Life in a Medieval City

by Frances Gies

  They then began to mine against another turret…We countermined, and got possession of the hole which they had excavated. They began therefore to run a mine between us and a certain wall and destroyed two embrasures…But we set up there a good and strong palisade between us and them.

  They also started a mine at the angle of the town wall, near the bishop’s palace, and by dint of digging from a great way off they arrived at a certain wall…but when we detected it we made a good and strong palisade between them and us, higher up, and countermined. Thereupon they fired their mine and flung down some ten fathoms of our embrasured front. But we made hastily another good palisade with a brattice and loopholes, so none among them dared to come near us in that quarter.

  They began also a mine against the barbican of the Rodez gate, and kept below ground, wishing to arrive at our walls, making marvelous great tunnel. But when we perceived it we forthwith made a palisade on one side and the other of it. We countermined also, and having fallen in with them, carried the chamber of their mine.

  Altogether the assailants drove seven different mines, starting from the cellars of houses in the suburb outside. A final attempt to storm the barbican failed, and the approach of a royal relieving army forced Trencavel to raise the siege.

  This was an exceptionally determined effort. In the skirmishing warfare more normal in the thirteenth century, a walled city can usually assure its safety merely by closing its gates on the approach of an enemy force.

  15.

  Town Government

  “I am a good lawyer,” said Renard. “Often I’ve made right out of wrong and wrong out of right, as it suited me.”

  —ROMAN DE RENARD

  Medieval cities enjoy a great deal of individual liberty, varying degrees of self-government, and little democracy. Their charters, many of which were written in the twelfth century, are principally grants of freedom from feudal obligations—the head tax, the labor service, the tax at will, the marriage tax—in return for payment of a cash impost. Limits are set for their military service, they are allowed to operate their own law courts for lesser crimes (“low justice”) and, usually, they are permitted a mayor and council.

  The charter is essentially a compact between the burghers and their seigneur, or a contract for which the commune is the collective bargaining agent.

  The mayor and council may be elected by the heads of the corporations (masters of the guilds), or they may simply replace themselves at intervals by “co-optation,” that is, by naming their own successors. Whatever the method, the result is to place town government in the hands of wealthy burghers closely allied in interest to their prince. Typically a small number of families monopolize political power.

  In Venice twenty-seven families supply half the members of the 480-man Grand Council. Some families are represented on the same city council for generations and even centuries. The Lanstiers sat on the town council of Arras for three hundred years. The more sophisticated the town’s economic life, the more it participates in international commerce, the more this oligarchic tendency is exaggerated. In Pisa thirty families monopolize the government throughout the thirteenth century.

  The commune of Troyes does not include everyone who lives in the city. It is restricted to the “Third Estate”—merchants and craftsmen. Knights who have houses in town may not belong. The clergy too—bishop, abbot, canons, priests and monks—are excluded. But if a knight or a clerk goes into business, not only may he join, he must. On the other hand, members of the commune do not necessarily live in the city; some live in the suburbs but do business in the city.

  Members of a commune invariably take an oath, swearing on the relics that they will faithfully guard the life and possessions of their dear lord, his lady, and his children, and sustain them against all men and women whomsoever, and at the same time be loyal to every member of the commune, not aid foreigners against the burghers, obey the mayor, pay their part of the debts of the city, and be good and loyal burghers.

  Under the mayor and the town councillors serve a bureaucracy of officials, treasurers, clerks, and magistrates. The town watch guards the ramparts by day and patrols the streets by night. In case of attack, the watch is supplemented by the whole militia. Often a charter specifies that “all who have sworn the communal oath must join the defense, none may remain at home, except one sick, infirm or so poor that he must himself take care of his sick wife or children.”

  Nearly all charters promise the seigneur ost et chevauchée (military service) but on varying terms. That of Troyes exempts moneychangers and fair merchants while the fair is taking place. Laon, whose charter was one of the earliest in northwest Europe, owes a fixed quota: one hundred and twenty foot sergeants and three wagons. Arras has a more advanced arrangement: the town is obligated to supply either a thousand foot sergeants or three thousand livres, a cash sum sufficient to hire a thousand soldiers for the summer. Many towns have demanded and won geographical and political limits to their military service. The citizens of Brai-sur-Somme are required to march only in case of general war or an expedition for the faith, and for either purpose no farther than Reims and Châlons, Tournai and Paris, at their own expense. Men of Poitiers do not have to cross the Loire, those of Chaumont and Pontoise can stop at the edge of the Seine or the Oise.

  Recently a new turn has been given to the question of military service. With the growth of proletarian discontent many towns are taking care to restrict the privilege of arms to the wealthy. In Troyes only those citizens possessing vingt livres vaillant (“twenty pounds’ worth of property”) are authorized to own a crossbow and fifty bolts.

  Of the two aspects of the charter, individual liberty and self-government, the former is much the more important. The constitutional history of Troyes is a vivid illustration of this fact of medieval life. Though traces of town government appeared in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century, Troyes apparently did not receive a charter until 1230, when Thibaut the Songwriter, financially embarrassed by his war with Peter of Brittany and Hugo of La Marche, signed a formal guarantee of the citizens’ ancient privileges and in addition established a Town Council. The councilmen, thirteen in number, were appointed directly by Thibaut; from their company they elected a mayor. The council’s function was, quite baldly, to raise money. Members of the commune of Troyes, freed from all servile imposts, were required to pay a fixed annual cash levy, based on the amount of their property. The taille (tax) was assessed at a rate of six deniers per livre on movable property, two deniers per livre on real estate. It was the job of the mayor and council to obtain a sworn statement from each burgher of the precise value of his property. But the richest burghers, among whom the councilmen were doubtless numbered, did not have to make such a statement; they were permitted the option of paying a flat rate of twenty livres.

  The tax system specified by the charter of Troyes has been popular for some time, but by mid-century two other kinds of taxation have appeared: the cash poll tax and the sales tax. All three reflect the changing fiscal situation, in which sovereign counts, dukes, and kings are succeeding in touching the rapidly growing liquid wealth of the city burghers. The petty lords of the countryside have no such sources of income, and so are losing ground financially to the heads of incipient national states.

  Another major source of revenue is the cause of violent wrangling among the competing authorities. This is justice. Whoever administers justice keeps the fines and forfeits, so kings, counts, barons, bishops, and burghers quarrel jealously over jurisdiction. One of the significant provisions of the Magna Carta protects the English barons against loss of their lucrative courts to the king. Like most charters, that of Troyes of 1230 reserved for the count “high justice”—jurisdiction over murder, rape, and robbery. He was also awarded two-thirds of the fines for false measure—an important matter in a fair town—and all cases concerning his churches, knights, fiefs, and Jews. For a yearly cash payment he relinquished other kinds of justice to the town.

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p; In Champagne, cases reserved for the count are heard by his provost. This office is usually filled by a burgher, who works on a commission basis, pocketing a share of the fines he levies. A provost is usually not above accepting gifts, though the practice is officially frowned on. For many of the offenses he tries the penalty is death and confiscation of property. A murderer with wealthy relatives stands a better chance of escaping the gallows than a poor man—a situation not confined to the Middle Ages.

  Hanging is a painful death, because the drop technique has not yet been invented, and death comes by strangulation. Torture is rarely employed. If the provost feels it is necessary to extort a confession, he may have a prisoner’s teeth extracted, or have him toasted over a fire, or given a stretch on the rack. But few provosts are so fastidious as to insist on a confession. They prefer to listen to the evidence and give the word to the hangman. Traitors, witches, and heretics are burned at the stake, executions in the latter two categories being accompanied by numerous prayers. On the other hand, thieves may be let off with a taste of the branding iron, or a lopped-off hand, and youthful first offenders may escape with a flogging. It even happens that a poor man who steals a shirt is freed after a brief imprisonment on the grounds that he is ill and the offense is small. The crypt under the old castle is used for confinement of those awaiting trial. Actual prison sentences are rare.

  The town tries cases involving petty theft, fraud, and minor assault. It also hears litigation concerning commercial transactions and property. The mayor and four or five councilmen act as judges, listening to the evidence and delivering their verdict unanimously. A few typical recorded cases1 give the flavor of thirteenth-century urban court problems:

  A burgher has discovered some silver wine cups belonging to him in the possession of another townsman, who proves that he purchased them from a tin merchant, who in turn declares that he bought them from a fourth man. Hauled into court, the fourth man swears that he is “pure and innocent,” the unvarying formula of the accused, and calls to witness the uprightness and honesty of his life. He is not, however, able to give a convincing account of how he came into possession of the cups, which are ordered returned to the rightful owner. The accused man is sent to the crypt until the judges can hear further witnesses. A woman whose son has been hanged for fatally assaulting another young man in a tavern by bashing his head with a heavy flagon is accused by the victim’s relatives of instigating the crime. They want a money payment, but are disappointed. The mayor after due deliberation declares the woman innocent. A knight who owns a house on which the tenant has not paid any rent for a year demands permission to seize the tenement’s doors and shutters, which is granted, with a fraction of the sale going to the court. A woman who keeps a lodging house is summonsed for creating a “vile nuisance.” She has had a wooden pipe built from the privy chamber of her house to the gutter, rendering it evil-smelling and sometimes blocking it up. The neighbors bring her into court, where she is fined six deniers and ordered to remove the pipe within forty days.

  Civil and criminal law are not yet clearly distinguished. Traces of the old Germanic custom, by which every offense was personal, and murderers paid money ransoms to the relatives of their victims, survive in the mid-thirteenth century. It is difficult to prosecute a felon without the testimony of his victim or his victim’s relatives, and sometimes a killer can still buy his freedom by compensating the family (paying wergild).

  Together with this view of crime as a civil offense, the early Middle Ages also preserved the barbarian customs of duel and ordeal. By 1250 judicial duel is officially forbidden nearly everywhere but is still widely practiced. Even peasants often settle their disputes with cudgels. Legal or not, the loser or his family must pay a heavy fine, and if the quarrel is settled before the combat takes place, fines must still be paid, so that the seigneur does not lose his profit.

  But trial by ordeal has fallen into disrepute. Formerly a man was allowed to prove his innocence by thrusting his hand into hot water, or picking up a hot iron, or risking drowning. But in the view of the thirteenth century, sensibly expressed by Frederick II, the ordeal “is not in accord with nature and does not lead to truth…How could a man believe that the natural heat of glowing iron will become cool or cold without an adequate cause…or that because of a seared conscience the element of cold water will refuse to accept the accused?…These judgments of God by ordeal which men call ‘truth-revealing’ might better be called ‘truth-concealing.’”

  Roman law is slowly superseding wergild, as well as duel and ordeal; court trial, examination of witnesses under oath, and even the use of trained lawyers are becoming more common. Rediscovery of such collections as the Digest of Justinian has led to a renaissance of law, coinciding with the more sophisticated needs of reviving commercial life. The markets and fairs, and especially the Fairs of Champagne, have given a powerful impetus to the development of merchants’ law.

  There is a third law court in most towns—that of the bishop. Here again revenue is of prime importance, and the bishop will fight with every weapon in his spiritual arsenal to defend his court against encroachment from town or provost. Even a clerk in minor orders who has no intention of becoming a priest can insist on being tried in the ecclesiastical court, where he is certain to be more gently treated than by town magistrate or provost. In the bishop’s court the law is a composite of Scripture, oral tradition, precedents in Roman and Germanic law, decrees of Church councils, and legislation by the Pope. The celebrated Gratian brought this hodgepodge into an orderly system in the twelfth century, and at the same time founded a whole methodology by posing one text against another and reconciling them.

  Roman law is now taught in law schools at Montpellier, Orléans, Angers, Bologna, Reggio, and other places, but Paris teaches only canon law. Lawyers are not particularly popular. Their pretensions are resented, and their pedantic interpretations irritate everyone. They insist on exact forms and formulas. But they are improving the administration of justice and pointing the way to guarantees for the accused that a future age will regard as indispensable.

  A jurisdictional dispute among the courts of a town sometimes becomes a bigger legal cause than the case that was originally to be tried. In 1236 the mayor and councillors of Laon imprisoned three men who the canons of the cathedral thought should be tried in the ecclesiastical court. The town officials refused to hand over the prisoners, whereupon the canons issued bans of excommunication against the councillors. But the parish priest to whom the bans were given sided with the town and refused to publish them. The canons excommunicated the priest. Priest and townsmen took the case all the way to Rome and won a favorable judgment, enforced by a papal excommunication against the canons. The same priest savored the revenge of entering the church at Vespers, lighted candle in hand, pronouncing the sentence, and turning the candle upside down.

  Many regions are beginning to enjoy a medieval advance in jurisprudence—the court of appeals. The Parlement of Paris and the Parliament of London are two of the most famous. Another is taking shape in Troyes—the Council and Tribunal of the Count of Champagne, meeting from time to time in the Grands Jours de Troyes. In its origins no more than the count’s court sitting in judicial session, it will develop into a regularly appointed body of chief vassals, leading burghers and prelates, and will serve as trial court for the nobility and appeals court for the lower classes.

  The Charter of 1230 may have sufficed for Thibaut’s financial needs in 1230, but a little more than a decade later it no longer did. Probably the minor Crusade of 1239, in which Thibaut distinguished himself, plunged him into fresh debts. In any case the mayor and council proved incapable of raising enough money for their sovereign, and so without ceremony he turned them out of office. In their place he installed a group headed by an enterprising Cahorsin financier named Bernard de Montcuc, who had arrived in Troyes some years earlier as a moneychanger. Together with his associates, who included two of his brothers, Bernard undertook to advanc
e Thibaut four thousand three hundred pounds (livres Tournois) a year for five years—a thousand at the Hot Fair, two thousand at the Cold Fair, and the remainder at the Fair of Bar-sur-Aube. With these loans Thibaut could pay off his debts and presumably have enough to live on. Bernard and his consortium were repaid by two means: first, a special sales tax over the five-year period levied at four deniers per livre (one-sixtieth) on all merchandise sold in Troyes, and second, the farming out of low justice. As a sop to the businessmen of Troyes, those paying the sales tax were exempted from military service. To clear the way for these revenues politically, Thibaut appointed Bernard and his friends to serve in turn as mayors throughout the emergency.

  Thus in Thibaut’s view the government of Troyes is little more than a money-raising agency. Though the Troyes burghers doubtless grumbled at first, their acceptance of the Montcuc scheme and their generally passive attitude toward the charter indicate a lethargy toward political affairs that differentiates them sharply from most other townsmen. In many cities charters have been won after violence and bloodshed, and once won are jealously guarded. The difference in the Troyen attitude is unquestionably a reflection of the vast advantages accruing to the burghers of Troyes from their fairs. Though their political liberties have proved illusory, their individual liberties are genuine. They possess freedom without self-government, and as long as the fairs prosper they will be satisfied.

  Troyes is not the only town to suffer from a prince’s follies, and at the head of the list of princely follies stands crusading. Burgher discontent has played a major role in the decline of the crusading business since Peter the Hermit. In 1095 idealism caused many people to do foolish things, but by the thirteenth century ordinary people have lost their appetite for warfare, while princes and barons have grown more cautious about selling estates to equip armies. Nowadays only princes who can exact large contributions from their towns can think about Crusading. In most of France and Flanders the principal form of such contributions is the feudal “aid,” originally a gift to a lord on the occasion of a daughter’s marriage or a son’s knighting—a ham from one peasant, a sack of grain from another. In the more affluent, urbanized society of the thirteenth century, the aid is a cash payment. When a sovereign requests it, his towns must assess themselves. No town is happy about an aid, and some find it thoroughly objectionable. Douai, in Flanders, paid 32,600 livres over a period of twenty years for a variety of needs and extravagances of its counts and countesses. Noyon went bankrupt, the goods of its burghers being seized to pay creditors.