Developments in Western Europe During the High Middle Ages: C1000 CE to C1500 CE

Developments in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages: c1000 CE to c1500 CE Changes in Agriculture Population growth in the Middle Ages after the tenth century resulted from decreases in Viking raids and improvements in agricultural methods for producing food. Farmers experimented with new crops and with different cycles of crop rotation (such as the three-field system) to ensure the most abundant harvest possible without compromising the fertility of the soil. During the high middle ages, European peoples expanded their use of water mills and wheeled heavy iron plows (like the moldboard plow), which had appeared during the early middle ages, and also introduced new tools and technologies. Two simple items in particular – the horseshoe and the horse collar – made it possible to increase sharply the amount of land that cultivators could work. Horseshoes helped to prevent softened and split hooves on horses and tramped throughout moist European soils. Horse collars placed the burden of a heavy load on an animal’s chest and shoulders rather than its neck and enabled horses to pull heavy plows without choking. Thus Europeans could hitch their plows to horses rather than to slower oxen and bring more land under the plow. Scholars believe that the diffusion of the horse collar to Europe was a complex phenomenon, with the collar itself diffusing to northern Europe across central Asia and the breast strap harness diffusing from north Africa through Islamic Iberia. The agricultural surplus created in part by these varied innovations encouraged the growth of towns and of markets that could operate more frequently Figure 1 A peasant plows using the moldboard plow, horse collar, and breast strap harness. than just on holidays. Excerpted from Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past, p410 The Revival of Towns and Trade “With abundant supplies of food, European society was able to support large numbers of urban residents – artisans, crafts workers, merchants, and professionals. Attracted by urban opportunities, peasants and serfs from the countryside flocked to established cities and founded new towns at strategically located sites. Cities founded during Roman times, such as Paris, London, and Toledo (in Spain), became thriving centers of government and business, and new urban centers emerged from Venice in northern Italy to Bergen on the west coast of Norway. Northern Italy and Flanders (the northwestern part of modern Belgium) experienced especially strong urbanization. For the first time since the fall of the western Roman empire, cities began to play a major role in European economic and social development. The growth of towns and cities brought about increasing specialization of labor, which in turn resulted in a dramatic expansion of manufacturing and trade. Manufacturing concentrated especially on the production of wool textiles. The cities of Italy and Flanders in particular became lively centers for the spinning, weaving, and dyeing of wool. Trade in wool products helped to fuel economic development throughout Europe. By the twelfth century the counts of Champagne in north France sponsored fairs that operated almost year-round and that served as vast marketplaces where merchants from all parts of Europe compared and exchanged goods. The revival of urban society was most pronounced in Italy, which was geographically well situated to participate in the trade networks of the Mediterranean basin. During the tenth century the cities of Amalfi and Venice served as ports for merchants engaged in trade with Byzantine and Muslim partners in the eastern Mediterranean. During the next century the commercial networks of the Mediterranean widened to embrace Genoa, Pisa, Naples, and other Italian cities. Italian merchants exchanged salt, olive oil, wine, wool fabrics, leather products and glass for luxury goods such as gems, spices, silk and other goods from India, southeast Asia, and China that Muslim merchants brought to eastern Mediterranean markets. As trade expanded, Italian merchants established colonies in the major ports and commercial centers of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. By the thirteenth century, Venetian and Genoese merchants maintained large communities in Constantinople, Alexandria, Cairo, Damascus, and the Black Sea ports of Tana, Caffa, and Trebizond. Caffa was the first destination of the Venetian brothers Niccolo and Maffeo Polo when they embarked on their commercial venture of 1260. Those trade posts enabled them to deal with Muslim merchants engaged in the Indian Ocean and overland trade with India, southeast Asia, and China. By the mid- thirteenth century the Polos and a few other Italian merchants were beginning to venture beyond the eastern Mediterranean region to central Asia, India, and China in search of commercial opportunities. Figure 2 Trade in Europe, c1300 Although medieval trade was most active in the Mediterranean basin, a lively commerce grew up also in the northern seas. The Baltic Sea and the North Sea were sites of a particularly well-developed trade partnership known as the Hanseatic League, or more simply as the Hansa – an association of trading cities stretching from Novgorod to London and embracing all the significant commercial centers of Poland, northern Germany, and Scandinavia. The Hansa dominated trade in grain, fish, furs, timber, and pitch (used for waterproofing ships) from northern Europe. The fairs of Champagne and the Rhine, the Danube, and other major European rivers linked the Hansa trade network with that of the Mediterranean. As in post-classical China and the Islamic world, a rapidly increasing volume of trade encouraged the development of credit, banking, and new forms of business organization in Europe. Bankers issued letters of credit to merchants traveling to distant markets, thus freeing them from the risk and inconvenience of carrying cash or bullion. Having arrived at their destinations, merchants exchanged their letters of credit for merchandise or cash in the local currency. In the absence of credit and banking, it would have been impossible for merchants to trade on a large scale. Meanwhile, merchants devised new ways of spreading and pooling the risks of commercial investments. They entered into partnerships with other merchants, and they limited the liability of partners to the extent of their individual investments. The limitation on individual liability encouraged the formation of commercial partnerships, thus further stimulating the European economy. The growing cities of medieval Europe were by no means egalitarian societies: cities attracted noble migrants as well as peasants and serfs, and urban nobles often dominated city affairs. Yet medieval towns and cities also reflected the interests and contributions of the working classes. Merchants and workers in all the arts, crafts, and trades organized guilds that regulated the production and sale of goods within their jurisdictions. By the thirteenth century the guilds had come to control much of the urban economy of medieval Europe. They established standards of quality for manufactured goods, sometimes even requiring members to adopt specific techniques of production, and they determined the prices at which members had to sell their products. Figure 3 A tailors' guild in London, England Excerpted from Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past, p411-412 & 415 Gender Roles in the High Middle Ages Women who lived in the countryside continued to perform the same kinds of tasks that their ancestors tended to in the early middle ages: household chores, weaving woolen cloth, and the care of domestic animals. But medieval towns offered and cities offered fresh opportunities for women as well as men. In the patriarchal society of medieval Europe, few routes to public authority were open to women, but in larger towns and cities women worked alongside men as butchers, brewers, bakers, candle makers, fishmongers, cobblers, innkeepers, launderers, money changers, merchants, and occasional pharmacists and physicians. Women dominated some occupations, particularly those involving textiles and decorative arts, such as sewing, spinning, weaving, and the making of hats, wigs, and fur garments. The career path of midwifery – the medical profession dealing with pregnancy and childbirth – was also dominated by women. Women found their rights eroding as a wave of patriarchal thinking and writing accompanied the movement from an agricultural society to a more urban one. Men thought that less education was necessary for women, even though women often managed manor accounts. However, Christine di Pisan of Venice strongly challenged the idea that women could not be literate. She herself wrote prose and poetry in praise of women’s accomplishments, including The Book oF the City oF Ladies. Women in religious orders, such as nuns, had more opportunities to demonstrate their administrative skills than most other women of the time. Figure 4. Medieval midwives assisting with childbirth. Some women were allowed to become guild members and artisans, although not all had property rights. Women in Islamic societies tended to enjoy higher levels of equality, particularly in parts of Africa and Southeast Asia. Advances in Medieval Scholarship Scholarship in the medieval period was almost entirely in the hands of the Catholic Church and its clergy. For example, medical advances were almost unknown in Western Europe, since Church authorities believed that sin was the cause of illness. In their minds there

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