The High Middle Ages:

The Thirteenth Century

The pinnacle of the High Middle Ages, the thirteenth century was a period in which the dynamic trends already under way during the two preceding centuries came to fruition. Within the Church new reforming orders like the Franciscans and Dominicans were founded and the papacy made even more unprecedented claims to power. With these claims the papacy continued to come into conflict with monarchs who had themselves gained in stature and power in certain areas, particularly England and France. Commerce continued to thrive, but by this time merchants, artisans, and even cities were organizing their own institutions, like guilds and leagues, reflecting their growing power and permanency. The culture of the Middle Ages flourished during this century. Magnificent Gothic cathedrals, some started in the twelfth century, rose throughout Europe. Universities expanded, becoming important centers of learning as well as recruiting grounds for members of the growing state and ecclesiastical bureaucracies. Medieval scholasticism dominated the period intellectually and received its finest statement in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas.

In this chapter some of the connections between religious, political, social, and cultural trends of thirteenth-century Europe are examined. Some documents concentrate primarily on theoretical and practical relations between the Church, the state, and society. How did the papacy justify its claims over secular authority? How did the Church react to the challenges presented by the growing urban centers? How did the Church control its clergy, who had such concrete contact with all classes in traditional society? How was the Church affected by the growing body of and new respect for Classical law and thought?

The documents also shed light on the relations between monarchs, nobles, and towns-the three lay competitors for power. How did the strength of central authority vary in different parts of Europe? How did monarchs, nobles, and towns compete with one another for power and authority? How did the balance between the monarchs, nobles, and towns shift in the Holy Roman Empire under Frederick 11? How did the newly assertive cities deal with the development of commerce and urban growth, as seen in the formation of leagues and various urban institutions such as guilds?

Finally, the sources show how some of these relations were reflected in the culture and society of the period. What constituted social injustice? What problems did urban areas have with crime and violence? How was the position of the aristocracy reflected in pictorial art? How was the new respect for Classical law .

The Outlaws of

Medieval Legend: Social

Rank and Injustice

Maurice Keen

Today, the social system of the Middle Ages seems unjust, particularly for the poor, who suffered the most. Yet one must be careful in applying modern standards to an earlier era. In the following selection Maurice Keen of Oxford argues that the poor did not have such a critical view of the social system and the laws that supported such a hierarchical structure. Rather, criticism was directed toward corruption within the system. In his interpretation Keen makes creative use Of evidence from medieval ballads and legends.

Consider: The common view or ideal that justified the social system to the medieval mind, what sort of behavior created a sense of injustice in the minds of medieval people.

The middle ages were profoundly respectful to hereditary rank and they did not question its title to homage. They did on the other hand question the right of those whose actions belied any nobility of mind to the enjoyment of the privileges of noble status. They were not indignant against an unjust social system, but they were indignant against unjust social superiors. The ballad makers accepted this contemporary attitude and echoed it in their poems.

This explains why the ballads have nothing to say of the economic exploitation of the poor, of the tyranny of lords of manors whose bondmen were tied to the soil and bound by immemorial custom to till their land for him. For we might expect, from what we know of the social system of the countryside in the middle ages, to find Robin, as the champion of the poor, freeing serfs from bondage, harbouring runaway villeins in his band, and punishing the stewards of estates whose conduct was every whit as harsh and unjust as that of the offices of the law. But the middle ages did not view social injustice, as we do, in terms of the exploitation of one class by another; they admired the class system as the co-operation for the common well-being of the different estates of men. They recognized three different classes in their society; the knights and lords, whose business it was to protect Christendom in arms, the clerks who had charge of its spiritual wellbeing and whose duty was prayer, and the common men whose business it was to till the soil. Each rank had its obligation to discharge its proper duties without complaint, and, in the case particularly of the first two classes, not to abuse the privileges which its function gave it. That they were made to 'swink and toil' gave the peasants no ground for complaint; their occupation, as one preacher quaintly put it, lay in 'grobbynge about the erthe, as erynge and dungynge and sowynge and harwying' and 'this schuld be do justlie and for a good ende, withoute feyntise or falshede or gruechyngle of hire estaat'. But those who failed to discharge their duties and abused their position had no right to a

place in the system, nor to the profits of association. 'They neither labour with the rustics ... nor fight with the knights, nor pray and chant with the clergy; therefore,' says the great Dominican, Bromyard, of such men 'they shall go with their own abbot, of whose Order they are, namely the Devil, where no Order exists but horror eternal.

The law's object is ultimately to uphold social justice, and to the middle ages social justice meant a hierarchical social system. The trouble came when those who belonged to a high class used the wealth, which was given them to uphold their proper rank, to corrupt the law and abuse it for their own profit. Their ultimate sin was the use of their originally rightful riches to purchase more than was their due. For this reason, those who were shocked by flagrant injustice into attacking the accepted system criticized not the economic oppression which is almost automatically implied, but the corruption of evil men whose personal greed destroyed the social harmony of what they regarded as the ideal system. The method which these men employed was to buy the law, and to control by their position its application. It is for this reason that the outlaw ballads, whose heroes are the champions of the poor, are silent about the multitudinous economic miseries of the medieval peasant, and are concerned only or at least chiefly with an endless feud against the corrupt representatives of the law. Contemporary opinion diagnosed the disease which was gnawing at society as the personal corruption of those in high rank; that such disease was the inevitable accompaniment of their hierarchic system they simply could not see. This is why the animus in the outlaw ballads is against oppression by those who own the law, not against exploitation by those who own the land.

Life in Cities:

Violence and Fear

Jacques Rossiaud

The growth of cities after the eleventh century created what we now recognize as typical urban problems. One such problem was keeping the peace. Cities in Western Europe were often places of violence and fear As part of a trend toward studying, social life, historians have increasingly studied crime and violence in medieval cities. In the following selection Jacques Rossiaud analyzes violent acts in the cities o Western Europe, emphasizing how urban violence fostered anxiety.

Consider: Who tended to commit most of the violent acts; possible explanations for urban violence; what the effects of this violence might be.

The history of the cities of Western Europe is shot through with episodes of violence, fear, and revolution, episodes in which family honor, participation in the municipal council, or working conditions were at stake. Such conflicts opposed "magnate" and "popular" factions. In Italy they opposed actual political parties dominated by clans, and in the bigger cities of Flanders they turned into true class wars punctuated by massacres, exilings, and destruction. Such conflicts were frequent between 1250 and 1330, and they resulted everywhere in a defeat of the old rich land and an enlargement of oligarchies. A second wave of unrest of a more clearly social character (the dompi in Florence and Siena, the maillotins in Paris, and so forth) battered the urban world in the late fourteenth century. The defeat of the lower orders did not put an end to the tensions, which were transformed into an occasional brief terror, here and there, but were more usually expressed in continual but muted, "atomized" conflicts difficult to distinguish from common delinquency in the documentation. Stones thrown at night through a master's windows, a creditor brutalized, a brawl between two rival groups of workers were easily ascribed to ordinary violence by the judges.

In other words, many city-dwellers, even if they lived through long and difficult periods of tension, escaped the horrors of riots and repression, but they all had to face an atmosphere of violence on an almost daily basis. There is little need to accumulate examples: in Florence, Venice, Paris, Lille, Dijon, Avignon, Tours, or Foix, the judicial archives reveal an impressive series of cold-blooded vendettas, of chaudes mNjes between individuals or groups settled with knives or iron-tipped sticks, and of rapes, often collective, that marked for life poor girls beaten and dragged from their rooms at night.

These violent acts were for the most part committed by youths or adult men, often of modest social condition, but who were indistinguishable from law-abiding citizens.

Wine-drunkenness was often an excuse does not explain everythinLy, nor do the arms that everyone carried in spite of municipal ordinances. The example came from on high: even in Reims at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the judges were incapable of keeping clans from resolving their quarrels by means of arms. However, civic violence (executions, torture, forcing a criminal to run through the city streets as the crowd jeered and struck him) was offered as a spectacle, and the domestic moral code allowed blows. justice, what is more, did not inspire belief; it was more dreaded than appreciated, and it was inefficient and costly. When he was scoffed at, the individual turned to immediate vengeance. He did so to safeguard his honor: it was in the name of honor that young men punished girls who, to their minds, transgressed its canons. Like violence, honor was a value widespread in urban societies: prominent citizens were called "honor-

able." There was no reputation without honor and no honor without authority. The richman's wealth and friends lent support to his honor; the working man without wealth held his reputation to be an essential capital.

Violence fostered anxiety. On occasion the notables denounced it, but they did not really seek to extirpate it (either in Venice or Dijon). For humble folk this fear added to other obsessions-of being abandoned amid general indifference, as with Dame Poverty, whom jean de Meun described as covered with an old sack, 11 a bit apart from the others ... crouched down and hunched over like a poor dog," sad, shamed, and unloved.

Solitude

Georges Duby

Whether in urban or rural areas, people of the High Middle Ages spent much of their everyday lives in the company of others. What we in our times think of as privacy was not quite the same in medieval society. Not only were living spaces more communal, but people were expected to work, play, and travel in groups. In the following selection A History of Private Life, Georges Duby describes this crowded, communal society and the difficulties facing anyone seeking solitude.

Consider: How groups formed in various occupations and activities; how Duby analyzes private space; the problems facing an individual longing for solitude.

People crowded together cheek by jowl, living in promiscuity, sometimes in the midst of a mob. In feudal residences there was no room for individual solitude, except perhaps in the moment of death. When people ventured outside the domestic enclosure, they did so in groups. No journey could be made by fewer than two people, and if it happened that they were not related, they bound themselves by rites of brotherhood, creating an artificial family that lasted as long as the journey required. By age seven, at which time young aristocratic males were considered persons of sex, they left the woman's world and embarked upon a life of adventure. Yet throughout their lives they remained surrounded, in the strong sense of the word-whether they were dedicated to the service of God and sent to study with a schoolmaster or joined a group of other young men in aping the gestures of a leader, their new father, whom they followed whenever he left his house to defend his rights by force of arms or force of words or to hunt in his forests. Their apprenticeship over, new knights received their arms as a group, a mob organized as a family. (Generally the lord's son was dubbed along with the sons of the vassals.) From that time forth the young knights were always together, linked in glory and in shame, vouching for and standing as hostage for one another. As a group, accompanied by servants and often by priests, they raced from tourney to tourney, court to court, skirmish to skirmish, displaying their loyalties by showing the colors or shouting the same rallying cry. The devotion of these young comrades enveloped their leader in an indispensable mantle of domestic familiarity, an itinerant household.

Thus, in feudal society, private space was divided, composed of two distinct areas: one fixed, enclosed, attached to the hearth; the other mobile, free to move through public

space, yet embodying the same hierarchies and held together by the same controls. Within this mobile cell peace and order were maintained by a power whose mission was to organize a defense against the intrusion of the public authorities, for which purpose an invisible wall, as solid as the enclosure that surrounded the house, was erected against the outside world. This power enveloped and restrained the individuals of the household, subjecting them to a common discipline. Power meant constraint. And if private life meant secrecy, it was a secrecy shared by all members of the household, hence fragile and easily violated. If private life meant independence, it was independence of a collective sort. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries collective privacy did exist. But can we detect any signs of personal privacy within the collective privacy?

Feudal society was so granular in structure, composed of such compact curds, that any individual who attempted to remove himself from the close and omnipresent conviviality, to be alone, to construct his own private enclosure, to cultivate his garden, immediately became an object of either suspicion or admiration, regarded as either a rebel or a hero and in either case considered "foreign"-the antithesis of "private." The person who stood apart, even if his intention was not deliberately to commit evil, was inevitably destined to do so, for his very isolation made him more vulnerable to the Enemy's attacks. No one would run such a risk who was not deviant or possessed or mad; it was commonly believed that solitary wandering was a symptom of insanity. Men and women who traveled the roads without escort were believed to offer themselves up as prey, so it was legitimate to take everything they had. In any case, it was a pious work to place them back in some community, regardless of what they might say, to restore them by force to that clearly ordered and well-managed world where God intended them to be, a world composed of private enclosures and of the public spaces between them, through which people moved only in cortege.

Ecological Conditions

and Demographic Change

David Herlihy

Most historians feel that the medieval expansion ended between 1300 and 1350 and that changes occurred that marked the following century as one of contraction, disruption, and decline. Traditionally, these changes have been analyzed from political, military, and religious perspectives. In the following selection David Herlihy of Harvard focuses on the economic aspects of this change, particularly the economic limitations that prevented the medieval expansion from continuing much beyond the thirteenth century.

Consider: Obstacles hindering economic expansion by 1300; the social and political effects that might have stemmed from these economic changes; other factors that might account for the end of the medieval expansion.

Medieval expansion, however, never achieved a true breakthrough, never reached what some economists today term the stage of "takeoff," in which a built-in capacity for continuing growth is developed. By around 1300, certain obstacles were beginning to hinder economic expansion. One was the relative stagnation of technology. In spite of important technological discoveries that introduced the Middle Ages, peasants in 1300 were working the land much as their ancestors had several centuries before. However, technological stagnation alone does not seem to have imposed a rigid ceiling on growth. Paradoxically, many peasants in the late thirteenth century were not working the soil according to the best known and available methods. Their chief handicap was not lack of knowledge but lack of capital, for the best methods were based upon the effective use of cattle to supply both labor and manure. Insofar as we can judge, many small cultivators of the thirteenth century could not afford cattle and had to work their plots with their own unaided and inefficient efforts.

A second limitation upon expansion was the failure to develop institutions and values that would maintain appropriate levels of investment, especially in agriculture. In spite of the growth of cities, a large part of Europe's lands was controlled by military and clerical aristocracies, which were not likely to reinvest their profits received in rent. The great landlords were rather prone to spend their rents on conspicuous but economically barren forms of consumption such as manor houses, castles, churches, wars, the maintenance of a lavish style of living. They were also likely to demand from the towns money in loans for such unproductive expenditures.

A third limiting factor seems to have been the growing scarcity of resources, especially good land. As the best soils were taken under cultivation, the still growing population had to rely increasingly upon poorer, marginal lands, which required more effort and capital to assure a good return. The European economy was burdened by a growing saturation in the use of its readily available resources, and it had neither the technology nor the capital to improve its returns from what it possessed. In the opinion of many historians today, this saturation in the use of resources not only ended the economic advance of the central Middle Ages but precipitated a profound demographic and economic crisis in the fourteenth century.

Chapter Questions

1. Some historians have described the thirteenth century as the period in which Medieval civilization attained a remarkable balance. In what ways was this period so balanced?

2. In what ways were the main characteristics of the thirteenth century simply a further extension of trends already evident during the eleventh and twelfth centuries? What new developments appeared during the thirteenth century?

3. What evidence does the chapter provide of the struggle for authority that persisted through this period?