Hauling Away in Late Medieval Bavaria: the Economics of Inland Transport in an Agrarian Market I by MICHAEL TOCH
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Hauling Away in Late Medieval Bavaria: The Economics of Inland Transport in an Agrarian Market I By MICHAEL TOCH Abstract Using the mid-fourteenth-century accounts of the Bavarian monastery of Scheyern (to the north of Munich), the article scrutinizes the way late medieval landlords went about the organization of transport. Most intricate were the arrangements for the yearly recurring ventures sent into the Southern Tyrol to purchase, cart, and ship home the excellent vintages of Latin wine. For most of the relay route, hired can'iers were employed, but one stage was turned over to tenants owing the monastery carting services. Other transport needs nearer home made for less complicated arrangements, using a mix of hired labour, permanent servants, and the monastery's own rolling stock and beasts. No attempts were made to improve the technological level of transport, relying instead on a very flexible organization of monetary and labour resources attuned to local circumstances. Hr economic history of later medie- did not go further than the thirteenth val Bavaria is still largely uncharted. century and was primarily concerned with T This period of decisive political and the early medieval genesis of social divisions social development, most of which has within the rural population. The latter has been very thoroughly researched, has yet only a cursory chapter on late medieval to find its proper treatment for the econ- developments, and wholly left out the omy.'- Despite the existence of a sizeable agrarian sector, the one making up the number of systematically edited sources 3, largest part of the Bavarian economy as the main economic developments are left late as the early twentieth century. The stranded between the purely agrarian treat- important monograph of Friedrich Ltitge ment accorded by Philippe Dollinger, and on Bavarian landlordship again starts only the mainly mercantile and industrial inter- with the sixteenth century and deals solely est of Eckhart Schremmer. 4 The former with legal matters) There is thus a gap which is only barely filled by two short ' Some of the ideas developed here were first expressed in a paper chapters on the rural and urban economy delivered in July 1989 in Brussels at a conference on 'Inland Transport and Coummnication in the Pre-Industrial Period'. in the otherwise magisterial Handbuch der " For an excellent overview on the formation of the Bavarian duchy Bayerischen Geschichte.° see M Spindler, ed, Ha;~dbudt der bayerischen Geschichte, vol. II, Munich 1969, "nd ed., 1977. The political and social development Such a state of research cannot be rem- of the countryside is ampdy docu,nented in the series Historischer edied in a single blow. This paper aims at Atlas yon Bayem, Munich 195off. See Erwin Riedcnauer, Der Historische Atlas yon Bayern, in: Jahrbuch fi'lr fri~nkische one sector only, transport, which has how- Landesforschung 43, 1983, ~1-58. ever often been credited with a key func- 3 By ,low close to forty volumes of sources mainly of monastic origin, edited since 1952 in the series 'QueUen uud Er/Srterungen tion in both the traditional and the modem zur bayerischen Geschichte' under the auspices of the Kommission economy. 7 We shall ask what goods late ['fir bayerische Landesgeschichte at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Munich. medieval Bavarians, living in an almost 4 Philippe Dollinger, i)~volution des classes mrales cn Bavi~re depuis la fin de I'/Toque carolitlgietlllejusqu'au milieu du Xllle sibde, Paris, 1949, henceforth cited in the updated German translation edited by Franz s Friedrich Ltitge, Die bayerische Gnmdhetrschaft. Untersuch,mgen fiber Irsigler, Der bayerische Bauemstand vom 9. his zum 13. jahrhundert, die Agrarverfassung Altbayenls im 16.- 18. jahrl, undert, Stuttgart, 1949. Munich, x982; Eckhart Schremmer, Die Wirtsehaft Bayems. Vom 6 Handbuch der bayerischen Geschid~te, 11, Ch 5, 6. hohen Mittelalter bis zum Beginn der bldustrialisiemng. Bergbau, Gewerbe, 7 For a bibliographical orientation see A Simon, Bibliographie zur Handel, Munich, 197o. Verkehrsgeschichte De,aschlands im Mittelalter, Trier, I984. Ag Hist Rev, 4I, *-, pp III-I23 III II2 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW purely agricultural country nevertheless are probably misled by the prevalent legal crossed by routes of international com- character of the surviving documentation, merce, carried hauled and shipped from which leaves out the manifold forms of place to place, and why they did so. What free association. Thus a rare sharecropping functions did such activities possess in the contract of I395 specifies also the respect- wider framework of economic needs? 8 We ive duties of lord and tenant concerning shall follow a simple procedure, checking hauling and transport. ~I Judging by the first the research literature and edited surviving bulk of the record, the lords' sources for information on the workings administrators and scribes paid much more and organization of transport. We shall attention to the wide-ranging expeditions then attempt to supplement the deficiencies aimed at providing the great households of the fragmented general record by with staple goods and especially wine. This recourse to an especially well docmnented was available in good quality only in far case study. away Southern Tyrol (Italian Alto Adige) or in the even more remote Danube region of Lower Austria. Other articles such as I salt and cheese too had to be transported Transport is mentioned here and there in over significant distances. Here again the Bavarian sources as early as the Carolingian operative principle was the forced partici- period, but most documents belong to the pation of tenants in a system of transport time from the twelfth century onwards. along routes lined by stations in which the The type of transport emerging from them landlord possessed privileges of toll exemp- is part and parcel of the manorial system, tion. These features are nicely brought involving the tenants in periodical ventures together in the nfid-fourteenth-century of corv4e labour where they hauled their evidence of the lnonastery of Osterhofen. I~" own taxes in kind or tithe returns to the The abbey cooperated with a number of lord's manorial centre. Very little direct tenements to equip a currus expedicionis to evidence has survived on such local short be sent to Austria, evidently to collect the range missions? We are a litde better served wine cultivated there on its holdings and by the spate of rentals, listing the tenants' convey it via tax-exempt stages back home. duties and dues, of the thirteenth and early A similar organization is attested as early as fourteenth centuries. ~° Yet even in this the eleventh century for the great Ratisbon better documented period only rarely is monastery, St Emmeram. Its tenants in there direct evidence for actual transport sub-Alpine Vogtareuth were charged with activities on the local level. But then we transporting wine from Bolzano in the Southern Tyrol. '3 Identical or similar 8 In a similar way I have attempted to supply some evidence for arrangements are found for a sizable another key sector of the medieval rural economy, credit. See my 'Geld und Kredit in einer sp~itmittelalterlichen Landschaft' in: number of Bavarian landlords of the twelfth Deutsdws ArchivJ?~rEsCorsdmt~ des Mittelalters, 38, 1982, pp 499-550; and my forthcoming 'Local Credit in an Agrarian Economy: The Case of Bavaria 04th to 15th Centuries)' in: P.-j. Schuler, ed, Local and lntenmtional Credit, t994. 9Dollinger, Der bayerische Bauemstand, l 53-8. ~o See in general Kobert Fossier, Polyptiques et eensiers (Typologie des sources du moyen 5ge occidental ..8), Tournhout 1978. On the German Urbare see K Th v Inama-Sternegg, Ober Urbarien und "O Engels - M. Thiel, eds, Die Traditionen, Urkuaden mid Urbare Urbarialaufzeichnungen, in: Archivalisdw Zeitschrifi. 2. x877, des Klosters Miinchsmanster, Munich, x96t, 2o8. pp 26-52. For the Bavarian ecclesiastical ones see Johannes Wetzel, '~Johann Gruber, ed, Die Urhmden und das iilwste Urbar des Stifles Die Urbare der bayerisdlen Kli~ster und Hochstifte vom At~ang des i t. Ostedtofen, Munich, 1985, entries 467, 47o, 474, 73o, x65o, 1653, Jahrhunderts bis 135 o, unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Munidb 1663, I666, 1669, 1671-1766. 1976. For the ducal Urbare see now lngrid Heeg-Engelhardt, ed, '~ Ernst Klebel, Aus der Veff,assungs-, Wirtschafts- und Das i~lteste bayerische Herzogs,rbar. Analyse u,d Edition, Munich, Siedlungsgeschichte der Hofinarkt Vogtareuth bei Kosenheim, in I99o. Zeitschriftfiir bayerische Landesgesdffthte 6, 1933, PP 27-59, 177-216. J HAULING AWAY IN LATE MEDIEVAL BAVARIA II3 to fourteenth centuries, and even as late as from the local level of a case study. In the fifteenth century. ~4 contrast to the literature and our previous Yet already by the turn from the thir- exposition, both based on the prevalent teenth to the fourteenth century this sort legal sources, this case study uses accounts, of manorial organization often seems a a rare type of evidence in medieval thing of the past, as evidenced by cash Germany which informs us however of payments indicating in the rentals the com- things that have actually been done? ° On mutation of transport duties, r5 This fits in the other hand a case study, instructive as with the general development as manorial it might be, has a limited capacity for corv4es were increasingly whittled away generalization. Luckily, in our case ecclesi- by the inroads of the money economy. ~6 astical aggrandizement has assembled a And indeed, looking back from the early lordship with possessions in different modern period to the thirteenth century, regions typical of a wider area. This is the Schremmer sees transport already organized lordship of the Benedictine monastery of solely along commercial lines, with pro- Scheyern: founded in IO87 in the wilder- fessional carriers active on the land routes ness of an Alpine valley, it moved a few connecting Bavaria with Alpine Tyrol and years later to another Alpine site; relocated through it with the high-density economy again in I Io4 to the already settled lowland of Italy.