbers of those fighting personal.
in wars increased, they caused greater and more Heraldic symbols, public ceremonial, mottos,
lasting damage to the economy and they made emblems and genealogical histories strength-
more victims. As state violence increased, sub- ened the ties between princes and their subjects.
jects began to offer more fierce resistance as they Something as large and abstract as a state, the
became more conscious of their rights and organ- contours of which were not yet settled, only pen-
ised themselves better. On the positive side, states etrated the collective consciousness very slowly.
could now suppress more effectively private and The differences between the Scots and the Irish on
local violence. the one hand and the English on the other were
It is obvious that late medieval states emerged fed by the repeated efforts made by the English
in ways that never could have been so willed or to dominate. The Bohemians derived a strong
planned. They were the results of the trials of sense of nationality from their opposition to con-
strength between countless conflicting ambi- tinuing German expansion. Nation-building can
tions, interests and opposing forces or obstacles. thus be seen as an unplanned effect of foreign
In many cases, wars did not produce the results domination.
intended by the aggressors, but nevertheless they
left deep marks. The Hundred Years War made
a significant contribution to the formation of War
French and English national consciousness. At
the same time it created political affinities which The American historical sociologist Charles Tilly
steered relations between the kings and their sub- (1990) once observed that ‘wars made states and

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 Th E C ONSOL I DATI ON O f STATE S 11 CHAPTER

states made war’, by which he meant that states, 11,000 strong, fought 7,500 French – one-third of
both for the demarcation of their territories and whom were heavily armed horsemen who were
the growth of their institutions, were the product normally seen as equal in force to ten foot sol-
of continual competition between diverse politi- diers. Horses and equipment, and the attendants
cal units. Conversely, by far the largest part of who were indispensable for them, were extremely
the resources – financial, material and services – expensive investments; considerable practice was
which states had at their disposal, was destined to needed to acquire the combative skills, moreover,
make preparations for war, to wage it and to pay and only the aristocracy could afford this. The
rents on the debts contracted for it. Indeed, it was Scots who defeated the English at Bannockburn
precisely during those long periods of warfare that in 1314 also fought for the most part on foot,
the state apparatuses managed to increase the tax armed with bows, pikes, and striking and stab-
burden on their subjects considerably and thus to bing weapons. They slashed away without fear
enlarge the state resources. From the end of the or favour, clearly driven by a desire for liberation
thirteenth century onwards, rulers increasingly from what they saw as foreign domination.
financed their wars by contracting debts that had In north and central Italy, ambitious military
to be paid back afterwards with substantial inter- men from local noble families, but also foreign
est. Interest groups played an important role in soldiers of fortune, took troops into their per-
this development: because they could profit from sonal service in exchange for payment and hired
it or expect rewards from their state at war, they themselves out with their companies to the high-
steered the decision process towards war. It is est bidder. This phenomenon of the condottiere, a
clear that the nobility – for whom armed conflict commander of a mercenary company, was closely
was not only a matter of honour but also gave connected to the rivalry between the small but
them the opportunity to acquire land, take home rich regional states in that part of Europe. The
booty or gain the favour of the king – continued foot soldiers in either paid or obligatory service
to be a driving force behind the casual accept- were given more importance in the armies of the
ance with which war was seen as a fixed part of princes. The Welsh archers contributed to the loss
continuing political competition. of 1,500 French knights at Crécy in 1346.
Of course the great economic and demographic When the towns built their walls they adopted
changes between the tenth and the thirteenth the principle of the fortified castle on a larger
centuries were not without consequences for scale. The assailant was vulnerable, while the
the art of war. During the thirteenth century defender was protected as long as his supplies
more archers appeared on the battlefield, while lasted. The long circumference of towns made
foot soldiers were frequently hired from Wales. an effective blockade difficult, requiring a large
That was when the longbow and the crossbow number of troops over a long period of time,
came into use. In the course of the century these which often exhausted the financial resources
archers were often deployed as auxiliary troops, and the morale of the besiegers. From the last
but by 1300 they were increasingly fighting for decades of the fourteenth century, however, the
themselves. The Swiss peasants who defeated the cannon turned the towns’ former advantage in
Habsburg army of knights in 1291 and 1315 made siege warfare into a disadvantage. Town walls
history. On a much larger scale Flemish crafts- had been designed to face battering-rams, not the
men and peasants cut the army of knights of the force of cannon balls. They were built high to
French king to pieces at the battle of the Golden resist projectiles from catapults and siege-towers:
Spurs in 1302. Such victories were a sign of the it was difficult to breach the walls with trebuchets
new power relations resulting from the growth – at most the gates and parapets were damaged.
of urban populations. In 1302 the Flemish force, When they were shot at by cannon, however, the

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PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

walls became particularly vulnerable, especially extremely long pikes. These were used to bring
if they were high. The effectiveness of cannon the enemy cavalry to a halt and force them back,
on the battlefield was limited by its enormous or could lead the attack on the enemy infantry.
weight, slowness and lack of accuracy and reach The cavalry now was literally sidelined to the
until the sixteenth century. But from the end of flanks, where it could carry out intermittent
the fourteenth century, towns and castles were attacks. The initiative for this modern plan came
no longer safe from an army equipped with from France, where for the first time in 1439 King
gunpowder artillery. Charles VII was allocated money to establish a
During the fifteenth century there was thus standing army. In contrast to feudal practice,
a discrepancy in military resources which gave when the vassals were called up in the good sea-
the besiegers a considerable advantage as long son for campaigns of a limited length (forty days,
as they could afford the high price of cannon. for example), war had become a year-round busi-
The new technique played into the hands of ness that required trained troops to be available
the largest competitors who were able to pay permanently. The French king now took between
for the expensive innovations and the techni- 20,000 and 25,000 officers and men into perma-
cally trained personnel to operate them. Besides, nent paid service as gens d’armes (men of arms),
they could make far more effective use of them who used a combination of different weapons.
than the defenders could. Princes now saw the The initiative coincided with the final offensive
possibility of dealing a definitive blow against of the Hundred Years War and contributed to the
their most formidable rivals: local and regional definitive expulsion of the English.
rulers. Rebellions in France, the Low Countries As more subjects became involved in the
and north Germany often gave princes the excuse business of war, and negotiations had to be
to use their military supremacy to restrict the undertaken with the parliament or assemblies of
autonomy of great aristocrats and large towns. towns and estates for providing troops and sub-
The most spectacular example of this was the cap- sidies, the necessity to justify these efforts grew.
ture of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453: Religion provided an obvious legitimisation. It
the legendary high walls which had withstood was the justification for the merciless war of exter-
every siege since the sixth century were now mination against the Languedoc Cathars, which
shot to pieces by the Turkish artillery. In north- reached its most brutal stage with the dreadful
ern and central Italy there were few territorial massacre of Montségur in 1244. Declaring war a
monarchs apart from the pope who could afford crusade was the most obvious form of religious
to make use of the new military technology on legitimisation. Only the pope could do so, but
a significant scale, so the advantage fell to the often enough popes were prepared to be a secular
largest towns, which were thus able to enlarge ruler’s tool. For example, when the papal client,
the regions they controlled. Venice was the most Charles of Anjou, from the French royal house,
successful: faced with losing part of its colonial lost his kingdom of Sicily to Peter III of Aragon
empire to the Ottomans, it assured its domestic during the Sicilian Vespers of 1282, the pope
safety and prosperity by taking control of the urged Charles’s nephew, King Philip III of France,
eastern part of the Po Valley. to undertake what he called a ‘crusade against
On the battlefields, offensive action again Aragon’. Much later, between 1420 and 1436, the
gained the advantage at this time, providing war against Bohemian independence was waged
military logistics adapted to new challenges. To by the German kings Wenceslas and Sigismund
offer some resistance to the massive power of foot under the motto of a crusade against the heretical
soldiers, the most progressive princes turned their Hussites, the followers of the Church reformer,
infantry into mobile phalanxes equipped with Jan Hus.

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Kings could even use their personal bond with Supreme law courts
a saint as a legitimisation of their wars. The cult
of a national saint was one means of achieving Kings and territorial princes attempted to estab-
this: in France, for example, the saints Denis, lish their higher authority over the traditional
the first bishop of Paris whose name resounded forms of dispensing justice, but until the end of
in the battle-cry ‘Montjoie Saint-Denis’, Michael the eighteenth century they always had to take
and (after 1297) Louis IX. Military heroes had into account the large variety of legal systems and
the privilege of being buried alongside the kings local customs within their territories. As the ter-
in the mausoleum of Saint-Denis, which also ritories expanded, so did this variety. In general,
housed the oriflamme, the banner carried during they tried hard to reduce the autonomous action
the king’s campaigns. As leaders of a war of libera- of foreign courts outside their own territories,
tion against foreign invaders, the kings of France especially ecclesiastical ones.
could plead that they served a higher good than
did the great territorial princes. In this way the
king’s war could be presented as the only one in
the general interests of the kingdom, the only
lawful and sacred one. The defence of the patria,
fatherland, presented as a mystic body by analogy
with the Church as the mystic body of Christ, was
worth a courageous death, as the propaganda in
fifteenth-century texts increasingly proclaimed.
The kings stopped at nothing to give an exclu-
sive justification to their wars, while those of the
territorial princes under them were demoted to
mere private conflicts, sometimes even to rebel-
lions against the lawful authority.

State institutions and social

order
Superior means of force was an essential condition
for the long-term exercise of power, but not enough
in itself. If large groups of subjects did not accept
the legitimacy of the government imposed upon
them, then it provoked internal resistance that
forced up the costs of control for those in power,
damaged their claims to provide protection for all PLATE 11.1 James I, count of Barcelona and king of
subjects in their region and made their government Aragon (1213–1276), sitting on his throne with the
vulnerable to coalitions between domestic and for- sword of justice upright, accompanied by two coun-
eign foes. If we accept that, in addition to a healthy cillors and a soldier, oversees the justice rendered
dose of aggression, every human community shows by a seated judge in a dialogue with two advocates
a fundamental need for peace and stability, then holding written documents, and their female and
we can expect to see subjects and rulers make some male clients. Vidal Mayor, Book of the Deeds, late thir-
attempt to reach long-term arrangements. teenth century.

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PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

Princes made every effort to give their own deal with the growing number of cases, royal
laws and their own law courts precedence over judges (alcaldes) were appointed and a central
local courts of justice in order to give their juris- court of justice, the Audiencia, was installed. In
dictional authority the highest validity – if not the long term the justice administered by the
a monopoly. Such attempts at institutionalis- crowns of both Castile and Aragon strengthened
ing supreme justice were anything but easy, in the position of the peasants, and also that of the
view of the conflicting interests. In England the king as the highest guarantor of justice.
law courts of the king enjoyed priority over all Both canon law, which had been extensively
other courts as early as the twelfth century; in codified in the course of the twelfth and thir-
the course of the thirteenth century three cen- teenth centuries, and Roman law, which spread
tral courts of justice emerged, among them the from Bologna and was studied intensively in the
King’s Bench which, apart from handling pleas emergent universities (see Chapter 8), contained
to the Crown, had the exclusive right to try seri- many elements that were of particular use to the
ous crimes. The French king found it far more princes in their efforts to justify their centralis-
difficult to reserve for himself certain ‘royal cases’ ing activities. The surviving Roman law had a
such as counterfeiting, lèse-majesté and appeals. strongly centralistic and absolutist slant, with
The Parlement of Paris, which King Louis IX had principles such as ‘the prince is above the law’
established around 1250 as the highest court of and ‘what pleases the prince has the force of law’.
justice in the kingdom, had an increasing num- Emperor Frederick Barbarossa made much use of
ber of cases to deal with as confidence in the these quotations after he defeated Milan in 1162,
judges’ independence grew. as did the king of Castile, much later, in the fif-
The success of the states’ higher administration teenth century. In the thirteenth century lawyers
of justice over the many competing legal circles close to the kings of France used formulas of the
was based on several factors, above all of course same type to justify decrees in which they claimed
on pure power relationships. Powerful local lords to serve the ‘common interest’. This usage also
and rich towns offered effective opposition until aroused opposition, however, for example at the
well into the eighteenth century. Venice allowed English court, which did not wish to consider
all subordinate towns in the Terraferma to retain itself subordinate to the emperor. Henry Bracton,
their own privileges and institutions, but made a priest who served as judge on the King’s Bench
them subject to its political authority and fis- in the middle of the thirteenth century, wrote
cal discrimination. For the peasants, Venetian a treatise on the laws and customs of England,
supremacy meant liberation from the class-based based on a collection of 2,000 judgements. He
justice of the burghers in the smaller towns. defended the superiority of the English jury sys-
Elsewhere, too, the possibility of appealing to tem and natural law, for in his view Roman law
a higher court of law offered new opportunities favoured the king’s interest. English law, on the
for parties who were economically or politically other hand, defends the interests of the people,
weak in relation to the main lords or towns. The Bracton said. Outside England, Roman law cer-
princes tried to place their justice above local and tainly formed one of the basic subjects in the
regional law courts, and at the same time applied training of lawyers. Their thinking and their use
more general procedures and principles, often of administrative language was permeated with
borrowed from learned law or jurisprudence. For concepts, such as that of res publica, la chose pub-
instance, from the end of the fourteenth century lique (the republic) which, even without an exact
Castilian peasants increasingly appealed to the equivalent at the time, sharpened state thinking
Crown to act as arbitrator in complaints against and highlighted the distinction between public
their exploitation by aristocratic landowners. To and private law.

386
 Th E C ONSOL I DATI ON O f STATE S 11 CHAPTER

Attempts to codify the law at the level of discipline, independent of theology. Even if the
kingdoms were exceptional in the Middle Ages. universities were under ecclesiastical author-
One attempt was made in Castile, soon after the ity they still provided the opportunity for the
kingdom had experienced considerable growth development of non-dogmatic, rational juridical
at the expense of the Muslims: the Fuero Real thinking, free of religious precepts. The tech-
of the early 1250s; another, the Siete Partidas, in nique of interpreting legal texts made continual
the 1260s. In similar circumstances of rapid renewal and adaptation to the changing reality
territorial expansion a royal law code was pro- possible. In this way the principles of Roman law
duced in Poland in 1347. The breakthrough were also absorbed in new jurisprudence.
in the systematic recording of law on the level of University trained lawyers were given key
the state did not occur until the sixteenth cen- positions in all public administrations, both
tury, in a generally painstaking assessment of on central and local levels of government, and
the many local, regional and national customary both in state and church. Government bodies
laws, most of which remained in force until the and courts of law were increasingly often staffed
late eighteenth century. In France the royal order with academically trained lawyers. Their activi-
in the middle of the fifteenth century to provide ties contributed to the wider introduction of laws
an official, authorised record of the countless into public life, including principles from juris-
regional customary laws was carried out with prudence that protected private interests from
painful slowness. A century later most of them governments, in particular the defence of private
had been published in the north and in central property, testamentary disposition, the freedom
France, but not in the south, despite its much of contracting parties and the protection of wid-
stronger Roman tradition. A real codification, a ows and orphans. Notaries and solicitors took an
systematic collection and homogenisation on the increasing role in public life. The concept of the
authority of the central government never came corporate legal entity, universitas, made its way
about. Local judges continued to enjoy consider- into the towns and communities in their associ-
able freedom in the administration of justice. ated and constituent organs, such as guilds. Like
The influence of canon law was felt in so many other matters, the spread of modern,
the administrative and judicial practices of the rational legal thinking was closely connected to
young states even earlier than Roman law. The the urban environment, as well as, and in contrast
rational investigation of the facts by a judge to, that of the great royal courts.
before a person was charged, in contrast to the The administration of justice played a larger
early medieval customs of accusation and single part in social reality than did the legislation of
combat, was modelled on the Church’s inquisitio, princes. Local regulations were much closer to
the judicial inquiry. In 1215 the Fourth Lateran everyday life and could be more easily enforced
Council condemned trial by ordeal as a means by a combination of social control and common
of obtaining evidence because it was irrational interest. We should not believe that the legis-
and the outcome was often questionable. In the lation of the French kings simply reflected the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries both Church wishes, le bon plaisir, of the sovereign: the great
and secular authorities had progressed so far that majority of royal ordinances came into being in
they shunned the unpredictability of a trial by a response to requests, via petitions from pressure
publicly proclaimed ordeal and supported more groups. In this respect, the situation in England
rational methods of investigation. was rather different from that on the continent –
It is of fundamental significance for western on the one hand because of the long tradition of
thought that in the young universities law (Roman trial by a jury of laymen, and on the other hand,
and canon law) was recognised as a separate because of the early (from the twelfth century)

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development of a system of professional royal Latin. This was common practice everywhere in
courts of law with extensive powers. Common the Catholic parts of Europe. As a result of help
law, the growing part of customary law that was requested from the clerics by the illiterate ruffi-
administered by royal judges according to uni- ans who were the feudal lords to formulate their
form procedures only minimally influenced by administrative activities, judicial pronounce-
jurisprudence and attaching much importance ments and agreements, Church Latin also became
to legal precedent, remained intact in England, the administrative language of the early states all
which meant that in fact it was the courts that over Catholic Europe.
made the law. England was far ahead of the rest of Europe in
The establishment of the Reichskammergericht, matters of administrative and judicial organisa-
the imperial high court, in 1495, itself the succes- tion. This was the result of the centralisation of
sor of the Reichshofgericht installed by Frederick II monarchy in later Anglo-Saxon England and the
in 1235, offered opportunities for appeal through- fact that after 1066 the Normans had to keep a
out the German Empire, at least in theory. The tight grip on the land they had conquered. In the
weakness of the Empire was exposed, however, second half of the twelfth century two separate
when the emperor was immediately compelled courts become recognisable, in two fields that
to allow powerful territorial princes exemption required specific expertise: first, the Exchequer,
for their subjects, because the princes set up their the treasury, where the king’s financial officers
own territorial central courts. The regionalism had to justify their accounts, and then the Court
was evident in France as well, where parlements, of Common Pleas or Common Bench, the central
in this particular context meaning law courts, royal court of law for dealing with civil suits. This
were set up in regions with a strong tradition development can be seen as the beginning of a
of autonomy. The monarchy was able to adapt general European tendency to progressive admin-
to this regional diversity and imposed its own istrative specialisation and bureaucratisation,
model as far as the circumstances allowed. It was which came about at diverse times and to vary-
a matter of pacification inside the borders and of ing degrees depending on the social evolution
creaming off resources for defence or imperialistic of a particular region. Advisory functions were
aims. expanded and made permanent in separate insti-
tutions which were sustained by paid officials,
who increasingly were professionally trained.
Bureaucratisation Around the middle of the thirteenth cen-
tury, vernacular languages started to appear in
As early as the twelfth century the emerging official documents on the European continent.
monarchies felt the need to surround themselves In England, old English had been used for this
with growing numbers of experts in administra- purpose since the ninth century, although there
tive matters. The growth into a civil service state had been a switch to Latin and French after
can best be seen as a concentric development, the Norman Conquest. The new preference of
beginning in the household of a territorial prince the vernacular was connected to the growing
or king. The most elementary functions grew role played by burghers in government, which
into differentiated court offices, whose structures helped to some extent to bridge the traditional
remained fairly generally applied until the sev- gap between the knightly and urban worlds. One
enteenth century. To draw up and publish their important result of this opening up of govern-
written documents, the earliest princes called ment circles to the vernacular and to officials of
upon the services of nearby clerics, the only peo- bourgeois or lower noble origin was that gov-
ple who could read or write, and primarily so in ernments and subjects could communicate in

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the same language, hence the term parliament. was important that princes could rely on the sup-
Government was no longer shrouded in a foreign, port of the Church, which was after all the largest
esoteric language and culture, keeping it remote landowner and very influential. Diplomacy was
from local authorities and the people. Use of the another field of activity much favoured by mem-
administrative language gained in social impor- bers of the higher clergy. Their internationally
tance as government and judiciary increasingly standardised education and knowledge of Latin
relied on written procedures and reached more were obvious reasons for this, together with the
subjects directly. On several occasions during the inviolability of their legal position and the trust
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, representa- radiating from their clerical status.
tives of the Estates protested successfully against During the second half of the thirteenth cen-
the use of a foreign language by their rulers: tury northern Italian financial specialists made
German in Bohemia or French in the Burgundian their appearance in the princely courts of north-
Low Countries. Administrative centres narrowed western Europe, no doubt in the pursuit of their
the gap with their subjects by using the vernacu- activities as financiers and moneylenders. They
lar, so that their language acquired a wider area held high positions in the service of princes as
of circulation than others, albeit often only in receivers, treasurers, tax farmers or mint masters
official documents. until about the middle of the fourteenth century.
Nevertheless, the lead enjoyed by the Church In those capacities they rationalised the manage-
in the written culture of the West left its traces in ment of the rapidly growing princely finances,
the clerical status of the heads of the royal sec- doubtless safeguarding their own interests at the
retariats, the chancellors. The chancellors of the same time.
German kings were generally bishops, or were An example of the numerical evolution of
made bishops soon after their appointment. It royal bureaucracy can be found in the central
was not until 1424 that a layman became chan- administration in France: at the beginning of the
cellor in Germany. Between 1280 and 1332, all fourteenth century it had eight master account-
the French chancellors were incumbents of the ants, nineteen by 1484; ten notaries worked in the
rich bishopric of Laon. However, secularisation chancery in 1286, fifty-nine in 1361, seventy-nine
set in from the middle of the fourteenth century in 1418 and 120 by the early sixteenth century.
onwards: chancellors were now laymen and, by After that there was an enormous acceleration
1500, only 8 per cent of the royal secretaries were in bureaucratisation: by 1515 the French state in
clerics. its entirety employed more than 4,000 officials.
Clerics had more to offer the princes than Around 1200, the king of England had fifteen
just their original monopoly of expertise. It was messengers in his service and in 1350 about sixty,
important that their ecclesiastical dignity pro- enabling the sheriffs of the counties to receive
vided them with their own substantial incomes, mail from the capital every week. In England
making them cheap employees for the princes. there were probably fewer state officials per
The Church freely granted dispensation to its head of population, partly because several func-
clerics to enter such service, doubtless motivated tions, such as that of justice of the peace, were
by feelings of charity and concern for the good unsalaried and exercised by local landowners.
government of the faithful. As a result of provid-
ing such services the Church was in an excellent
position to look after its own interests, directly Taxation
and discreetly. No wonder that the overwhelm-
ing majority of all surviving pre-1300 documents In those regions where there were enough sil-
deal with Church property. On the other hand, it ver coins in circulation, kings could generate a

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PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

new form of revenue, levies in cash. The threat rhythms of the war. Taxes were not levied during
of invasion was an excuse for introducing gen- periods of peace with Scotland (1297–1306) and
eral taxation. In order to pay for military defence truces with France (1360–1369). By contrast, the
against a new wave of Viking attacks, Danegeld, intensive warfare of 1294–1298 and the begin-
which had been levied at the time of the first ning of the Hundred Years War caused explosive
invasions, was reintroduced in England in 991, growth in the burden of taxation. The war ena-
but now on a permanent footing. It remained, bled princes to ask for extra money and support
under the name of heregeld, until the 1160s. It was from their subjects on the pretext of defending
based on a fixed assessment per area of land and the country, which was, after all, the concern
was paid in silver coin, of which many more were of every subject. The terms necessity and self-
minted during this period. Heregeld can thus be defence were brought out by learned advisors
considered the oldest regular state tax in Europe. when the excuse of the Crusades could no longer
Other general taxes were introduced in be used. But which land had to be defended, and
England far earlier than on the continent. In who was the aggressor? In 1297 the barons found
1185, at the pope’s dogged insistence, a tithe (10 that Edward’s attack on Flanders could no longer
per cent) was levied on personal property and be described as national defence, but his cam-
incomes in preparation for the Third Crusade. It paigns in Guyenne, Wales and Scotland did not
was a fiscal success, which is all the more remark- attract such a protest.
able because a similar attempt in France not only The collection of taxes required a widely
ran up against the immunities of the great territo- ramified network of collectors, which kings
rial princes, who were powerful enough to refuse and territorial princes could not build up easily,
to cooperate, but also against the fundamental inevitably because all fiscal immunities, such as
objection that the king by his own authority did seignories, church domains and towns, insisted
not have the right to levy taxes on personal prop- upon maintaining their autonomy. They pre-
erty or incomes. Soon afterwards the principle of ferred to hand in a total amount for their whole
the proportional tax on personal property was area that was agreed upon beforehand, so that
again applied in England, until the excesses of they could keep the tax collection and thus the
John Lackland led to a clause against arbitrary control over the tax-bearing capacity of the popu-
taxation in the Magna Carta in 1215. lation in their own hands. The system of levying
In the long term, however, taxation proved export customs in the ports enabled the English
to be the most successful method to enable the kings to install their own collectors there: these
English crown to centralise its power. In 1275 duties were new Crown rights mainly involv-
the English parliament approved indirect taxes ing foreign buyers of wool. The introduction of
for the first time. They mainly affected the general and permanent royal taxation, under
export of wool. These taxes would form a perma- the pressure of the Hundred Years War, gave the
nent source of income for the Crown and at the French king the opportunity to keep the collec-
same time function as a political weapon against tion of those taxes largely in his own hands.
buyers on the continent, notably the Italians, In Castile, too, the expansion of the Crown’s
Flemings and northern Germans. Parliament powers by conquest at the expense of the
continued to determine the conditions of the Muslims gave it the right to appoint the regi-
tax, so a public discussion about great economic dores as collectors in the towns. In other parts
and political questions took place. When general of Europe, however, kings and princes encoun-
taxation, both direct and indirect, was placed on tered great difficulty in centralising the collection
a permanent footing in the thirteenth century, of taxes by their own officials over the whole
its level and frequency were determined by the territory. From 1292 onwards the ayudas (bids

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 Th E C ONSOL I DATI ON O f STATE S 11 CHAPTER

for help) rapidly followed each other in the the supremacy of the crown in France as opposed
lands under the Aragonese crown, as a result to the supremacy of parliament in England.
of the royal wars. The principle was that, out- ‘Money is the sinew of war’, wrote Cicero; by
side the circumstances when as highest lord the implication, it was also the touchstone of the
king could count on the services of his vassals, relationships between those who made the deci-
a prince must ask his free subjects for help. This sions about war and lesser mortals. The more a
meant negotiating with subjects, who could prince was tempted to wage war, the more taxes
then set their conditions and wrest benefits or he had to impose on or demand of his subjects.
more autonomy from the prince. In 1363 the Now that princes asked for increasingly large
Cortes Generales of the four former kingdoms taxes increasingly often, governments of towns
under the crown of Aragon – Valencia, Aragon, and other representative bodies saw opportuni-
Catalonia and Mallorca – agreed to introduce a ties to negotiate about conditions for possible
tax on the production of cloth and the export of agreement. This development was one of extreme
merchandise. importance. It came to an end in many countries
The English crown was far more successful – France, but also Poland, Hungary, Sweden and
than the French in drastically increasing its rev- Denmark – between the fifteenth and seventeenth
enues in a short time. Expressed in tonnes of fine centuries. The ability of princes to gain access to
silver, Edward III received 32 tonnes in 1336, 66 a tax system that could function independently
in 1337 and 92 in 1339. Loans then accounted for of the approval of people’s representatives played
more than half the receipts; this was only possible an essential role in this development.
if enough moneylenders were prepared to extend The possibility for raising taxes again and
credit to the king. The French king’s income was again depended on the type of economy pre-
no more than 53 tonnes in 1339 and 56 in 1340. vailing in a particular country. In England and
Clearly, at the beginning of the Hundred Years Catalonia it was clear in the thirteenth and four-
War, the English with their surprise attack had an teenth centuries, respectively, that taxes could be
enormous advantage over the French, who could levied on exports. An export-oriented economy
not react adequately militarily, and certainly not could thus form the basis for a fiscal system that
logistically or financially. The disastrous course taxed not its own subjects but the foreign buyers.
of the first phase of the war led to immense fiscal This functioned especially well when a unique
demands from the French crown, which was then selling point was at stake, such as English wool,
granted permanent indirect taxes. These were oriental spices and wines. Even then, however,
easily collected, did not require further negotia- the level of taxation might put the competitive-
tions but weighed disproportionally heavy on the ness of a country’s export trade at risk. Where the
lower income groups. It started in 1355 with the possibility of an export tax did not exist or not
gabelle, a tax on salt, and a levy of one-thirtieth sufficiently, the only recourse was to tax the sub-
of the value of merchandise; this ratio was raised jects, with the risk of rebellion when the burden
to one-twentieth in 1435. The great opportunity was felt to be unfair. There was a delicate rela-
came in 1440 with the introduction of a per- tionship between increasing fiscal demands and
manent annual tallage, taille, to be collected by strengthening opposition to them from people’s
officials of the king. Unlike the English parlia- representatives or even uprisings.
ment, the French Estates General and regional In England, the Low Countries, Catalonia and
assemblies thus allowed themselves to be mar- the Swiss Confederation, the supervision of the
ginalised as a political body by surrendering the tax system by representative bodies put a brake
right to approve the tax every year. In the long on the increase of the tax burden to a level far
run, this had enormous consequences, leading to above the capacity of the subjects. The ordinary

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PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

burgher was closer to economic reality than the credit. In other words, a well-functioning tax sys-
princes and their advisors, who displayed aris- tem increased the chances of obtaining credit,
tocratic contempt for it. Lending for the public which then threatened the equilibrium of that
debt could be quite a profitable investment for system.
members of the political elites, which might The economic system thus made a twofold dif-
well have made them reflect favourably on the ference in a state’s chances of obtaining money:
government’s spending policy. in a commercialised economy, surpluses could
State budgets swelled under the growing pres- be syphoned off far more easily through indirect
sure of the costs of wars, financed to a large extent taxes, regardless of the level at which they were
by loans. But these loans meant there would be levied, than in an agrarian subsistence economy.
an additional tax increase in the long term. In Moreover, credit was cheaper and more easily
the middle of the fourteenth century and the available in a commercialised economy, making
early fifteenth century, the city-state of Florence a rapid expansion of liquid assets possible, while
was engaged in a series of wars against the Papal the agrarian economy was mainly limited to
States, Milan and Pisa. At the beginning of the the sluggish, restricted and barely flexible yields
period the Republic’s expenditure was 40,000 from demesnes. One result of this was that from
florins, but the wars cost 2.5, 7.5 and 4.5 mil- the thirteenth century onwards a state’s military
lion florins respectively. The difference had to be opportunities were more and more determined
found in tax increases and in loans, for which by its access to the money market. The more
the interest found its way into the pockets of commercialised regions could then achieve mili-
the financiers, but was paid for by taxes on the tary superiority simply because they were able
everyday consumer goods of ordinary people. to hire as many soldiers as they needed. These
Government debts thus enriched the wealthy at mercenaries came predominantly from periphery
the expense of simple taxpayers. regions which still had agricultural economies,
If we look at fiscality as a means of exercising such as Wales, Scotland, central France, Castile,
power then we are struck by the direct and con- the Swiss Confederation and central Germany.
tinuing relationship between war and taxation. It is thus quite conceivable that the agricul-
Wars stimulated new and higher taxation, and tural regions not only produced fewer resources
even active representative institutions could not with which to resist the supremacy of the core
really offer resistance. Princes were not guided regions, but that their own populations often also
by macro-economic considerations. They really supplied the troops that would subject them.
could not know what results their activities might
bring because there was no reliable statistical
information available about their own finances The state’s subjects
or those of their subjects. Time and again the
unplanned expenses for the purpose of war threw The initiative for the continual competition for
state finances into confusion. Once a conflict had more concentrated means of power which led to
broken out, expenses could not be kept under the formation of increasingly large and strongly
control because only victory counted in a war, equipped states naturally emanated from those
not economic efficiency. Therefore a lot of money persons and bodies which already were ahead in
had to be spent, borrowed against high rates of the power stakes: feudal lords, large landowners,
interest, the repayment of which would have a princes, princes of the Church and urban oli-
snowball effect and continue to burden expendi- garchies. Yet the outcome of this centuries-long
ture for decades thereafter. Only the states which struggle was not decided solely by these elites.
seemed to be creditworthy could actually obtain The people who became subordinated to more

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 Th E C ONSOL I DATI ON O f STATE S 11 CHAPTER

powerful states did not just sit and watch: com- those countries where a woman could succeed,
munities had formed their own political systems there were always arguments about her husband
in preceding centuries, which for a long time and his claims. In those circumstances, the sub-
remained a weighty factor to resist the centralis- jects who were called to recognise a new ruler
ing policies of monarchs and their councillors. had the opportunity to assert their preference
The feudal lords, who were no match for their and to lay down conditions for their agreement.
mightier rivals, sometimes formed alliances This applied even more strongly in those regions
against their rulers and even sought the sup- where kingship was by definition arranged by
port of their natural opponents in the towns or election, namely in the German Empire and
ecclesiastical institutions. In short, the formation its originally vassal kingdoms of Bohemia and
of stronger concentrations of power provoked Poland, as well as in Sweden. The election contest
counter-reactions in which losing parties formed always stirred up intense rivalry among the most
coalitions that could turn the tide at the first sign important princely houses so that the kingship
of a ruler’s weakness. This dialectical process cre- itself remained weak, even after the Habsburgs
ated forms of representation and resistance that succeeded in making the German kingship
would make a unique contribution to world his- hereditary in practice after 1438. The heavily
tory: constitutional monarchies controlled by debated succession to Emperor Maximilian I led
representative assemblies. his grandson Charles V to accept a whole series
The formal recognition of a new ruler, just of conditions and restrictions to his power in
like a feudal contract, took the form of a recipro- 1519.
cal oath of loyalty in which first the future ruler From the twelfth century onwards evidence
promised to protect the rights of his subjects and throughout Europe points to the representatives
the Church, and then his vassals and other repre- of different estates, including burghers, being
sentatives of his subjects swore an oath of faithful involved in the recognition of a ruler and the
service to him. It was on the basis of this statutory formulation of the basic rules of his government.
extension of the feudal oath of homage, subject In 1135 Alfonso VII had himself proclaimed
to the sanctions of breach of contract, that vas- emperor of Spain before a solemn assembly
sals and privileged urban and rural communities made up of important spiritual dignitaries and
freely decided to accept a territorial lord and to great barons and ‘judges’, by which it is possi-
hold him to the obligations he had assumed. ble that the elected representatives of the towns
The appointment of a legitimate successor could be meant. This was certainly the case in
was a recurring problem, a consequence of the 1187, when the governments of fifty towns took
high mortality rate among the hardened warri- part in the meeting of the royal council of Castile,
ors; disagreement generally arose because of the which affirmed Berenguela’s right to the succes-
variety of legal rules for succession and complex sion and her contract of marriage to Conrad
family ramifications. Rules of succession, such as of Hohenstaufen. One year later, after a much-
the right of the first-born (primogeniture) and disputed succession to the throne, Alfonso IX of
the admission (England, Castile, Denmark) or León promised before ‘the archbishops, bishops,
exclusion (France, Holy Roman Empire, Aragon) religious orders, counts and other nobles of the
of women, were pointers to the choice in theory kingdom together with elected burghers of the
but did not guarantee an unequivocal or good towns’ to respect the good customs and only to
solution. Problems arose in one out of every two make decisions about war and peace after discus-
successions because there were several contenders sions with ‘the bishops, nobles and good men’.
with equally valid claims, or because the succes- The assembly in turn swore allegiance and to
sor was a minor, incompetent or female. Even in maintain the law and peace in the kingdom.

393
PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

In the neighbouring kingdom of Aragon as the impeachment process in the American con-
the cortes (assembly of the estates) met regu- stitution. In essence, the famous Magna Carta of
larly from the mid-twelfth century onwards, 1215 was also a list of complaints that King John’s
with more than one hundred members, some vassals addressed to him for breaching the feudal
of them from the towns. The cortes dealt with law. London was the only city mentioned. The
political questions such as the maintenance of deposition and execution of Edward II in 1327
order, administration of justice, taxation and and Richard II in 1399 were legally supported by
the minting of coinage. In 1214, the Aragonese similar procedures carried out in parliament.
cortes, consisting of ‘barons, knights, burghers In urbanised regions, towns did not wait until
and vassals from the castles and villages’, swore their princes had dynastic problems to introduce
allegiance to the under-age king, James, in return consultative structures on a regional and inter-
for financial and judicial advantages. When the regional scale. In this way they could take care
dynasty was in crisis, as happened in Castile-León of their own commercial interests with all the
between 1275 and 1325, the cortes formulated implications for coinage, tolls, administration of
their grievances about a variety of matters in the justice and security. If these interests were dam-
kingdom and thus brought their influence to bear aged by their own or foreign princes, then towns
on the government to choose a rival claimant to brought their grievances and requests to them as
the throne. The far-reaching rights which Spanish a collective body, compelling their compliance
noblemen and towns had won in connection sometimes by means of financial concessions
with the Reconquest gave them a stronger basis and, if necessary, through boycotts or reprisals.
in their dealings with the Crown than that of Since overseas and overland trading routes easily
their colleagues elsewhere in Europe. In Aragon, crossed borders, governments of trading towns
where feudal institutions were fully developed, operated in truly international associations. As
this tendency was even more outspoken than in long as princes showed no interest in economic
Castile, where feudalism was largely absent in the politics, which was true of most of them until
structuring of power relations. the fifteenth century, traders enjoyed much
In Flanders representatives of nobility and freedom in this. The attempts at territorialisa-
large towns had gone a step further as early as tion and expansion of state power set them on
1128 (see Chapter 4, Box 4.1). This was the first a collision course with princes. Typical points of
time that the juridical form of an oath of hom- friction were the harmful effects of dynastic wars
age was extended to a contract between a prince on commercial relations, toll collections, the
and the collectivity of his subjects. By doing this, arrest of foreign merchants by a prince’s officers
the feudal right of resistance in case of infringe- of justice and devaluation of the currency. A typi-
ment of the agreement became applicable by the cal conflict arose in Brabant around the death of
subjects against the government of the entire Duke John II in 1312. As he fell ill leaving only a
land. In other words: subjects were now entitled minor son, he negotiated with the nobility and
not to obey their ruler if he broke his promises. the towns to secure his succession. The towns
Consequently, in the event of violation, he would complained that at that time many of their citi-
lose the allegiance not only of his vassals but of zens were arrested outside the duchy, to be kept
all his subjects, and therefore also his office. This as hostage and their goods confiscated, in order
principle would be further applied in Brabant to enforce the repayment of the duke’s debts.
in 1420 and in the Low Countries as a whole They managed to get effective control over the
on the Act of Abjuration of Philip II of Spain duchy’s finances by a regency council dominated
in 1580–1581. Via the English revolutions of by the seven major cities. This charter included
the seventeenth century, it would later be found a formula granting to all citizens the individual

394
 Th E C ONSOL I DATI ON O f STATE S 11 CHAPTER

right to deny any support and obedience to the

duke if he would violate any of their privileges.
This extension of the feudal right of resist-
ance initiated a long tradition of constitutional
charters in Brabant, limiting the monarchical
power.
With their associations, privileges, merchants’
guilds and their own legal systems, trading towns
had created solid structures that to a large extent
functioned independently of the state. They
could not be brushed aside easily by the new
state apparatuses: after all, they had a great deal
of specialist knowledge and contacts and were
not inclined to give them up for nothing. States
were thus obliged to negotiate with urban organ-
isations with a long tradition of autonomous
representation. That was where the money and
financial competences were. The moment when
their governments were incorporated into tighter
state structures formed an excellent occasion for
this. Hence the emphatic role they played in
purely political events, such as succession crises
in regions like Aragon, Flanders and Brabant.
The survival of effectively functioning repre- PLATE 11.2 Ceremonial session of the two Houses
sentative institutions depended both on external of Parliament in 1523. This highly ceremonial rep-
pressure and the social, economic and political resentation shows the king on his throne with three
structures of the regions concerned. The parlia- ecclesiastical councillors to his right and two laymen
ment in England owed its exceptional continuity to his left. The seating order in quadrangles reflects
(despite some interruptions of several years at the this division: lords spiritual are seated on the king’s
end of the fifteenth century) to the solid anchor- right and lords secular in front and on the left. In the
age of its representation in the counties and centre, officials are seated on four woolsacks and
boroughs, where the tradition of the subjects’ there are two scribes. The herald appears to allow
participation went back to the time of the Anglo- the Commons to take their places.
Saxon kings. Even the most centralised states
could not completely eliminate the traditionally individuals with an eye on a noble title then
strong regional systems of representation. All the they ran the risk of their subjects sending a peti-
newly incorporated territories kept their tradi- tion directly to the king or, even worse, being
tional rights: for example, in France the Normans brought down by revolts. Their role as intermedi-
received their charter in 1315, Lorraine as late as ary between the centre and periphery in the state
1766. Also in France, the estates’ assemblies of then took a terrible blow. Two sorts of factors
Burgundy and of Languedoc functioned until the increased the pressure on such ‘representatives’
end of the eighteenth century. from the fifteenth century onwards: the expan-
A great deal depended then on how repre- sion of monarchal authority limited their room
sentative the representatives really were. In the for manoeuvre, and the escalation of war contin-
towns, if the representatives were purely private ually raised the fiscal and military expectations

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PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

of the Crown. Both these trends appeared at the gave the princes the advantage. The towns seldom
same time, although the extreme lack of financial managed to cooperate effectively for any length
resources for war compelled states to give in and of time to form a counterbalance. Unions of
make concessions to local elites. German towns in regions like Swabia, Alsace and
the upper Rhine, which contemplated protecting
certain common interests of their burghers from
Balance of powers the feudal powers, suffered from a lack of genuine
solidarity. Even in the German Hanse, the great
In the competition between states described in urban league, most of the time the interests of the
this chapter there were naturally more losers regional groupings were deeply divergent, often
than winners. Among the losers in the process even diametrically opposed. This made truly
of state formation were countless local lords and coordinated action only possible in exceptional
territorial princes whose lands were swallowed circumstances. Certainly, the members would not
up by more competitive units. In this we can see support each other in purely political conflicts
an increased efficiency within the same type of with nearby princes.
dominion. It was a different matter for the cul- The strengthening of state power was thus a
tural losers, like the Welsh, Irish and Bohemians predominant pattern of the late Middle Ages.
whose languages were banned from Church ser- States continually occupied more territory, they
vices, government and the law; Muslims who concentrated a greater superiority of means
became second-class citizens in Castile, Portugal of violence in relation to other power cores in
and the lands under the crown of Aragon; and society and they built an apparatus of officials
Christians in the Balkans after the Ottoman con- to maintain the law and collect taxes. Warfare
quests. The German upper class in the central and territorial acquisitions made a huge differ-
European and Baltic towns and in the rural areas ence with regard to real state power, as expressed
of Prussia was shameless in its discrimination in expenditure figures shown in Table 11.1. Note
against the Slav population. A great deal of urban especially the weakness of the Empire vis-à-vis
autonomy was lost in the process of strengthen- the major kingdoms as well as its constituent ter-
ing state power, because princes gained a tight ritories and even one single imperial city.
hold on the composition of town government, In the Holy Roman Empire several territorial
the exercise of judicial powers and financial princes consolidated their positions at the expense
expenditure. There was naturally no question of of smaller contestants and towns, but the continu-
independent military activity in the context ally changing coalitions among the dozens of units
of the state. Insurgency was repressed by superior prevented any real concentration from taking
strength. place. The Empire as a whole lost substantial areas
However strong the concentration of people because of the lack of cohesion in its periphery.
and capital in the towns, they were compelled The imperial principalities in the Low Countries
to relinquish a large measure of their autonomy were combined into an exceptionally powerful
to the monarchies because, apart from north- complex under the Burgundian-Habsburg dynasty.
ern and central Italy, the states gradually came Alsace, Lotharingia (Lorraine), Franche-Comté,
to have more means of exercising power at their Dauphiné and Provence came into the French
disposal. If the budgets of towns like Ghent and sphere of influence. The Swiss Confederation
Louvain were more or less equal to the budgets detached itself gradually, and in 1501 formally,
of the count of Flanders and the duke of Brabant, from the Empire. Under the rule of Emperor
respectively, in the fourteenth century, the ter- Charles IV in 1373, after whom the famous bridge
ritorial expansion and the systematic tax levies in Prague was named, the kingdom of Bohemia

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TABLE 11.1 State expenditure, c.1500 (in tonnes of pure silver)

France 42–91 Habsburg Landsb 10

Venice 37 Brittany 7
England 17–44 Holy Roman Empire 5
Castile 12–76 Palatinate 3
Low Countriesa 20–27 Bavaria 3
Naples 22 Nüremberg 2.7
Lombardy 22 Württemberg 2
Papal State 10 Archbishopric Cologne 1
Notes: a Franche Comté included. b Austria, Bohemia, Tyrol.
Source: Martin Körner, ‘Expenditure’, in Richard Bonney (ed.), Economic Systems and State Finance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 399.

succeeded in stringing together vast areas of land illegitimate birth and the marriage of close rela-
that stretched from Brandenburg through Lausitz, tives (see Chapter 12). As it became clear that it
Silesia, Moravia, Austria, Styria and Carinthia as was increasingly possible to buy such favours,
far as the Tirol. The Habsburg dynasty eventually those who could afford to used them purely
supplanted the Luxemburg house and, in 1526, instrumentally. Although the role of the Church
brought all those regions back under imperial was in no way played out, it had lost its suprem-
control through tactical marriages. acy and even its independence in relation to the
The enlargement of the monarchic states’ stronger secular rulers.
power did not take place solely at the expense It must be clear that in 1500 (just as in 1800)
of local and territorial lords and princes and the there still was no question of a single type of state
towns. Church institutions also lost ground at in Europe. Expansion of territorial states in the
every level during the fourteenth and fifteenth German Empire and Italy was curbed by the bal-
centuries. The ideal of the crusade was degraded ances of power existing between the countless
in the thirteenth century to a purely political, political units. Incorporation into larger units
internal-European weapon and disappeared into rarely meant the abrogation of customary law
the realm of fiction. The popes’ universalistic and institutions. The stronger states could rely
claims were stranded finally on French opposi- on a modern commercialised economy in which
tion, leading to a profound territorialisation of greater quantities of more flexible resources were
the Church (or rather nationalisation, such as the available than in a traditional agrarian economy,
Gallican Church, a precedent for the Anglican such as that of Poland or Denmark. In Italy the
Church founded in 1534), which came to depend commercial middle class ruled the cities directly
on secular rulers and began to serve their interests during the so-called communal period, but, from
more directly. Church property was thenceforth the mid-thirteenth century onwards, the ten-
taxed regularly. Towns and states took over a dency towards investment in land and seigniorial
growing number of functions that the Church rights underpinned the tendency towards the
had previously considered its own. Secular courts formation of signorie, or even outright monar-
of law ruled on matters of marriage and heresy, chic rule. Commercial capital was not tied to a
the organisation of poor relief and health care particular place or a particular territory. Should
came increasingly into lay hands and was submit- the lack of safety, non-repayment of royal debts,
ted to regulation by local authorities. Papal moral heavy tax burden or excessively high wages create
authority was diminished through the increas- unattractive conditions for investors in search of
ingly magnanimous application of the principle profits, then they sought refuge elsewhere and
of granting indulgences and dispensations for the local economy suffered. Princes could not

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PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

control capitalists, and since they could not exist ■■ Discontinuity of the monarchy, financial
without their credit they had to allow them free- crises, lost wars and excessive violations of
dom in their activities. This mixed model would customary law by officials created typical
offer the best chances for the future. incentives for representatives of the subjects
to raise their voice and claim constitutional
rights as well as guarantees against future
Points to remember violations.
■■ Righteous resistance against arbitrary monar-
■■ Most European states were expanded and chical power was feudal in its origins, but in
transformed feudal kingdoms, others (local the most urbanised regions of Europe the
seignories and territorial lordships) were built wealthier citizens succeeded in extending
from the bottom up through the expansion this right to all subjects by means of regu-
of the most powerful feudal lords. lar political representation and by enforcing
■■ Once a kind of equilibrium was reached in constitutional covenants, in exchange for
the power relations within a particular polity paying regular taxes.
and in its relations with neighbouring states,
that situation tended to be perpetuated
(path dependency), unless the economic or Suggestions for further
political position of one or more contend- reading
ers underwent a dramatic shift. The shape
of consolidated states reflected the role of Guenée, Bernard (1985), States and Rulers in Later
Medieval Europe (Oxford: Blackwell) (orig. French,
countervailing powers within the society.
1971). Classic and systematic analysis of the char-
■■ Dynastic alliances and armed conflicts were
acter of the late medieval state, its ideologies,
the most effective instruments leading to resources, targets, and its relations to society.
the ongoing territorial expansion of polities. Harding, Alan (2002), Medieval Law and the Foundations
Warfare was the most costly activity deployed of the State (Oxford: OUP). The need of social order,
by medieval and early modern states. As peace and justice is explored as the basis of systems
of government from the centre, from the Frankish
princes claimed that to be their exclusive pre-
and Anglo-Saxon courts to the monarchic states.
rogative, subjects were confronted with the Housley, Norman (2002), Religious Warfare in Europe,
damages and peaking taxation. These could 1400–1536 (Oxford: OUP). A bright analysis of the
offer opportunities for political participation, conflicts waged in God’s name in the period from
but more often princes successfully evaded thel Crusades to the early Reformation.
this by seeking new sources of income such as Imber, Colin (2002), The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). A chronologi-
tolls, loans and debasement of the currency.
cal and institutional overview of the first centuries,
■■ The prime functions of state officials were its focusing on the palace, the military, the law and
financial administration and justice. Princely taxation.
high courts of jurisdiction created opportuni- Watts, John (2009), The Making of Polities: Europe,
ties for (wealthy) subjects to seek their right 1300–1500 (Cambridge: CUP). An up-to-date and
broad comparative overview of the course of politi-
independent of local influences.
cal events, combined with the structural analysis of
■■ University training was valued for high relevant processes and factors, with due attention
clergymen, judges and lawyers; a practical to the various forms of government and to political
training was preferred for accountants. culture.

398
12 Crisis in the Church
and the reorientation
of the faithful

Who leads Christendom? In the entire history of the papacy there has
never been such a difference in personality of two
Towards the end of the thirteenth century it successive popes as there was between Celestine V
gradually became clear that the hierocratic aspi- (1294) and Boniface VIII (1294–1303). Both have
rations of the popes would finally have to give been called a living anachronism, yet for totally
way to a new type of caesaropapism, the forma- different reasons. Celestine, an unworldly her-
tion of what has been called ‘national churches’, mit, emerged as a compromise candidate whom
on which kings or other secular rulers had a nobody really wanted, when the papal throne
strong hold. The history of the years around 1300 had been vacant for a long period. Once he had
teaches us that the pope in Rome had not prop- become pope, so shocked was he by the moral
erly understood the signs of the times. We are laxity of the world he had entered that he could
indebted to his misunderstanding for some of the not retire quickly enough from his new dignity.
most fascinating politico-ideological documents Some reports say that a certain amount of pres-
of the Middle Ages, as the final act of the strug- sure was brought to bear on him by his successor,
gle between emperor and pope and between pope Cardinal Benedetto Caetani, a brilliant lawyer
and French king was played out to the accom- who ascended the papal throne under the name
paniment of an unprecedented polemic barrage. Boniface VIII. Soon afterwards, the man of the
The starting signal came in 1294 when Pope world that Boniface had been became a man who
Celestine V abdicated after a pontificate of barely wanted to be exalted above that world. And for
five months; the contest ended with the death of the last time, a pope thundered from the Lateran
Emperor Louis in 1347. that the highest power in the world belonged

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all principalities and kingdoms’. In fact, King

Philip, who suspected the pope of conspiring
against him with the king of Aragon, decided
to remove the Holy Father from the scene by
constructing a charge of heresy against him and
then having him kidnapped from Italy. The last
part of the plan failed, although a Franco-Italian
commando unit under the leadership of Philip’s
confidant, Guillaume de Nogaret, did manage to
take Boniface prisoner in his summer residence
at Anagni. The pope was released a day later, but
died soon after his traumatic and humiliating
arrest.
A combination of events led to the removal
of the papal court to Avignon in 1309. Avignon
was then a town divided by the river Rhône into
the old, German-imperial part on the east bank,
and a new, French, part on the west bank. The
popes held the formal lordship over the German
part, together with the small County of Venasque
that surrounded the town, in fief of the counts of
Provence who happened to be the kings of Naples
from the French House of Anjou. In 1348, the
PLATE 12.1 Pope Boniface VIII, statue in copper and
popes bought these rights from the countess of
bronze on wood, 2.45 m high, c.1300 on show on the
Anjou, after which Avignon and Venasque became
façade of the Palazzo Pubblico of Bologna.
a papal enclave between France and the Holy
Roman Empire. The decision, in 1309, of Pope
to him and him alone. Through his papal bulls Clement V (1305–1314) to move to Provence was
and his legates he interfered in the high politics connected with the denouement of the Boniface
of temporal princes everywhere from Sicily to VIII affair. Clement was anxious to prevent the
Denmark, only to be rebuffed everywhere. French king from going ahead with his plan of
Boniface’s aggression was directed mainly at having Boniface posthumously declared a her-
the French king, Philip IV the Fair, questioning etic. He found it completely unacceptable that
his right to levy taxes on the French clergy and someone who had been invested with the keys
to try them in secular courts of law. Tensions of St Peter would ever be called an enemy of the
mounted, and resulted in the publication of a faith, but he paid an outrageous price for Philip’s
series of radical bulls, the last of which, Unam acquiescence: he agreed to the persecution and
Sanctam (1302), competes with the Dictatus Papae eventual condemnation of the Knights Templar.
of 1075 (see Chapter 6) for the prize of being the After the fall of the last Christian bulwarks in
most extreme formulation ever of papal claims Palestine at the end of the thirteenth century this
to temporal power. According to one contempo- extremely wealthy military order had established
rary satirical text, the French king would have its headquarters in Paris and successfully entered
laughed his head off ‘when he heard that it had the banking business. The French crown was one
been decreed by the Lord Pope Boniface that he of its largest debtors. Philip IV and his advisors
himself [i.e. the pope] is and should be lord over were mightily envious and looked for ways to

400
 C R I SI S I N Th E C h U R C h A ND T hE R E OR I E NTATI ON Of T h E fA I T h fU L 12 CHAPTER

destroy the order and confiscate its French pos- John XXII, were conflicts between irreconcil-
sessions. Even after a thorough enquiry in the able aspirations and also between powerful and
dioceses and a council held in Vienne in 1311– obstinate personalities. All received the support
1312 – mainly attended by French and Italian of eminent intellectuals, most of them Italians,
bishops – had voiced doubts, the Templars were who were well able to cloak actions in ideology.
‘unmasked’ as a band of heretics and blasphem- For this reason the first three decades of the four-
ers given to homosexual practices and diabolic teenth century are a gold mine for those with an
rituals. Many of them died as the result of terrible interest in the history of political thought.
tortures or were burned at the stake. The papal position was stated most clearly by
Clement also witnessed the death of imperial James of Viterbo, Giles of Rome and Henry of
universalism. It began in 1310 when the king of Cremona, who were all three elevated, at some
the Romans, Henry VII of Luxembourg, crossed point, to archbishop or bishop. The American reli-
the Alps with a small armed force to have himself gious historian, Steven Ozment, once compared
crowned emperor and to impose his authority on them to ‘legal beavers’ who ‘labored methodically
the communes of northern and central Italy. The to construct a protective dam against the surg-
original enthusiasm of those who hoped that a ing tide of secular power’. There was not much
powerful Roman king would put an end to the new to record, however. The most important of
political conflicts in Italy rapidly faded away their hierocratic arguments were by now very well
when Henry acted particularly harshly against known: the pope, as Christ’s only representative
the Lombard towns which refused to open their on earth, did not have to justify himself to any
gates to him. At a tumultuous meeting, where he human authority. Equally, the pope could call
literally had to fight his way in against Guelph every secular ruler to account, for papal power
troops led by the Orsini family, Henry was was higher than, and the source of, all secular
crowned emperor in Rome in 1312. He died the power. In practice, it was best for the pope to leave
following year en route to southern Italy to take the exercise of temporal power in the hands of
the kingdom of Naples. princes, because sometimes it was necessary to use
The journey made to Italy in 1327 by his suc- force. But the pope could certainly be involved
cessor Louis IV was even more audacious. The in the drawing up of important policies. What
pope had kept himself fairly aloof in 1311–1312, was new was that the old arguments were under-
but now, from his palace in Avignon, John XXII pinned by reasoning borrowed from Aristotle.
(1316–1334) turned against the Roman king. In This was especially the case in the work of James
defiance, Louis had himself crowned emperor in of Viterbo, who combined the Aristotelian idea of
Rome by the city’s governor, Sciarra Colonna, the state as the product of man’s nature with the
who was not a prelate. It was a curious episode, idea (inspired by Aquinas) that spiritual leader-
stirring up memories from an already distant ship of the Church was government informed by
past, when pope and emperor regularly called God’s grace, and was therefore superior to, and
each other heretic and deposed each other. Louis institutive of, all forms of secular power. The same
returned to Germany in 1330 without having idea tempted Henry of Cremona to propose that
accomplished very much in Italy. the pope should have (final) temporal jurisdiction
in all secular polities on this earth – which was
less bizarre than the extremist claim by Giles of
Spiritual and secular power Rome that all private property rights originated
from the Church.
The confrontations between Philip the Fair and The position of King Philip the Fair was sub-
Boniface VIII, and between Emperor Louis and tly defended by Jean Quidort, a theologian at the

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PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

University of Paris and thus known as John of lasting disruption of peace in Italy. Subsequently,
Paris. In his classical dualist proposition John rec- he had extended this pessimistic view over the
ognised that spiritual power was indeed superior whole of Christendom. Not only did this situa-
to temporal power, but only on a higher, meta- tion prevent the well-being of man in this world,
physical level. In the real world pope and secular it also endangered his eternal salvation, because
princes were autonomous and supreme, each in the conditions for achieving the latter could
his own well-defined sphere, because each had only be created in a society where peace reigned.
received his authority immediately from God. Marsilius’s radical solution was to deny every
Quidort perceived with great clarity that in form of secular power to the clerical estate, whose
Christendom, as it had developed, with a Church only, and extremely important, task should be
emerging as a physical institution with all kinds to take care of people’s souls, to morally educate
of interests in the world, and with secular rul- and spiritually guide them, and to administer
ers who had the responsibility of the spiritual the holy sacraments. In their turn, secular rulers,
as well as temporal well-being of their subjects, and the emperor first of all, should not take their
the matters of Church and world by definition temporal duty lightly, which was to provide good
always intersected and overlapped. Consequently government. This meant preserving order, unity
in extreme situations, but only then, pope and and social harmony within their realms, so that
secular rulers were allowed to interfere in each peace and prosperity would prevail.
other’s spheres, for instance when a king proved Among political theorists the fame of Defensor
to be heretical or a pope behaved scandalously. Pacis largely rests on its radical restatement and
The implication was that, normally, the pope adaptation of the Roman-republican idea of pop-
should not intervene in any way with the affairs ular sovereignty, which vested legislative power
of secular authority; the pope should only be in the people, to be taken as all (male, adult)
heard when princes contravened the laws of the members of a polity. It is true that for practical
Holy Church. reasons, the drafting of laws would always be del-
Emperor Louis IV (nicknamed by Pope John egated to a smaller body of people, in the Defensor
XXII ‘the Bavarian’) could count on the formi- Pacis called the pars valentior (‘the worthiest part’)
dable intellectual support of Marsilius of Padua or the prudentes (‘the wiser men’), but this did
(c.1275– 1342), a physician who taught at the not take anything away from the fact that leg-
artes faculty in Paris and was in the service of the islative power itself belonged to the whole body
Visconti family, the pro-German rulers of Milan. of citizens, while the executive power was left to
Once he became known as the author of Defensor the pars principans (‘the leading part’) – which in
Pacis (‘The Defender of the Peace’), which had Defensor Pacis looks more like a podestà in the
been circulating since 1324, he fled to the service of a city-state than the Roman emperor
Bavarian court, then at Nuremberg. He accom- as the (nominal) head of state. Only in Defensor
panied Louis on his journey to Rome where he Minor, an abridged ‘clarification’ of the Defensor
was responsible for the coronation ceremony and Pacis, written at the imperial court around 1340,
the pro-imperial propaganda around it. Defensor was there a frank identification of legislator
Pacis is undoubtedly one of the most original with principans, and of principans with emperor.
politico-theoretical treatises of the entire Middle Obviously, Marsilius had adapted his views to his
Ages. Its title refers directly to the emperor. His new situation!
long experience with Italian politics had given By extending the principle of the sovereignty
Marsilius the deep conviction that the continu- of the people over the Church, Marsilius blazed
ous interference of the Church in the exercise of a second revolutionary trail. He argued that
secular power was the major cause of the long- only the commune of the faithful (universitas

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PLATE 12.2 The Seven Sacraments. This magnificent altarpiece by Rogier van der Weyden was commis-
sioned between 1440 and 1445 by Jean Chevrot, bishop of Tournai and head of Duke Philip of Burgundy’s Great
Council. The triptych is framed as a church interior with the main sacrament, the Eucharist, in the nave, and
the six others in the aisles, following the human life-cycle from left to right: baptism, confirmation, confession,
ordination of a priest, marriage and anointing of the sick.

fidelium) could be the fount of law-making and of plenitudo potestatis (‘full powers’)! Moreover, all
the exercisers of authority within the Church, bishops and priests should be appointed by the
including, for instance, the excommunication secular authorities, and the Church should not
of heretics, which in Marsilius’s view was only have any worldly possessions, for Christ and the
an option when they threatened civil harmony. apostles had had none either.
Again, for practical reasons, this fundamental Marsilius borrowed these trenchant views
competence could best be delegated to the civil partly from John of Paris, and partly from the
authorities and not to the clerics, for the clergy spiritual Franciscans who, after a century of vary-
should not hold any coercive power in the world. ing success in their struggle to gain control inside
This also applied to general Church councils, the Franciscan order and the acceptance of the
which represented the community of the faith- Church authorities, were silenced in 1323 when
ful at the highest level, but which should then Pope John XXII declared the idea of the absolute
leave secular princes to convert their pronounce- poverty of Christ and the apostles to be hereti-
ments into enforceable laws. As if this was not cal. Interestingly enough, the Franciscans, in
enough, Marsilius delivered the coup de grâce to their defence, were the first to explicitly advance
the Church hierarchy by pronouncing that Christ a theory of papal infallibility. They pointed out
had not made any distinction in rank when he that in 1279 Pope Nicholas III had endorsed the
established the priesthood, so the pope was no doctrine of apostolic poverty, so John XXII was
higher than a village priest, let alone the holder not allowed to teach to the contrary because

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PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

every pope was infallible in his doctrinal judge- interpretation of the Bible and not the allegorical
ments. But at the time all this was to no avail exegesis that was customary in the Middle Ages.
– papal infallibility in doctrinal matters would The third point followed on from this: clerics were
not become the official teaching of the Catholic in fact superfluous as middlemen in the mediation
Church until 1870 – and several Franciscan lead- of the truth, especially those who did not them-
ers fled to Munich, which was rapidly becoming a selves live in the spirit of the Gospel.
meeting place for radical dissidents. Among them Wycliffe could count on the protection of the
was the Franciscan friar William of Ockham, who highest circles, but he also had many followers in
shared many of Marsilius’s ideas about the strict the lower ranks of society. And yet there was no
division of temporal and spiritual power. reformation before the Reformation in England.
Radical as the ideas of Marsilius and Ockham The main reason was that Wycliffe’s support-
were, they could never have caused a reformation ers, called Lollards (‘the mumblers’), radicalised
before the Reformation. Not that Marsilius and soon after his death and lost the support of
Ockham aimed to do so. The English theologian the elite, especially after an anti-royal revolt in
John Wycliffe (c.1325–1384), who worked at the 1414. Matters were different in Bohemia where
University of Oxford and frequented the courts of Wycliffe’s works had been a great influence on
Edward III and Richard II of England, came closer Jan Hus, a dissident theologian at the University
to such reformation. He developed pronounced of Prague who linked his ideas on the reformation
views on the role of faith and the place of the of the Church with an anti-German Bohemian
Church in the world. He saw the visible Catholic nationalism. After the death of Hus at the stake
Church as an artificial, unworthy shell sheltering in 1415, it looked for a long time as if Bohemia
the true Church, the invisible community of the would break away from both the Empire and the
faithful, which included only those who had been Catholic Church. Widespread sympathy for the
chosen by divine preordination. Since in earthly Hussite cause radicalised in 1419 when mille-
life it is not known who the chosen are, the vis- narian expectations arose and were mixed with
ible Church must continue to exist, for want of social revolutionary ideas. It was thought that the
anything better. That is why reforms were needed victorious Second Coming of Christ on earth was
so urgently. The reforms should deal with three imminent, and that this glorious event would
points. The first of these shows how much Wycliffe take place in Bohemia, because God had chosen
was influenced by the spiritual Franciscans as well, that land to restore the true faith and lay the
for he believed that the visible Church should foundation of the thousand-year reign of Christ
have no dominium, that is, no earthly possessions on earth – hence millenarian – that had been
and no worldly power. In Wycliffe’s view, domin- foreseen in the Book of Revelations. To that end
ium was always the result of divine grace, so that a cosmic landing stage was set by projecting the
lawful dominium could only rest on those whom biblical geography of the Holy Land on Bohemia,
God had chosen and who already lived in a state with mounts Tabor (still the name of the town
of grace on earth. As it was impossible to identify on that spot) and Horeb as the most conspicu-
this elite body, Wycliffe considered it best that ous beacons. Emperor Sigismund (1410–1437)
Church property and rights should be confiscated responded by organising, with papal consent, five
by the king and managed by him. No wonder that extremely brutal crusades against the ‘rebels’, but
Wycliffe had many supporters in royal circles! all were very successfully repelled. In 1433 talks
Second, Wycliffe believed that the whole truth of between the emperor and moderate sections of
the faith lay enclosed in the Bible; every individual the movement were started, but it would take
believer could thus have access to this truth, all until 1436 before a final settlement was reached
the more so because Wycliffe argued for a literal and the Hussite wars were ended.

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The popes in Avignon and law for unrestrained papal intervention. The bull
proclaimed that, as the holder of supreme author-
the bureaucratisation of the ity in the Church, the pope could dispose of all
Curia ecclesiastical offices and their related benefices.
Of course this did not bring an immediate end to
With the loss of its universalistic pretensions, the existing practices. Popes could not afford to tram-
Catholic Church certainly lost much of the moral ple on the rights of others, but they systematically
and spiritual leadership within Christian Europe. began to increase the number of occasions when
On the other hand, the Avignon popes were very their intervention was accepted. Their efforts
successful in developing another thirteenth- reached a climax during the Avignon period. Pope
century legacy: the attempts to centralise the John XXII (1316–1334), for example, issued some
exercise of papal authority within the Church. 3,000 dispositions relating to benefices in the first
This process led inevitably to the strengthen- year of his pontificate, sometimes in the form of
ing of the bureaucracy in the Curia, the papal appointments in contested cases (‘provisions’),
court, together with the consolidation of the sometimes in the form of firm reservations,
position of the pope himself. The four perma- known as ‘expectancies’, concerning benefices
nent departments of the Curia established in the which were expected to become free in a short
thirteenth century – chancery, Camera Apostolica, time, hence ‘expectancies’. This was partly the
Penitentiaria and Audientia – were expanded and result of his fight against the widespread hold-
given new sections or wider powers. In the four- ing of plural benefices – a fight which the popes
teenth century the chancery consisted of seven did not ultimately win. Not surprisingly, all these
offices, each one with its own precisely defined papal dispositions had to be paid for. Added to
tasks, which gave the treatment of incoming other new as well as existing sources of income,
and outgoing documents an almost Prussian these proceeds from dispositions raised papal
perfection. The enormous growth in chancery revenue during the Avignon period to between
output was obviously closely connected with the 166,000 and 481,000 gold florins per year. This
expansion of the activities of the departments of did not make the popes as rich as the kings of
finance and justice. France, England or Naples, but it certainly put
The basis for enlarging the financial scope of them in the same league. No wonder that one of
the Curia was laid during the papacy of Innocent John’s successors, Clement VI (1342–1352), had
III (1198–1216). He was the first pope to impose no trouble in finding the revenue to construct the
taxes on the clergy throughout Latin Christendom magnificent new Palace of the Popes.
for ‘urgent matters’, such as crusades. In that way Clearly the whole machinery could only
the popes became less dependent on their Italian work with the assistance of a well-oiled bureau-
possessions and occasional princely subsidies. A cratic apparatus. Altogether, the Curia employed
second new source of income, the collection of between 500 and 600 people in 1350, more than
which was perfected during the Avignon papacy, double the number of a century earlier. This
was formed by the revenues from the granting of included the household staff and those involved
lower Church offices and the incomes attached with guard duties, but excluded the personal
to them (beneficia). Before the thirteenth century staffs of individual cardinals, which also com-
the popes had seldom intervened in appoint- prised dozens of members, for the cardinals
ments – only in exceptional circumstances or administered justice in a private capacity and
when conflicts arose. This changed gradually were jointly responsible for the management of
and in the bull Licet ecclesiarum, issued in 1265, their revenues.
Pope Clement IV laid down the basis in canon

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The Great Schism and the Scotland) chose Avignon; England, the Holy
Roman Empire, the Scandinavian kingdoms,
conciliar movement Poland, Hungary and Portugal supported Rome.
Despite the fact that the papacy and the papal The obediences were by no means fixed; states
Curia stood under strong French influence dur- changed sides as circumstances dictated.
ing the Avignon period, almost all the popes From the very beginning, many on both sides
continued to work towards a return to Rome. made efforts to bring the Schism to an end. Since
Peace in Italy was one of the conditions for this. neither of the popes could oust the other by force
In 1319, Pope John XXII sent a legate to Italy, of arms nor was prepared to abdicate or submit to
accompanied by a small armed force that would arbitration, a general council was suggested after
be complemented with mercenary troops on the some time as being the appropriate means of end-
spot, with instructions to get things organised ing the sordid discord within the Church. The
in the papal territories, but the legate, Cardinal acceptance of this idea was preceded by a long
Bertrand du Poujet, was not always very adroit. and very learned discussion, in which theologi-
The mission of Cardinal Gil Albornoz, archbishop ans and canonists went into the role of general
of Toledo and a tough veteran from the later days councils of the Church as an almost natural
of the Reconquest, reached Italy in 1350 and met counterweight to the growing centralism of the
with greater success, but Albornoz and his succes- papacy. The most urgent questions were whether
sors got caught up in the web of Italian politics. a general council had the canonical authority
So it was that the popes did not return to Rome to judge popes, whether general councils could
until Gregory XI (1370–1378). He arrived there be convened without papal consent, and who
in January 1377 only to die the following year. should be invited as presupposed representatives
Nobody could have foreseen the events that of specific groups within the Church.
followed. The cardinals quickly voted for an Conciliarism developed further the longer
apparently risk-free candidate, tried and tested in the Great Schism lasted. It acquired, however,
papal administration, in order to keep the papacy another, less divisive basis. Two French theolo-
in Rome: Urban VI (1378–1389). However, the gians appeared as its most eloquent exponents:
cardinals soon backtracked on their choice, prob- Pierre d’Ailly (1350–1420), a gifted and versatile
ably fearing that the new pope would drastically scholar, who was attached for many years to the
reduce their influence in the Curia. To make University of Paris, was then bishop successively
matters worse, they then chose an anti-pope, of Le Puy and Cambrai and was finally elevated to
Clement VII (1378–1394) who took up residence cardinal in 1411, and Jean Gerson (1363–1429), a
in the papal palace in Avignon while their first fellow teacher from Paris. The basis of their con-
choice stayed in Rome. The Great Schism was ciliar thinking was that a general council could
a fact, although it was impossible then to sur- make a judgement over the pope and indeed had
mise that this split within the Church – by no the duty to do so if the pope ‘strayed from the
means the first! – would last for nearly forty years, faith’ and threatened the continued existence of
from 1378 until 1417. The Schism immediately the Church, which a schism naturally did. This
posed a major problem because the whole of opinion, already outlined by earlier theorists,
Latin Christian Europe had to choose one of the could still be supported with canon law. The
two popes. Not surprisingly, the main dividing more radical view that a pope was subordinate
lines in the field of international political power to a general council, whatever the circumstances,
determined the composition of the two spheres never prevailed.
of papal authority, or obediences: France and The first attempt to put conciliar thinking into
its allies (Naples, the great Spanish kingdoms, practice ended in a fiasco in 1409. The general

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council organised shortly thereafter by Emperor institution or apparatus that would give their
Sigismund proved an unqualified success, how- programme a firm basis and which would have
ever. The Council of Constance (1414–1418) was looked after their interests between councils.
the largest Church assembly in the Middle Ages; Second, their criticism focused too much on the
its sessions were public and attracted a steady position of the pope inside the Church and too
stream of princes, nobles, members of the lower little on reforms in other segments of the Church.
clergy and students; and all the ecclesiastics pre- The collapse of the conciliar movement
sent were allowed to vote. The sitting popes were opened the way to a powerful recovery of the
forced to resign and a new pope, Martin V (1417– papacy, but a high price had to be paid for the
1431), was elected and immediately accepted Great Schism and the conciliar period. It was pre-
practically everywhere. At long last, the Great cisely during this very critical phase that the forces
Schism was at an end. opposing papal centralism had grown stronger.
It seemed as if the way was clear now for England and France, kingdoms constantly in
conciliar thinking to be transformed into a con- need of money as a result of the Hundred Years
stitutional element in Church organisation. At War, were determined to prevent any drainage of
Constance it had been decided to hold general ecclesiastical revenues to Rome. Their stance led
councils at regular intervals, as had been the cus- to the formation of what have rightly been called
tom of the early Christian Church. For a while it ‘national Churches’ (see Chapter 11).
looked as if this would indeed become standard Elsewhere, although the control exercised
practice. But things started to go wrong at the by kings and other rulers over the clergy was
second convention after Constance, the Council perhaps less strong, a new balance was found
of Basle in 1431. This was due mainly to the lack between papal and princely authority over
of cooperation by Pope Eugene IV (1431–1447), Church and clergy within the boundaries of
who refused to be browbeaten by the headstrong territorial principalities. The Renaissance popes
prelates; he felt far superior to them. At the end fully understood this and even created a similar
of 1437, he moved the meeting to Ferrara, a power base by further reinforcing the Papal State.
manoeuvre dividing those attending the coun- The success of their policy was mirrored in the
cil. The majority, including the most important pomp of their court as well as in the new splen-
spokesman for the conciliar movement at the dour they gave to Rome. The downside of this
time, Nicholas of Kues (Cusanus) (1401–1465), arrangement, however, was that after giving up
made the best of the situation and joined the the ideal of universal and unified Christendom
pope. Only a rump group of radicals remained in under uncontested papal leadership, the head of
Basle, where they became rapidly marginalised. the Catholic Church also surrendered the famous
Bereft of significant support, the assembly finally freedom of the Church, which had been so des-
adjourned in 1449. In hindsight the removal to perately fought for in the eleventh and twelfth
Ferrara can be seen as a turning point – the begin- centuries. The clergy became once again signifi-
ning of the end of conciliarism as a mainstream cantly dependent on secular rulers, who used the
movement within the Church. In 1460 Pope Pius Church to support their policy and to provide an
II (1458–1464), in the bull Execrabilis, gave con- attractive income to many of their clients.
ciliarism the coup de grâce by forbidding anyone
from lodging an appeal against a papal decision
with a general council of the Church. Religious life
All things considered, two factors can be held
responsible for the failure of conciliarism. In the The rich religious life of the late Middle Ages
first place, the conciliarists failed to create an has fascinated many generations of historians.

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While some have looked primarily for the roots great, and never before had there been such wide
of the Reformation, others have stressed the very public support for the works of the Church. The
continuity with the past: religious sentiments Church had apparently succeeded more than
underwent deep-seated change in the eleventh ever before in reaching the faithful and in getting
and twelfth centuries; the fourteenth and fif- its most important religious and moral messages
teenth centuries just continued the trends that through to a broad spectrum of the people.
had then been set in motion. At first glance, the
evidence for the continuity view appears to be
stronger, but this ignores two issues. First, it was Observance and devotion
not the forms in which religion found its expres-
sion as much as their profusion and the intensity Calls for reformation inside monasticism were
of the faith experience that require attention. heard from time to time through the entire
Second, the Reformation did not just happen: Middle Ages. Apparent weaknesses in the obser-
its prehistory must be placed in the late Middle vance of the strict monastic rules provoked a
Ages. We would like only to shift the emphasis. reaction aimed at a return to basic principles.
In the past, every critical attitude to wrongs in These reactionary aspirations, fed by the latent
the Catholic Church, every expression of moral anti-clericalism of pious believers who expected
and religious reflection was seen as heralding the regular clergy to behave virtuously, became
Reformation. Nowadays, the generally accepted known as observant reform (from the Latin
view is that from the very beginning the reform- observare, ‘to comply with’). This made itself
ers blamed the Church for demanding too much felt from the second half of the fourteenth cen-
of the faithful rather than too little, and that tury onwards in all major orders, including the
criticism was rarely accompanied by a complete mendicants but with the notable exception of
rejection of the Church, its ideology, institutions the Carthusians, who had never given up their
and rituals. This fits in with the image of a bipo- original rigour and therefore would gain great
lar pluriformity in late medieval religious life. popularity in the late Middle Ages. Observance
Between the two extremes of, on the one hand, a in other orders was accompanied by a peculiar
piety directed towards the internalisation of reli- form of separateness, in which observant mon-
gious values and personal contact with the divine asteries did not break with the order to which
(introspective extreme) and, on the other hand, they belonged but differentiated themselves from
a popular faith accompanied by a great deal of the non-observant monasteries within the order.
external show (extrovert extreme) lay a broad grey One dimension of this movement concerned
area, full of rich forms of expression and offering the performance of the sacraments and liturgy.
something for everyone. One common element Both were important to the lay understanding
was the obsession with dying and death, which of the Christian religion. Another was about
is hardly surprising in view of the high mortality the practical interpretation of monastic rules.
of the period. It meant that the lists of souls to Observant monasteries united in congregations
be remembered in prayer grew ever longer, and which made communal agreements and carried
that religious poetry, songs, sermons, paintings out checks on their enforcement. An example of
and sculptures were full of motifs which made this is the Congregatio Hollandiae, a misleading
the reader, hearer or viewer grimly aware of the name, because it comprised seventy-five obser-
constant proximity of death. vant monasteries of the Dominican Order in the
Never before had Christian religious life shown area that extended from Brittany to Finland. The
such a wealth of Roman opulence, never before only existing monastic order in which no need
had individual involvement in religion been so for any observance or reform was felt was that of

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the stern Carthusians. Their admirable strictness Countries more than two hundred beguinages
was exactly the reason for the respect and support and convents were founded between 1230 and
they met with from the lay world, and for that 1320, each with an average of fifteen members.
reason some new Carthusian monasteries were In 1350, there were 1,170 beguines in Cologne
founded in the fifteenth century. living in 169 beguinages, forming more than 3
In addition to purifying monastic life, obser- per cent of the estimated urban population, with
vant reform bore fruit in other ways. There on average of seven inhabitants per house. The
existed in the late Middle Ages, even more than beguines settled on the edges of the towns in
before, a basis for criticising monasticism in secu- small houses built in an enclosed courtyard with
lar society, just as there was for anti-clericalism its own chapel or church. They were supervised
in general. Early signs of this criticism are found by a mistress or prioress and had rules for internal
in satirical works – in Boccaccio’s Decameron, for order. There were domestic quarters and larger
example, Franciscans are systematically portrayed buildings for communal activities. The beguines
as libertines and debauchees. No wonder, then, supported themselves with their spinning and
that the number of entrants to some orders began embroidery, often coming into conflict with
to fall noticeably, and the size of gifts of money the craft guilds which accused them of unfair
and goods decreased drastically. Observance was competition.
able to reverse this negative trend to some extent. A new devotional movement was launched
The years between about 1350 and 1500 saw the in the fourteenth century by Geert Grote (1340–
establishment of countless new convents and 1384), the son of a cloth merchant from Deventer
even the foundation of several new orders with in the prince-bishopric of Utrecht who studied in
long-forgotten names such as the Bridgettines, Paris and then lived comfortably on the Church
Colettines and Hieronymites. In urban areas espe- benefices that he held as a canon in minor orders,
cially, this gave rise to a richly varied monastic before repenting of his ways in about 1370. He
landscape. For example, the County of Holland was deeply inspired by the great Brabantine mys-
had just a handful of monasteries in 1350, but tic John of Ruusbroec and his followers. Fiercely
within a century this number had risen to more attacking the laxity of many clergy, Geert started
than two hundred. All these new initiatives were to follow a strictly moral and ascetic way of life,
only made possible through the financial support and had himself ordained a deacon. His example
of prosperous laymen and secular clerics. led to the formation of a very successful pious
Some of these benefactors found that just giv- movement with three branches: first, the Brethren
ing donations was not enough, and they decided and Sisters of the Common Life (who were lay-
to live a regulated religious life themselves. Again people) and, second, an observant association of
the parallel with the twelfth and thirteenth cen- convents of Augustine canons and canonesses
turies springs to mind. At that time the pressure known as the Congregation of Windesheim. The
to lead an authentically Christian life resulted third branch consisted of numerous convents of
in the foundation of mendicant orders and the tertiaries (sisters of the third order of St Francis, see
formation of groups of laypeople who led a reli- Chapter 6) that strongly sympathised with Grote’s
gious life, following a rule, but did not take a ideas, and adhered to observance. Grote’s move-
monastic vow or withdraw from life in the world ment that came to be known as the Modern (=
– such as the beguines and the third orders of the ‘contemporary’) Devotion found faithful followers
Franciscans and Dominicans. The beguines were and sympathisers far beyond the Deventer region,
exceptionally successful in the southern Low in particular into the Rhineland and Westphalia.
Countries and the adjacent Rhineland but met The Modern Devotion strongly promoted an
with sustained suspicion elsewhere. In the Low inner spirituality and experience of God that was

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brought about through individual prayer and always turned towards the eternal light at the end
meditation. Seen from that perspective, Church of this world’s vale of tears, which could only be
rituals, above all the celebration of the mass, had reached by following Christ’s example.
first and foremost the task of priming an interior, In addition to this stress on a pious, secluded
rebirth-like transformation within the devout life, aimed at transforming individual sinners
believer. An emphasis on ostentatious display, into virtuous persons, the Modern Devotion saw
on the other hand, would only hinder spiritual an important mission in the writing, translating,
worship, as would an excessive attachment to copying and condensing of all kinds of devout
physical and material things. It was simplicity texts into the vernacular in support of personal
and silence, patience and penitence, austerity piety and prayer. The most popular texts were
and restraint that were aimed for, the inner eye passages from the Bible, various Lives of Jesus
that circulated at the time, vitae of appealing
saints, prayers and edifying works, produced
in simple, cheap books on a large scale. Three-
quarters of all books preserved in Dutch from this
period reproduced such devotional texts for indi-
vidual reading. The absolute best-seller because of
its simplicity and purity was Over de navolging van
Christus (‘On the Imitation of Christ’) of canon
Thomas a Kempis (1380–1471), of which more
than nine hundred manuscript copies have been
preserved; it was first printed in 1472 and saw
hundreds of editions in dozens of languages ever
since. Only the Bible itself was more popular.
If Geert Grote and his followers sometimes
bordered on the unacceptable in the eyes of the
Church authorities, other lay initiatives crossed
the line and were declared heretic, just as had
happened in the decades around 1200. One
was that of the Free Spirit, which seems to have
sprouted from the beghards and beguines as
a mystical branch. ‘Free spirit’ is a reference to
PLATE 12.3 The Well of Life symbolises the Church, the second letter of St Paul to the Corinthians:
topped by God the Father, Mary and the Crucified ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.’
Christ. The mystic winepress demonstrates how the It was used to support the claim that a mystical
blood of Christ’s suffering is offered in the Eucharist union of the human soul with the divine would
by angels to the believers. These are represented completely free the former of any further will
here in the traditional hierarchy of the clergy in the to sin. This led to suspicions of antinomianism,
forefront, the aristocracy led by the emperor, the third that is the conviction that one does not have to
estate, and pilgrims. The original frame, decorated respect any human laws nor any moral values.
with the Arma Christi, the Instruments of the Passion, Whether the Free Spirit was ever really a move-
signifies that this painting served as the epitaph of ment remains to be proven. One of its alleged
a cleric from the northern Low Countries who died leaders, the beguine Marguerite Porete, author of
in 1511 and had himself portrayed kneeling with a the influential mystical tract Mirror of Simple Souls,
chalice. died at the stake in Paris in 1310. Marguerite had

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also distinguished between an inferior outward Mysticism

Church and a superior internal-spiritual church,
a theme that anticipated the ecclesiological Since St Paul, mysticism has always been an
theory of John Wycliffe. Thanks to powerful important current within Christendom. It can
protectors Wycliffe had stayed out of the hands be described as a spiritual attempt to achieve a
of the Inquisition; his followers, however, were highly personal, emotional, often even ecstatic,
accused of heresy soon after Wycliffe’s death. union of the innermost soul with God in an
A central belief of these Lollards was the idea intuitive, non-rational way through concentrated
that within the Church there was a direct rela- meditation. Often this attempt is described in
tionship between God and the faithful that had terms of a mental journey along a difficult path,
no need of the intervention of clerics, sacraments which leads in stages of increasing detachment
or even of saints. The Lollards laboured for an from the transient world to the divine. From
English translation of the Bible, the only source Late Antiquity on, ecclesiastical authorities had
of Christian truth, and for Bible exegesis through met mystics and mystical sects with sound suspi-
sermons in the vernacular. This was by no means cion, especially those that were active outside the
the first time that Holy Scripture had been trans- closed walls of monasteries. They often accused
lated into a vernacular language. In fact, there are them of disregarding the canonical teaching of
already two examples from Late Antiquity: the the Church, of adhering to pantheism, of deny-
Gothic Bible and the Vulgate (standard transla- ing the grace-giving quality of sacraments and
tion in Latin). In the thirteenth and fourteenth the necessities to have priests to administer
centuries, in spite of resistance from ecclesiastical them or to celebrate faith with outward ceremo-
authorities, these were followed by translations nies and liturgy. It was also thought that extreme
in French, Catalan, Castilian, Czech, High forms of mystical exercise held the danger of dei-
German and Low German (Dutch). However, fication, a state of mind in which the mystic felt
the English-language Lollard Bible of c.1380 and him- (or her-)self completely united with God.
other Christian key texts were duplicated on a The idea behind this was that, because Christ
scale and at a speed that would only be exceeded had been truly and completely human, every
with the discovery of printing. In this way, the human being could truly become God through
Lollards clearly helped to promote literacy in Christ.
England, as did the Modern Devotion in the Low As it happened, in the late Middle Ages mysti-
Countries and the Rhineland. cism flourished as never before. We can distinguish
As the Lollards received increasing support between a more intellectual current, directly
from members of the lower clergy and self-edu- inspired by fifth-century Christian Neoplatonism,
cated laypeople so the movement became more and a non-intellectual trend, in which pure will-
radical. A virulent anti-clericalism, expressed in power, visions and an exaggerated affection
fiery songs, began to predominate. After a revolt for the suffering Christ were central. A group of
against the king the movement was forced under- German Dominican theologians at the end of the
ground and many Lollards met their end at the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centu-
stake or on the gallows. It continued in south- ries, the best known of whom is Meister Eckhart
eastern England until the Reformation, however, (c.1260–1328), was typical of the first current.
chiefly because of the continued sympathy of The second tendency had many practitioners
educated craftsmen. An interesting difference in such lay movements as those of the beghards
between the Modern Devotion and the Lollards and beguines, as well as among individual
was the dislike expressed by the latter for the new female mystics who were not related to any order
sort of piety that had a central role in the former. or movement in particular.

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Meister Eckhart was trained as a theologian which declared seventeen of his opinions as
at the University of Paris, where he also taught heretical, and criticised eleven others. Before the
theology. He was appointed to prominent posi- court’s verdict Eckhart had died.
tions in the Dominican Order, but his fame rested Far more extreme than Meister Eckhart were
foremost on his sermons in the vernacular. In his female mystics who were active in the more
mystic works he presented the joining of God’s visionary tradition of Bernard of Clairvaux. They
essence with the most hidden part of the soul as a re-transformed the well-known allegory of the
complete exclusion of the exterior person, and his mystical marriage of Christ with his Church into
will, desires and active knowledge of the world, a realistic personal and somatic experience. In
while at the same time every partition between feverish dreams they had intimate encounters of
the passive intellect and the inner soul had to the third kind either as brides of Christ or as his
be breached. For Eckhart, this transcendence of mother (as stand-in Marys, so to speak). In both
the ego in a process of complete detachment cases, their relationship with Christ was intimate
from the world, of total self-denial and surrender, and imagined to be physical. They thought of
was the essence of the ideal imitation of Christ. themselves as breastfeeding the infant Jesus, giv-
Only after all the material environment created ing him clean nappies or sucking the blood from
was stripped away and the individual was totally his wounds at the cross, or they offered their flesh
detached from everything, would the Word of to be tortured instead of that of their beloved
God, which was already in the soul, become per- husband or son. The latter fantasy hits a deeper
ceptible as a spark of the divine. This mystical psychological level on which the extreme identi-
transition was an act of unknowing and amaze- fication with Christ was focused on his suffering.
ment, because ultimately God remained rationally According to the American historian Caroline
unknowable, even if his presence was now felt all Walker Bynum (1982) this was the result of a
over. Fellow friars denounced Eckhart as a her- subtle manipulation of the medieval symbols for
etic to the archbishop of Cologne, after which he masculinity and femininity at a deeper psycho-
retracted some of his views. Nonetheless he was logical level. Because typically feminine qualities
charged before a papal inquisition at Avignon, such as physical weakness and kindness were

PLATE 12.4 Episodes from the lives of

hermits are shown in this rather enigmatic
painting by Fra Angelico, which he named
‘Tebaide’, after the Egyptian city of
Thebes. There, in the desert, St Pacome
(296–346) founded the first Christian
monastery with a rule. Angelico found
his inspiration in anthologies of the lives
of saints from the fourth to the tenth
centuries, and in the Golden Legend by
James of Varazze. Miracles performed by
hermits and their encounters with devils
are shown in a strange composition,
possibly as a motivation for the new wave
of eremitism at the time of the painting,
around 1420.

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 C R I SI S I N Th E C h U R C h A ND T hE R E OR I E NTATI ON Of T h E fA I T h fU L 12 CHAPTER

ascribed to men like Christ and St Francis in order Florence and Siena, ended in open warfare,
to demonstrate how they had shown their humil- Catherine turned out to become a valuable fig-
ity by laying aside their male strength, religious urehead of the pro-papal/pro-Guelph side in the
women found it easy to empathise with them. Of conflict. But, in the end, Catherine’s personal
the many extremist mystics in the later medieval political agenda was determined by her will to
period, who claimed to have been blessed with reconcile both parties in order to put them back
the stigmata – more than a hundred cases are together into spiritually more rewarding enter-
known from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries prises, such as a new crusade to the Holy Land
– by far the majority were women. One could say and the long-awaited return of the pope – whom
that this special physical and traumatic affinity she called babbo (‘daddy’) in her letters – to Rome.
with Christ made them equal to or even better
than men.
The general admiration for the most remarka- The ordinary believers
ble of these devout women led to their recognition
as saints or ‘blessed’ persons (a lesser category of The introverted and often fervent religious feel-
sainthood). Their vitae (biographies and auto- ings just described were the realm of a small
biographies) combined topoi from traditional minority of highly motivated believers, both
saints’ lives, especially from the eleventh and clerical and lay. Most believers gave expression to
twelfth centuries, with not particularly subtle, their faith through externals that were carefully
populist descriptions of the most extreme forms orchestrated and controlled by the Church and
of mortification and self-effacement, of ruthless clergy. This interaction can be described by the
penitence, of nauseating acts of self-humiliation, use of a well-known analysis model from com-
spiritual agony, quasi-erotic adoration, utter munications theory, in which the two-way traffic
addiction to the Eucharist and endless prayer, between sender and receiver is central. The sender
all of which, according to Richard Kieckhefer (the Church) had to make use of feedback proce-
(1989), not only disturbed and shocked their dures to find out whether its message (the faith)
readers, but were also intended to achieve that had reached the receiver (the believer) properly,
very effect. At the same time it is not always easy and eventually to respond to popular reactions.
to determine the veracity of these ‘lives’, because Should this not be the case, then the sender had
most were (re)constructed and put on paper by to correct itself, either by adapting the form in
their (male) confessors. For instance, in order which the message was shaped or by improving
to reconstruct the life and religious identity of the channels of communication through which
Catherine of Siena (c.1347–1380) close to four the message was transmitted. This approach not
hundred letters, written or dictated by herself, only allows greater attention to be given to what
and a visionary tract on her name have to be the Church was thinking and wanting officially,
mixed with the detailed hagiography, written but also and especially to the translation switch
shortly after she died by her confessor, the lead- it had to make in order to instil the convictions
ing Dominican Raymond of Capua. It becomes and moral behaviour it desired, as well as to the
clear from these quite different testimonies that demand made by the faithful and to the forms
Catherine, who was already recognised as a saint in which the faithful eventually made manifest
during her lifetime, was a religious devout with their beliefs, their experience of the faith.
two faces: besides being a renowned mystic, she To reach the people the Church had above all
was also active in Italian politics. Around 1375, to keep the message simple. Only a few of the
when high tension between the governors of faithful were able to read even the Bible in its
the Papal States and the leading Tuscan towns, entirety; most were only acquainted with selected

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parts of it through readings during mass or ser- of charity or love (feeding the hungry, caring
mons. While we should remember that mass was for the sick, etc.) and the works of spiritual
said entirely in Latin, the practice of reciting comfort (such as granting forgiveness), of
common prayers was rather mixed: the vernacu- which there were also seven.
lar was used next to Latin. The Christian message
therefore had to be as succinct and simple as The obvious deliverers of this message were
possible. It boiled down to five components: the parish clergy, the more so because in the
late Middle Ages the ordinary believers used to
1. Knowledge of the creed (from credo meaning go to Church more often than before. The ques-
‘I believe’), a short statement of the essential tion is whether most of the parish clergy were
articles of the faith. The most usual creeds indeed suited for their job. For a long time this
were those established at the Council of was probably not the case. Most parish priests
Nicaea in 325 and the Fourth Lateran Council had received only elementary education. In the
in 1215. Every believer was required to be second half of the Middle Ages, this situation
able to say the creed before confession and
communion.
2. Knowledge of the most important prayers:
the Our Father and Hail Mary were already
standard prayers in the late Middle Ages.
Well-to-do believers had special prayer books
or Books of Hours made for their own use.
Examples from the thirteenth century are
still in existence, some of them illustrated
with beautiful miniatures; in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, prayer books were
extremely popular.
3. Knowledge of the most important moral pre-
cepts of Christianity – the Ten Commandments
from the Old Testament and the three so-
called theological virtues (faith, hope and
charity) from the New, with the four cardinal
virtues from ancient philosophy (prudence,
justice, fortitude and temperance) making up
the seven capital virtues which were mirrored
by the seven cardinal or deadly sins (among
others, envy, anger, avarice and lechery).
4. Some knowledge of the seven grace-giving
sacraments (Chapter 2).
5. Some knowledge of eschatology, the com- PLATE 12.5 Purgatory: angels rescue the souls of
plex ideas of life after death. Central to this women who have fulfilled their penance and will be
was the presentation of Purgatory (Chapter elevated to heaven. Note the head with a prelate’s
6). People were quite convinced that the mitre and a couple of shaved monks’ heads among
length of the unpleasant stay in Purgatory those having to continue their penance. Miniature in
could be shortened by indulgences (see Box the Très riches heures du duc de Berry (the illumi-
12.1), prayer, the practice of the seven works nated Book of Hours), early fifteenth century.

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had clearly improved, and some historians even Preachers had a number of resources to help
speak of a ‘pastoral revolution’. This was already them when they were preparing their sermons.
announced in the twelfth century in the famous These included the first catechisms, which
school of the monastery of Saint Victor at Paris, appeared after the Fourth Lateran Council; col-
where much attention was paid to pastoral theol- lections of summarised saints’ lives, such as
ogy. But real change only came with the Fourth the Legenda Aurea (‘Golden Legend’), compiled
Lateran Council of 1215, which decided upon a around 1265 by the Genoese Dominican, Jacopo
package of measures to raise their level of knowl- de Varazze; various sets of exempla (examples,
edge and their moral standards. In addition, the i.e. anecdotes and short tales with a moral mes-
bishops were urged to instruct the clerics under sage), and the A, B, C des simples gens (the ‘ABC of
their supervision by teaching and preaching. Ordinary People’) by Jean Gerson, which became
Later on, the first written instructions for spir- very popular in the fifteenth century. The good
itual care appeared, and by the end of the Middle examples were aimed primarily at the eradication
Ages substantial numbers of parish clergy were of false beliefs and the persuasion of relief not
likely to have been to university. At the same only in the afterlife but also against all kinds of
time bishops took greater pains with their peri- hazards in everyday life. Strong emphasis was laid
odical visitations to the parish clerics, partly to on the sacrament of confession and penance; the
steal a march on anti-clerical voices. Apart from reluctant were threatened with the most horrible
the usual complaints about poor education, sus- torments. The larger churches supplied plenty of
pect morality and simony, such criticism was visual support in the form of paintings, sculp-
directed chiefly towards a fault that resulted from tures, carvings and stained-glass windows, while
the papal policy on benefices – pluralism (stack- liturgy was further adapted to satisfy both the
ing up benefices) and the absenteeism inherent spiritual sensibilities of the passionate believers
to it. and the theatrical expectations of the masses.
From the thirteenth century onwards, parish Liturgical plays, representing biblical scenes, and
clergy had always been helped in carrying out stages in or before churches were the origins of
their duties by preachers from the mendicant a new kind of theatre which developed indepen-
orders, a situation which did not always please dently of the ancient tradition. The invention
them as shared tasks meant shared incomes. Top of printing made it possible for the first time to
preachers, such as Bernardino of Siena of the spread devotional and moralising texts and prints
Franciscan Order and the Dominicans Vincent among the ordinary faithful on a large scale.
Ferrer (c.1350–1419) and Girolamo Savonarola Of course, we cannot know exactly what was
(d. 1498), for example, attracted enormous retained from the message spread through ser-
audiences for their sermons, or even weeks of mons and other channels. We have indicated in
sermons, especially during Lent, the period of Chapters 2 and 6 the survival into the Middle
fasting preceding Easter, when they might pro- Ages of many superstitions which often had their
duce a lengthy sermon with a different theme roots in pre-Christian practices. Be that as it may,
every day for forty days. Ferrer, a Spaniard, was the religious life of the masses, with the tradi-
nicknamed ‘the angel of the Last Judgement’ tional worship of saints at its centre, creates a
because he constantly threatened his hearers rich, vital impression. Most notable was its clear
with hell and damnation. It was not all inno- move towards ever more emotion, to what Miri
cent, however. With his inflammatory sermons, Rubin (2009) has termed ‘the emergence of a
Ferrer must take a considerable share of the blame European style of emotive devotion’.
for the terrible persecution of Spanish Jews in
1391.

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Popular devotion institutions spent large amounts of silver and

gold to expand and display their relic collections.
Central in this religious emotionality stood the Theft was also not uncommon. In the aftermath
devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary that of the Fourth Crusade the Venetians carried
had grown up during the eleventh century and off shiploads of relics from Constantinople. In
gained in popularity ever since. It had two clear 1235, King Louis IX of France paid the incred-
thematic focal points: one the motherhood ible sum of 135,000 pounds to the Latin emperor
of Mary, the other the suffering and painful of Constantinople, Baldwin II, for the purchase
death of Christ. The deep interest in the Holy of about thirty relics from the Passion, with the
Virgin’s motherhood was expressed in a pref- Crown of Thorns as first prize. To have a wor-
erence for pictures and prayers which stressed thy showcase for this religious treasure, the king
the tender relationship between a mother and spent another 40,000 pounds building a spectac-
her son, and the broken heart of a mother who ular two-story chapel on the premises of the royal
witnesses her child suffer and die. Most telling palace on the Isle de la Cité in the heart of Paris:
in this respect were paintings and sculptures the Sainte Chapelle (‘Holy Chapel’), a spectacular
of Jesus on his mother’s lap, both as an infant tour de force of gothic architecture with its amaz-
and after his descent from the cross (a so-called ing surface of stained glass. Louis’ acquisition was
pietà). Also very popular were other scenes from a real assault on the market for this type of highly
Jesus’s infancy (Jesus in the manger and Jesus prized relic, because, as one can imagine, there
cradled in his mother’s arms). Christ’s suffering were few physical leftovers of Christ and the
was commemorated in several new Church fes- Holy Virgin to be found on earth, although, quite
tivals – among them Corpus Christi (the feast of remarkably, all that could possibly have been left
the body of Christ), the day of the Sacred Heart had already been found: spilled drops of Mary’s
and the day of the Holy Cross. These were sup- milk, the spilled blood of Jesus (to be admired in
ported by pictures of the man of sorrows – images Bruges and even nowadays said to become fluid
of the naked body of Christ with the wounds of every Friday), his toenail clippings, imprints of
the passion – and of exuberant crucifixion scenes his face and the Holy Prepuce, of course, that
on altar pieces and life-sized calvaries. Attentive was removed at the circumcision of the infant
prayer to the suffering Christ was stimulated by Jesus and which up to eighteen churches all over
so-called Andachtsbilder (images that focus atten- Europe claimed to have in their possession.
tion), rather crude vulgarisations of the ‘man of In addition to these bodily remains – with
sorrows’, some with all the instruments of tor- their inherent, for many believers unthinkable,
ture neatly depicted, others reduced to the five problems of decay and putrefaction – there were
bleeding wounds of the crucified Jesus. All were so-called contact relics, objects that had been
intended to stir up empathy and inner reflection touched by Jesus and Mary. Most famous are the
on the meaning of the Saviour’s horrifying death. Holy Crucifix – or splinters of it, of which literally
Pictures of this kind are at the end of a long icon- hundreds of specimens can be found in European
ographical evolution in the imaging of the Son reliquaries – and the Crown of Thorns just men-
of God, which runs from depicting Christ as the tioned. But there were also less obvious objects.
divine and majestic ruler of heaven to bringing The Scala Santa in the Lateran Palace at Rome had
him down to a completely helpless and deserted originally been the stairs that Jesus had to climb
human wreck. to meet his judge, Pontius Pilate, in Jerusalem.
As before, devotion to saints, Christ and his The Casa Santa, the house at Nazareth in which
holy mother was accompanied by the veneration the Holy Virgin had been born, was – and still
of their relics. Rich people and wealthy religious is – miraculously preserved in the Adriatic town

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of Loreto. In the Holy Land devout, and credu- to the belief in miracles and gave rise to an entirely
lous, pilgrims could buy authentic footprints of new type of devotion, next to more traditional
Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the apostles. Objects like ones that were based on the adoration of statues
these saw their value (and attraction by crowds of of Jesus or Mary (or Mary with Jesus) which were
pilgrims) rise when they generated miracles, some- supposed to be miracle working.
thing which also, and quite typically, occurred In any case, miracles remained important in
with another, but not perishable, central object of popular belief throughout the later medieval
the Passion: the consecrated host, a holy replica period. However, according to specialists, several
of the bread Jesus broke at his Last Supper, while shifts in comparison with the earlier situation
speaking the words ‘this is my body’. The sophis- can be detected. For one, in the later Middle Ages
ticated theological handling of this mysterious there were more healing miracles as compared to
transformation (Chapter 8) did not prevent believ- the earlier Middle Ages, when there were more
ers from conceiving of a literally physical presence miracles of vengeance (God or a saint punishes
of the body of Christ in the consecrated host. And the enemy of who prayed to them).
when some hosts were seen to start bleeding, or After Christ and his mother, other saints could
to come unharmed out of blazing fires, this added count on their part of popular devotion: Mary’s

BOX 12.1 INDULGENCES AND THE

INDULGENCE TRADE
Among the odder expressions of Catholic belief is the granting of indulgences, defined in canon
law as ‘the remission of temporal punishment for sin, in response to certain prayers or good works’.
So, strictly speaking, the indulgence (Latin, indulgentia) relates to the penitence or satisfaction
part of the Christian ritual of confession and penance, not to the guilt part, which for a person who
has received the sacrament of confession was dealt with in the absolution (‘remission [of guilt]’)
granted by the confessor. The granting of an indulgence has always been the exclusive right of
popes, who saw themselves as the keepers of the so-called Treasury of Merit. This treasury can be
seen as if it were a huge amount of goodness credit in some heavenly account, earned by Christ
and the saints, from which ordinary believers, under special circumstances, were allowed to make
a small withdrawal.
Popes Alexander II in 1063 and Urban II in 1095 first defined these circumstances as taking
up arms against the Muslims in defence of the Holy Sepulchre. This was assigned the value of a
‘plenary’ indulgence, that is, a general remission of all temporal punishment for all sins. Later
on, indulgences became more institutionalised: this happened with the Crusade indulgence, for
example, at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. In time, the number of occasions at which indul-
gences could be earned was expanded, first to include certain forms of church attendance, the
accomplishment of a pilgrimage, the giving of alms or financial aid to build a new church, and later
also intense and frequent prayer. After a while, and despite official Church opposition, the idea
spread among the faithful that the bereaved could earn indulgences for their deceased relatives
by remembering them frequently and at length in their prayers.
In sermons, the abstract idea of indulgence as a remittance or a mitigation of penitence soon
came to be presented as a reduction of the time spent by sinners in Purgatory, the place where

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the souls of the departed suffer for a time until they are purged of their sins. Inflation inevitably
set in, and the number of Purgatory-free days soon reached astronomical levels. This illustrates
how the system of indulgences gradually became commercialised. As early as the twelfth century,
itinerant indulgence-preachers, commonly called pardoners, licensed by the pope, would preach
a sermon and then hand out letters of indulgence in exchange for generous donations to all sorts of
vague good works; the indulgence stated exactly how much remission the bearer could count on.
With the advent of printing came the sale of indulgence prints, devout Andachtsbilder (‘pictures
to be watched with attention’), especially of the Passion of Christ, and produced in large numbers,
bearing a simple prayer and noting an indulgence.
From early on there was opposition to such developments in the indulgence system, includ-
ing from the new mendicant orders which had to make a living from preaching and alms – the
Dominican Albertus Magnus, for example, railed against every form of trade in indulgences. In
the run-up to the Reformation, such criticisms reached storm force and indulgences became one
of the primary targets of the original reformers, above all because they were such a familiar phe-
nomenon to every believer. The pardoners ran an increasing risk of being attacked, especially
when reformation of the Catholic Church was under discussion, as it was during the German
Peasants’ Revolt of 1525.

Source: Lexicon für Theologie und Kirche, Vol. I (Freiburg: Herder, 1993), s.v. ‘Ablass’, ‘Ablassbilder’ and
‘Ablassprediger’; Robert W. Shaffern, The Penitents’ Treasury: Indulgences in Latin Christendom, 1175–1375
(Scranton PA/London: University of Scranton Press, 2007).

popularity led to the veneration of other impec- could now also have a penitentiary purpose – the
cable virgins, who were preferably martyrs on top pilgrimage as a punishment imposed by an eccle-
of that, such as the late classical saints Catherine, siastical or secular court of justice. By the late
Barbara, Lucia and Ursula and the 11,000 virgins Middle Ages the pilgrimage also began to show
from Cologne. More generally one can speak of a holiday-like symptoms including the circulation
feminisation of holiness in the later Middle Ages of travel guides and road maps. Top destinations
that paralleled the increasing role of women in were obviously Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago de
late medieval spirituality, mysticism and com- Compostela. Now they were joined by others:
munal conventual life. Of the numerous local Rocamadour in the Dordogne, Canterbury, Mont
and regional saints who until the thirteenth Saint-Michel and Wilsnack in Brandenburg, the
century were acclaimed as saints by the faithful hotspot for the new type of host miracles just
themselves or by the parish clergy, an increasing mentioned.
number were of the female sex and also of non- This popular religious enthusiasm fostered the
noble, at times even lowly, origins. The popes large increase of local social welfare institutions
clamped down on the unrestrained growth of that were often closely connected to religious con-
the whole business by making canonisation, pre- fraternities. The miraculous images of some saints,
ceded by a critical examination with a real ‘devil’s most generally Mary, became centres for such asso-
advocate’, their prerogative, a step which effec- ciations which exploited veneration and spent the
tively curbed the further proliferation of saints. proceeds on charitable works. Good examples are
Not surprisingly, the late medieval period the Compagnia della Madonna di Orsanmichele in
saw a new boost in pilgrimage. In addition to Florence and the Illustrious Confraternity of Our
its devotional and penitential aims, pilgrimages Beloved Lady in ’s-Hertogenbosch in the duchy of

418
 C R I SI S I N Th E C h U R C h A ND T hE R E OR I E NTATI ON Of T h E fA I T h fU L 12 CHAPTER

Brabant (of which the painter Hieronymus Bosch were special confraternities of penitents who held
was an esteemed member). Large cities like Florence collective flagellation sessions as well as simple
and Ghent had dozens of such confraternities, but prayer and choral societies. The most common
they were also to be found in smaller towns and activities included funerals and memorial services
even in villages. Sometimes they were primarily for deceased members, sometimes financial sup-
connected to the cult of a saint, sometimes asso- port for widows and orphans and participation
ciated with a craft guild or a particular age-group in local processions at which religious or morality
or social class. The richest of them had their own plays were enacted – another new medium through
meeting house and chapel adorned with splendid which the Christian message could be relayed in a
altarpieces by famous artists. The simple ones just simplified form to a broad public.
had an altar in a side aisle of a church. Their activi- However, just like in the centuries before,
ties and numbers of members varied greatly. There popular religious enthusiasm had its downsides

PLATE 12.6 A view of hell, from the scenes of the Last Judgement, fresco painted on the walls of the San Brizio
chapel in the imposing cathedral of Orvieto (Italy) by the Tuscan painter Luca Signorelli, c.1500.

419
PART IV TH E LATE MIDDLE A GES, 1300–1500

as well, and in this respect the late Middle Ages and the divine, what role was left for clergy and
must also be seen as a period in which religious Church? Willingly or not, masters of theology
tendencies that had taken shape centuries before allowed narrow-minded pietism to enter schol-
almost brimmed over by more extreme forms arly discourse, while bishops and popes lent
of expression. Most innocent were what the art support to show trials against heretics or to the
historian Michael Camille has called the image cult of saints, relics or miracles that had first won
explosion, and Caroline Walker Bynum (2011) the hearts of common believers. Ironically, the
the overbalancing of devotion on to material sentimental superstitions of the masses were
objects: reliquaries, paintings, sculptures, amu- grist to the mill of all kinds of anti-clerical dis-
lets, badges, books of prayer – all of them quite senters and reformists, such as the Cathars and
well known from Antiquity on, but were now Waldensians of the twelfth and thirteenth centu-
present in a superabundance never seen, and ries or the Lollards and Hussites of the fifteenth
despite warnings of ecclesiastical authorities century.
and protests by reformatory movements. Even One of the main objections of the sixteenth-
more questionable was the increased belief in century reformers against popular religious
appearances of supernatural beings, especially practice was the veneration of supposedly ‘holy’
when these were not sightings of Jesus, Mary or material objects. They directed their criticism in
angels, but devils. The late Middle Ages saw the general towards the outward display and super-
dawn of the early modern witch hunts. The first ficial nature of this accumulative devotion, the
group of persons known from medieval sources most important aim of which seemed to be to
to have been tried for witchcraft was led by a gain as much quantifiable credit as possible with
noble lady called Alice Kyteler of Kilkenny in God and the saints, while the inner state of the
Ireland. In 1324, she was accused of organising believer scarcely seemed to matter. On the other
nightly gatherings, of repudiating Christ and his hand, the Catholic Church was more success-
Church, of making horrifying potions and of for- ful in taking its message directly to the ordinary
nicating with the devil who sometimes took the faithful in the late Middle Ages than previously.
shape of a black African called Ethiops. Alice her- Through the variety of its institutions and rituals
self luckily escaped but one of her maidservants the Church offered the faithful a solid frame-
was burned at the stake. The same fate was the work and support which gave meaning to their
share of Jews who were accused of the wilful des- existence and provided them with mental and
ecration of hosts, poisoning of fountains or the material succour in time of need. Had these ordi-
butchering of Christian boys, tales that abounded nary believers not been so mobilised or their
in some regions of Europe in the fifteenth and awareness so kindled, and without the critical
sixteenth centuries and were often connected to approach to various aspects of Catholic life which
host miracles. was indeed the result, Luther, Zwingli and Calvin
Facing this emotional overdrive (and its would never have found ground where their ideas
negative excrescence), the Church acted with could take root.
ambivalence – sometimes it poured oil on the
flames of popular rage, but in many other occa-
sions it was merely hesitant. On the one hand, Points to remember
ecclesiastical authorities, from high to low, could
and would not deny the possibility of miracles ■■ The years around 1300 saw the last, vain,
and godly intervention. On the other hand, if attempt of the popes to be accepted as the
ordinary believers could generate them and in undisputed leaders of Christendom. This gave
that way have direct contact with the saintly rise to a renewed polemic on the relationship

420
 C R I SI S I N Th E C h U R C h A ND T hE R E OR I E NTATI ON Of T h E fA I T h fU L 12 CHAPTER

between spiritual and temporal power, cles and discusses the problems they presented for
which paved the way for the incorporation both Church authorities and the ordinary faithful.
Pointing to the proliferation of religious art, she
of the Church and ecclesiastical matters into
argues that it called attention to its materiality in
the state. sophisticated ways that explain both the animation
■■ The prolonged stay of the popes at Avignon of images and the hostility to them on the part of
(1309–1377) led to a successful extension iconoclasts.
and sophistication of the papal bureaucracy, Duffy, Eamon (2006), Marking the Hours: English People
which reinforced the pope’s hold on the and Their Prayers, 1240–1570 (New Haven CT: Yale
University Press). Books of Hours were unques-
clergy.
tionably the most intimate and most widely used
■■ During the period of the Great Schism books of the later Middle Ages. They were used for
(1378–1417) there were two popes, one in private, domestic devotions, and in which people
Rome and one in Avignon. This situation commonly left traces of their lives. Women feature
gave rise to the further elaboration of con- very prominently among the identifiable owners
and users. Duffy places these volumes in the con-
ciliarist thought.
text of religious and social change, and above all
■■ Imitatio Christi (‘Imitation of Christ’) remained the Reformation.
the dominant ideal for religious reform Engen, John van (2008), Sisters and Brothers of the
movements such as Modern Devotion, while Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World
the penchant for a spiritual implementation of the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University
of religious belief reinforced mysticism, both of Pennsylvania Press). Comprehensive and histo-
riographically updated study of the most important
among clergy and laypeople.
devotional movement of the late Middle Ages, with
■■ The religious perception of ordinary believ- special attention to its attraction, to the suspicions
ers was characterised by emotionality and of heresy that it aroused, to its success in commu-
materiality. nity building while stressing communal harmony,
■■ Thanks to a successful pastoral revolution lay to the nature of its spirituality and to its ‘theological
rationale’.
believers in the later Middle Ages had a far
Ozment, Steven (1980), The Age of Reform, 1250–1550:
better idea of the dogmatic and moral con- An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval
tents of the Christian religion than laypeople and Reformation Europe (New Haven: Yale University
had had in the period before. Press). This book grounds the great Protestant
reformers firmly in the tradition of medieval scho-
lastic, mystic and ecclesio-political thought.
Swanson, R.N. (1995), Religion and Devotion in Europe,
Suggestions for further c.1215–c.1515 (Cambridge: CUP). A practical and
reading very readable survey of Christian religious life in the
late Middle Ages, which departs from a communica-
Bynum, Caroline Walker (2011), Christian Materiality: tion model (how did clergy and laity communicate?)
An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New and highlights major developments related to piety
York: Zone Books). The eminent specialist of and popular devotion.
Christian spirituality and devotion describes mira-

421
 Epilogue

As we saw in the introductory chapter it is dif- Europe. This view is supported by demographic
ficult to draw a sharp line between ‘Middle Ages’ and economic indicators: despite the sporadic
and ‘early modern times’. No general ‘historical’ outbursts of plague epidemics, their effect was less
switch took place round any of the well-known disastrous than between 1347 and 1440, and the
symbolic dates (1453, 1492, 1498, 1517, let alone population of Europe grew again. If the recurring
1500). Each one of those dates deals with one par- epidemics had caused it to drop from 75 million
ticular aspect of the reality of the time (Ottoman to 50 million in about 1450, then by 1500 it had
expansion, the journeys of discovery and colo- recovered to a total that – depending on the esti-
nisation, the Reformation). Moreover, at least mate and whether or not Russia and the Balkans
until the Industrial and the French Revolutions, are included – lay somewhere between 61 and 82
the basic structures of the Middle Ages remained million, rising to between 78 and 106 million by
intact: a mainly agrarian class society, built on 1600 – more than ever before, but nothing com-
a locally particularistic foundation and monar- pared with Ming China, whose total population
chical concentration. Rather than engage in a increased from an estimated 85 million in 1393
pointless controversy about the demarcation to an estimated 231 million in 1600. People had
of an era, we have chosen, as we did with the learnt to cope with contagious disease and could
transition from Late Antiquity, to indicate the keep it under better control. This population
perspective of the historian who either believes growth was made possible primarily through the
he can detect the new very early on or continues further introduction of intensive methods of agri-
to see the old for a long time. In reality, of course, culture, which had previously only been applied
both tendencies existed side by side in a relation- in the most advanced areas. Substantial growth
ship of creative tension. in shipping capacity also facilitated the regular
Fernand Braudel (1902–1985), the renowned export of large quantities of grain to densely pop-
French historian, introduced the concept of ulated regions: 67,000 hectolitres were exported
the ‘long sixteenth century’, which he placed from Danzig/Gdansk to the West in 1470, grow-
between 1450 and 1650. It was a time of growth, ing to 1.2 million in 1562. The total volume of
expansion and innovation in practically all of grain exported from all ports in Prussia between

423
 E pILOGUE

1562 and 1569 is estimated at an average of 2.18 in the form of cheap pamphlets which could be
million hectolitres per year, sufficient to cover read ‘in a corner’ by everyone, as Geert Grote
the demand for bread for 650,000 people. expressed it.
A generalisation such as typifying the ‘long Growing demand for the written word explains
sixteenth century’ as a growth phase of course the search for methods to reproduce it more
ignores the very considerable regional differ- quickly and on a larger scale. When Gutenberg
ences. The Balkans and Hungary suffered terribly printed his first Bible in Mainz around 1455, he
under the Ottoman wars of conquest. After 1494 set in motion a process that would quickly be
there was a grave crisis in Italy as the great powers imitated and improved. There is no doubt that
continued to wage their wars there during half a printing was a considerable help in spreading
century. It was one of the causes of the shift of new political, religious and scientific ideas. Yet
economic leadership – Italy had been the undis- it was not technology that was initially respon-
puted leader since the growth phase beginning sible for this media revolution, but the strongly
in the tenth century – to the North Sea area, to increasing demand for devotional literature
Antwerp in particular. Should one share Braudel’s for quiet personal reading that met the need for
view of the unity of the period between 1450 and a more individual perception of religion. The
1650, the economic perspective is crucial. We German historian Uwe Neddermeyer has calcu-
shall summarise here some of the trends discern- lated that in the German lands the production of
ible in the fifteenth century and first half of the handwritten books increased by roughly 25 per
sixteenth century which resulted directly from cent per decade between 1370 and 1470, from
developments in the late Middle Ages. 20,000 annually in 1370 to 200,000 by 1460.
No wonder that efforts were made to find more
efficient methods of reproduction. Two million
Acceleration books were printed in the decade around 1500.
While this was an impressive figure for Europe,
From the perspective of the Middle Ages the inno- a comparable level of communicative capaci-
vations of the late fifteenth and the sixteenth ties had been attained three centuries earlier in
centuries can be better described as progressive China, where gazettes were circulated through
accelerations than as radical breaks. This is even the Empire on a massive scale.
true of the invention of printing. From the thir- Overseas colonisation got into its stride
teenth century, government, trade, the Church, around the Mediterranean, Black, Baltic and Irish
education and literature made increasing use of seas from the twelfth century. European travellers
the written word. At the same time there was a started searching for overland routes to the Far
swing towards the use of vernacular languages East from the mid-thirteenth century, and soon
for all these purposes, so that much larger seg- afterwards for sea routes as well. The voyages of
ments of the population took part in the culture discovery along the coast of Africa and later across
of writing. Parchment soon became a scarce item, the oceans lie in the continuation of the dynamic
reserved for luxury books. Cheaper paper made that had been growing for centuries, although it
the continued growth of literacy possible. In the must be recognised that Columbus and Vasco
Low Countries and the Rhineland, the religious da Gama gave an impetus to qualitative leaps.
reform movement of the Modern Devotion, For several years, however, these discoveries had
which rapidly won large numbers of followers in only marginal effects on the European economy.
the last decades of the fourteenth century, is a The economic growth of the sixteenth and sev-
typical example. Among its aims was the dissemi- enteenth centuries did not imply a breakthrough
nation of pious literature in the Dutch language to a totally different system, only a very advanced

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 E p I L OGU E

state of pre-industrial society. Nor should it be a level that still meets current standards. That
assumed that at this time Europe had achieved being said, without the assiduous copying of
a higher level of economic, cultural and political diligent medieval monks, the continuous flow of
development than China, Japan or the princely translations from Greek and Arabic and the intel-
states of India. Until industrialisation, western lectual curiosity of Franciscans and Dominicans,
Europe was no more than one of the world’s more a substantial part of the writings of Antiquity
highly developed agricultural societies, but it was would never have been preserved for us.
the one that took more initiatives towards other Medieval methods and concepts were still fol-
continents; whether this is a sign of progress or lowed at the universities. Medical education was
relative failure is still a matter of debate. based on the ancient Greeks’ teachings of the
The European voyages of discovery certainly four body fluids until the seventeenth century,
changed the view of the world, in both senses, and was far removed from the sickbed, while the-
very quickly. Geographical insights, as visualised ology focused on the authority of the teachers of
in maps, grew on the basis of the wider knowl- Late Antiquity. In 1543 the founder of modern
edge and experience of the seafarers. The atlases anatomy, Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, published
published in Antwerp by Abraham Ortelius in a huge and richly illustrated empirical study of
1570 and Gerard Mercator between 1585 and human anatomy, pointing out the mistakes in
1589 took many of their new facts and insights Galen’s second-century theory. He dissected
from the descriptions of coasts that had been bodies in front of his students, confronting them
collected gradually and handed on piecemeal with inconsistencies between these empirical
by generations of sailors whose maps have been observations and Galen’s outdated ideas. He met
preserved since the thirteenth century. In this with so much opposition from supporters of tra-
way people’s view of their planet grew in a few ditional teachings that he had to resign from the
generations into the globe that we know today. universities of Louvain, Padua and Pisa where
Chapter 8 described how fourteenth- and he taught consecutively. Innovative as Vesalius’s
fifteenth-century Italian humanists refined their findings were, he followed in a surgical tradition
knowledge of ancient sources, brought the study that had been active at the universities of Paris
of classical languages and literature to a higher and Montpellier until about 1300.
level and, above all, how they forged a new edu- In 1920 no less a scholar than Max Weber
cational concept from them. The Latin school advanced the proposition that commercial capi-
was the dominant pedagogic model until the talism’s rational pursuit of profit could only truly
1960s, propagating its own methods as funda- flourish in those lands where the Protestant ethic
mentally innovative. Both Counter Reformation of austerity held sway. By this he meant that
schools, notably those run by the Jesuits, and the commercial capitalism could not have existed
grammar schools and high schools in Protestant in the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, it must be
countries were powerful forces in spreading this remembered here too that after a more thorough
image of a fundamental Renaissance. But both study of medieval commercial and other sources,
systems make the mistake of overestimating specialists are in agreement that merchants
themselves. There was interest in and admira- and entrepreneurs in Italian, southern French,
tion for the culture of Antiquity throughout the Catalan and Flemish cities in particular consist-
Middle Ages. Although the humanists examined ently displayed a capitalist mentality from the
more and older manuscripts of ancient and early twelfth century onwards: they made rationalised
Christian texts and became more critical in their efforts to make as much profit as possible, which
search for sources, it was not until the nineteenth was then reinvested in the business to make it
century that scientific philology actually reached grow. Other considerations, religious or ethical,

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 E pILOGUE

for example, were subordinated to their pursuit the first half of the sixteenth century and in the
of profit. Forms of vertical integration and of earlier movements for reform lay in the combi-
partnerships based on shareholdings were seen nation of a Church lacking moral authority and
in growing numbers from the thirteenth century, incapable of incorporating criticism positively,
particularly in Italy. Here, too, it must be stressed the strong interrelation between the authority of
that the great sixteenth-century capitalist firms, the state and the hierarchy of the Church, and
such as the Fuggers and Welsers of Augsburg, the enormous spread of reformist thinking made
were larger than their medieval predecessors, but possible by the printing press. The effects of the
essentially no different. sixteenth-century Reformation were of course
Just like book production, colonisation, car- more lasting than those of the earlier reform
tography, surgery and commercial capitalism, movements: these, however, had created the
the Reformation was not a fundamentally new breeding ground.
phenomenon. In many respects – his political Martin Luther, as an Augustinian friar and
and social principles, for example – Luther was theology professor at the University of Wittenberg
more conservative than the so-called Cathar her- in Saxony, was deeply embedded in medieval,
etics, the Franciscan spirituals or John Wycliffe. particularly Augustinian, theology. He was also
Criticism of the clergy echoed through the works a gifted preacher and a sharp polemic writer, of
of John of Leeuwen, the ‘good cook’ of the priory whose works more than half a million copies
of Groenendaal in the Sonian Forest just south of had been disseminated in the years 1516 to 1521
Brussels between 1355 and 1370, no less sharply in the form of hundreds of pamphlets and also
than in those of Erasmus. The Modern Devoteds’ substantial books. He enjoyed the protection of
emphasis on simplicity, austerity and sincere Duke Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony. Much
personal devotion based on readings in the ver- of his criticism against the Church had already
nacular joined a long line of reformers in a call been expressed by numerous reformers since
for Church reformation that had been made at the thirteenth century, and in 1417 the German
regular intervals since the tenth century. Some participants in the Council of Constance had
were given their place within the Church, some- agreed upon an extensive list of abuses. They
times after difficult negotiations, concessions and mainly concerned papal interference in the
secessions, such as Francis of Assisi and his fol- appointments of prelates in the Empire, in their
lowers. Others, especially those who exposed the jurisdiction and in financial matters. In France,
socio-political order, such as the Cathars, Lollards England and elsewhere, similar complaints had
and Hussites, and the Lutherans and Anabaptists led to royal legislation and concordats with the
in the sixteenth century, were condemned as papacy, but the multi-layered political structure
heretics and burned without mercy. of the Empire and the emperor’s unique posi-
The criticisms levelled by the early sixteenth- tion vis-à-vis the pope had prevented any action.
century reformers closely resembled those made In the Imperial Diet held at Worms in 1521,
by the critics of previous centuries. They spoke Emperor Charles V felt that, after Luther’s excom-
out against the love of luxury and the worldly munication by Pope Leo X, he as ‘defender and
conduct of the clergy, against the purely formal protector of the Catholic faith’ had no choice but
character of Church ritual; they pleaded for the to extend his imperial ban on Luther and to order
Bible and private reading matter in the vernacu- the complete destruction and burning of all his
lar, and for the role of the individual conscience, works. The authorities were evidently unaware
and translations of the complete Bible were made of how widely these works had already been dis-
in several languages from the thirteenth century. seminated and of the enormous public interest
The great differences between the situation in in reformist thought. Indeed, at the same Diet of

426
 E p I L OGU E

Worms, 102 articles of ‘Complaints of the German The territories of France, England, the Spanish
Nation against the Holy See’ were discussed in kingdoms, the principalities of the Low Countries
line with the list of 1417; the issue returned to and the Italian regional states expanded and
the agenda of several assemblies, but the violence integrated steadily, and their resources grew
against Church property during the Peasants’ more than proportionally. Their destructive
War impeded a resolution. The emperor urged power far exceeded that of lesser princes, local
successive popes to convene a general council, lords or towns, who were thus fatally deprived of
but they had reason enough to view any reforma- their power. The autonomy of local bodies and
tion of the Church ‘in head and members’ with their political voice in the form of parliaments
the greatest suspicion; moreover, they were far and state assemblies suffered. This again was a
too much involved in the rivalries between the process that was set in motion in the central
west-European monarchies to help with solving Middle Ages, sometimes accelerating, sometimes
a problem which they saw primarily as a problem encountering setbacks. The so-called medieval
in the Empire. There matters evolved in practice: particularist state model, based on the autono-
at the Diet of Speyer in 1529, the evangelically mous rights of local communities and regions,
minded estates declared that a majority decision existed until the end of the eighteenth century
could not be binding on ‘matters concerning in some of Europe’s most progressive states – the
the honour of God and our spiritual welfare Dutch Republic, northern Italy and Switzerland.
and salvation’. This ‘protest’ led by the elector Monarchical states became larger and stronger
of Saxony and the landgrave of Hesse and sup- as a result of constant and continual fighting
ported by scores of autonomous towns, mainly between each other, especially if they were in a
in south Germany, was the impulse for the for- position to draw off commercial profits, such as
mation of a political alliance to protect reformist England. The threat of the Ottoman Empire was
beliefs. The Empire’s complex political structure ever present, especially for the Habsburgs.
had hindered reforms from being implemented
for more than a century, but it also enabled the
breakthrough of Protestantism. The medieval roots of
Finally, ‘early modern’ times are often asso- modern culture
ciated with the age of the ‘modern state’. Even
when a precise description of this term is adhered In conclusion, we would like to examine which
to, in the sense of a centralised government characteristics of our own culture can be traced
organisation which shows itself to be an effective back directly to medieval origins. Many funda-
supreme power in its own territory, early exam- mental characteristics of what Europe is today
ples can be seen – in England from the twelfth evolved out of developments occurring during
century – next to late developers, in particular the Middle Ages.
Castile and Poland in the seventeenth and eight- Europe is characterised by its cultural diver-
eenth centuries. Here, too, we must emphasise sity: the multiplicity of peoples, languages and
that the differences were those of degree and customs form the basis of a consciousness that in
not of fundamental importance, and there are certain periods has been fanned into an aggres-
considerable variations between the regions in sive nationalism. During the early Middle Ages
every period. Expansion did indeed take place linguistic areas were consolidated as the result
in the prominent monarchies of the West from of migration and acculturation. This diversity
the twelfth century onwards, in a development now forms a marked contrast with continents
which was not always direct but was continuous where, although there is great variety of cultures,
in the long term. a common language and a set of common values

427
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provide an integrating framework. Such a culture such long-lasting results: autonomous forms of
was provided in China by the Empire, and in rationality in the fields of religion, government,
Islamic regions by religion and law in the Arabic economic activity and scientific thought.
language. This unifying cultural pattern was com- During the Middle Ages feudalism gradually
pletely absent in Europe. The Catholic Church took shape as a system of feudo-vassalic relations
provided something of the sort, and Latin – aimed at warranting military power and some sort
the language of the Church – also operated as of public government through a controlled redis-
a universal language for government until the tribution of land and lordship. Strictly organised
thirteenth century, functioning in Europe rather and carefully managed lordships and principali-
as Mandarin did in China. In diplomacy and ties were created out of small units through a
scholarship Latin even remained the common process of continuous competition and struggle.
language much longer. But the Church, just like This was followed by the elimination of weaker
the emperors, failed in its ambition to become rivals and the expansion of the surviving enti-
the supreme universal power. Political fragmenta- ties, forming the basis of monarchic states. It is
tion formed a barrier to cultural homogenisation, impossible to imagine European history without
gradually even reinforcing the national identity. the basic units upon which it was built: politi-
Throughout the ages, the Church has been cal fragmentation was added to cultural diversity.
an exceptionally influential institution. It was The two categories that make up nations – peo-
the most important medium for the transfer of ples and polities – did not overlap each other,
classical culture, to which it added specifically for they had grown out of differing dynamics.
Christian values that in many cases were diamet- Despite the strong trend towards homogenisation
rically opposed to those of Antiquity. In principle over the past few hundred years, most European
the Church defended every human soul and was states are still made up of more than one ethnic
thus obligated to oppose slavery and arbitrary group. Diversity of cultures and states, with all
killing. It defended, again in theory, spiritual val- the concomitant tensions, conflicts and creativ-
ues over material values, poverty over riches, the ity, is the European characteristic par excellence.
weak over the mighty, and it encouraged charity A coordinated empire had no chance of surviv-
and love of one’s neighbour. However much and ing there because of the cohesiveness of the older
however often these principles may have been political and cultural patterns. Empires with an
set aside, reformers and zealots could still revi- effective power could not last for long in the
talise the message and pass it on. The Church is West. In later centuries the Ottoman, Habsburg
the oldest and most all-encompassing medieval and Russian empires were only able to survive in
institution and, in the long term, was thus able the less progressive and more thinly populated
to assert its message in relative independence. parts of the continent by using superior physi-
Slavery disappeared among European Christians cal violence. They all disintegrated after the First
in the course of the Middle Ages. Rulers could no World War, in part under pressures from national
longer apply violence indiscriminately: sooner or cultures dating from the Middle Ages.
later they would have to render account to the The multiplicity of political and cultural
clerics. The institutional division between Church entities was an impediment to the monolithic
and secular power, which had grown gradually exercise of power, a situation that was reinforced
out of the realities of the late Roman Empire by the separate organisation of Church and state.
and been shaped by the doctrine of the two In Europe there was no single central author-
swords, was unprecedented in world history. It ity that could intervene in every field of human
allowed breakthroughs in Europe that had either activity throughout a very extensive territory, as
never taken place elsewhere or never produced there was in China, for example. The relatively

428
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short distances made it possible for dissidents and attitude, the desire for material gain, but also the
other persecuted people to move to other areas ability to deal with and learn from other cultures
of authority. Inside the monarchic states central and other social categories. The inhabitants of
authority again encountered many areas that the great seaports, in particular, were very open
governed themselves to a large extent. Religious in their outlook. Townspeople had had to fight
institutions and noble lords held considerable for their place in a world that was controlled by
domains where rulers were unable to exercise landed aristocracy and were therefore readier
direct control. Large commercial cities continued to make compromises. The calculation of risk,
to enjoy a great degree of self-government and not physical conflict, offered the means of suc-
could administer their own laws. This autonomy cess. Certain elements from the chivalric culture
forced rulers to consult with influential subjects gradually filtered through into the civic culture
and their representatives, from which constitu- via the patrician elite. Yet what distinguished
tional constraints on the monarchy grew up and the latter was that it allowed neither Church nor
a parliamentary tradition could develop. No sin- prince or aristocrat to impose their laws on it,
gle European prince could function as an absolute even though its members were anxious to do
ruler during the Middle Ages; he was accountable business with all of them. This was the context
both to his father confessor and to subjects who for the emergence of civil and property rights,
had their own means of exercising power and and of commercial capitalism, which became the
could eventually oppose his policy. Europe was driving force behind the western economy.
therefore the only continent where representative The Middle Ages saw the creation of the
institutions came into being which controlled the universities, centres which reproduced and com-
purse strings on behalf of specific categories of mented on the knowledge from the ancient
subjects – the estates: clergy, nobles, burghers, free authorities. It was at the universities that efforts
peasants – and at crucial moments had the power were made to harmonise Christian doctrines with
to curb the arbitrary designs of princes. ideas from pagan Antiquity that were considered
A civic culture grew up in the towns which, valuable. Here, too, the initial impetus was given
together with the chivalric culture, gave shape to test ancient theories against Arabic empirical
to the pattern of values and the imagination of knowledge and personal observations. In theory,
Europeans for many centuries. There are sub- universities were under papal authority. In prac-
stantial differences between them. The culture of tice this meant that they enjoyed far-reaching
chivalry valued bravery and skill with weapons, independence from the clergy and temporal rul-
valorous deeds and brilliant physical accom- ers in the immediate vicinity. The weakening
plishments. It continued to prevail as a model of of the papacy in the late Middle Ages allowed
masculine and aggressive behaviour. At the same critical intellectuals to emerge and develop, who
time, however, it also advocated selfless assistance formulated new ideological foundations attuned
to widows, orphans, clerics and other people in to the radically changing social realities.
need, the willingness to serve one’s lord and the The Christian West originally grew up com-
Christian faith actively, generosity in sharing pletely aware that it trailed behind its great
booty and gifts with followers and indifference neighbours, the Byzantine Empire and the Arabic
to material gain – except land linked to lordship. world. The relationship with the latter was often
In its romanticised version this grew into the cult discordant, but it never prevented intensive com-
of courtly love, a literary construct that survives mercial dealings or frequent cultural exchanges.
in today’s popular literature. The close contact enabled the West to borrow
The cultural horizon of urban patriciates, on much and to evolve further, gradually becom-
the other hand, was determined by a businesslike ing emancipated. As the Ottoman Empire swept

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 E pILOGUE

the Byzantine Empire off the map it formed an continuity with the Middle Ages. Europe evolved
enormous military and cultural challenge for the during these distinctive centuries into an entity
West. This friction dominated the sixteenth and that has made a radical contribution to world
seventeenth centuries in central Europe and the history.
Mediterranean. Here again we thus encounter

430
 TIM E LINE

Roman and Byzantine The Church Islamic world Iberia Italy

TIMELINE

empires

300 306–337 Emperor 311 Edict of Milan

Constantine the Great
325 Council of Nicaea
379–395 Emperor
381–392 Christianity
Theodosius I
recognised as state
395 Partition of the religion
Empire
354–430 Augustine of
Hippo

400 410 Goths plunder 409 Settlement of

Rome Vandals, Sueves, Alans
451 Council of 476–493 Odoacer king
c.440 Codex Chalcedon 429 Vandals move to of Italy
Theodosianus North Africa
492–496 Pope 493–526 Theoderic
476 Dethroning of the Gelasius I king of the Ostrogoths
last emperor in the
western Empire

500 527–565 Emperor c.529 Monastic rule of c.570–632 Mohammed 589 Visigoths forswear 535–552 Gothic wars
Justinian Benedict of Norcia Arianism
c.550 Mosaics in
530 Corpus Iuris Civilis c.560 Irish missions on Ravenna
the continent
532–537 Construction 568 Langobard
of the Hagia Sophia 590–604 Pope invasion
Gregory I
568–774 Langobard
kingdom

600 610–641 Emperor 622 Mohammed’s

Heraclius flight to Medina
649 First Lateran
636 Syria conquered Council 636–637 Muslims
by Muslims occupy Syria and
Persia
641–668 Emperor
Constans II 661–750 Umayyad
dynasty in Damascus

700 717–741 Emperor Leo c.710–754 Boniface, 711 Invasion of c.700–750 Formation
the Isaurian missionary and Muslims, battle of of the ‘Papal State’
archbishop of Mainz Jerez de la Frontera
730–843 Iconoclasm
750–1055 Abbasid 756 Foundation of 756 Pippin the Short
dynasty in Baghdad the Umayyad emirate acknowledges the
Córdoba Papal State

432
 TI ME L I NE

Gaul, Frankish kingdoms Britain Central and eastern Europe

341 Salian Franks recognised c.340 Conversion of the Goths

as foederati

376 Goths cross the Danube

378 Battle of Adrianople

418 Visigothic kingdom in c.400 St Patrick in Ireland

Aquitaine recognised as
407 Withdrawal of regular
foederatus
Roman legions
440–534 Kingdom of the
Burgundians

481–511 Clovis king of the

Franks

496 Clovis converts to

Catholicism

507 Battle of Vouillé

c.550 Invasion of Avars

563 Columbanus on Iona
c.570 Start of Slav migrations
to Balkans and Greece

597–604 Mission of Augustine

of Canterbury

600 Formation of seven Anglo-

Saxon kingdoms
687 Pippin, mayor of the
palace in Austrasia, defeats c.672–735 The Venerable Bede
c.680 Invasion of Bulgars
Neustrians
698 Gospels of Lindisfarne

719 Charles Martel mayor of

the palace
719/751 Carolingian dynasty,
until 911 in Germany, until 987
in France
733/734 Battle of Tours
751 Mayor of the palace Pippin 757–796 Offa king of Mercia 772–804 Charlemagne’s wars
III, ‘the Short’, crowned as king against the Saxons
793 First Viking attacks
of the Franks Pippin I
768–814 Charlemagne

433
 TIM E LINE

Byzantine Empire The Church Islamic world Iberia Italy

TIMELINE

700 774 Charlemagne king

of the Langobards

800 817 Monastic reform 800 Charlemagne

by Benedict of Aniane crowned as emperor

844 Normans conquer

Lisbon

867–1056 878 Muslims occupy

Macedonian dynasty Sicily

900 910 Foundation of the 909 Fatimid dynasty 929 Umayyad

abbey of Cluny established in north- caliphate of Córdoba
western Africa
951 Otto I king of Italy

963–1025 961–967 Caliph 962 Otto I Roman

Emperor Basil II al-Hakim II emperor
969 Fatimids conquer
Egypt, caliphate of
Cairo
989 Council of
Charroux: Peace of
God

999–1001 Pope
Silvester II

1000 c.1015 The Bulgarian

Empire under 1031 Overthrow of
1049–1054 Pope c.1050 Turkmen
Byzantine protectorate caliphate of Córdoba
Leo IX expansion
1031–1086 Taifa
kingdoms

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 TI ME L I NE

Gaul, Frankish kingdoms Britain Central and eastern Europe Roman Empire

772–804 Wars against the 793 First Viking attacks

Saxons

814–840 Emperor Louis the c.800 Disintegration of the 800 Charlemagne crowned as
Pious Avar Empire (Roman) emperor
834 Danish invasion along the 836–841 Viking invasions in 814–840 Emperor Louis the
North Sea coast of the Frankish Scotland and Ireland Pious
Empire
840–877 Emperor Charles the 817/840–855 Emperor Lothar
Bald
840–877 Emperor Charles
842 Oaths of Strasbourg the Bald

843 Treaty of Verdun

855–892 Viking invasions in
West Francia
876/881–888 Charles the Fat, 871–899 Alfred the Great, king c.861–864 Mission to Bulgars 876/881–888 Charles the Fat,
last Carolingian emperor, king of Wessex and their conversion last Carolingian emperor, king
of Italy, East and West Francia of Italy, East and West Francia
893–927 Bulgar khan Symeon
888–895 Odo ‘duke’ of West 895 Magyar invasion
Francia

911 Danish warlord Rollo count c.900–950 Integration of the 10th century Dissemination of 919–1024 Saxon (Ottonian)
of Rouen, core of duchy of seven kingdoms cyrillic script dynasty
Normandy
936/962–973 Emperor Otto I

955 Battle of Lechfeld

966 Conversion of the Polish 967/973–983 Emperor Otto II
Prince Mieszko

976 Foundation of the

bishopric of Bohemia in Prague
987–996 Hugh Capet, king of 989 Conversion of Prince 983/996–1002 Emperor
France Vladimir of Kiev Otto III
991 Imposition of Danegeld
987–1328 Capetian royal 992–1024 Boleslaw first king
dynasty of Poland

997–1001 Waik/Stephan of
Hungary

1001 Kingdom of Hungary 1002/1014–1024 Emperor

recognised by Emperor Otto III Henry II
1016–1035 Cnut of Denmark,
king of England c.1015–1185 Bulgarian Empire 1024–1125 Salian dynasty
Byzantine protectorate
1024/1027–1039 Emperor
Conrad II

435
 TIM E LINE

Byzantine Empire The Church Islamic world Iberia Italy

TIMELINE

1000 1054 Schism between 1055 Seljuks conquer 1061–1091 Sicily

Greek and Latin Baghdad occupied by Normans
Church
1071 Battle of 1073–1085 Pope 1071 Seljuks conquer 1071 Bari under
Manzikert: most of Gregory VII most of Asia Minor Norman rule
Asia Minor lost to the
Seljuk Turks
1081 Dynasty of 1085 Christian 1082 Venice receives
Comnenus conquest of Toledo free trade privileges in
Byzantine Empire
1086–1147 Berber
1090–1153 Bernard of
dynasty of Almoravids
Clairvaux

1096–1099 First
Crusade

1098 Foundation of
the abbey of Cîteaux

1100 1101 Foundation

of the abbey of
Fontevraud
1120 Foundation
of the abbey of
Prémontré
1128 Foundation of 1146 Turkish conquest 1137 Union of 1130–1154 Roger II
the Templars’ Order of Edessa kingdom of Aragon king of Sicily
with County of
1147–1149 Second 1171 Nur ed-Din 1130 Sicily and
Barcelona
Crusade dislodges Fatimids southern Italy under
from Egypt 1147 Foundation of papal suzerainty
1159–1181 Pope
kingdom of Portugal
Alexander III 1167–1183 Lombard
League
1176 Battle of 1179 Third Lateran 1174 Kurdish vizir 1172–1212 Almohad c.1188 Foundation
Myriokephalon: Seljuk Council Saladin rules over rule of the University of
victory Egypt and Syria Bologna
1189–1192 Third
Crusade 1187 Saladin chases 1197–1250 Frederick
crusaders out of II king of Sicily, 1212
1198–1216 Pope
Jerusalem Roman king and
Innocent III
emperor

1200 1204 Constantinople 1202–1204 Fourth

occupied by crusaders Crusade
1204–1261 Latin 1209–1229
Empire Albigensian Crusade
1210 Pope Innocent
III approves the
Franciscan Order
1215 Fourth Lateran 1212 Battle of Las
Council Navas de Tolosa
1216 Approval of the
Dominican Order
1217–1221 Fifth 1220 Chinggis Khan
Crusade overruns Iran

436
 TI ME L I NE

France Britain Central and eastern Europe Roman Empire

1066 Battle of Hastings 1025 Kingdom of Poland

recognised by Emperor
1066–1087 William of
Conrad II
Normandy, the Conqueror,
1075–1122 Investiture
king of England
Controversy

1086 Domesday Book

1144 Abbot Suger initiates the 1132–1254 Hohenstaufen

construction of ‘Gothic’ church dynasty
1154–1485 Royal House of
at Saint-Denis
Plantagenet 1152/1157–1190 Emperor
1157–1191 Philip of Alsace, Frederick I, Barbarossa
1154–1189 King Henry II
count of Flanders
1159 Formation of regional
1170 Murder of Thomas
1180–1223 King Philip II hanse leagues
Becket
Augustus
1171–1172 First expedition in
Ireland

1189–1199 King Richard I, the

Lionheart

Early thirteenth-century Early thirteenth-century

foundation of the universities foundation of the universities
of Paris and Montpellier of Oxford and Cambridge
1204 Conquest of Normandy
1209–1229 Albigensian
Crusade
1214 Battle of Bouvines 1215 Magna Carta 1212/1220–1250 Emperor
Frederick II
1226–1270 King Louis IX, the 1228 Frederick II king of
Saint Jerusalem

437
 TIM E LINE

Byzantine Empire The Church Islamic world Iberia Italy

TIMELINE

1200 1230 Dynastic union 1228 Ten years’ peace

Castile and León between Emperor
1243–1254 Pope
Frederick II and the
Innocent IV 1235–1248 Christian
sultan of Egypt
Reconquest of Seville
and Córdoba
1248–1252 Crusade 1250–1517 Mamluk
to Egypt and Palestine rule over Egypt, Syria,
Palestine

1253 Iran and Iraq

taken by Mongols
1261–1453 Dynasty of 1258 Baghdad 1265–1321 Dante
Palaiologi captured by Mongols Alighieri
1266 Charles of Anjou
king of Naples and
Sicily
1291 Loss of Acre. 1291 Conquest of 1282 Sicilian
End of crusades to Acre, the last crusader Vespers: Sicily under
Middle East base Aragonese rule
1294–1303 Pope
Boniface VIII

1300 1309–1377 Popes 1304–1374 Petrarch

reside in Avignon

c.1325–1384 John 1326 Ottoman Turks

Wycliffe conquer Bursa (Asia
Minor)

1340–1384 Geert
Grote

1361 Ottomans 1369 Trastámara

conquer Adrianople dynasty in Castile
and push into the
Balkans

438
 TI ME L I NE

France Britain Central and eastern Europe Roman Empire

1237–1242 Mongol invasion

of Russian principalities and
Hungary
1241 Battles of Liegnitz and
the Sajó river
1254–1272 Interregnum

1272–1307 King Edward I

1285–1314 King Philip IV, the 1282–1284 Conquest of Wales
Fair

1295 ‘Model parliament’ 1291 First Swiss Confederation

1296–1314 Wars with Scotland

1302 Estates General

summoned about taxation of
ecclesiastical property
1302 Battle of the Golden 1314 Battle of Bannockburn 1314–1347 Roman King
Spurs, near Courtrai Louis, of Wittelsbach,
crowned in 1327 as king of
the Langobards, in 1328 as
emperor
1323–1328 Peasants’ War in 1327 King Edward II 1320 Unification of Poland
Flanders dethroned and executed
1328 Controversy about 1327–1377 King Edward III
succession, decision based on
Salian law
1328–1589 Valois royal
dynasty
1337–1453 Hundred Years War 1337–1453 Hundred Years War

1346–1378 Emperor Charles

IV, of Luxemburg
1346, 1356 Battles of Crécy 1348 Foundation of the
and Poitiers University of Prague
1358 Jacquerie 1356 Golden Bull
1364–1380 King Charles V 1358 German Hanse reforms
from merchants’ associations
to an encompassing urban
league

439
 TIM E LINE

Byzantine Empire The Church Islamic world Iberia Italy

TIMELINE

1300 1378–1415 Great 1378 Ciompi revolt in

(western) Schism Florence
1395 Gian Galeazzo
Visconti duke of Milan

1400 1405 Death of Timur

Lenk (Tamerlane)
1414–1418 Council of
Constance
1415 Jan Hus dies at
the stake
1431–1449 Council 1434 Cosimo de’
of Basel Medici, signore of
Florence
1439 Council of 1449–1492 Lorenzo
Florence de’ Medici, il
1453 Ottoman 1453 Ottoman
Magnifico
conquest of conquest of
Constantinople, actual Constantinople
end of Byzantine
Empire
1454 Peace of Lodi

1479 Marriage of
‘the Catholic kings’
Isabel of Castile and
Ferdinand of Aragon
c.1467–1536 1492 Columbus
Desiderius Erasmus discovers the New
World
1492 Christian 1492 Christian 1494–1529 French
conquest of Granada, conquest of Granada, invasion and wars
the last Muslim the last Muslim between the houses
stronghold in Iberia stronghold in Iberia of Valois and
Habsburg
1498 Vasco da Gama
reaches India by sea

1500 1517 Martin Luther’s 1516–1556 Charles (V)

95 Theses of Habsburg king of
Castile and Aragon

440
 TI ME L I NE

France Britain Central and eastern Europe Roman Empire

1380–1422 King Charles 1381 Peasants’ Revolt 1386 Personal Union Poland
VI, mentally ill since 1392, and Lithuania
regency by the dukes
1389 First battle on the Field
of the Blackbirds, Kosovo:
Ottoman victory over Great
Serbia
1384–1404 Philip the Bold, 1399 King Richard II
duke of Burgundy, count of dethroned and executed
Flanders
1399–1461 Lancaster royal
dynasty

1407–1418 Dynastic war 1410–1437 Emperor

between Armagnacs and Sigismund, of Luxemburg,
Bourguignons king of Hungary, Bohemia
and Italy
1415 Battle of Agincourt
1419–1467 Duke Philip of 1419–1436 War against
Burgundy, the Good Hussites
1420 Treaty of Troyes
1429 King Charles VII crowned
in Rheims
1431 Joan of Arc dies at the
stake
1435 Peace of Arras 1438–1806 Habsburg imperial
dynasty
1450–1453 French victories 1440–1493 Emperor Frederick
reduce the English possessions III
to Calais
1466 Poland incorporates
Prussia, until then ruled by the
1461–1483 King Louis XI 1461–1485 Wars of the Roses
Teutonic Order
1465–1559 Wars between
the houses of Valois and
Burgundy-Habsburg

1477 Conquest of the duchy 1478 Great Prince Ivan III of

of Burgundy 1485–1603 Tudor royal Moscow conquers Novgorod 1486/1493–1519 Emperor
dynasty Maximilian I

1495 Constitutional reform

1509–1547 King Henry VIII 1501 Secession of the Swiss

Confederation
1515–1547 King Francis I
1520–1556 Emperor Charles V
1529 Cession of the 1521 Diet of Worms
sovereignty over Flanders
1534 Act of Royal Supremacy 1526 Ottomans conquer most 1525–1526 Peasants’ War
and Artois to the House of
over the Church of England of Hungary in the battle of
Habsburg
Mohács
1536–1539 Dissolution of the
monasteries

441
Glossary

Abbey monastery, or closed community of nuns c.1170, salaried and dismissible at will. Their
or monks, led by an abbot (which means main tasks were to maintain the count’s pre-
‘father’) or abbess (‘mother’). Monks and rogatives, to collect revenues on his behalf
nuns took vows on a rule, originally that of and to organise the administration of justice
Benedict of Norcia prescribing (personal) pov- within a jurisdiction. Similar officials were
erty, chastity and obedience, and they led a soon afterwards appointed in France.
life of contemplation and prayer for the salva- Banal lordship, seigneurie local lordship
tion of souls. Later on, several other rules have based not primarily on the possession of land
been applied. and of peasants living on that land, but on the
Al-Andalus Arab name for the part of the Iberian local appropriation and exercise of bannus
peninsula that was under Muslim rule. Now, and other regal rights by local strongmen who
the general term for southern Spain. were not accountable to either kings or counts.
Arianism a widespread heterodoxy among lead- Banlieu a town’s jurisdiction extending a few
ing barbarian groups in the Migration Period. miles surrounding the walls.
The Arians believed that Christ, as the son of Bannus, bannum in the Carolingian Empire,
God, was not his father’s equal, but subordi- royal prerogative to coerce and to command
nate to him. each and everybody (actually, the early medie-
Artes liberales ‘liberal’ (free) arts taught at val equivalent of sovereign power), which was
schools for higher education which took their delegated at regional level to counts, and at
name from the fact that their practice was free local level to the counts’ representatives (vice-
from manual labour, in contrast to ‘mechani- counts, etc.). Later, ‘banal’ rights formed the
cal’ arts, which included medicine and basis of banal lordships.
architecture. Traditionally the seven liberal Benefice a source of income, mostly land along
arts were divided into the trivium, the linguis- with its workers, given as a conditional tenure
tic arts connected with the spoken and written (as a fief) in exchange for services rendered to
word, and the quadrivium, the collective name the lord.
for the four mathematical disciplines. Bishop, bishopric (from the Greek epi-scopos,
Bailiffs, baillis officials appointed in Flanders overseer) the head of the Christian community

443
 GLOS S ARy

within a territory, originally around a Roman 1054, Latin Christians became labelled as ‘the’
civitas or city. Responsible for the appointment Catholics.
of priests and the conduct of the community. Chancellor the head of a ruler’s administration,
In the early Middle Ages bishops were usually originally responsible for the emission of pub-
involved in local government and jurisdiction. lic acts. Increasingly the chief councillor or
Bull papal ordinance, authenticated by a leaden prime minister.
seal (Latin bulla). Chapter the formal association of secular
Caesaropapism a form of rule in which the sec- canons.
ular head of state (‘caesar’) is also the religious Charter in general, a formal document released
leader (‘pope’). by a public authority; more specifically, a char-
Canon law laws of the Church, codified sys- ter of liberties listed the rights of a local or
tematically in the twelfth century. Resolutions territorial community.
taken by councils are also called canons. Chiefdom small-scale polity headed by a warlord
Canon, canoness canons were originally cler- and his personal retinue of armed followers
ics who followed the rules of the Church and (also called Gefolgschaft in German).
formed a religious association called ‘chapter’, Chivalry cultural and moral encasement of
headed by a provost and a dean. Since the tenth knighthood, cultivating a code of values
century, a distinction was made between secu- and behaviour, such as courage, loyalty, fel-
lar canons attached to important churches, in lowship, charity and generosity.
particular cathedrals and living individually, Common law the whole of royal laws appli-
and regular canons, living in monasteries cable to all free subjects throughout England
under a rule, usually that of St Augustine. The through the royal courts.
reform movement of the eleventh and twelfth Commune sworn community of citizens, men-
centuries strongly encouraged canons to live tioned in northern Italy from the late eleventh
in communities under a strict rule. There were century, claiming self-government and partic-
also female canons or canonesses who could ular privileges.
not of course be priests and always lived in Communion the culmination of the holy Mass,
monasteries. the consecration of bread and wine as the body
Canonisation official proclamation of saint- and blood of Christ, is believed to make Christ
hood of a person having lived as an exemplary present. The host (consecrated wafer) is offered
Christian; the formal procedure was estab- to the believers; cf. excommunication.
lished only in the thirteenth century. Complexio specific mixture of bodily fluids which,
Capitulary, pl. capitularies legislative ordi- according to medieval medicine, determined a
nance, divided in chapters or capitula, issued person’s temperament and health condition.
by a Carolingian king or emperor. Convent house or community of friars or nuns
Cardinal senior title in the Catholic Church, belonging to one of the mendicant orders,
awarded to the principal clergy within the headed by a prior or prioress.
city of Rome and its vicinity, where cardinals Conversi lay brothers primarily drawn from
hold the seven bishoprics. Cardinals occupy popular classes, employed as manual labour-
the main offices at the Curia, and since 1059 ers in the monastic orders of Cistercians and
cardinals have elected the pope. Premonstratensians.
Castellanus local official holding a castle for a Copyhold written contract whereby English
superior lord (king, count, banal lord). landlords gave out parts of their demesne
Catholic originally this Greek word signified to their bondsmen for the possession of their
‘universal [Christian]’; since the Schism of holdings in a form of hereditary lease.

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Council or synod; in the Christian Church: Disputatio oral debate as a didactic art in the
assembly of bishops with decisive authority teaching of rhetoric, initiated just before 1000.
about dogmatic issues. In the early Middle Doom customary law in Anglo-Saxon England.
Ages, councils were held at the ecumenical Duke, dukedom, duchy in the barbarian
level (all of Christendom) as well as at the kingdoms dukes were governors with military
regional level, and at that time they were powers over large territories that were sup-
mostly summoned and presided over by lay posed to be inhabited by distinct peoples; later
rulers; the church reform of the eleventh and they were the highest-ranking princes in the
twelfth centuries strove at excluding laymen’s Empire or kingdom.
interventions. The pope or an archbishop then Emperor the east Roman emperors in
convened councils and synods. Constantinople saw themselves as the only
Count, county, Latin comes, comitatus in the true successors to the Roman emperors. They
late Roman period, a military commander and considered Charlemagne’s imperial corona-
his soldiers; in the early Middle Ages, regional tion and that of his Carolingian successors as
representative of the king and his territory. usurpation. Otto II created the tradition of the
Curia court of a prince, or more likely that of coronation by the pope of the elected German
the pope. Any court was a centre of decision- king as ‘Roman emperor’.
making, administration and jurisdiction. Enfeoffment the act of conferring a fief on a
Danegeld land tax to be paid in silver coin as vassal.
tribute to Danish invaders from 991, which Estates term derived from Latin status (state,
was maintained – as a general land tax – in condition) and French état; in English, apart
England until 1162. from referring to large landownership, it
Danelaw the area of England north-east of the means representative assemblies on the scale
old Roman road from London to Chester of principalities and kingdoms, also called
where numerous Danish farmers settled from parliaments. In the latter meaning, the plu-
the late ninth century onwards. Danish law ral refers to the composition of several social
and institutions survived for centuries even classes, mostly clergy, nobility, citizens and in
after English reconquest. some territories also rural communities.
Demesne, domain 1) landed estate, parts of Ethnogenesis the process by which highly
which – also called 2) ‘demesne’ or ‘reserve’ dynamic multi-ethnic confederations over the
– were reserved for direct exploitation by course of time grew into peoples with a new
the landlord using the labour services of his identity, which was grafted on to the culture
dependent tenants living on small farms pro- of the dominant, often name-giving, group.
viding for their subsistence (mansus). 3) As in Eucharist collective commemoration (in holy
‘royal domain’: that part of a kingdom over Mass) by a Church community of the Last
which the king himself directly exercised full Supper that Christ shared with his apostles.
royal (public) authority. Exchequer financial department of the kings of
Denarius penny, silver coin first struck at England since the twelfth century, composed of
the end of the seventh century, worth one- the treasury and an accounting office. Sheriffs
twelfth of a solidus, the standard Roman gold had to submit their accounts for control on a
coin. chequered tablecloth, hence exchequer.
Diet Reichstag, assembly of territorial princes in Excommunication ecclesiastical censure bar-
the (Roman) Empire, along with the German ring a person from receiving the communion
king or emperor. From 1470 onwards, cities (Eucharist), which meant exclusion from the
were also represented. Christian community until repentance.

445
 GLOS S ARy

Exemption the whole or partial release of an Guild association of a professional group; mer-
ecclesiastical person, corporation or institu- chant guilds organised the trade in their home
tion from the authority of the ecclesiastical town, and the regulation and protection of
superior next highest in rank. In particular: the members’ trade in foreign countries. Craft
direct subordination of a religious institution guilds were compulsory local organisations
(e.g. an abbey) to the authority of the pope. regulating a particular craft.
Feudal society medieval society could qualify Hagiography the description of the life of
as a feudal society when feudal-vassalic exemplary Christians, often written to support
relations were extended, and applied more the claim to their sainthood by the demonstra-
systematically, to such crucial elements of tion of miracles.
society as public governance (mediatisa- Hanse originally a regional association of mer-
tion), public defence (feudal levies/armies) chants to secure their regular trade routes and
and the aristocratic land market. This was the mediate or adjudicate conflicts. The German
case for large parts of western Europe from the Hanse grew in the thirteenth century as a
twelfth century onwards. conglomerate of regional associations, and
Feudal-vassalic relation contractual, asym- transformed itself in 1358 into a loosely struc-
metric relationship between a higher- and a tured league of nearly two hundred towns.
lower-placed person, both free men, called lord Hausmacht the resources of a German king in
and vassal, respectively, aimed at exchanging the territories (duchy, county, margraviate,
political and military support for protection etc.) under the direct rule of his dynasty.
and maintenance, ensured by the grant of a Hierocracy conception of religious leaders (e.g.
fief. popes in Christendom) who claim a superior
Fief see benefice. authority over secular heads of state.
Fondaco, funduq trading post in Islamic cities Holy, holiness, sainthood many religions
where blocks of houses were designated to for- consider some people, objects, periods of time,
eign traders to store their goods and so they spaces and institutions as distinct from and
could live according to their own customs, superior to the profane world. In Catholicism,
with their own churches, bath-houses, ovens, the Church is thought to be holy, and so was
administrative and court buildings; imitated the Roman Empire since the twelfth century.
by Venice for German traders. In the early Middle Ages, saints were pro-
Gefolgschaft the armed followers or military claimed spontaneously by a community of
retinue of a barbarian warlord. admiring believers. From the late tenth cen-
God’s peace, God’s truce peace agreement tury onwards, the Church prescribed strict
designed by bishops, abbots, but also secular procedures for beatification and canonisa-
lords from the late tenth century to protect vul- tion. A saint had to have led an exemplary life
nerable people (peasants, women, travellers, in which (s)he performed miracles. A saint was
etc.) against excessive violence perpetrated by entitled to mediate to God. Numerous biogra-
aristocrats; the restrictions were agreed within phies have been written to support proposals
a defined territory, and for particular days and for canonisation, see hagiography.
periods the sanction was religious. Holy Roman Empire the coronation of
Grundherrschaft type of aristocratic lord- Charlemagne as emperor in 800 was presented
ship in which a large landowner exercises (to as the ‘transfer’ of the ancient Roman Empire.
a certain degree) what we would call public The qualification of the Empire as ‘Holy’ first
authority over the peasants who lived on his appeared in an imperial charter of 1157, with
estate. the intention of stressing the Empire’s equality

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with the Church; the title Sacrum Imperium Interdict papal ban or ‘interdict[ion]’ on the
Romanum was first used in 1254, during the administration of holy sacraments in a par-
Interregnum – the period in German medieval ticular territory, sometimes an entire kingdom
history when there was not a generally recog- or principality.
nised German king – and remained until 1806. Interregnum the period of vacancy between
Homagium homage or commendatio, i.e. becom- two kings; in particular in the Holy Roman
ing a lord’s man, symbolised by the ritual of Empire, 1254–1272.
joining hands with the lord. Homage became Investiture the conferment of the symbols of
a standard part of the ceremony in which spiritual power to bishops and abbots; the fact
someone became a vassal. that investiture was done by secular rulers who
Humanism in general the intellectual effort to chose incumbents gave rise to a serious con-
trace, copy and study (narrative) texts from flict (the Investiture Controversy), especially
classical (Greek and Roman) Antiquity – which between the pope and the emperor, because
by itself generates a larger interest in secular bishops were closely involved in the Empire’s
culture and human action (hence: human- secular administration (Reichskirche).
ism). In particular: the flourishing of this effort Knight, knighthood the social order of heavily
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, first armoured elite warriors on horseback, formed
in Italy, then also north of the Alps. from the tenth century onwards by men of
Hundred subdivision of a county or (in England) various social origins. In the long run, the
shire; in England since the early tenth cen- knighthood in many parts of Europe became
tury: local district of originally one hundred difficult to distinguish from the nobility.
homesteads, administered by a royal reeve Königsnähe German, proximity to the king.
who summoned the hundred’s law court. Landfriede German, in analogy with the God’s
Iconocalsm (‘[the] destruction of images’) was peace, princes and kings in the Empire tended
opposed to the veneration of all kinds of images to make voluntarily agreed arrangements
of God and the saintly by outright forbidding between prominent parties to foster peaceful
the making of such images. It was a dominant relations within their territory and to sanction
theological current during the reigns of several breakers of the peace.
emperors of the early Byzantine Empire. Liege the preferred lord of a vassal.
Immunity freedom of Church institutions from Ligesse French, preferential fealty of a vassal to
administrative or judicial interference by secu- one particular lord, the liege.
lar authorities. Maior domus, mayor of the palace head of
Inquisition literally ‘inquiry’, in particular a ruler’s household.
about someone’s religious orthodoxy. From the Mamluk or ghulam (literally ‘slave’ or ‘page’),
early thirteenth century on, popes started to the recruitment system, introduced by
use ‘inquiries’ systematically in their attempt Abbasid caliphs in the ninth century, to use
to eradicate groups of supposed heretics in mounted slave soldiers of non-Arabic, in par-
southern France, northern Italy and the mid- ticular Turkic, origin as elite household troops.
Rhineland. Inquisitors often belonged to the Shortly after 1250, the commanders of mam-
Dominican Order. Suspects and witnesses were luk troops seized power in Egypt and erected
interrogated, if need be under torture; sanc- a sultanate that would also cover Syria and
tions could be imprisonment and, more rarely, Palestine. In 1517 it was incorporated in the
burning at the stake. In 1478, the ‘Catholic Ottoman Empire.
kings’ of Castile and Aragon created their own Manorial system the system of exploitation of
Inquisition to detect conversos or ‘crypto-Jews’. large estates (called villae or curtes in the Latin

447
 GLOS S ARy

documents of the early and central Middle social basis of the representation was gradu-
Ages on the continent, and manors in England ally broadened to the shires and boroughs,
after 1066) based on unfree labour services and and meetings became more regular; a ‘model
deliverables in kind to the landlord. parliament’ was summoned in 1295.
March, Mark border region of the Carolingian Patrician, patriciate term applied by modern
Empire with a strong military administration, historians to the social elite in medieval towns,
ruled by a margrave. defined by more or less formal contemporary
Mediatisation devolution of government criteria such as membership of the merchants’
whereby a king or comparable prince leaves guild or ownership of land in the city centre.
the effective exercise of public authority on Popolo political organisation of affluent middle
the regional and/or local level to vassals. classes in Italian city-states.
Miles, pl. milites Latin, knight, mounted Purgatory the state of purification of the soul
warrior or armed horseman. during the time interval between death and
Ministerial knight of unfree status or origin the Final Judgement; in the Middle Ages often
(in the Roman Empire). conceived as a period of temporary punish-
Missi dominici emissary counts and bishops ment for minor sins. The duration of the stay
sent in pairs as inspectors in the Carolingian in Purgatory was thought to be proportional
Empire. to the virtues and devotion of the deceased as
Mozarab Christians in al-Andalus who well as to prayers for his/her soul. A full-blown
adapted their way of life, their language and doctrine of Purgatory was established in the
manner of dress, but not their religion, to the Council of Lyon in 1245.
dominant Arabic culture. Quaestio Latin, literally ‘question’: a fixed
Natural philosophy medieval equivalent of teaching method in higher education from the
modern (natural) science – especially physics, twelfth century on. The pros and cons of pos-
cosmology and biology – which was mainly sible answers to often complicated questions
based on the works of Aristotle. are weighed up systematically using the tech-
Orthodox, orthodoxy Greek for ‘the right nique of logical analysis, before a balanced
belief’, as convened in a council and formu- conclusion is drawn.
lated in its canons. Since the Schism of 1054, Reconquest, Reconquista piecemeal occupa-
applied to eastern Christianity. tion by Christian warriors, from the late tenth
Ostkolonisation, eastward colonisation century to 1492, of those parts of the Iberian
long-term and massive migration movement peninsula that had been in Muslim hands
of west-European settlers into central Europe. since 711.
Pair, peer literally in French: ‘equal’ (to the Regalia Latin, the rights immanently belonging
king). In late medieval France, six bishops and to the king.
six dukes formed the twelve pairs; in England, Reichskirche, imperial Church the policy of
the dukes, earls, viscounts and barons are seen Roman emperors – systematic after the begin-
as peers. ning of the eleventh century – to confer the
Parlement French supreme court, developed secular office of count or duke on (arch-) bish-
from 1261 as the judicial section of the royal ops, thereby integrating the highest clergy
court, formally organised in 1345. In England, closely in secular policies and making their
parliament in the early thirteenth century selection dependent on the emperor.
also referred to extended assemblies assisting Renaissance literally ‘rebirth’, referring to the
the king in the exercise of justice; later, taxa- restoration of classical forms and ideals as
tion and petitions were also dealt with. The these were evoked in imitations of classical

448
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literature or of (supposedly) classical models in Signoria, pl. signorie tyrannical regimes con-
buildings, paintings and sculptures. Modern stituted since the middle of the thirteenth
medieval historians distinguish renaissances century in Italian cities by local noblemen or
in the Carolingian period, in the twelfth, mercenary captains in the service of cities.
and in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. Simony the practice of the buying and selling
Réserve see demesne. of clerical offices, named after Simon in Acts
Sacrament ceremonial and performative acts, 8:18–24.
instituted by the Church and to be admin- Sovereign the highest power, not recognising
istered by priests, by which divine grace is any superior.
dispensed to the worthy believers. The Church Suzerain the highest feudal lord.
gradually formalised seven sacraments, the Syncretism functional fusion of old and new
most relevant being baptism, confession and religious representations and practices.
the Eucharist. Synod regional assembly of bishops (cf. [Church]
Saint, sainthood see holy, holiness. council).
Scholasticism shorthand for the teaching in Templar member of the religious military Order
schools for higher education and universities of the Temple (in Jerusalem).
from the twelfth century onwards. Scholasticism Tenant-in-chief holder of a royal fief in
was characterised by its optimism about the England after 1066. Most fiefs consisted of a
power of human reason, especially in seeing bigger or smaller number of manors (estates),
into theological mysteries. never of public offices (as on the continent).
Seigneur, seigneurial, seignory see banal Tithe share of the harvest, traditionally one-
lordship. tenth, contributed to the Church for the
Sénéchaux royal official in southern France, maintenance of the local priest, local church
responsible for maintaining the king’s prerog- building and the relief of the local poor.
atives, to collect revenues on his behalf and Universitas Latin for guild or corporation,
to organise the administration of justice (cf. including that of teachers and students in
bailiffs, baillis). schools for higher education that were called
Serf, serfdom a shorthand for all sorts of legally studia generalia at the time but which modern
unfree peasants. The typical serf lived on a historians describe as universities.
small farm on the estate of a large landowner; Vassalage see feudal-vassalic relation,
he owed labour service and other deliverables, homagium.
and was subjected to his landlord’s jurisdiction Villein another word for serf, especially in
(cf. Grundherrschaft). England.
Sheriff administrative and judicial official of the Wergeld in Germanic law codes the compensa-
English king in a shire. tion money that had to be paid for killing or
Shire administrative unit of land in Anglo-Saxon severely injuring a person in order to avoid a
England, from the Norman Conquest equiva- blood feud.
lent to county, common on the continent.

449
 Bibliography of
secondary literature

This bibliography of secondary literature is a selec- of Medieval Political Thought, or of Medieval

tion of books (monographs and edited volumes) Philosophy, while various other series extend over
that is biased in two important respects: year of the medieval period, e.g. the last volumes of the
publication and language. What we want to offer Cambridge Ancient History. The easiest way to find
is a sampling of new, often thought-provoking and select articles in journals and edited volumes
works rather than a bouquet of classics. This on medieval history is to make use of the fully
means that hardly any titles that appeared before digitalised International Medieval Bibliography,
1990 have been entered in our list. Moreover, edited by the medieval history department of
because this is a textbook aimed at undergradu- the University of Leeds. It has to be consulted
ates who have English as their first language and via Brepolis, the website for all online projects
only limited knowledge of foreign languages, of Brepols Publishers. Finally, to get a quick idea
the bibliography contains only English titles. We of the supply, content and quality of major new
fully recognise that by this decision we do grave publications in the field of medieval history, one
injustice to the many, many authors, editors and should consult the review pages of top journals,
publishers of high-quality books on medieval his- such as Speculum, or the free internet review site
tory in other languages – French, German, Italian of growing importance, The Medieval Review,
and Spanish for a start. hosted by Indiana University, Bloomington.
Students who want to further explore any In our bibliography, title descriptions are per
theme or subject of medieval history are rec- chapter and in alphabetical order of the authors.
ommended not to stop at our bibliography, Titles appear only once in the bibliography, even if
but also to consult general reference works that their content ranges over more than one chapter.
have not been included. The first that spring to In these cases we chose the most fitting chapter
mind are the awe-inspiring, multi-volume series for a title, so readers should be aware of this limi-
of ‘Histories of (. . .)’, published by Cambridge tation. Furthermore to save space we used UP as a
University Press. Several of these are entirely general abbreviation for ‘University Press’, while
dedicated to the Middle Ages, not just the New the two greatest suppliers of titles, Cambridge
Cambridge Medieval History, but also for exam- University Press and Oxford University Press, were
ple the Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire, shortened to CUP and OUP, respectively.

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to Paradise? (Cambridge: CUP).
Epilogue
Tierney, Brian (1998), Foundations of the Conciliar
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from Gratian to the Great Schism Mary’s Mother: Saint Age (Cambridge MA: MIT Press) (orig. German,
Anne in Late Medieval Europe (Leiden: Brill). 1966).
Tinsley, David F. (2010), The Scourge and the Cross: Ascetic — (1987), The Genesis of the Copernican World
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Van Engen, John (2008), Sisters and Brothers of the Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2008), Provincializing Europe:
Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, 2nd
the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of edn (Princeton: Princeton UP).
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Vauchez, André (1993), The Laity in the Middle Ages: word by Fredric Jameson] (2010), The Legitimacy of
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Vroom, Wim (2010), Financing Cathedral Building (Cambridge: CUP).
in the Middle Ages: The Generosity of the Faithful Mignolo, Walter D. (2011), The Darker Side of Western
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Warnar, Geert (2007), Ruusbroec: Literature and Mysticism (Durham NC: Duke UP).
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Waters, Claire (2004), Angels and Earthly Creatures:
Preaching, Performance, and Gender in the Later Middle
Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press).

474
Index

The index was composed by Tess Hoppenbrouwers MA. Not included are names of persons, peoples, places or
concepts that occur more than 25 times in the main text, so one will look in vain for ‘Anglo-Saxons’, ‘England’ or
‘taxes’. Generally only names of emperors, kings and popes have been provided with the years of their rule. They,
as well as other rulers, including (arch-)bishops and saints have been classified under the first name. Their ranking
is given by hierarchy, number, and the alphabetical order of their principality. Saints have been classified under
their personal name when they appear in the text as historical persons (e.g. Francis of Assisi), under ‘St’ when the
text only refers to their shrine or to their devotion (e.g. St Cuthbert, St James). Unless a person is generally known
after his/her first name (e.g. Dante, Michelangelo), they are to be found under his/her surname, family name
or place-name of origin. Geographical names on maps are included in the index only when they also occur in
the text. References to modern authors are marked with an asterisk (*). Page numbers printed in italic refer to the
text in boxes, plates and the general timeline. Page numbers printed in bold refer to the page in the Glossary, on
which the term is described.

Aachen 91, 111–12, 116, 129, 157, Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya Adrianople 28, 232, 438
249, 368 al-Razi (Rhases) 263 Adrianople, battle of (378) 28,
abacus 271 Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi 433
Abbasid dynasty 83–6, 124, 239, 266 advocate 170
241, 432, 447 Abu Ya’qub Yusuf (1163–1184) 154 Aegidius Romanus see Giles of
ABC of Ordinary People, the Abu Yusuf Ya’qub al-Mansur Rome
(A,B,C, des simples gens) (1184–1199) 154 Aetius, Flavius 33
415 Accursius 286 Afghanistan 28
Abd al-Mu’min (1132–1163) 154 Acre 180, 228–30, 232–3, 235, 237, Africa 7, 17, 21–2, 30, 36, 41, 53,
Abd ar-Rahman I, emir of Córdoba 239, 438 67, 85, 153, 224, 235, 260, 424
124 Act of Abjuration 394 Africa, East 8
Abd ar-Rahman III, caliph of acta of councils 65 Africa, North 4, 7, 31, 36, 44, 54,
Córdoba (929–961) 124 Adalbero, bishop of Laon 185, 207 80, 122, 124, 153–5, 236, 239,
Abélard, Peter 275, 277–80, 292, Adalbert, bishop of Prague 247, 254, 272, 316, 320, 432
348 (Vojtech-) 75–6 Africa, West 236, 239, 254, 434
abbot 56, 62–4, 70–1, 95, 110, 114, Adam of Bremen 70 ager 17
130, 134, 138, 148, 150, 160, adelantado (Spanish governor) 160 Agincourt, battle of (1415) 363,
190, 192, 194, 200, 204, 207, Adelard of Bath (c.1070–1150) 273 441
270, 352 Adelheid, wife of Otto I 133 agrarian, agricultural production,
Abu-Abbas al Saffah, caliph of Adelsheiligen 90 produce (-economy) 1, 4, 24,
Bagdad (750–754) 84 Adelskirche 74 41, 57, 98, 104, 110, 165, 176,

475
 INDE X

186, 221, 238, 256, 333, 338, Alexander VI, pope (1492–1503) Andalusia, al-Andalus 124, 153–5,
340, 342, 357, 366, 392, 397 193, 294 302, 443, 448
Agricola, Rudolf (1444–1485) Alexander ‘Nevsky’, prince of Andorra 359
296 Moscow 11 André the Chaplain 186
Agrippa, Marcus Vipsanius 25 Alexandria 53, 60, 65, 67, 223, Ane (goddess) 77
aid and relief 148 227, 239, 241, 244, 250 Angelico (fra) 412
Aigues-Mortes (harbour) 235 Alexius I Comnenus, emperor angelology (scholarly study of
Ailly, Pierre d’ 406 (1081–1118) 223 angels) 262
Al Abbas, vizier of Caliph Al-Zafir Alföld (Hungarian steppe) 29, 31, Angevin Empire 142, 163, 177, 362
231 33–4 Anglia 38, 40, 73, 342
al-Andalus, see Andalusia Alfonso I, king of Aragon anima (soul) 261
al-Azhar, mosque 85, 224 (1104–1134) 154 Anjou (county) 142, 149, 400;
al-Hakam II, caliph of Córdoba Alfonso III, king of Asturias (empire of) see Angevin Empire;
(961–967) 153 (866–910) 76 (house of) 148, 370, 372, 400
al-Hakim, Fatimid caliph at Cairo Alfonso VI, king of León and Ankara 8; battle of 380
(996–1021) 85, 195, 209, 224, Castile (1072–1109) 154 annona 21–2 see also
434 Alfonso VII, king of León and iugatio-capitatio
al-Khwarizmi, Abu Abdallah Castile (1126–1157) 393 anointing (of kings) 133, 157
Muhammad (d. c.850) 273 Alfonso VIII, king of Castile Anselm of Aosta, St (1033–1109),
al-Majusi, Ali ibn Abbas (Haly (1158–1214) 154, 304 archbishop of Canterbury 276–7
Abbas) 263 Alfonso IX, king of León anti-clericalism 138, 408–9, 411
al-murabitun (Berber tribes) 154 (1188–1230) 393 antinomianism 410
al-Mutasim, caliph of Baghdad Alfred the Great, king of Wessex Antioch (city and principality) 47,
(833–842) 84 (871–899) 76, 93, 118, 125, 147, 60, 62, 65, 67, 228–30, 234,
al-Qaddisya, battle of (637) 80 159, 435 239; Antioch (patriarch of) 227
al-Qahira see Cairo Algiers 154 anti-Semitism see Jews
al-Qurashi, ibn al-Nafis 267 Alhazen (Ibn al-Haitham) 267 Antwerp 243, 249, 253, 300, 303,
al-Tabarî (d. 923) 224 Ali, Almoravid emir 154 343, 345, 424–5
al-Zafir, caliph of Egypt 231 Ali, first cousin of Mohammed 83 apanages 361
Alamans 33, 35, 38, 40, 108, 133 All Souls’ Day 199 Apulia 44, 175, 221, 331
Alans 27, 29–31, 432 Almeira 230 Aquinas, see Thomas
Alaric I, leader of the Goths 28–31 Almohads 154–5, 237, 436 Aquitania 31
Albania 47, 236, 377–80 Almoravids 154, 436 Arabia 6, 80, 83
Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus) alms 83–4, 206, 213, 315, 319, Aragon (kingdom) 145, 155–6,
266, 287, 418 355–6, 417–18; see also poor 160, 171, 173, 185, 196, 316,
Albi 145 relief 351, 360, 370–1, 384–6, 391,
Albigensian Crusade (1208) 145, Alsace 317, 396 393–6, 400
208, 436–7 Althing (Iceland’s general Aragon, Castile and León, union of
Albornoz, Gil 406 assembly) 92 (1469) 371
Albrecht of Mecklenburg, king of Amalfi 44, 180, 222, 226, 238–9 Arc, Joan of 348, 363, 441
Sweden 372 Amals 35 Arcadius 22, 28–30
alcalde 386 Amandus, St 72 archbishop (official) 60
Alcántara, Order of the Knights Ambrose, bishop of Milan archdeacon (official) 60
of 202 (374–397) 54, 65 Archimedes 273
alcázar 153 America 7 Ardennes 88, 106
aldermen (scabini) 93, 187, 305–6, amir al-umara 85 Ardres 172
311; see also jurati Amore, De 186 Arezzo 293
Alemannia 106 Amsterdam 249, 301 Arianism, Arians 36, 39, 44, 67–8,
Aleppo 8, 47, 229, 234, 241 Anabaptists 426 443
Alexander II, pope (1061–1073) Anagni 400 Aristotelian logic 272–8, 297
195, 417 Anarchy, the 149 Aristotle 262–3, 266–7, 273–8,
Alexander III, pope (1159–1181) Anatolia 47, 69, 85, 225, 228, 380 285–90, 292–3, 298, 345, 401,
198, 436 Andachtsbilder 416, 418 448

476
 I NDE X

Arius 67 Aurillac, Gerbert of 133, 271, bannus, bannum (royal prerogative)

Arles 42, 54 274–5; see also pope Silvester II 170, 172, 443
Armagnacs 363, 441 Austrasia 105–6, 433 baptism 51, 57–8, 62, 68, 71–4,
Armenia(n) 47, 67, 71, 84–5, 225 Austria 33, 108, 116, 136, 216, 233, 139, 211, 289, 403, 449
Armenia Minor 230 304, 341, 352, 374, 397 Barcelona, city 82, 108, 124, 154–6,
Armenian Church 227 Auxerre 150 186, 196, 236, 247, 251, 316, 371
Arno (river) 245, 250 Auxerre, Heiric of 93 Barcelona, county 98, 156, 173,
Árpád clan, Árpáds 141, 372 avaritia (greed) 355 370, 436; see also Spanish
Arras 101, 305, 363; (Peace of) Avars 34, 40, 45, 74–5, 91, 102, March
(1435) 363, 441 108, 433 Bardi (family) 243–4, 251, 253
Arslan, Kilij, sultan of the Rum Averroës (Ibn Rushd) (1126–1198) Bari 44, 223, 436
Seljuks 228 273, 288 Barnes, Timothy* 52
artes liberales 269, 296–8, 443 Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (980–1039) baronage, barons, English higher
artes mechanicae (mechanical arts) 263–4, 287 nobility 148–9, 151–2, 179,
269, 296, 323, 443 Avignon 153, 243–4, 251, 293, 184–5, 187, 196, 363, 366,
Arthur, king 11, 183; Arthurian 366, 369, 400–1, 405–6, 412, 393–4, 448
romance 183 421, 438 Bar-sur-Aube 249
article letters 352 ayudas 391 Basil I, emperor (867–886) 60, 64
Artois 142, 246, 256, 361, 366, Ayyubids 232–3, 239, 241 Basil II, emperor (963–1025) 47–8,
381, 441 Azzo d’Este 140 223, 434
Ascalon 230 basilica 9, 19, 43, 111, 133, 136,
Ashtor, Eliyahu* 253 Babenberg, House of 136 191, 193, 198, 204, 214
Attila, khan of Huns 26, 32–3 baccalaureus 287 Basle, council of 440
as-Salih, Ayyubid ruler of Syria 233 Bacon, Roger 290–1 Basques, Basque country 38, 72,
assassins see hashîhiyûn Badajoz 154 108, 124, 182
astrolabe 271 Baghdad 8, 84–6, 96, 124, 153–4, battles 160
astrology 260 224–5, 237, 239, 241, 432, 436, Batu, grandson of Chinggis Khan
Asturias 76, 124 438 242, 376
Athanagild, Visigothic king, father bailiff, bailli, baljuw 162, 311, 354, Bavaria, Bavarians, Bavarii 38, 58,
of Brunhild 105 443, 449 72, 74, 106, 108, 112, 130, 133,
Athaulf 29 baillages 162 136–7, 360, 366, 381, 397, 402
Athos, Mount 64, 379 Baldwin I, king of Jerusalem Bayeux Tapestry 147, 167, 179
auctoritas (in intellectual life) 266, (1100–1118) 228 Bayezid I, Ottoman sultan
273, 277, 348 Baldwin II, emperor of (1389–1402) 380
Audiencia, royal court of justice in Constantinople (1228–1261) bayles 230
Spain 386 416 Beauvais 215, 308
Audientia, papal court of justice Balearics 316, 371 Becket, see Thomas Becket
197, 405 Baltic (Sea) 76, 102, 129, 195, 215, Bede, the Venerable 73, 270, 433
Aue, Hartmann von 183 237, 304, 376, 424 Bedouin 80, 83–4
Augsburg, Religious Peace of 367 Balts 76, 222 beguines, beguinages 203, 346,
augustalis see coinage Bamberg 135, 214 409–11
Augustine (d. c.605), archbishop of ban, papal see interdict Beijing 8
Canterbury 60, 73, 105, 433 banal lordship 161, 170–3, 175, Beirut 45, 229
Augustine (354–430), bishop of 177–8, 207, 210, 443, 444, 449; belfort, belfry 315
Hippo 51, 58–9, 62, 65–8, 71, see also (local) lordship Bench (Court) of Common Pleas
202, 208–9, 266, 269, 294, 409, banal revolution 110, 169–70, 172 162, 388
432 Bangor 63 Benedict of Norcia 63, 432, 443
Augustine, monastic rule of 202 banking business 230, 238, 251, Benedictine Rule 61, 63, 198, 200,
Augustinian (Austin) canons 202, 253, 400; see also credit business 204
409 banlieu 310, 443 Benedictines 63
Augustinian (Austin) hermits, friars banneret 184 benefice, beneficium (feudal) 110,
206, 426 Bannockburn, battle of (1314) 383, 114, 115, 305, 443; (church)
augustus 15, 17 439 405, 415, 443

477
 INDE X

Benevento/um (dukedom) 34, 108, 280, 282, 287–8, 291, 386, 400, Bruges 245, 249, 251, 253, 257,
134; (town) 134 436 303, 305, 331, 350, 416
Bengal, bay of 8 Bonaventura 288 Bruges, Galbert of 144
Beowulf 11, 90, 103 Boniface, archbishop of Mainz Brunelleschi, Filippo 295
Berbers 84–5, 122, 154, 436 (674–754) 58, 61, 63, 72, 432 Brunhild, queen of Austrasia 105–6
Berengar, Margrave of Ivrea 133 Boniface IV, pope (608–615) 77 Bruni, Leonardo of Arezzo
Berenguela, queen of Castile 393 Boniface VIII, pope (1294–1303) (Aretino) 293–4
Berg (county) 360 399–401, 438 Bruno of Cologne 132, 202
Bergen (Norway) 247 bonum commune 314 Bruno of Egisheim, bishop of Toul
Bergen-op-Zoom 249, 343 Book of Hours 414 see Pope Leo IX
Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) Book of Kells 64 Brussels 321, 426
180, 200–1, 275, 277, 280, 412, Book of Lives of the Saints 70 Budapest 10
436 books on nature (libri naturales) Buffalmacco 332
Bernardine of Siena, St 356, 415 285, 288 Bukhara 241
Bertrand, bishop of Le Mans 95 bookkeeping 252, 303 Bulgar, market of 104
Bertrand du Poujet, cardinal 406 Bordeaux 119, 145 Bulgaria 28, 46–7, 60, 75, 376, 380
Beurse, van der (family) 251 Borgia, Cesare 294 Bulgars 35, 45–7, 433, 437; Bulgars,
bezant loans 230 Boris, khan of the Bulgars 74 khan(ates) of 74
Béziers 145 boroughs 135, 149, 395, 448 bull, papal 400, 444; Cum inter
Bible, teaching of 280, 297; Bosch, Hieronymous 419 nonnullos (1323) 206; Dictatus
translation of 27, 368, 411, 413, Boserup, Esther* 338 Papae 191, 400; Exercrabilis 407;
426 Bosnia 141, 236, 372, 381 Licet ecclesiarum (1265) 405;
Bijns, Anna (1493–1575) 346 Boston (English town) 247 Non parum animus noster (1171)
bill of exchange 238, 251–2 Botticelli, Sandro 294 76; Parens scientiarium 281;
Birka 102, 104, 121 Bougie 230, 239, 247 Unam Sanctam (1302) 400
bishopric 53, 55, 59–61, 71, 75, 94, Boulogne, House of 227 Bumke, Joachim* 181
134, 141, 190, 192, 310, 443 Bourges 207, 321, 363 Burckhardt, Jacob* 3, 292
Bithynia 379–80 Bouvines, battle of 145, 437 bureaucracy, -tisation 4, 17, 19, 46,
Black Death 209, 241, 331–41, 351, Brabant (duchy) 187, 237, 243, 59, 84, 89, 161, 312, 367, 380,
356 246, 249, 256, 283, 324, 394–6, 388–9, 405, 421
Black Prince (Edward), son of 419 burgher culture, mentality 319,
Edward III 362 Brabant, Siger of 288 349
Blackbirds (Kosovo), battles on Bracciolini, Poggio 356 Burgundians, people 31, 33, 36,
Field of the 374, 380, 441 bracteate 103 38–40, 363, 433; Burgundians
Blanche of Valois, wife of Charles Bracton, Henry 386 (Bourguignons), party 441
IV 368 Brandenburg 367, 397, 418 Burgundy, county (Franche-Comté)
Blickle, Peter* 352 Braudel, Fernand* 423–4 130, 137, 361
Bobbio 63, 199 Breda 324 Burgundy, duchy 146, 184, 198,
Boccaccio, Giovanni 293, 347, 409 Bremen (city) 108, 180, 237 200–1, 206, 249, 361, 363, 366,
boendr 91–2 Bremen-Hamburg (archbishopric 395, 403, 441
Boethius, Anicius 93, 274–5 of) 70, 74 Burgundy, House of 360, 381, 441
Bogeslav of Pommern see Erik, Brenner (route) 135, 246 Burgundy, kingdom 33, 105–6,
king of Denmark, Norway and Brethren and Sisters of the 129, 134
Sweden Common Life 409; see also burhs 118
Bohemia(ns) 75, 122, 133, 135, Modern Devotion Buridan, John (c.1292–1358) 268,
141, 254, 282, 335, 349, 360, Brethren of the Sword (Order of) 289–90
367–8, 372, 374, 382, 384, 389, 237 Bury St Edmunds 158, 249
393, 396, 404, 435, 441 Bridgettines (Order of) 409 Buyids 85
Bohemond of Taranto 227–8 Britons, people 33, 94 Bynum, Caroline Walker* 412, 420
Bois-le-Duc see ’s-Hertogenbosch Brittany 33, 38, 77, 108, 146, 150, Byock, J.* 92
Boleslaw, king of Poland 141, 183, 360, 397, 408 Byzantium 7, 43, 47–8, 55, 103,
435 Brooke, C.* 277 193, 221–2, 226, 230, 233–4,
Bologna 137–8, 150, 204, 263, 272, Brown, Peter* 55, 82 236, 238–9, 257, 377

478
 I NDE X

caballeros villanos 157, 179 capitano del Popolo 311 cathedral school see schools
caesar (rank) 15–17, 52, 376, 444 capitatio 21 Catherine of Siena 413, 418
Caesar, Julius 25, 271 capitulare, -laria, capitulary, -laries Catholicism 36, 50, 71–2, 433, 446
Caesarea 239 61, 112–13, 115, 118, 125, 444; Caucasus, mountain range 8, 47
Caesarius, bishop of Arles 58 Admonitio Generalis 112, 270 Cavalca, fra Domenico 332
Caesarius of Heisterbach 211–12 Capua 134 cavalcata (cavalry) 172
caesaropapism, caesaropapist 54, Capua, Raymond of 413 Celestine V, pope (1294) 399
60, 86, 399, 444 Carcassonne 9 celibacy, clerical 58–9, 134, 180,
Caetani, Benedetto see Boniface cardinal (office), college of 189
VIII cardinals 191, 196–7, 405, 444 Cellarius, Cristophorus 2
Caffa (Kaffa) 236 cardinal virtues see virtues Celts, Celtic (culture, languages)
Cairo 85–6, 153, 222, 223–4, 231, Carinthia 74, 129, 397 25, 38, 77
234, 239, 241, 267, 335, 434 caritas 50 centenarius (hundredman) 170
Calabria 31, 36, 44, 175, 221, 224 Carloman, son of Charles Martel ceorls 91
Calatrava, battle of Campo de 154; 72, 106–7, 110 Cesena, Michael of 206
Order of the Knights of 202 Carloman, son of Pippin the Short Ceuta 154, 230, 247
Calcidius 274 107–8 Ceylon 242
caliphs 80 Carmelites, Order of 206 Chalkidiki 378
Callistus III 196 Carolingian dynasty 106–7, 130, Chalon-sur-Saône 249
Calvin, John 420 433; see also Pippinid dynasty Champagne (county) 142, 173,
Cambrai 308, 406 Carolingian Empire 51, 61, 75–6, 207; fairs of 246, 249–50, 253
Cambridge 282, 284, 305, 437 92–4, 98, 112–15, 119, 121, chancery (cancellaria), chancellor
Camera Apostolica (Apostolic 125, 170, 172, 443, 448 (cancellarius) 36, 112, 197,
Chamber) 197, 250, 405 Carolingian Renaissance see 280–2, 291, 389, 405, 444
camerarius (papal treasurer) 197 Renaissance Chang’an 243
Camille, Michael* 420 Carpathians, the 141 Chanson de Roland (Song of
Campbell, Bruce* 331 Carpentras 320 Roland) 108, 179
cancellaria see chancery carpet-weaving 153 chansons de geste 182–3
cancellarius (papal chancellor) 197 Carpi, Jacopo Berengario da 264 chapter (of canons) 61, 444;
Candia 235 Carthage 31 chapter (of monks and friars)
Candlemas 133 Carthusians, Order of 200, 202, 202, 204, 272, 444; chapter
cannon 383–4 408–9 school see schools
canon, canoness (clerics) 59, 62, casa indominicata (house of the Charles I the Great (Charlemagne),
409, 444 lord) 97 king of the Franks and Italy,
canon law see law Casa Santa, Nazareth 416 emperor (768–814) 41, 107–8,
canones (Church’s rules) 59 Casimir III the Great, king of 110–11, 124
canonical election (of bishops) Poland (1333–1370) 374 Charles II the Bald, king of the
190–2, 198 Caspian Sea 85, 104, 375; Caspian West Franks, emperor (840–877)
canonisation 70, 207, 418, 444, 446 steppe 27, 85, 334 101, 116–17, 120, 271, 435
Canossa 135, 192 Cassiodorus 36 Charles III the Fat, king of the
Canterbury 151, 158–9, 282, 301, castellanus, castellans, castellani East Franks and Italy, emperor
345, 418 170, 173, 444 (876–888) 115, 117, 435
Canterbury Tales 345 Castile 156, 160, 172–3, 179, 236, Charles IV of Luxemburg, emperor
Canute see Cnut 257, 283, 341, 343, 361, 370–1, (1346–1378) 367–9, 372, 374,
Cape of Good Hope 8 386–7, 390, 392–3, 396–7, 427, 396, 439
Capella, Martianus 269, 271 438, 447 Charles V, king of Spain, emperor
Capetian dynasty 142, 145–7, 435 Castile-León (double kingdom) (1516/1519–1556) 41, 314,
capital virtues see virtues 360, 394, 438 367, 370–1, 374, 381, 393, 426,
capitalism, capitalist mentality Castle Combe 342 440–1
253, 425; commercial Catalaunian Fields, battle at 33 Charles III the Simple, king of the
capitalism 9, 238, 255, Catharism 183, 208 West Franks (893–929) 120
425–6, 429; see also commercial Cathars 145, 202–3, 207–8, 384, Charles V, king of France
revolution 420, 426 (1364–1380) 347, 439

479
 INDE X

Charles VI, king of France civitas, civitates 17 Colmar 116

(1380–1422) 363, 441 Civitate Dei, de, La Cité de Dieu, The Cologne, archbishopric 132, 138,
Charles VII, king of France City of God 65–6 360, 367, 397, 412; city 10, 38,
(1422–1461) 363, 384, 441 clans, urban 27, 311, 314 71, 216, 251, 280, 282, 287–8,
Charles VIII, king of France Clara of Montefalco, St 264 303, 323, 330, 346, 409, 418
(1483–1498) 336, 370 Clare of Assisi, St 204 colonisation 33, 75, 169, 195,
Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily Clarendon, Constitutions of 151 229–30, 235–7, 272, 338,
and Naples (1266–1285) class struggle 353 424, 426; see also hospites;
139–40, 384, 438 Claudian (Claudius Claudianus) 31 Ostkolonisation; (land)
Charles the Good, count of Clement IV, pope (1265–1268) 405 reclamation
Flanders 144 Clement V, pope (1305–1314) Colonna, family 293; Sciarra 401
Charles of Valois 362 400–1 colonus 21, 43
Charles Martel, mayor of the Clement VI, pope (1342–1345) 405 Columbanus 63, 433
palace 72, 106, 108, 110, 124, Clement VII, pope (1378–1394) 406 Columbus, Christopher 7, 424, 440
433 clerus (clergy) 57 comes (Roman title) 19, 445; see
Charles-Robert (Carobert) of Clinton, Lord 344 also count
Anjou, king of Hungary cloth, production and trade 101, Comestor, Peter 286
(1310–1342) 184, 372 230, 241, 246, 250–1, 255, 257, comitatus, pl. comitatenses 23, 27,
Chartres 10, 215 301, 320, 324, 341–2, 345–6, 137, 445
Chartres, Bernard of 266–7 391; see also wool commendatio 114, 447; see also
Château-Gaillard 145 Clovis, king of Franks (481–511) homagium
Chaucer, Geoffrey 345 23, 35–6, 38–9, 71–2, 104, 197, commercial revolution 237–8
Chauliac, Guy de 264 433 common law see law
Chelles 69 Cluny 82, 190, 198–200, 202, 207, Commons, House of 185, 341;
cheque 153, 230, 251–2 434 see also Parliament
Chester 118, 445 Cnut, Canute the Great, king of commune, community (in towns)
chiefdom 25, 27, 38, 90–1, 110, Denmark, Norway and England 140, 211, 292, 302–5, 308–12,
121, 125, 444 (1016–1035) 74, 121, 147, 315, 367, 401, 444
Childebert, son of Brunhild 105 158–9, 272, 435 communion 414, 444
Childeric, father of Clovis 23, 38 Coblenz 303 community of the vill (village)
Childeric III, king of the Franks coca (ship type) 245 187–8
107 Cockaigne, Cockayne, land of 330 Comnenus dynasty 223, 436
Chilperic I, king of Neustria Codex Justinianus 45; see also Corpus complexio 261, 444
(561–584) 105–6 Iuris Civilis concejo (municipal council) 361
China 5, 7–9, 206, 236, 238, Codex Theodosianus 44, 45, 432 Conches, William of 274
241–3, 251–2, 333–4, 376, cog (ship type) 102, 245 Concilium Germanicum 61, 110
423–5, 428 Cohn, Samuel* 353 conclave 191
Chinggis Khan, great khan of coinage, coins, monetisation 18, condottiere 383
Mongols (1206–1227) 11, 376, 21, 38, 94, 99, 104, 122, 244, confession 57–8, 198, 211–12,
241–2, 436 249, 251–3, 363, 394; augustalis 269, 279, 367, 403, 414–15,
Chios 236 254; bezant Byzantine gold 417, 449
chivalry see knighthood coin 230, 254; denarius (denier, Confessiones 65
Chlotar II, king of the Franks penny) 101–2; dinar Arabian confraternities (religious) 419
105–6 gold coin 254; dirham 103–4; Congregatio Hollandiae 408
Chrodegang, bishop of Metz 63 ducat/ducato, genovino, fiorino Congregation of Windesheim 409
Church of the Holy Wisdom see 252, 254; sceatta 101; silver coin coniuratio (sworn society) 308;
Hagia Sophia 16, 102–3, 118, 120, 287, see also commune
Cicero 271, 292–4, 391 389–90; solidus gold coin Conques 209
Cilicia 47 22,101 Conrad, duke of Lorraine
ciompi revolt 353, 440 Colettines (Order of) 409 (922–955) 132
Cistercians (Order of) 75–6, 200–2, College, Collège des Dix-Huit; Conrad II, Roman king
208, 212–13, 280, 444 Collège de Sorbonne 285; (1024–1039) 132, 134–5,
Cîteaux 200–2, 436 see also Merton College 435, 437

480
 I NDE X

Conrad III of Hohenstaufen, Corvinus, Mathias, king of Second Crusade 75, 142, 232,
Roman king (1138–1152) 136 Hungary (1458–1490) 374 436; Third Crusade 142, 233,
Conrad IV (1250–1254) 139 Cosini, Silvio 265 390, 436; Fourth Crusade 233,
Conrad of Hohenstaufen 393 Costanza, heiress to Sicily 137 273, 416, 436; Fifth Crusade
Conradin (of Hohenstaufen) 139 cotton 153, 224, 241, 255, 369 436; Sixth Crusade 233;
consolamentum 208 council, ecclesiastical 61, 64–5, Seventh Crusade 235; Eight
Constance, Peace of 137 197, 445; Conciliar movement Crusade 235
Constans II, emperor (641–668) 406–7; Council of Basle Cumans see (Kipchaq) Turks
46, 432 (1431–1449) 407, 440; Council curia (city council), curiales (city
Constantine the Great, emperor of Chalcedon (451) 67, 432; councillors) 18–19, 21; Curia
(306–337) 2, 17–18, 43–4, 46, Council of Clermont (1095) (papal) 190, 197, 204, 356,
51–5, 59, 61, 65, 68, 76, 133, 194, 227; Council of Constance 405–6, 444–5
139, 193, 274, 432; see also (1414–1418) 407, 426, 440; cursor biblicus 287
Donation of Constantine Council of Lateran, First (649) cursus publicus 18–19
Constantine V Kopronymos, 61, 432; Council of Lateran, curtis 97, 447; see also manor
emperor (741–775) 46, 69 Second (1139) 189; Council of Cusanus, Kues, Nicholas of Cusa
Constantine VII, emperor Lateran, Third (1179) 198, 230, 193, 292, 407
(913–959) 47 436; Council of Lateran, Fourth Customs of Barcelona (Usatges de
Constantine XI, emperor (1215) 159, 198, 233, 276, 387, Barcelona) 186
(1449–1453) 381 414–15, 417, 436; Council of customary law see law
Constantine the African 287 Nicaea (325) 60–1, 414, 432; Cyprus 47, 67, 230, 232–3, 235,
Constantinople, fall of 2, 55, 376, Council of Nicaea, Second (787) 244, 321
381, 384, 440 61; Council of Sardica (343) 59 Cyril 75
Constantius II, emperor (337–361) count (office-holder) 104, 110, Czech(s) 372, 411; see also
18, 43, 68 113–15, 125, 445 Bohemia; Czech Republic 122,
Constantius Chlorus, caesar 15, 17 county (district) 93, 112–13, 115, 141, 368–9
consuetudines, malae 170, 187 160, 256, 445
Consulate of the Sea (consulado del Courson, Robert of 281 Dacia, Boetius of 288
mar) 247, 371 courtliness (courtoisie) 181, 186 Dagobert I Frankisch king
contado, pl. contadi 137, 140, 318 courtly culture, literature, love 3, (623–639) 72, 106
convent 204, 315–16, 346, 354, 181–3, 186–8, 429 Dalmatia 196, 236, 335, 372
409, 444 Courtrai (Kortrijk) 350; Battle of Damascus 8, 80, 85, 124, 229, 232,
conventuals see Franciscans Golden Spurs at 323, 383, 439 234, 241, 267, 432
conversi see lay brothers Cracow 320, 343 Damasus I, pope (366–384) 60
conversos 124, 447 Crécy, battle of (1346) 362, 383, Damietta 233, 235
coopvrouw (female merchant) 346 439 Damme 304
Copernicus, Nikolaus 267–8 credentes (Cathars) 208 Danegeld 118, 120, 390, 435, 445
Coptic Church 67, 227 credit business 208; see also bill of Danelaw 118, 445
copyhold 341, 444 exchange; monti di pietà Danes 74, 116, 118
Corbie 74 credo, creed 414 Danevirke 121
Córdoba (emirate, since 929 Cremona, Gerard of 273 danse macabre (dance of death)
caliphate) 125, 153–4, 173, 432, Crete 47, 235, 321 337, 343
434; city 124, 153–4, 156, 224, Crimea 236, 330, 334 Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) 293,
300, 438 Crispus, son of Constantine 52 312, 438
Cornwall 38, 80, 256, 342 Croatia 141, 196, 372 Danzig (Gdansk) 303–4, 374, 423
coronation (ritual) 111, 129, 194, Crown of Thorns 369, 416 Dar al-Islam 82–3
214, 367, 402, 445–6 crown vassals, royal vassals 95, Dar al-Harb 82
corporati 21 115, 148, 160, 162, 173–4, Datini, Francesco 251
Corpus Christi (Church festival) 416 360–1; see also tenants-in-chief; Dauphiné 396
Corpus Iuris Civilis 44–5, 286, 432 vassi dominici/regis deacon 57, 59, 184, 189, 191, 409
Corsica 44, 196, 239, 314, 371 crusades: Albigensian Crusade 145, deaconries 55
cortes see representative institutions 208, 436–7; First Crusade 9, Decameron 293, 409
Corvey 74, 200 180, 195, 207–8, 227–8, 436; decima regalis (royal tithe) 110

481
 INDE X

decretists 286 Douai 323 enfeoffment 149, 160–1, 174–5,

Decretum Gratiani (c.1140) 196, 286 Dracula, Vlad (the impaler) 374 179, 361, 445
decuriones see curia drapers, drapery 254, 307, 324 Enlightenment, the 10
Defensor Pacis 352, 402 Druses 226 epidemics, epidemic diseases 8,
Dei gratia, formula 159 Dubrovnik, Ragusa 236, 335, 359 16, 42, 88, 333, 335–6, 339,
deification 411 Duby, George* 110 343, 357, 423; see also Black
deforestation 168 Du Cange, Charles du Fresne, Death
Della Scala see Scaligeri seigneur 2 Epiphanius, bishop of Cyprus 67
demesne 94, 97, 148, 175–6, 178, ducat see coinage, gold Epirus 28, 377–8
256, 308, 333, 341, 392, 444–5 Duisburg 249 epizootic 333–4
demonisation (of women) 348 duke (office) 38, 91, 104, 106, 121, Erasmus, Desiderius 297, 356, 426,
denarius see coinage, silver 130, 138, 141, 148, 161, 173, 440
Denmark 75–8, 118–21, 147, 184, 190, 207, 360, 362, 367, Erfurt 282, 290
158–9, 175, 196, 288, 360, 445; duchy, dukedom 34, 130, ergotism see St Anthony’s Fire
371–2, 391, 393, 397, 400, 435 161, 163, 169, 173, 445 Erik VII, king of Denmark, Norway
Desiderius, bishop of Vienne 105 duma 377 and Sweden (Bogeslav of
Deventer 249, 409 Dürer, Albrecht (1471–1528) 296 Pommern) (1389–1412–1439)
Devon 342 Durham 209, 342 371–2
dhimma, dhimmi 124, 226 eschatology 262, 414
diaconiae see deaconries earl 147–8 Eschenbach, Wolfram von 183
Dialogue about Miracles 211–12 East Anglia 38, 40, 73, 342 esprit de corps 179, 285
Dictatus Papae (1075) see bull, East Friesland 359 Essex 38, 351
papal Ecgfrith, son of Offa of Mercia 118 Estates (General) see representative
diet 137, 445; see also Roncaglia; Echternach 106, 171, 200 institutions; estates, orders 93
Speyer; Worms Eckhart, Meister 411–12 Este (family) 369
diocese 59–60, 134, 140, 190–1, ecumenical councils see councils Estonians 76
280; see also bishopric, parish Edda 102 Esztergom 301
Diocletian, Roman emperor Edessa 8, 228–9, 232, 436 ethica (moral philosophy) 269
(284–305) 15–19, 21–22, 46, Edington (battle) 118 Ethica Nicomachaea 285
52, 68 Edward the Confessor, king of Ethiopia 6, 71
Dionysius the Areopagite (Pseudo-) England (1042–1066) 147 ethnogenesis 34, 445
262, 271 Edward I Longshanks, king of Etymologiae 269
disputatio 274, 287, 445 England (1272–1307) 235, 390, Euboia 235
dogma, Christian 55, 61, 67–8, 80, 439 Eucharist 57, 67, 210–11, 275–6,
86, 206, 210–11, 275–6, 286, Edward II, king of England 403, 410, 413, 449
290; Muslim 83 (1307–1327) 331, 394, 439 Eucherius, son of Stilicho 30
domain see manor Edward III, king of England Euclid (323–283 BC) 262, 273
Domesday Book 147, 149, 164, 437 (1327–1377) 184, 253, 333, 341, Eugene III, pope (1145–1153) 75
Dominic Guzman, St Dominicus 362, 391, 404, 439 Eugene IV, pope (1431–1447)
203 Edward, the Black Prince 362 407
Dominicans (Order of) 203, 206, Einhard 111, 270 Eunapius 52
208, 266, 280, 288, 290, 332, Eiximenes, Francesch, Friar 371 European miracle, the 238
409, 425 Elbe Marches 129 Eusebius of Caesarea 52
dominium (of Church) 404; see also Elblag, Elbing 304 evangelical 203, 352, 427
(local) lordship Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen of exactiones see tallia
Donation of Constantine (Donatio France, queen of England 11, exarch 44
Constantini) 193–4, 196, 292 142, 149–50 Exchequer 161, 163, 388, 445
Donatus, Donatism 68 Emma of Normandy, queen of excommunication 136, 138, 196,
donjon see keep England, mother of Edward the 403, 444, 445
dooms 38, 118, 445 Confessor 147 exemption, privilege of 57, 199,
Dordrecht 303, 323 empyreum 259 256, 388, 446
Dorestad 102, 104, 119–20, 171 encellulement 169 exorcist 57
Dorset 118 enclosure movement 341 expectancies 405

482
 I NDE X

Eyck, Jan van 296 Florentine Platonism 294 Galen, Galenos, Claudius of
Ezzelino da Romano 140 florin see coinage, gold Pergamum 262–264, 268, 273,
foedus, foedera, foederati 23, 28, 31, 287, 425
fabliaux 186 33, 49, 433 Galerius, Roman caesar 15
factor (trade representative) 250–1 fondaco see funduq Galla Placidia 29–30
faculty 280–1, 288, 290 Fontenay (abbey) 200–1 galley (ship type) 239, 245, 250,
fair price theory 253 Fossier, Robert* 169 381
fairs, annual (and cycles of) 101, Franche-Comté see Burgundy Gallican Church 297
247–51, 343 (county) Garter, Order of the 184
falsafa 266 Francia (Gaul) 40, 61, 63, 74, 91, Gascony 38, 145
Famagusta 244 111, 116–17, 120–1, 132, 435 gastalds 38
famine 99, 315, 319, 329–331, 333, Francis of Assisi 204, 426; see also Gauls see Celts
335–6, 338, 357; see also the Franciscans Gaza 53
Great Famine Franciscans, Order of 203–7, 288, Gdansk see Danzig
faramanni 39 290, 319, 403–4, 409, 425, 436; Gediminas, ruler of Lithuania 375;
Faro 156 conventual Franciscans 206; Gediminid dynasty 375
Faroes 158 Second Order of 204; spiritual Geel 210
Fatima, daughter of Mohammed Franciscans 206, 403–4; Third Gefolgschaft 27, 72, 90, 444, 446
83 Order of 205 Gelasius I, pope (492–496) 54, 56,
Fatimids, Fatimid empire 85, 124, Franconia (Frankenland) 130, 136, 432
224–5, 239, 434, 436 353 Generalitat 371
Feckenham Forest 169 Frankenhausen 352–3 Geneva 249, 251, 268, 343
Feoda Campanie 173 Frankfurt (am Main) 249, 251, 303, genovino see coinage, gold
Feodor, son of tsar Ivan the 343, 349 gens d’armes 384
Terrible 376 Frederick I Barbarossa, Roman gentry 185, 343
Ferdinand II, king of Aragon and king, emperor (1152–1190) 129, Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of
Sicily 371, 440 136–7, 140–2, 196, 232, 282, Anjou and Touraine 149
Fermo 135 309, 386, 437 geography, the 261
Fernando I, king of Aragon Frederick II, Roman king, emperor Georgia 47, 71, 85, 381
(1412–1416) 370 (1215–1250) 41, 133, 137–40, Gepids 34–5
Ferrara 140, 291, 296, 360, 369, 198, 233, 254, 273, 388, 436–8 German Order see Teutonic Order
407 Frederick the Wise, elector of Germania 25–6; Germania Secunda
Ferrer, fra Vincent 415 Saxony 426 303
feud, feuding, right of 92, 160, Free Spirit, heresy of the 410 Gerson, John 348, 406, 415
181, 312–14, 318; see also Freiburg 323 Ghent 144, 245, 303, 305–6, 321,
wergeld Freiburg, Dietrich of 291 323–4, 342, 350–1, 396, 419, 467
feudal law see law; feudal mode of French Revolution 9, 199, 310, 423 Ghibellines 140, 314
production 88; feudal society Friars Minor see Franciscans Gibraltar, Straits of 7, 31, 36, 122,
115; feudal states 115, 130, Friars Preachers see Dominicans 245
148–9, 173, 360; feudal-vassalic Frisia, Frisians 33, 38, 72, 74, gift-exchange 90, 99–100, 104,
relations 115, 130, 172–3, 175, 101–2, 120–1, 168 125, 356
182, 188, 446, 449; feudalism, Friuli 34, 130 Gilbert Scott, sir George 10
feudal system 99, 174–5, 229, Froissart, Jean 351 Giles of Rome, Aegidius Romanus
394, 428 Fuero Real 387 186, 401
fideles 114 Fugger (family) 426 Giotto di Bondone 3
fief see beneficium; fief de reprise 175 Fulda 72, 115, 199–200 giro 252
Fiesole 30, 265 fulling mill 256 Glaber, Rodulfus 206, 209
filii ecclesiae 53; see also militantes funduq (fondaco) 230–1, 239, 246, Glossa Ordinaria 286
pro Deo 250, 446 Gniezno (Gnesen) 75
Finns, Finland 76, 376, 408 Fustat 85, 222, 224, 241 Godfred, Danish king 120
Fiore, Joachim of 206 Godfrey of Bouillon 227–8
fiqh 83 gabelle 391 God’s Peace see Peace of God;
Fletcher, R.* 56 Gaismair, Michael 352 God’s Truce see Truce of God

483
 INDE X

Goff, Jacques Le* 319 Groenendaal 426 Harald Bluetooth, king of Denmark
Göktürk (‘Blue Turks’) 34, 46 Groningen 296 (c.935–985) 78–9, 121
gold coins see coinage, gold Grote, Geert 409–10, 424, 438 Harald Finehair, king of Norway
Golden Bull 367, 439 Grosseteste, Robert 290–1 121
Golden Fleece, Order of the 184 Grundherrschaft see (local) lordship Harald Hardråde, king of Norway
Golden Hord, Mongol khanate Guadalupe, Compromise of 351 147
242, 334, 375–6 guardianship (legal) 346; see also Harald Klak 74, 120
Golden Spurs (battle of) see advocate haribannus 93
Courtrai Guelphs, German family (Welfs) Harold, earl of Wessex, king of
goðar 91–2 136–7, 140, 145; Italian party England (1066) 147
Gorm the Elder, king of Denmark 314, 401, 413 hashîshiyûn 226
78–9, 121 guild, craft 21, 45, 246, 263, 315, Haskins, Charles Homer* 272
Gorze 200 318, 321–5, 342, 346, 353, 387, Hastings, battle of 147, 167, 437
Gospels, the 51, 60, 64, 71, 198, 409, 419, 446; merchant guild Hattin, battle on the Horns of 232
203–5, 404 (hansa) 246, 272, 304–6, 318, hauberk see mailcoat
Gothic Bible 27, 411; style 9–10, 322, 371, 395; teacher and/or Hausmacht 136, 360, 367, 446
159, 213–15, 368; wars 34, 36, student guild 281–2; see also Hebrides 118, 335
40, 432 university Heidelberg 282, 284
Goths 27–9, 31, 35, 40, 71, 93, Guitmund, bishop of Aversa 276 Heine, Heinrich 10
432–3 Gutenberg 424 Heliand 76
Gotland (isle) 404 Guthrum, Viking king 118 Heloise, wife of Abelard 279
Gottfried von Strassburg 183 Guy [of Dampierre], Count of Henry I the Fowler, king of
Gotthard, St (mountain pass) 245 Flanders 315 Germany (919–936) 130
Gozzoli, Benozzo 332 Guyenne, duchy 361–2, 390 Henry II, Roman king (1002–1024)
Granada 8, 155, 236, 371, 440 Guyuk, Great Khan of Mongols 132, 134, 141, 435
Grand (Vosges) 52 242 Henry III, Roman king
Grand Canal (China) 8 (1039–1056) 134–5, 160, 190
Grande Chartreuse, La 200 Habsburg (dynasty, empire) 360, Henry IV, Roman king (1056–1106)
grangie 200–1 366–7, 370, 374, 381, 383, 393, 135–6, 138, 141, 191–2, 196,
Grant, Edward* 290 396–7, 427–8, 441 207, 221, 227
Gratian (monk) 286 hadith 82–3, 267 Henry V, Roman king (1105–1125)
Graubünden 359 Hadrian, emperor (117–134) 45 136, 149
Gravelines 304 Hadrian IV, pope (1154–1159) Henry VI, Roman king
Great Council 312, 315, 356; 158 (1190–1197) 137
see also town council Hagia Sophia 44, 432 Henry VII of Luxemburg, Roman
Great Famine, the (1315–17) 331, hagiography 413, 446 king (1308–1313) 367, 401
333, 338 Hainault 331, 360, 381 Henry, Roman king (1222–1235)
Great Persecution 52, 68; see also Haithabu, Hedeby 104 137–8
Diocletian Håkon, king of Norway 371 Henry II Trastámara, king of
Greenland 7, 75, 158 Halberstadt 74 Castile (1369–1379) 370
Gregorian Reform 275 Hama 234 Henry I Beauclerc, king of England
Gregory I the Great, pope Hamburg (city) 75, 245, 303, 359, (1100–1135) 148, 149, 151–2,
(590–604) 51, 63, 65, 69, 77, 369; see also (archbishopric) 162, 194
105, 432 Bremen-Hamburg Henry II Plantagenet, king of
Gregory VII, pope (1073–1085) Hamwic 104 England (1154–1189) 11,
135–6, 138, 180, 191–2, 194, handmaiden comparison, the 266, 141–2, 145, 148–51, 158, 161,
196, 198, 221, 436 297 196, 437
Gregory IX, pope (1227–1241) Hangzhou 8 Henry III, king of England
(cardinal Ugolino) 70, 204, 208 hansa, hanse see guild, merchant; (1216–1272) 148, 152
Gregory XI, pope (1370–1378) 406 Hanse, the German 246–7, 318, Henry IV Lancaster, king of
Gregory, bishop of Tours 70, 105 353, 372, 396, 439; the London England (1399–1413) 363
Greifswald 304 305 Henry V, king of England
Grierson, Philip* 100 härad see hundare (1413–1422) 362–3

484
 I NDE X

Henry VII Tudor, king of England homagium, homage 115, 447 icon (devotion to, veneration of)
(1485–1509) 366 Hondschoote 342 68; iconoclasm 68–9, 432, 447
Henry VIII, king of England honorati 19 Iconium see Konya
(1509–1547) 441 honores see ministeria Ifriqiya 85, 122, 124
Henry Jasomirgott, duke of Austria Honorius, emperor (395–423) 22, Il-Khanate (Monghol khanate of
136 29–30 Iran) 240–1
Henry, duke of Bavaria 132 Honorius I, pope (625–638) 65 Illustrious Confraternity of Our
Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony honour (concept of) 92 Beloved Lady, ’s-Hertogenbosch
and Bavaria 136–7 Horeb, mount 404 418
Henry Plantagenet, count of Anjou Hormuz 242 imam 83, 85
142, 149 horse traction 98, 167 Imitatio Christi, Imitation of Christ
Henry of Cremona 401 hospitals 315, 354 204, 410, 421
Heraclius, emperor (610–641) hospites 168; see also colonisation immixtio manuum 114–15; see also
45–6, 51, 432 hospitia 59 homagium
hereditary men (viri hereditarii) 305 housecarls 147 immunity 42, 64, 113, 170, 447;
Hereford mappa mundi 260; see also Hudson, J.* 162 see also privilegium immunitatis
mappae mundi Hugh Capet, king of France Imperial Church (Reichskirche)
heregeld 390 (987–996) 130, 132, 142, 145, 134–6, 150, 448
heresy 67, 75, 82, 145, 183, 196, 435 Imperial Land Peace (1186) 184
203, 206, 288, 366, 397, 400, Hugo, Victor 10 imperial overstretch 147
411 Hugues, Count of Vermandois 227 incastellamento 172
Hermes Trismegistos 294 Huizinga, Johan* 3 India 6–8, 28, 238, 241–2, 273,
Hermit, Peter the 227 Hülegü, khan of Mongols 241 425, 440
’s-Hertogenbosch 324, 418 hulk (ship type) 102 Indian Ocean 241, 257
Hessen 353 humanism 1, 3, 272, 291–2, 294–7, indiction 21
hidalgo (knight) 361 447 indominicatum see terra indominicata
hierocracy, hierocratic ideology 54, Humbert, cardinal of Silva Candida indulgence 194, 397, 414, 417–18
191, 194, 399, 401, 446 190–1 Industrial Revolution 4–5, 238, 423
Hieronymites, Order of 409 Humiliati 203, 207 industrialisation 299, 324, 382,
Hildebrand of Soana see Gregory humours (bodily) 261, 263 425
VII, pope hundare (härad) 187 Ingelheim 91, 111
Hippo Regius 59, 65 hundred, hundred court 119, 173 Innocent III, pope (1198–1216)
Hippocrates 287 Hundred Years War 146, 163, 253, 137, 145, 154, 194, 196–8, 233,
Hjørring 103 336, 344, 361–2, 364, 369, 382, 237, 405, 436
Hodges, Richard* 104 384, 390–1, 407, 439 Innocent IV, pope (1243–1254)
Hofgericht 174 Hungary 28, 34, 40, 75–6, 116, 138–9, 242, 438
Hohenstaufen dynasty 132, 136–7, 134, 141, 209, 221, 227, 242, Inquisition 208, 288, 411–12,
139–40, 161, 314, 353, 367, 254, 372, 374, 380, 391, 406, 447; inquisitorial procedure
370, 437 424, 435, 439, 441 (inquisitio) 162, 208, 387
holiness 418, 446 Huns 6, 26, 28–9, 33, 35, 349 Institutiones 45; see also Corpus Iuris
Holland (county) 168, 324, Hunyadi, family 374; János 374 Civilis
337, 342, 345, 360, 381, 409; Hus, Jan 384, 404 insurance (commercial) 238, 250–1
(place-name) 237 Hussites 349, 354, 369, 384, 404, interdict 151, 196, 222, 351, 366,
Holy Cross, day of the 416 420, 426, 441 447; see also excommunication
Holy Crucifix 416 Hypatia 53 intermediary markets 256
holy orders 57 Interregnum 106, 140, 161, 317,
Holy Roman Empire (Sacrum Ibiza 321 366, 439, 447
Imperium Romanorum) 129, 136, Ibn Fadhlan, Ahmad 96–7 investiture (lay-), Investiture
141, 146, 148, 161, 163, 174, Ibn Rushd see Averroës Controversy 136, 190–2, 194–5,
196, 207, 227, 306, 331, 360–2, Ibn Sina see Avicenna 437, 447
365–7, 393, 397, 400, 406 Ibrahim ibn Yaqub 122 Iona 63–4, 433
Holy Sepulchre 85, 194–5, 209, Iceland 7, 75, 89, 91–2, 94, 102, iqta 84–5
224, 226–8, 233, 417 103, 158, 335 Iran see Persia

485
 INDE X

Ireland 3, 7, 33, 71, 74, 86, 91, John of Salisbury, bishop of King’s Bench, court of 386
111, 118, 196, 331, 333, 420, Chartres 284 King’s Lynn 247
433, 435, 437 John Lackland, king of England knighthood, knightly class,
Irminsul 77 (1199–1216) 145, 148, 150–52, chivalry 147, 157, 179–85, 188,
iron (implements; production) 98, 196, 390, 394 305, 344, 429, 444, 447
166, 201, 222, 231, 254, John II the Good, king of France knight’s fee 148, 185
Isabella, queen of Castile and Léon (1350–1364) 184, 361–2 Königsnähe 90, 447
(1474–1504) 371 John the Fearless, duke of Königstein, Wolfgang 349
Isidore, Bishop of Seville 19, 242, Burgundy (1404–1419) 363 Konya (Ikonion) 226
269–70 John II, duke of Brabant 394 Kosovo see Blackbirds, Field of
Ismael, Ismaeli (Shi’ite sect) 83 Jong, Mayke de* 111 Krajina 130
Isphahan 8 Joujan 34 Krak des Chevaliers 229
Istria 108 journeymen’s associations kraks 229
Italic League 370 (compagnonnages) 324 Krakatoa (volcano) 42
iter Italicum 296 joust(ing) see tournament Kublai, Great Khan of Mongols,
Itil 104 Judaism 51, 86 emperor of China 242
iudex (judge) 170 Judith, wife of Louis the Pious 116 Kues, Nicholas of see Cusanus
iugatio-capitatio 21 juiveria, juderie, calls (Jewish Kurds 84–5
Ivan III, grand-prince of Moscow neighbourhoods) 320 Kutna Hora 367
(1462–1505) 376–7, 441 Julian the Apostate, co-emperor Kyrgyzstan 80
Ivan IV the Terrible, tsar of Russia (361–363) 18, 52 Kyteler of Kilkenny, Alice 420
376 Jülich 360
jurati (sworn men) 187; see also Lagny 249
Jacobite Church 227 aldermen Lancaster, House of 351, 363, 366,
Jacquerie 349, 351, 354, 439 justice of the peace (function) 389 441
Jafar al-Sadiq, imam 83 justicias 160 Landfrieden 160, 207
Jagiellon dynasty 374 Justinian, emperor (527–565) 36, land-labour ratio 176, 340
James I, count of Barcelona and 39, 43–6, 51, 53, 58, 68, 432 Lando, Michele di 353
King of Aragon (1213–1276) Jutes 33, 90 Lanfranc of Pavia, archbishop of
385, 394 Jutland 24, 78, 103–4, 121 245 Canterbury 275–6
James of Viterbo 401 Langobards see Lombards
janissaries 381 Kabylia 224 Languedoc 9, 145, 202–3, 208,
Japan 425 Kairouan 124 384, 395
Jarrow 270 kalam 266 Laon 190, 308, 389
Java, isle of 42 Kalmar, Union of 360, 372 Laon, Anselm of 286
Jelling 77–9 Karakorum 242 László IV, king of Hungary
Jerez de la Frontera, battle at 36, 432 Karlstein 368–9 (1272–1290) 372
Jerome (Church Father) 65 Kaupang 104 Lateran (palace), Rome 61, 136,
Jesuits, Order of 425 keep (donjon) 172 191–3, 198, 399, 416
Jesus of Nazareth 50–1, 53, 55, 65, Keller (Cellarius), Kristoph 2 latifundia (estates) 42
67, 69, 71, 202–3, 410, 412, Kempis, Thomas a (van Kempen) Latin Empire 233, 235, 273, 377,
416–17, 420 410 436
Jews (position of, attitude towards) Kent 38, 73, 105, 118, 351 Latin school see school(s), of towns
50–1, 124, 155, 186, 198, khatun (Ottoman queen, sultana) Lausitz 360, 397
208–10, 227, 415, 420 381 law: canon law 45, 57, 136–7,
jihad 83, 154, 380 Khazars, empire of 104 176, 191, 196–7, 208, 280, 286,
jizya 226 Khusro, shah of the Persian Empire 386–7, 406, 417, 444; common
John of Patmos 51, 329 46 law (England) 162, 388, 444;
John Chrysostom, archbishop of Khwarazm shahs, empire of 241 customary law 124, 138, 162,
Constantinople 65, 67 Kieckhefer, Richard* 413 176, 186, 237, 310, 351, 388,
John XII, pope (955–964) 133, 193 Kiev (principality, city) 47, 76, 96, 397–8; feudal law 174, 308,
John XXII, pope (1316–1334) 206, 103, 242, 375–6, 435 351; issuing of (legislation) 45,
401–3, 405–6 King, Gregory 330 112, 160, 360, 370, 387, 426;

486
 I NDE X

maritime law 246, 316, 371; liege lord(ship), ligesse 137, 160, Lothar I, emperor (840–855)
natural law 351, 386; Roman 162, 173–4, 182, 196, 447 116–17, 129, 435
law 17, 39, 43–5, 137, 176, Lies, Field of 116 Lothar II, king of Lorraine
272, 282, 286, 314, 352, 386–7; Lille (Rijsel) 249, 303 (855–869) 116
urban law 306, 308, 310–12, Lille, Alan of 266 Louis the Pious, king of Franks,
320, 429; see also capitularies limes 23–4, 71 emperor (814–840) 61, 74, 108,
Lawrence, C.H.* 205 limitanei 23 111–13, 116, 169, 189, 435
lay brothers (conversi) 176, 200–1, Lincoln 159, 290 Louis IV of Bavaria, Roman king,
444 Lindberg, D.* 271 emperor (1314–1347) 332,
leagues see town leagues Lindisfarne 63, 433 366–8, 399, 401–2, 439
leases, leasing [of land] (hereditary, linen (weaving) 153, 241, 249–50, Louis the German, king of East
life-time, short-term, 254–5, 260, 342, 345, 369 Franks (833–876) 116
sharecropping) 94, 98, 162, Lisbon 156, 236, 434 Louis IV, king of West Franks
176, 178, 340–1, 349, 357 literacy 86, 126, 255, 270, 411, (936–954) 132
Lechfeld, battle at 133, 435 424 Louis VI, king of France
leet court 187 Lithuania(ns) 76, 374–6 (1108–1137) 130, 145, 179
Leeuwen, John of 426 liturgy 58, 67, 123, 198, 200, 206, Louis VII, king of France
Legenda Aurea 415 210, 217, 227, 368, 408, 411, (1137–1180) 142, 145
legislation see law 415 Louis VIII, king of France
Leiden 303, 324 Liudger, abbot-bishop of Werden (1223–1226) 145–6
Lekapenos, Romanos, co-emperor 74 Louis IX the Saint, king of France
(920–944) 47 Liudolf, son of Otto I 132 (1226–1270) 139, 145, 159, 162,
Lendit fair 247 Livonia(ns) 237, 375 235, 242, 310, 321, 369, 385–6,
Leo I the Great, pope (440–461) Livorno 236 416, 437
60, 198 Lodi, Peace of 370, 440 Louis XI, king of France
Leo III, pope (795–816) 111 Lollards 404, 411, 420, 426 (1461–1483) 366, 441
Leo IX, pope (1049–1054) 134–5, Lombard, Peter the 286–7 Louis XII, king of France
190, 197, 221, 434 Lombard League 137–8, 140, 436 (1498–1515) 370
Leo X, pope (1513–1521) 426 Lombards, Langobards 34–6, Louis of Anjou (Lajos), king
Leo III, the Isaurian, emperor 38–40, 44, 54, 80, 90, 93, of Hungary and Poland
(717–741) 69, 432 107–8, 133–4, 253, 272, 310, (1342–1370–1382) 372
León, kingdom of 156, 160, 173, 401, 432, 434 Louis, duke of Orléans 363
304, 393; see also Castile-León Lombardy 34, 101, 112, 129, Louis of Nevers, count of Flanders
(double kingdom) 134, 136, 140, 197, 203, 208, 350
Leovigild, king of Visigoths 249–50, 293, 309, 315, 397 Louvain 283, 305, 396, 425
(569–586) 36 London 10, 118, 152, 230, 243, Lübeck 180, 237, 245–6, 249, 306
leprosy 139, 319 246–7, 250–1, 256, 282, 301–2, Lucan 293
Le Puy 406 305, 351, 394, 445 Lucca 250
lèse-majesté 386 long sixteenth century (concept) Lucretius 271
Levant 222, 230, 237, 239, 244, 423–4 Luder, Peter 296
253, 257 Lopez, R.S.* 238 Lüneburg 249
Liber Floridus 6 lordship, local, based Luoyang 243
liberties, liberty, of Church 150, on landownership Luther, Martin 290, 297, 352, 420,
216; of rural communities 187; (Grundherrschaft) 91, 94, 124, 426, 440
of towns 306, 309; see also 149, 160–1, 169–70, 172–4, Luxemburg 439, 441
(town) privileges 176, 178, 188, 352–3, 359, 443, Luxemburg, House of 366–7, 372,
licentia (ubique) docendi 280–2, 285 446; based on banal rights 397
Licet iuris, decree 367 (banal lordship) 161, 170–3, Luxueil 63
Licinius, Roman caesar 43, 52 175, 177–8, 207, 443 Luzzi, Mondino de´ 264
Liechtenstein 359 Loris, Guillaume de 347 Lyons 80, 138, 203, 249, 343
Liechtenstein, Ulrich von 183 Lorraine 116, 129–30, 132, 227,
Liège bishopric 203, 360; city 98, 363, 395, 396 Ma’arrat al No’man 195
323 Lorsch 200 Maastricht 71, 303

487
 INDE X

Macedonia 47, 378, 380, 434 mappae mundi (world maps) mayor of the palace (maior domus)
Machiavelli, Niccolò 294–5 260–1 54, 106, 125, 433, 447
Madden, T.* 195 march, Mark (border territory) 55, Mazovia 374
Madeira 255 108, 112, 124, 129, 149, 156, Mecca 80, 83–4, 153, 234
madhhab 83 172, 271, 448 Mechelen 359
Magdeburg 135, 202 March Field 112 Mecklenburg 372
Maghreb 85, 122, 124, 222, 247, Marcher lords 149 mediatisation 160–1, 174, 360–1,
254, 257 Marcus Aurelius, emperor 448
Magister, the 63 (161–180) 279 Medici family 251, 294, 321, 356,
magister artium (university degree) Margaret of Male, countess of 369, 440
285 Flanders 361 medicine 263–4, 269, 272, 280–1,
magister militum (Roman military margrave (office) 113, 125, 130, 287, 348, 443–4
title) 23, 30 184, 448 medievalism 9
magister residens (university Margrete, queen of Denmark, Medina 80, 122, 432
professor) 287 Norway and Sweden Mehmet II, Ottoman sultan
Magna Carta 151–2, 390, 394, 437 (1387–1412) 371–2 (1451–1481) 381
Magyars 40, 76, 122, 130, 133, Maria, daughter of king Louis of Melanchton, Philip 268
141, 172, 435 Hungary 372 mêlée 180
Mahdi 83 maritime law see law Melle 102
Mahdia 222, 239 Maritsa river, battle at 380 mendicant orders (general) 203,
mailcoat (chain-mail, hauberk) mark (common land) 448 204–6, 253, 280, 288, 319, 355,
110, 178 Markus, R.A.* 62 409, 415, 418, 444; see also
Maine 142 Maronites 226 (religious) orders
Mainz, archbishopric 58, 61, 72, Marrakesh 154 Mercator, Gerard 425
132, 138, 157; city 29–31, 71, marriage: market 346; canonical merchant guild (hansa) see guild,
94, 101, 303, 367, 424 rules 61, 189, 198, 211, 397; merchant
maior domus see mayor of the morals 60, 181, 345; strategy Mercia 38, 90, 118, 433
palace 381 merinos mayores see adelantados
malae consuetudines see Marseille 98, 200, 230, 303 Merovech, son of Chilperic 105
consuetudines Martin V, pope (1417–1431) 407 Merovingian (dynasty, kingdom(s),
Málaga 154 Martin, bishop of Tours (316–397) empire) 35, 54, 90, 94–5, 101,
Malatesta family 369 70 104–7, 112–13, 115, 125
Malinowski, Bronislaw* 100 Marx, Karl 353 Merton College 285
Mallorca 156, 247, 360, 370, 391 Mary (Magdalen) 66, 69, 202–3, Mesen 249
mallus 93 212, 345, 410, 416–18, 420 Mesopotamia 47, 84
Maltese Order 360 Masaccio 296 Mesta 341
Malthus, Thomas Robert 338 Massa, Niccolò 264 Metaphysics 273, 285–6, 288
Mamluk, Mamluks 84, 240–1, 267, Mathilda, empress, daughter of Methodius 75
381, 438; mamluk system 84–5, Henry I 148–9 metropolitan 60
447 Mathilda, margravine of Tuscany Meung, John de 347
mancipia see slavery 135–6 Mexico 24
Manfred, king of Sicily 139 matière de Bretagne 183 Michael III, emperor (842–867) 74
manor, manorial system: Mattingly, David* 22 Michelangelo Buonarotti 296
Carolingian 95, 97–8, 112, Mauss, Marcel* 100 Middelburg 171, 323
118, 175–6, 178–9, 186, 447; Maxentius, Roman emperor Mieszko I, prince of Poland
England 125, 148–9, 165, 169, (306–3012) 52 (960–992) 122, 141, 435
172, 187, 256 Maximian, Roman emperor Migration Period 31, 33–5, 49, 88,
manor court (England) 187 (286–305) 15, 17, 52 90, 93, 99, 124, 443
mansus, pl. mansi 95, 97; mansi Maximilian of Austria, Milan, Lanfranc of 264
ingenuiles 97–8, 102; mansi Roman king, emperor Mile End 351
serviles 98 (1486–1493–1519) 174, 393, miles 173, 178–9, 182, 184–5,
Mantua 369 441 448; miles Christi 180; milites
Manzikert, battle of 223, 225, 436 May Field 112 castri 172; milites nobiles 185;

488
 I NDE X

milites popolani 185; see also Morocco 36, 154 Nibelungenlied 10, 33
knighthood Moscow (principality and city of) Nicaea, city 61, 226, 228; Church
militantes pro Deo 53; see also filii 376–7, 441 Council 60–1, 414, 432
ecclesiae Mosul 47, 232 Nicephoros II Phocas, co-emperor
military orders 156, 160, 202, motte (and bailey) castle 172 (963–969) 47
230, 237, 361, 370, 377; see Mozarab(ic) 124, 153, 182, 448 Nicholas I, pope (858–867) 180
also Brethren of the Sword; mudéjares 157, 320 Nicholas III, pope (1277–1280) 403
Calatrava; Templars; Teutonic Mullett, M.* 355 Nicholas Brekespear see Hadrian
Order Munich 10, 367, 404 IV, pope
Milvian Bridge, battle of the 51–2 municipium see civitas Nicomedia 15, 18
ministeria 113 Münster, (prince)bishopric 74, 360 Nidaros see Trondheim
ministerial 135, 161, 237, 170, 185, Müntzer, Thomas 352 Nieuwpoort 304
377, 448 Murad I, Ottoman sultan Nivelles 106
missi dominici 112–13, 448 (1362–1389) 380 nobility 10, 76, 89, 152, 179,
Mocenigo, Tommaso, doge of Murad II, Ottoman sultan 182, 184, 305, 309, 313, 318,
Venice 236 (1421–1451) 380 340–1, 349, 383; English 185,
Modern Devotion (Devotio Murcia 156 344, 363; Flemish 350–1, 394;
Moderna) 297, 409–11, 421, 424 Muret, battle of 145 German 2, 237; Hungarian 372;
Mohács, battle of (1526) 374, 381, Muscovite state, 375, 376–7; Lithuanian 375; Russian 377;
441 see also Russia see also knighthood
Mohammed, prophet 80, 82–3, Mussolini, Benito 41 Nogaret, Guillaume de 400
432 mysticism, mystic symbols 352, Nogent, Guibert de, abbot 195
Mohammed al-Muntazar, imam 83 411, 418, 421 Noirmoutiers (abbey) 119
Monaco 359 nomads 27–9, 34, 45–6, 84–5, 103,
monasticism 62–3, 200, 202, 211, Nantes 119 122, 195, 223–5, 380
408–9 Naples, city 44, 55, 63; kingdom Norbert of Gennep, bishop of
Mondeville, Henry of 264 293, 341, 360, 370, 397, 400–1, Magdeburg 202
monetisation see coinage 405–6, 438; university 283, 285, Noricans 35
Mongolia 206, 241–2, 333; 287 Norman Conquest 118, 148, 161,
Mongolian Steppe 9, 34, 49, Napoleon Bonaparte 41, 370 163, 179, 255, 388, 449
375–6 Narbonne 108, 124 Normandy 7, 120, 125, 130, 142,
Mongols, Mongol khanate(s) 8, nation (student association) 281 145, 147–8, 151, 175, 221, 227,
209, 236, 240–2, 252, 254, 257, national church 399, 407 268, 336, 343, 363, 435
334, 349, 374–6, 380, 438–9 national identity, consciousness, Normans 148, 161, 196, 221, 223,
monophysites, -ism 67–8, 227 nationalism, proto-nationalism 239, 388, 395, 434, 436
Monothelite tradition 227 4, 25, 40, 130, 160, 163–4, 188, Norsemen see Vikings
Mont Saint-Michel 418 370, 375, 381–2, 392, 404, Northampton 249
Mont Sainte Geneviève 281 427–8 Northmen see Vikings
Monte Cassino 63, 106, 200, 287 natural law 212, 351, 386 Northumbria, kingdom of 38, 91,
Monte Corvino, John of 206 natural philosophy 271, 286, 118, 270
monti di pietà 356 289–91, 298, 448 notary (public office) 247, 251, 282
Montpellier 282, 425, 437 Navarre, kingdom of 196, 233 Notker the Stammerer 270
Montségur 384 Navas de Tolosa, battle at Las Novalesa (monastery) 97
Montsó, castle of 155 (1212) 154, 436 Novellae constitutiones 45; see also
Monumenta Germaniae Historica 2 nave (type of ship) 245, 250 Corpus Iuris Civilis
Moore, R.I.* 208 Neddermeyer, Uwe* 424 Novgorod 103, 246, 359, 375–7,
moral economy 99 neighbourhoods 153, 186, 315–16, 441
Moravia 75–6, 116, 122, 141, 360, 320, 353 Noyon 130, 308
397 neo-Gothic (style) 10 Nubia 224
Morawa river 380 Neoplatonism 50, 65 Nur ed-Din, ruler of Syria and
More, Thomas 356 Nestorianism/Nestorians 67, 226 Egypt 232, 436
Morea see Peloponnese Neustria(ns) 74, 105–6, 433 Nuremberg 135, 306, 335, 343,
Morgarten, battle of (1315) 187 New York 10 359, 397, 402

489
 INDE X

oath, of allegiance 114–16, 304, Orvieto 419 Paris, Parlement, Parliament of,
393–4; of mutual assistance Osman 379 386, 388, 448; university 268,
116, 246, 304, 322; of office 162 Ostkolonisation 167, 448 281–5, 288, 298, 348, 402, 406,
Oaths of Strasbourg 116, 435 Ostmark 108 409, 412, 425, 437
obedience 62–3, 150, 395, 406, 443 Ostrogoths 31, 34, 36, 38–9, 44, Paris, John of see Quidort, Jean
observantism 408–9 275, 432 parish (chuch, clergy) 55, 57, 61,
Ockham, William of 278–9, Otto I the Great, king of Germany 80, 169, 177, 186–7, 192, 206,
289–90, 367, 404 and Italy, Roman emperor 209, 211, 214, 216, 315–16,
Odilo, abbot of Cluny 199 (936–973) 129–30, 132–3, 135, 351, 354–5, 414–15, 418
Odo, abbot of Cluny 198 141, 157, 190, 193, 424 Parlement see Paris, Parlement,
Odo, bishop of Bayeux 167 Otto II, Roman king and emperor Parliament of
Odo, duke of Aquitaine 435 (973–983) 133, 435, 445 parliament, English Parliament
Odoacer, king of Italy (476–493) Otto III, Roman king and emperor see representative institutions
34, 36, 432 (983–1002) 75, 133–4, 141, 271, pars principans,pars valentior see
Offa, king of Mercia (757–796) 38, 435 Defensor Pacis
118, 433 Otto IV, Roman king and emperor particularism 311
Oghuz see Turks (1198–1218) 137, 145 pastoral revolution 415, 421
Olaf, king of Norway (995–1030) Ottoman sultanate (conquests, patria 385
158–9 empire, sultans) 236, 241, 360, patriarch 47, 54, 60, 67, 75, 195,
Olof Skötkonung, king of Sweden 374, 376–7, 379–81, 396, 423–4, 226
121 427–9, 438, 440–1, 447 patriciate (urban), patricians,
Oluf, son of king Håkon of Norway Ottonian (or Saxon) dynasty 74, patrician rule 305–6, 311, 313,
371–2 134–5, 435 322–3, 349, 429, 448
open field (farming) see three- Ovid 183, 271 patricius (Romanorum) 134
course system Oxford 282–5, 287–8, 290, 404, patrocinium 196
oppidum see civitas 437 patronage (system) 93, 99, 196,
Oran 154 Ozment, Steven* 401 217
orders of chivalry 183–4; see also Paul the Apostle (St Paul) 51, 139,
Garter; Golden Fleece; Star; pactism 370 200, 262, 410–11
St George Paderborn 73, 111 pauperi 93
orders, religious see Augustinian Padua 140, 264, 282, 293, 295, 425 Pavia 30, 34, 41, 296; battle of 370
canons; Augustinian hermits; Padua, Marsilius of 352, 367, 402–4 Payns, Hugh de 180
Benedictines; Bridgettines; paganus 61 Peace of God (movement) 159–60,
Carmelites; Carthusians; pairs de France 362 194–5, 200, 206–7, 209–10,
Cistercians; Colettines; Pakistan 28 318, 434
Dominicans; Franciscans; Palaiologa, Sofia, wife of peace (of king, princes) 160;
Hiernoymites; Jesuits; Grand-prince Ivan III 376 see also Landfrieden
Premonstratensians; Tertiaries Palaiologi, House of 377–8, 438 peasant uprisings, revolts 207,
(Third Order); see also Palestine 46, 50, 65, 80, 85, 138, 349–54; (Flemish) 349–351,
mendicant orders; military 195, 222, 225–7, 229, 232–3, 354; (Germany) 349, 352–4,
orders 239, 241, 400, 438, 447 418; see also Jacquerie
Ordinance of Labourers 341 palts, Pfalz 73, 112 Pechenegs 223
Oresme, Nicholas 268 Pamplona 123 Pecock, Reginald 292
organic society, (view of) 185 Pannonia(ns) 29, 35–6, 70, 75–6, Pedersen, O.* 289
oriflamme 385 108, 116 Pegolotti, Francesco Balducci
Orkneys 118, 158, 335 Panofsky, Erwin* 215 242–4
Orléans 142, 283, 348, 363 papal election procedure 191–2 Pelagius, Pelagianism 68
Orsini, family 401 Papal State (res publica Sancti Petri) Peloponnese 46, 235, 378, 380
Ortelius, Abraham 425 54–6, 137, 197–8, 360, 370, penitentiaria see poenitentiaria
orthodox(y) 36, 43, 59, 64–5, 67, 397, 407, 432 peoples of the Book 82, 226
69, 82–3, 206, 211, 216–17, paper 153, 241, 255, 320, 424 Pera 236
224–5, 257, 260, 262, 274, 289, paper money 8, 251–2 peregrinatio (Irish) 63
374, 376, 448 Parc, Geoffrey du, 169 perfecti (Cathars) 208

490
 I NDE X

Périgueux 214 pilgrimage 80, 83, 123, 151, Politics 285–6

Péronne 142 158, 195, 209–10, 216, 227, poll tax 21, 84, 351
Persia, Persians (Iran) 16, 26, 34, 336, 417–18; see also saints Polo, Marco 242, 251
43, 45–6, 49, 80, 84, 103, 153, (veneration of) Pomerania 141
222, 238–9, 241–3, 432 pillars of the faith 83 Pomerelia 374
personae miserabiles 346 Pippin I, king of Franks see Pippin Ponthieu, county 361
personality of [the] law 310 III the Short Pontic steppe 27–9, 34, 242
Peruzzi family 253 Pippin I of Landen, mayor of the Pontius Pilate 416
Peter II, king of Aragon palace 106 poor relief 92, 186–7, 192, 315,
(1196–1213) 145 Pippin II of Herstal, mayor of the 354, 356–7, 397, 449; see also
Peter III, king of Aragon palace 106 alms; poverty; tables of the
(1276–1285) 370, 384 Pippin III the Short, mayor of the Holy Ghost
Peter the Cruel, king of Castile palace, king of the Franks as Poperinge 342
(1333–1369) 370 Pippin I (751–768) 54, 106–8, Popolo 185, 306, 311, 314, 448
Peter Damian 275 110–12, 115, 125, 159, 193, popolo di Dio, revolt of the 353
Peter the Venerable 82 432, 433 popular sovereignty 144, 371
Petrarch, Petrarca, Francesco 2, Pippin, king of Aquitaine 116 Porete, Marguerite 410
293–4, 438 Pippin the Hunchback, king of Porphyrius 275
Peutinger, Conrad 16 Italy 108, 112 porti (type of urban settlement) 101
Pevsner, Nikolaus* 213 Pippinid dynasty 72, 106; see also Porto Pisano 250
Philadelphion 15 Carolingian dynasty portolan charts 245
Philastrius, bishop of Brescia 67 Pirenne, Henri* 99–100 Portugal 122, 153–4, 156, 160, 180,
Philip I, king of France Pisa 140, 209, 222, 228, 231–2, 196
(1060–1108) 145, 179, 194 236, 239, 244, 273, 303, 316, potentes 89
Philip II Augustus, king of France 318, 320–1, 332, 392, 425 poverty 24, 68, 93, 95, 185, 202–4,
(1180–1223) 142, 145, 150–1, Pistoia 250 206, 319, 322, 338, 354–6, 403,
162, 232, 437 Pîtres 120 428; see also poor relief
Philip III, king of France Pius II, pope (1458–1464) 407 Prague 75, 94, 282, 320, 367–9,
(1270–1285) 145, 384 Pizan, Christine de 347–8 396, 404, 435, 439
Philip IV the Fair, king of France Plantagenet, House of 145, 148–9, Prato 251
(1285–1314) 252, 362, 400–1, 363, 437; see also Anjou Prato (Piazza) dei Miracoli (Pisa) 332
439 Plato (427–347 BC) 262, 266, precaria 43; precariae verbo regis 110
Philip VI of Valois, king of France 274, 278, 290, 294; Platonic predestination 68, 279
(1328–1350) 351, 362 naturalism 273; see also Premonstratensians 75, 176, 202,
Philip II, king of Spain Florentine Platonism; 444; Prémontré 202, 436
(1556–1598) and Portugal Neoplatonism Premyslid dynasty 372
(1581–1598) 320, 394 plenitudo potestatis 198, 403 priesthood (office) 62, 403
Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy Pliny the Elder 270 price scissor 342
361, 363, 441 Pliska 47 Prince, The (Il Principe) 294; see also
Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy Plotinus 262 Machiavelli
184, 361, 363, 403, 441 plough (types) 98, 147, 166–7, 168, prince-(arch)bishopric
Philip, duke of Swabia 137 342 (ecclesiastical principality) 9,
Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders podestà 311, 402 75, 134, 360, 362, 367, 409
(1157–1191) 142, 145, 162, poenitentiaria, penitentiaria, papal printing (invention of) 297, 352,
304, 437 court for moral questions 197, 411, 415, 418, 424, 426
Philo of Alexandria 65 405 Priscus 26
Piacenza 250 Poitiers, battles near 351, 362, 439 privileges, commercial 228, 257;
Pian del Carpine, John of 206, 242 Poitiers, city 102 of (foreign) settlers 246–7; of
Piast dynasty 122, 372, 374 Poitiers, Gilbert of 280, 286 towns 222, 230, 257, 306, 310,
Picardy, Picardian 142, 281, 366 Poland 75, 122, 134, 141, 165, 209, 318, 395, 436; of villages 187
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 294 242, 296, 301, 360, 372, 374, privilegium fori 57; privilegium
Picts 33 387, 391, 393, 397, 406, 427, immunitatis 57; see also
Piedmont 253, 367 435, 437, 439, 441 immunity

491
 INDE X

Procopius of Caesarea 91 404, 408, 411, 418, 421, 423, Riga 237, 304
proprietary churches/monasteries 426 Rimini, Gregory of 290
(system of) 56–7, 74, 192 regalia 137–8, 448 ripenses 23
Provence 36, 40, 106, 116, 129, Regensburg 232 Ripuarian Franks 38
146, 156, 183, 208, 239, 366, regidores 390 Riurik, ruler of Kiev 375; Riurikid
396, 400 Reichenau 200 dynasty 375–7
Provins 249 Reichsfriede 160, 207 roads, road network 1, 16, 19, 24,
Prüm 200 Reichskammergericht 174, 388 41, 93, 125, 244–5, 250, 303,
Prussia(ns) 75–6, 168, 195, 237, Reichskirche see Imperial Church 315–17, 330, 335
246, 256–7, 301, 304, 330, 360, Reichsunmittelbar 352 Robert II the Pious, king of France
374, 396, 405, 423, 441 relics (veneration of) 56, 59, 68–9, (996–1031) 145
Przemyslid, House of 141 80, 159, 200, 206, 210–11, 214, Robert, king of Naples 293
Ptolemy 261–2, 267–8, 273 216, 369, 416, 420; see also Robert Guiscard, duke of Apulia
Purgatory 194, 212, 355, 414, saints (veneration of) and Calabria 136, 175, 221, 227
417–18, 448 remensas (movement) 349, 351 Robert Curthose, duke of
putting out system 324 Remigius of Reims, St (Saint Rémi) Normandy 227
197 Robert II, count of Flanders 196,
quadrivium 269, 271, 286, 296, 443 Renaissance 1,3, 138, 193, 296, 227
quaestio method 277, 287, 448 356, 374, 407, 425, 448; Robert, count of Mortain 148
quarantine system 313, 335 Carolingian 3, 270–1; Italian Robin Hood 11, 169
Quentovic 104, 119 3, 272, 294–5; of the twelfth Rocamadour 418
Quidort, Jean, John of Paris 401–2 century 3, 271–2 Rockefeller Jr., John D. 10
Qur’an 82–3, 224, 267, 381 Renaud IV, count of Hainault 308 Roger II, king of Sicily (1130–1154)
renovatio imperii (Romani/ 137, 221–2, 436
Radagaïs 29–30 Romanorum) 44, 113 Rollo (Rolf), count of Rouen
Ragusa see Dubrovnik representative institutions 392–3, (Normandy) 120, 435
raison d’état see state realism 395, 429; cortes (Generales) Rolls Series 2
Raoul de Cambrai 182 361, 370–1, 391, 394; Estates Romagna 55, 140
ratione materiae/personae 59 (General) 362, 366, 382, 391, Romaioi, Rum (Romans) 44
Ravenna (city and exarchate of) 439, 445; parliament(s); English Roman de la Rose 347
29–30, 33–4, 44, 55, 111, 432 parliament 341, 390–1, 445 Roman law see law
Raymond IV, count of Toulouse res publica (concept of) 113, 311, romanesque architecture 10, 78–9,
145, 227–8 386 158–9, 213–15
Raymond VI, count of Toulouse réserve see terra indominicata Romania 27; see also Wallachia
145 revolutionibus orbium coelestium, Romanos I, emperor (920–944) 60
reaping hook 342 De 268 Roncaglia, Diet of 137, 282
Reccared, king of Spain (586–601) Rheims 116, 190, 215, 303, 363, Roncesvalles, battle at 108
36, 39 441 Roses, Wars of the 363, 441
Recceswinth, king of Spain Rheinvorstadt 303 Roskilde 78
(653–672) 36 ribat 154 Rostock 304
reciprocity, principle of 99–100 Ribe 104 Rouen 119, 303, 363, 435
reclamation (land-) 9, 98, 168, 176, Richard I the Lionheart, king of Rubin, Miri* 415
188, 338; see also deforestation, England (1189–1199) 137, 148, Rubroek, William of 206, 242
Ostkolonisation 151, 232–3, 304, 437 rudder 8, 245
Reconquest, Reconquista 123–5, Richard II, king of England Rudolf of Habsburg, Roman king
154–6, 160, 172–3, 195, 208, (1377–1399) 142, 351, 363, 394, (1273–1291) 139–40
236–7, 239, 301, 361, 370–1, 404, 441 Rudolph of Swabia 136
377, 394, 406, 438, 448 Richard, duke of York 344 Rupert, Roman king (1400–1410)
Red Sea 187, 241 Richard of Cornwall, count of 366
redistribution, principle of 99–100 Poitou, pretended Roman king Rurik, Viking king 120
Redwald, king of East-Anglia 73 233 Ruskin, John 10
Reformation (of the Church) 2–3, Richer of Reims, historian 130 Russia, Russian Empire 1, 7, 47, 76,
159, 189, 198, 316, 352, 353, Rienzo, Cola di 293 103–4, 125, 164–5, 238, 242,

492
 I NDE X

335, 343, 374–7, 423, 428, 439, Saracens 133 Septimania 108
441 Sarai 376 Serapis 53
Ruthenia 374 Sardinia 44, 138, 230, 239, 316, Serbia 47, 141, 221–2, 372, 376,
Ruusbroec, John of 409 360, 371 378–9, 380, 441
Sarmatians 27, 35 serfs, serfdom 72, 93–5, 97–8,
sacraments (church) 57–8, 62, Sarris, P.* 90 167, 175–6, 178, 185–7, 200,
68, 80, 189, 210–12, 276, 289, Savonarola, Girolamo 356, 415 209, 237, 306, 308, 310, 341,
402–3, 408, 411, 414–15, 417, Savoy-Piedmont, duchy 367 349, 351–2, 382, 449; see also
447, 449 Sawad, the 84 villein[age]
Sacred College (Sacrum Collegium) Saxo Grammaticus 78 sermones ad status 345
196–7 Saxon dynasty see Ottonian servi camerae 209; servi casati,
Sacred Heart, day of the 416 dynasty non casati 97
sacrum imperium (Romanorum) Saxony, kingdom, duchy 72, 74–5, Seville 19, 154, 156, 236, 361, 438
see Holy Roman Empire 111, 130, 136–7, 246, 254, 352, sharecropping see lease
sadaqa 84 360, 367, 426–7 sharia 82
Saint-Bertin, abbey of 97, 102 Sayers, J.* 201 sheriff (English royal office) 118,
Saint-Denis (abbey and town of) scabini see aldermen 148–9, 160–2, 173, 311, 389,
9, 101, 130, 199, 214, 247, 385, Scala Santa, Rome 416 445, 449
437 Scaligeri (della Scala family) 312, Sherwood Forest 169
Saint-Front (church) 214 369 Shetlands 118, 158, 335
Saint-Germain-des-Prés (abbey) scarsella 250 shi’at’Ali, Shi’ites 83, 85, 224–6
98, 102 sceatta see coinage shire 149, 161–2, 447, 449
Saint John the Divine 10 Schism, Great (ecclesiastical) 217, short-term lease see leases
Saint-Omer (town) 6, 144, 305 257, 406–7, 421, 440 shukuk 267
Saint-Quentin (town) 308 scholae see schools Sicilian Vespers 370, 384, 438
Saint-Vaast (abbey) 101 scholastic(s), scholasticism 215, Sidon 229
Saint-Victor (abbey) 98, 281, 415 272–3, 277, 291–3, 296, 298, Siena 250, 304, 312, 316, 369, 413
Sainte Chapelle, Paris 369, 416 449 Siete Partidas 387
sainthood 413, 446, 449 Schonen 249 Sigebert I, king of Austrasia
saint’s biography see vita schools (scholae) (of abbeys, (561–575) 105–6
saints, veneration of 69–70, chapters, towns) 203, 215, Sigebert II, king of Franks 105
159, 416, 418, 420; see also 253, 263, 267, 269–70, 272–3, Sigismund of Luxemburg, king of
pilgrimage; relics (veneration 279–284, 287, 290, 292, 297–8, Hungary and Roman emperor
of) 316, 381, 425, 449; see also (1410–1437) 372, 374, 384, 404,
sakh (cheque) 153 studium generale; university 407, 441
sala (hall) 97 Schwanken 186 Sigismund, king of Burgundy 35
Saladin, ruler of Egypt and Syria Scot, Michael 273 Signorelli, Luca 419
(1174–1193) 232, 436 Scotland 33, 38, 63–4, 80, 118, signoria, signore, signorie 140, 312,
Salamanca, university 283 175, 336, 360, 390, 392, 406, 367, 369, 397, 440, 449
Salerno 134, 263, 272, 283 435, 439 Sigtuna 75
Salian dynasty 132, 135, 190, 435 Scott, sir Walter 10 Silesia 141, 367, 374, 397
Salians, Salian Franks 33, 38, 132, Scotus Eriugena, John 271 silk (production, trade) 101, 153,
433, 439 Sculdais, sculteti 38 176, 199, 236, 239, 243, 251,
Salins 359 scutage (shield money) 148, 185 255,
Salutati, Coluccio 293–4 Scythians 27 Silk Road[s] 242–3, 376
Samarkand 241 seigneurie see (local) lordship Silvester I, pope (314–335) 133,
Samo, Slav king 91 Seljuks see Turks 139, 193,
San Gimignano 313–14 senatorial class 17, 19, 39 42, 59, Silvester II, pope (999–1004) 75,
San Marino 359 71 133, 141, 271, 434; see also
sanad 83; see also asānı̄d Seneca 271, 293–4 Aurillac, Gerbert of
Santiago de Compostela 209, 123, sénéchaux 162, 449 Simeon, khan of the Bulgarians
418 Senegal 236 (893–927) 62
saqaliba 153 Sens 69, 301 Simeon Stylites 62

493
 INDE X

Simon de Montfort 145 St John the Baptist 77, 202 Sumatra 242
simony 190–1, 197, 415, 449 St Mary Magdalen see Mary suras 82
Skálaholt 75 St Matthew 60, 64, 71 surgery (branch of medicine)
slavery, slave labour, slave trade 4, St Patrick 10, 71, 433 263–4, 426
93–5, 97–8, 100–1, 153, 187, St Remigius/Rémi of Reims see surplus extraction 175, 200, 300
222, 224, 235–6, 238, 303, 307, Remigius Sussex 38
321, 428 St Stephen 69 Sutton Hoo 73
Slavs, Slavic (culture, languages) Stafford, P.* 182 suzerainty 160, 173–4, 359, 361,
25, 34, 40, 75, 80, 91, 94, 102, Stamford 247 376, 436
116, 130, 135, 153, 202, 222, standard of living 255, 323, 340, Svein Forkbeard, king of Denmark
237, 304, 322 343, 357 121, 147
Slovakia 254 Star, Order of the 184 Sven Estridsson, king of Denmark
Slovenia 34, 36 state realism (raison d’état) 138, 295 196
Sluis 245 status group 185, 209, 304, 308, Sverre, king of Norway
Smithfield 351 320–1, 340, 343–5 (1184–1202) 158
Smolensk 375 Statute in favour of the Princes 138 Swabia (duchy) 130, 132–3, 135–7,
Smyrna 236 Statute of Labourers 341 140, 317, 345, 352, 368–9, 396
socius 204 Stavelot-Malmédy 106 Sweden (land and kingdom) 74,
soenna (sunnat al-Nabi) 83 Stedingers, revolt of the 187 77, 121, 159, 187, 249, 360,
Sofia Palaiologa, wife of Ivan III of Stefan Dušan, king of Serbia 371–2, 391, 393
Moscow 376 (1331–1355) 378 Switzerland, Swiss Confederation
Sogdian(s) 243 Stein, Freiherr vom 2 33, 40, 352, 359, 391–2, 396,
solidus see coinage, coins stellatum 259 427, 439
Song of Roland see Chanson de Stengade 97 sworn men see jurati
Roland Stephen II, pope (752–757) 107, Symeon, Bulgar khan (893–927)
Sorbonne 153, 284–5 193 47, 435
sottoposti 353 Stephen IV, pope (816–817) 116 syncretism 76–7, 80, 86, 449
Sound Tolls 372; see also toll(s) Stephen, count of Blois, king of Synesius of Cyrene, senator 23
Southampton 72, 104, 246, 250, England (1135–1154) 148–9 Synod of Orange 68
303 Stephen, king of Hungary synods 60–1, 136, 138, 191, 194,
sovereignty 160, 174, 359–61, 441; (997–1038) 76, 141, 159 201, 207, 211, 445, 449;
popular 144, 371, 402 Stilicho, Flavius 29–31 see also Synod of Orange;
Spanish March 108, 124, 271; stirrup 110 council(s), (church-)
see also Barcelona, county of Stockholm 102 syntheleia see iugatio-capitatio
Speyer, Diet of 135, 214, 323, 427 Strabo, Walafrid 286
spiritual care 62, 214, 216 Stralsund 304 Tables of the Holy Ghost 354;
spirituals see Franciscans Strasbourg 116, 215–16, 303, 306, see also poor relief
spiritus (bodily spirits) 261 435 Tabor, mount 233, 404
Spoleto (dukedom, city of) 34, 135 strategoi 46 Tacitus, Publius Cornelius 25–6,
Spufford, Peter* 104 strike 282, 323 271
squire(s) 184, 193, 305, 344 studia humanitatis 291–3, 296–8, tagma, pl. tagmata 46
St Anne 77 449 taifa(s) 154, 434
St Anthony’s Fire 333 studium generale 280; see also taille, tallia 170, 391
St Clare, Order of 204 university Talmont, family, St Hilaire 177
St Cuthbert 209 Styria, Styrian March 129, 397 Tamerlane see Timur Lenk
St Dominic see Dominicus Guzman subdeacon 57, 189 Tana (La) 236, 242
St Dympna of Geel 210 subsistence crisis 329–30, 340, 354; tanach 51
St Francis of Assisi see Francis subsistence economy 392 Tancred of Hauteville 221
St George, Order of 184 Suetonius 111 Tang dynasty, emperor (China)
St Ives (town) 247 Suevi 25–6, 29–39, 35 80, 243
St James of Compostela see Suger, abbot of Saint-Denis 130, Tariq ibn Zeyad 36, 122, 124
Santiago de Compostela 214, 437 Tarragona 108
St John of Jerusalem, Order of 180 Sulpicius Severus 70 Tassilo, duke of Bavarians 108

494
 I NDE X

Tatars, Tartars 223 Thierry of Chartres 274 Trancred, Christian Prince of

taxation 21, 39, 46, 89, 113, 315, thing, ting (court of justice) 92, 187 Antioch 234
344, 353–4, 362–3, 370, 377, thingfararkaup 92 transhumance 341, 380
380, 389–92, 394, 398, 439 third order 409 transubstantiation (dogma) 211,
Tebaide 412 Thomas Aquinas 277, 285, 287–90, 276
technological complex 168 401 Transylvania 141
Tedald, archbishop of Milan 191 Thomas Becket, archbishop of Trastámara, Henry count of see
Tempier, Stephen, bishop of Paris Canterbury 149–51, 158, 345, Henry II, king of Castile 370,
288 437 438
Templars, knights (Order of the Thorn (Torun) 304, 374 Treasury of Merit 417
Temple) 155, 180, 230, 234, Thrace 28, 47 Trebizond 236
400–1, 436, 449 three-course system (farming) 165 Treuga Dei see Truce of God
Ten Commandments, the 69, 414 Thuringia, Thuringian 38, 106, trial by ordeal 198, 309, 387
tenants-in-chief 148–9, 179, 185, 352–3 Trier (archbishopric, city) 71, 111,
190 Thyra, wife of Gorm the Elder 78–9 138, 173, 367
terra indominicata (indominicatum; Tianjin 8 Tripoli (Libya) 44
réserve) 97, 176, 341, 449 Tilly, Charles* 382 Tripoli (Syria) 222–3, 228–9, 230
terra mansionaria 97 Timaios 273–4; see also Plato Triumph of Death, the 332
Terraferma 370, 386 Timur Lenk, the Lame (Tamerlane) trivium 269, 282, 284, 296, 443
tertiaries 205, 409; see also third 8, 380, 440 Trondheim 158, 214
order Tirol 352, 397 troubadour, troubadour poetry
Tertullian 266, 289 tithe (ecclesiastical) 57, 86, 176, 154, 182–3
Tervingi (Goths) 28, 35 200, 350, 352, 390, 449; (royal, Troyes 201, 249; Treaty of 441
Teutonic Order 76, 180, 195, 237, decima regalis) 110, 174, 177 Troyes, Chrétien de 183–4
304, 374–5, 441 Tlemcen 154 Truce of God (Treuga Dei) 206–7,
Tewkesbury 10 Toledo 41, 122, 154, 156, 272–3, 446
textile (production and commerce) 406, 436 Trutfetter, Jodocus 290
91, 153, 242, 249, 254, 301, Tolkien, J.R.R. 11 tuitio 51
307, 320–1, 323–4, 342–3, 346, toll 138, 144, 245–7, 256, 316–17, Tunis (town) 8, 31, 230, 235, 239,
353; see also carpet-weaving; 394, 398; see also Sound Tolls 247
cloth; cotton; draperies; linen; tonsure 57, 284 Tunisia 21, 85, 99, 124, 154, 222
silk; wool(en) Tordesillas, Treaty of 193 Turkmenistan 85
thegns 91, 147 Torhout 249 Turks, Turkmen 44, 84, 224–6,
theme 46 Torun see Thorn 381, 434; Kipchaq 241–2,
theocratic belief 54 Toulouse, city 31, 41, 321; county 334; Oghuz 224; Ottoman 8,
Theodebert II, king of Austrasia of 130, 145–6, 209, 227–8, 360; 379–80, 438; Seljuk 223, 225–6,
105 kingdom of 35 436; see also Göktürk
Theoderic II, king of Burgundy 105 Touraine 142, 149 Tuscany 34, 130, 135–6, 140, 197,
Theoderic IV, king of the Franks Tournai 38, 72, 215, 403 208, 250, 293, 312, 320–1,
106 tournament 101, 180, 182; see also 331–2, 337–8
Theoderic the Great, the Amal, joust Twelvers, the 83
king of Italy (493–526) 34–6, Tours 70, 105–6, 276, 433 two swords, doctrine of 54, 191,
432 Tours, Berengar of 275–6 196, 428; see also Gelasius I
Theodora, empress 68 town (city) councils 19, 140, Tyler, Wat 351
Theodosius the Great, emperor 304, 306, 310–12, 314–16, 321, Tyre 229–30, 239
(379–395) 17, 22, 28, 30, 43, 323, 353, 361, 377; see also Tyrol 314
51, 53–4, 432 Great Council; town law see Tzimisces, John I, co-emperor
theological virtues see virtues law (969–976) 47
Theophanu, empress 133 town leagues 310; see also Hanse,
Thessaloniki 75, 232 Lombard League, Swabian Ugolino, cardinal see Gregory IX,
Thessaly 378 League; town privileges see pope
Thibaut IV of Champagne, king of privileges Ukraine 27, 375
Navarre 233 Traini, Francesco 332 Ulfilas (Wulfila) 27

495
 INDE X

Ulm 10, 216 vé 77–79 Vivaldi family 7

Umayyad(s) 80, 84–5, 124–5, 432, vegueres 160 Vives, Juan Luis 356
434 Venasque (county of) 400 Vlad the impaler see Dracula
umma 82 Venice, Council of 305 Vladimir (city) 376
United States 24 Venice, James of 273 Vladimir, prince of Kiev 47, 435
universals, debate on 277–9, 285 Verden 108 Vladislav II, king of Bohemia
universitas (civium, fidelium) 280, Verdi, Giuseppe 10 (1158–1174) 141
387, 402–3, 449 Verdun 101, 303; Treaty of 116–17, Vladislav Jagiello, king of Bohemia
university 263–4, 267, 272, 129, 435 (1471–1516) 374
279–87, 290–2, 296, 298, 386–7, Vergetreidung 165 Vogelweide, Walter von der 183
398, 415, 425, 429, 449 Vermandois 142, 227 Voitech see Adalbert of Prague
Uppsala 5, 75, 77 vernacular, use of 75–6, 116, 118, Volga (river) 103–4, 125, 242, 376
Urban II, pope (1088–1099) 136, 183, 203, 208, 293, 388–9, Vouillé, battle at 36, 433
194–6, 202, 227, 417 410–12, 424 Vratislav II, King of Bohemia 141
Urban III, pope (1185–1187) 232 Verona (March and town) 130, Vries, Jan de* 302
Urban VI, pope (1378–1389) 406 140, 312, 369 Vulgate 65, 411
urban potential 302 Vesalius, Andreas 264, 425 Vytautas the Great, grand-duke of
Urbino 369 Vézelay 9, 209 Lithuania (1392–1430) 375
urbs see civitas via antica, via moderna 290
Usama ibn Munqidh 234 vice-count (viscount, vicarii) 160, Wagner, Richard 10–11
usury 252–3, 255 170, 369, 448 Waiblingen 140, 314
utilitas publica 314; see also bonum Vicenza 140, 282 Walcheren/Walacria (isle) 120
commune Vienna 10, 75, 216, 282, 343 Waldemar Atterdag, king of
Utrecht, city 74, 102, 249, 303, Vienne 401 Denmark 371
323; (prince-) bishopric 72, 360, Vienne (river) 145 Waldenses, 203, 207
409 Vikings (Norsemen) 7, 74, 91, Waldo 203–4
96–7, 102–4, 118, 120–1, 125, Wales, Welsh 38, 80, 91, 383, 390,
vagantes 283 130, 171–2 392, 439
Vajk, Waik, Magyar prince 141; see villa, pl. villae 95, 447; see also Wallace, William 11
also Stephen, king of Hungary manorial system Wallachia 374
Valencia 156–7, 236, 247, 316, Villard de Honnecourt 215 wars of reconquest see Justinian
360, 370–1, 391 villein 94, 148–9, 172, 176, 256, water boards 187
Valenciennes 304; statute of 308 449; see also serfdom Wearmouth 270
Valens, emperor (364–378) 18, 28 Vilnius 77 Weber, Max 345, 425
Valentinian I, emperor (364–375) Vinci, Leonardo da 264, 296 Weiss, Peter* 52
18 Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène 9 Welf family see Guelphs
Valentinian-Theodosian dynasty Virgil 271, 293 Welser family 426
18 viri heriditarii 305 Welsh Marches 149, 172
Valla, Lorenzo 193, 292 virtues 180–1, 296, 345, 347–8, Wenceslas, Roman king
Valois, House of 439–41 448; capital 414; cardinal 414; (1378–1400) 367–9, 384
Vandals 22, 29–31, 36, 40–1, 44, theological 414 Wends 75
48, 432 Visconti family 312, 335, 369, 402, Werden 74
Varazze, James 412, 415 440 wergeld 91–2, 103, 449; see also
Variae 36 Visigoths, Visigothic kingdom(s) feud(ing)
Varro, Marcus Terentius 269 31, 33, 35–6, 38–40, 51, 71, 90, Wessex, House of 147
Vasari, Giorgio 3, 264–5 93, 105, 122–4, 227, 432, 433 Wessex, kingdom of 38, 93, 118,
Vasco da Gama 8, 424, 440 visitations (episcopal, monastic) 125, 147, 435
vassal 114–5, 140–1, 144, 173–5, 199, 212, 415 Westminster (abbey) 159, 162, 247
182, 359–60, 382, 384, 391, Vistula, Wisla (river) 25, 102, 168, Westphalia, Westphalians 77, 246,
393–4, 449; royal vassals 95, 237 409
115, 130, 148, 160, 162, 173–4, vita, pl. vitae (saint’s biography) 70, Weyden, Rogier van der 296, 403
361 72, 202–3, 410, 413 White Russia 375
vassalage 115, 125, 370, 374, 449 vita apostolica 202–3 Wickham, Chris* 98, 169

496
 I NDE X

Widukind, duke of Saxons 73 Windesheim, Congregation of 409 Yemen 71, 241

Wiener Neustadt 304 Winfrid see Boniface yeomen 343
Wiligis, son of Otto I 132 Wisla see Vistula Yersin, Alexandre 333
William II of Holland, Roman king Wittenberg 268, 426 Yersinia pestis 333–4
(1247–1256) 138 Wladislaw the Short, king of York (city) 74, 102, 147, 159, 270,
William of Normandy, the Poland (1320–1333) 374 282, 344, 363; (dynasty) 366
Conqueror, king of England Woden 77, 103 York, Alcuin of 57, 74, 110–11, 270
(1066–1087) 142, 144, 147–9, women, position of 62, 154, 182, Ypres 245, 249, 307, 323, 350
164, 167, 179, 194, 196, 437 345–6 Yuan, Mongol dynasty 252
William II Rufus, king of England wool and wool trade 101, 238, 247, Yusuf ibn Tashfin 154
(1087–1100) 148–9 249–50, 254–7, 301, 321, 333,
William II, king of Sicily 341–3, 345, 353, 371, 390–1; Zachary, pope (741–752) 54, 107
(1166–1189) 137 see also cloth-, textile[s] Zaragoza 154
William the Pious, duke of works of charity 55, 355, 414; Zeeland 360, 381
Aquitaine 198 works of spiritual comfort 414 Zengi, dynasty 232
William Clito, count of Flanders Worms 31, 214, 323; Concordat of Zeno, emperor (474–491) 23, 34
144 136, 192; Diet of 426–7, 441 Zeus Marnas (temple) 53
William of Moerbeke, bishop of Wycliffe, John 351 Zheng He, Chinese admiral 8
Corinth 273, 285 Zoë Karbonopsina, empress 47
Willibrord, archbishop of Frisians Xanten 202 Zürich 306
72 Zwingli, Ulrich 420
Wilsnack 418 Yarmuk, battle at 80
Winchester 247, 282 Yeavering 91

497
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