THE MEDIEVAL CITY Norman Pounds GREENWOOD PRESS THE MEDIEVAL CITY Titles in the Series Greenwood Guides to Historic Events of the Medieval World The Black Death The Crusades Eleanor of Aquitaine, Courtly Love, and the Troubadours Joan of Arc and the Hundred Years War Genghis Khan and Mongol Rule Magna Carta Medieval Castles Medieval Cathedrals The Medieval City Medieval Science and Technology The Rise of Islam The Puebloan Society of Chaco Canyon THE MEDIEVAL CITY Norman Pounds Greenwood Guides to Historic Events of the Medieval World Jane Chance, Series Editor GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pounds, Norman John Greville. The medieval city / Norman Pounds. p. cm.—(Greenwood guides to historic events of the medieval world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–313–32498–0 (alk. paper) 1. Cities and towns, Medieval—Europe. I. Title. II. Series. HT115.P68 2005 307.76'094'0902—dc22 2004028021 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2005 by Norman Pounds All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004028021 ISBN: 0–313–32498–0 First published in 2005 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America TM The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10987654321 Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright materials in this book, but in some instances this has proven impossible. The author and publisher will be glad to receive information leading to more complete acknowledgments in sub- sequent printings of the book and in the meantime extend their apologies for any omissions. CONTENTS Illustrations vii Series Foreword ix Advisory Board xxi Preface xxiii Chapter 1. Origins 1 Chapter 2. The Urban Plan: Streets and Structures 21 Chapter 3. The Urban Way of Life 55 Chapter 4. The Church in the City 85 Chapter 5. City Government 99 Chapter 6. Urban Crafts and Trade 119 Chapter 7. Health, Wealth, and Welfare 137 Chapter 8. Conclusion: The City in History 151 Biographies and Places 165 Augsburg and the Fuggers 165 The Cinque Ports 167 The Fair Towns of Champagne 169 The Hanseatic League 171 vi Contents The Laws of Breteuil 174 Ludlow, England, and Kalisz, Poland: A Contrast 175 The Most Highly Urbanized Region of Europe 179 Penryn, Cornwall, a Bishop’s Town 182 Sir Richard “Dick” Whittington 184 Primary Documents 187 1. “The Ruin” 187 2. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 188 3. Domesday Book 189 4. Urban Charters 191 5. Fairs and Markets 193 6. Gilds and Gild Regulations 194 7. Apprenticeship Contract 197 8. Urban Conditions 197 9. Sanitary Conditions 200 10. Street Life 203 11. Urban Finances 205 12. Citizenship 207 13. Urban Description and Illustration 207 14. The Visual Arts 208 15. Literary Descriptions 208 16. FitzStephen’s Description of London 209 17. Two English Towns: Lincoln and Nottingham 212 Glossary 215 Annotated Bibliography 221 Index 227 ILLUSTRATIONS Figures 1. Danebury, an Iron Age (c. 800 to 400 b.c.e.) hillfort in southern England 3 2. Totnes (Devon) and its abortive or unsuccessful satellites 13 3. The expansion of Florence 26 4. The expansion of Paris 27 5. Cologne 28 6. Krakow in the late Middle Ages 32 7. Arras, a binary town 33 8. Prague in the late Middle Ages 37 9. A row of townhouses, based on the surviving evidence of Tackley’s Inn, Oxford 42 10. Arnhem, a late medieval walled town, relatively lightly built up within its walled perimeter 44 11. A domestic cesspit, excavated within a house in Basing Lane in the City of London 48 12. At both Volterra and San Gimignano in central Italy the number of hearths (or households) increased until c. 1340 57 viii Illustrations 13. The number of hearths in the town of Millau in southern France at various dates 57 14. The source of the population of Toulouse, France, based on locative personal names 60 15. The known sources of migrants to Beauvais, France, based on locative personal names 61 16. Theory 72 17. Reality 73 18. The service area of the small Swiss town of Rheinfelden 74 19. The distribution of large and intermediate cities in late medieval Europe 76 20. Locations of French friaries 94 21. Locations of English friaries 95 22. Memorials of prominent citizens 110 23. A late medieval wall painting showing “Christ of the Trades” 124 24. Amiens, northern France 148 25. The Cinque Ports 168 26. Ludlow, England 177 27. Kalisz, Poland 178 28. Flanders, the most highly urbanized and industrialized region in late medieval Europe 180 Tables 1. The Size of Towns in Northern Europe 79 2. Urban Population of England as Percentage of Total 80 3. European Urban Population 81 SERIES FOREWORD The Middle Ages are no longer considered the “Dark Ages” (as Petrarch termed them), sandwiched between the two enlightened periods of clas- sical antiquity and the Renaissance. Often defined as a historical period lasting, roughly, from 500 to 1500 c.e., the Middle Ages span an enor- mous amount of time (if we consider the way other time periods have been constructed by historians) as well as an astonishing range of coun- tries and regions very different from one another. That is, we call the “Middle” Ages the period beginning with the fall of the Roman Empire as a result of raids by northern European tribes of “barbarians” in the late antiquity of the fifth and sixth centuries and continuing until the advent of the so-called Italian and English renaissances, or rebirths of classical learning, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. How this age could be termed either “Middle” or “Dark” is a mystery to those who study it. Cer- tainly it is no longer understood as embracing merely the classical in- heritance in the west or excluding eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia, or even, as I would argue, North and Central America. Whatever the arbitrary, archaic, and hegemonic limitations of these temporal parameters—the old-fashioned approach to them was that they were mainly not classical antiquity, and therefore not important—the Middle Ages represent a time when certain events occurred that have continued to affect modern cultures and that also, inevitably, catalyzed other medieval events. Among other important events, the Middle Ages saw the birth of Muhammad (c. 570–632) and his foundation of Islam in the seventh century as a rejection of Christianity which led to the im- perial conflict between East and West in the eleventh and twelfth cen- turies. In western Europe in the Middle Ages the foundations for modern x Series Foreword nationalism and modern law were laid and the concept of romantic love arose in the Middle Ages, this latter event partly one of the indirect con- sequences of the Crusades. With the shaping of national identity came the need to defend boundaries against invasion; so the castle emerged as a military outpost—whether in northern Africa, during the Crusades, or in Wales, in the eleventh century, to defend William of Normandy’s newly acquired provinces—to satisfy that need. From Asia the invasions of Genghis Khan changed the literal and cultural shape of eastern and southern Europe. In addition to triggering the development of the concept of chivalry and the knight, the Crusades influenced the European concepts of the lyric, music, and musical instruments; introduced to Europe an appetite for spices like cinnamon, coriander, and saffron and for dried fruits like prunes and figs as well as a desire for fabrics such as silk; and brought Aristotle to the European university through Arabic and then Latin translations. As a result of study of the “new” Aristotle, science and phi- losophy dramatically changed direction—and their emphasis on this ma- terial world helped to undermine the power of the Catholic Church as a monolithic institution in the thirteenth century. By the twelfth century, with the centralization of the one (Catholic) Church, came a new architecture for the cathedral—the Gothic—to re- place the older Romanesque architecture and thereby to manifest the Church’s role in the community in a material way as well as in spiritual and political ways. Also from the cathedral as an institution and its need to dramatize the symbolic events of the liturgy came medieval drama— the mystery and the morality play, from which modern drama derives in large part. Out of the cathedral and its schools to train new priests (for- merly handled by monasteries) emerged the medieval institution of the university. Around the same time, the community known as a town rose up in eastern and western Europe as a consequence of trade and the ne- cessity for a new economic center to accompany the development of a bourgeoisie, or middle class. Because of the town’s existence, the need for an itinerant mendicancy that could preach the teachings of the Church and beg for alms in urban centers sprang up. Elsewhere in the world, in North America the eleventh-century set- tlement of Chaco Canyon by the Pueblo peoples created a social model like no other, one centered on ritual and ceremony in which the “priests” Series Foreword xi were key, but one that lasted barely two hundred years before it collapsed and its central structures were abandoned. In addition to their influence on the development of central features of modern culture, the Middle Ages have long fascinated the modern age because of parallels that exist between the two periods.