Property and Poverty

19 PROPERTY AND POVERTY Between the eleventh century and the fourteenth the economy of Latin Christendom underwent fundamental and rapid transformations. There is, it is true, scholarly debate as to the direction and pace of economic development; but some points are clear enough. The population increased threefold, urban centres attracted an increasingly mobile populace and there was a massive minting of money. At a time when feudal society still flourished, there was a concomitant development of the basic structures of pre-industrial society, most of which had taken shape by 1300, so that many towns were to retain their essential appearance until the nineteenth century.1 While feudal tenure was still widespread, especially in France, England and the Empire, it appears that in England, by 1300, such tenures were becoming more like private property, transferred by sale as well as, more traditionally, by inheritance. What was formerly seen by historians as the area of'classic feudalism' has shrunk somewhat, for regional studies in France and the Low Countries have shown that even by the mid-eleventh century allodial holdings, independent of vassalage, constituted the principal form of property. Allods meant that real estate was more mobile than an extensively feudalised society would permit.2 More generally, the commercial revolution of this period produced a market economy centred on towns; and the agriculture which was still the main activity of medieval men and women became organised for that economy.3 The desire for new land and for the more efficient exploitation of the land led to massive reclamation projects, to the assessment of property by reference to rental income instead of service and produce, and to the increasing importance of bankers and credit transactions.4 Credit and payment techniques in general improved during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries so that turnover became more rapid and the volume of money was increased. It is with such factors as these — with elements in the economic process which defied or 1. Little 1978. 2. Witt 1971, pp. 965-88; Verriest 1959 and 1946. 3. Lis and Soly 1979. 4. Lopez 1971; Herlihy 1958. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/coreCambridge Histories. Columbia Online University © Cambridge - Law Library University, on 23 NovPress, 2018 2008 at 19:05:31, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521243247.023 6o8 Development: c. 1150—c. 1450 transformed traditional feudal relations, rather than with 'classic feudalism' itself — that the discussion here is concerned. In eleventh-century Tuscan cities, as elsewhere somewhat later, second- line nobles (valvassores) became part of the expanded feudal elite. Commercial families and the old aristocracy blended together so as to obscure the distinction between rural and urban power bases; and, especially in Italy, there is evidence for a widespread intrusion of the nobility into the legal and administrative professions. The increasing use of money and the development of an elaborate structure of financial credit in the new market economy, especially conspicuous in towns, gave rise to impersonal transactions unaffected by considerations of the status of buyer and seller; and this helped to produce a mentality in which the seed of capitalism was sown, thereby generating attitudes to property that were to survive into and beyond the early modern era. The distinctive spiritualities of the period between the eleventh and late fourteenth century were also, in part, responses and adjustments to this social and economic change: the laity became more involved in church reform.5 The distinctive political and legal theory and practice of this period, the very survival of the political communities of Europe as they emerged in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, point to the role of money and financial sophistication in the development of civic-spirited, abstract social ties, replacing the earlier mentality based on kinship and blood relationships.6 Any discussion of the evolution of concepts of property in this period must deal with some of the ways in which the abstract ties of credit and a faith in the durability of financial relations gained primacy in the public mind even while feudal rights and obligations persisted. In eleventh- century Tuscany there developed a harsh critique of ecclesiastical institu tions that accepted gifts in return for spiritual benefits. This can be seen as an offshoot of the Gregorian Reform movement which inspired monasteries to be freer from the world of power, arms and gifts; priests and monks were inspired to be free of the taint of simony, thereby enforcing spiritual authority as autonomous and abstract. It has recently been argued that the reform movement and a pious laity affected by it, challenged a system of values and social relationships structurally dependent on gift and literal exchange.7 A growing belief that interpersonal relationships could be predicated of abstract ties was reflected in the renewed use of Roman law categories on the part of the Holy Roman Emperor and his allies and the 5. Little 1975, pp. 11-26; Le GofF 1970; Bolton 1983; Violante 1974. 6. Becker 1981; Goody 1983; Mollat 1974. 7. Becker 1981. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/coreCambridge Histories. Columbia Online University © Cambridge - Law Library University, on 23 NovPress, 2018 2008 at 19:05:31, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521243247.023 Property and poverty 609 parallel development of canon law categories by a reformed papacy. A collective Christian set of interests and a collective set of civic, universal interests were enshrined both in the Roman and church law compendia and their commentaries. Ecclesiastical canon law developed to encompass ever widening jurisdiction in men's lives as did civil law. The nuclear family replaced the extended family solidarity.8 Marriage achieved sacramental status; dowries became real contracts; wills became true contracts of alienation with the right of usufruct at the end of the eleventh century. Notarial formulae came into vogue to guarantee universal legitimacy. The two laws generally classified human behaviour and reified obligation through written formulae in a more mobile, increasingly literate and pious lay society. Roman law projected a vision of legal order that was more stable, autonomous and more universal than the clannish, localised laws of an earlier period. In business as in law, the shift was away from voluntary and amiable transactions ruled by the principle of convenientia, that resulted in pacts publicly verified through witnesses and iconic documents enshrining benefactions, towards more impartial legal norms. This was related to a renewed and realised notion of Empire on the part of the Hohenstaufen and an extension of power over local communities through an extension of a more universal tribunal that was fuelled by credit transactions and taxation in money. Ancient imperialism and republicanism were revived in theory, made explicit in revived Roman law, and previously unexplored libraries were examined to reveal ancient texts to justify papal or imperial attempts at consolidation of power. Illegitimacy was censured, ecclesiastical concubinage was condemned, and, in general, a pious laity intervened in the reform of the local churches. Collective contracts between landlords and peasant communities evolved into communal rural statutes in favour of the survival of the community. Communal assemblies were charged with administering parish properties. Twelfth-century Lombard communes corporatively owned and claimed customary rights in pastures, fishing, mills, ovens, banks, food-markets and houses built on public streets. The possibility of living an authentic Christian life whilst remaining of the world (and therefore, not retreating to the monastic cloister) was gaining force, and one observes the shift in legal justifications for private, public and corporate ownership of property. Some of the first juridical texts to define the status of the laity, Gratian's De matrimonio and his collection of ecclesiastical law, the Decretum (c. 1140), described men as righteously married, tillers of the soil, capable of 8. Goody 1983; Violante 1953. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/coreCambridge Histories. Columbia Online University © Cambridge - Law Library University, on 23 NovPress, 2018 2008 at 19:05:31, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521243247.023 6io Development: c. 1150-c. 1450 adjudication amongst themselves, and with the rights to pursue their own affairs as possessors and users of worldly goods.9 On the subject of economic policy, city authorities and larger states came to be seen as the appropriate regulators. In effect, Empire and papacy, the two major forces behind the two collected bodies of law, Roman and canon, began to realise more fully in practice their two competing theoretical jurisdictions over Christian lives. Through the minting of coins and the lending of money at interest, the European commercial revolution came to maturity well in advance of either the concept or reality of the state.10 It is a commonplace of medieval textbook history that the keystone of feudal government was the personal agreement between a lord and a vassal to exchange, mutually, protection of a gift of land for counsel and military support and incidents in kind. By at least the early twelfth century on the continent, early thirteenth century in England, the personal agreement between two consenting parties to the feudal contract was beginning to be replaced by money payment. The encroachment of a profit economy on government is apparent in the development of a salaried bureaucracy of lawyers, administrators and publicists. Those who moved into the cities from the surrounding countryside adopted a single function as a means to earn their way, raising problems concerning the moral probity of some of the urban professions.

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