Cities and Solidarities: Urban Communities in Pre-Modern Europe 1138943614, 9781138943612

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Cities and Solidarities

Cities and Solidarities charts the ways in which the study of individuals and places can revitalise our understanding of urban communities as dynamic interconnections of solidarities in medieval and early modern Europe. This volume sheds new light on the socio-economic conditions, the formal and informal institutions, and the strategies of individual town dwellers that explain the similarities and differences in the organisation and functioning of urban communities in pre-modern Europe. It considers how communities within cities and towns are constructed and reconstructed, how interactions amongst members of differing groups created social and economic institutions, and how urban communities reflected a sense of social cohesion. In answering these questions, the contributions combine theoretical frameworks with new digital methodologies in order to provoke further discussion into the fundamental nature of urban society in this key period of change. The essays in this collection demonstrate the complexities of urban societies in pre-modern Europe, and will make fascinating reading for students and scholars of medieval and early modern urban history. Justin Colson is Lecturer in the Department of History, University of Essex. Arie van Steensel is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Groningen.

Routledge Research in Early Modern History

In the same series: Penury into Plenty Dearth and the Making of Knowledge in Early Modern England by Ayesha Mukherjee Violence and Emotions in Early Modern Europe edited by Susan Broomhall and Sarah Finn India in the Italian Renaissance Visions of a Contemporary Pagan World 1300–1600 Meera Juncu The English Revolution and the Roots of Environmental Change The Changing Concept of the Land in Early Modern England George Yerby Honourable Intentions? Violence and Virtue in Australian and Cape Colonies, c. 1750 to 1850 edited by Penny Russell and Nigel Worden Social Thought in England, 1480–1730 From Body Social to Worldly Wealth A. L. Beier Dynastic Colonialism Gender, Materiality and the early modern House of Orange-Nassau Susan Broomhall and Jacqueline van Gent The Business of the Roman Inquisition in the Early Modern Era Germano Maifreda Cities and Solidarities Urban Communities in Pre-Modern Europe edited by Justin Colson and Arie van Steensel James VI and Noble Power in Scotland 1578–1603 edited by Miles Kerr-Peterson and Steven J. Reid

Cities and Solidarities Urban Communities in Pre-Modern Europe

Edited by Justin Colson and Arie van Steensel

First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Justin Colson and Arie van Steensel for selection and editorial matter, individual contributions © the contributors The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-94361-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-27095-1 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of figures and tables Preface List of contributors 1 Cities and solidarities. Urban communities in medieval and early modern Europe

vii x xii

1

J U S T I N C O L S ON AND ARI E VAN S T E E NS E L

2 Making the citizen, building the citizenry. Family and citizenship in fifteenth-century Barcelona

25

C A R O L I N A O B R ADORS - S UAZ O

3 Gladman’s procession and communal identity in Norwich, 1425–1452

43

D E R E K M . C R O S BY

4 Mapping urban communities. A comparative topography of neighbourhoods in Bologna and Strasbourg in the late Middle Ages

60

COLIN ARNAUD

5 Conflict, community, and the law. Guarantors and social networks in dispute resolution in early modern Saxony

79

JOHN JORDAN

6 The poor of medieval Zagreb between solidarity, marginalisation and integration

98

S U Z A N A M I L J A N AND BRUNO Š KRE BL I N

7 Poor boxes, guild ethic and urban community building in Brabant, c. 1250–1600 H A D E W I J C H M AS URE

115

vi

Contents

8 Who’s who in late-medieval Brussels?

132

B R A M VA N NI E UWE NHUYZ E

9 A cursus for craftsmen? Career cycles of the worsted weavers of late-medieval Norwich

151

D A N A D U R KE E

10 Wage labour, wealth and the power of a database. Unlocking communities of work outside urban guilds in Newcastle upon Tyne

169

ANDY BURN

11 Urban communities and their burghers in the Kingdom of Hungary (1750–1850). The possibilities databases offer for historical analysis

188

Á R P Á D T Ó T H, GÁBOR CZ OCH AND I S T VÁN NÉMETH

12 Speech and sociability. The regulation of language in the livery companies of early modern London

208

J E N N I F E R B I S HOP

13 The physician’s marzipan. Communities at their intersections in Basel around 1600

225

S A R A H - M A R I A S CHOBE R

14 ‘Scientific’ instruments and networks of craft and commerce in early modern London

245

A L E X I B A K ER

Index

269

Figures and tables

Figures 2.1 3.1

Genealogical tree of the Sarrovira family Jurisdictions in the City of Norwich, c. 1443, a plan-analysis of the City of Norwich based on the Ordinance Survey 1884–5 (drawn by Keith Lilley) 4.1 Probable cases of spatial unity or proximity between dwelling and workplace in Strasbourg, 1466 4.2 Probable cases of spatial unity or proximity between dwelling and workplace in Bologna, 1385 4.3 Cases of separation between dwelling and workplace in Strasbourg, 1466 4.4 Cases of separation between dwelling and workplace in Bologna, 1385 4.5 Parish churches in Strasbourg in the fifteenth century 4.6 Parish churches in Bologna in the fifteenth century 4.7 Bakers and ovens in Bologna, 1385 4.8 Bakers in Strasbourg, 1466 4.9 Bathhouses in Bologna according to the estimi of 1385 4.10 Bathhouses in Strasbourg in the fifteenth century 6.1 Map of Gradec and Kaptol in the sixteenth century 7.1 Number of poor boxes first mentioned in Mechelen, Brussels and Antwerp 9.1 Number of years between getting the freedom and first jury appearance, 1490–1530 9.2 Frequency of search jury appearances, 1492–1530 10.1 Hearths per household, 1666, for four occupation groups 11.1 Map of free royal towns in the Kingdom of Hungary (seventeenth-nineteenth centuries) (drawn by Béla Nagy) 13.1 Felix Platter’s letter to Dorothea Gemusein that accompanied his marzipan gift, copy, 1596/97 13.2 Hans Bock, Das Bad zu Leuk (?), 1597 13.3 Coconut cup, late sixteenth century 13.4 Rose noble, around 1470

32 44 63 63 65 65 67 68 70 71 72 73 99 120 157 157 177 190 226 232 233 234

viii Figures and tables 13.5 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5

Hans Kellner, Virgin cup, around 1600 An air pump by Francis Hauksbee the elder, in his Physico-Mechanical Experiments on Various Subjects of 1709 Known locations of instrument shops in London in 1700–1750 A trade card for the optician Thomas Ribright of the Poultry, who was freed by the Spectaclemakers’ Company in 1734 A surveying theodolite by Jesse Ramsden, known in the late eighteenth century for his precision-dividing of instruments Thermometer, barometer and hygrometer by Benjamin Martin. George Willdey similarly sold stylish ‘weather houses’ at his shop near St Paul’s, among a wide range of other luxury wares

236 248 252 257 260 262

Tables 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 7.1 7.2 8.1 8.2 9.1 9.2 10.1 10.2 11.1a 11.1b 11.2a 11.2b

Available data on guarantors and pledgees Residence of guarantors and pledgees according to the 1546 tax register Wealth of guarantors and pledgees according to the 1546 tax register Relationship of guarantor to pledgee: cases with one guarantor Relationship of guarantor to pledgee: cases with ≥2 guarantors Wealth in Freiberg by neighbourhood according to the 1546 tax register, in gulden Guild hospices in Mechelen, Brussels and Antwerp Poor boxes open to journeymen in the earliest found regulations Several men were called Jan van Laken in late-medieval Brussels Socio-economic profiles of the nations’ representatives in the city magistracy of Brussels for the legislatures of 1421–1422, 1431–1432 and 1441–1442 Correlation of apprenticeship enrolments with search jury participation, 1512–1530 The correlation between search jury participation and political office-holding, 1490–1530 Summary of probate and hearth tax linked with occupations from All Saints’ parish registers Summary of hearth tax broken down by occupations recorded on the parish register The composition of newly admitted burghers by religious denomination (nationally), 1800–4 The composition of newly admitted burghers by religious denomination (nationally), 1843–7 The composition of newly admitted burghers by place of origin (nationally), 1800–4 The composition of newly admitted burghers broken down by place of origin (nationally), 1843–7

83 84 84 88 88 88 118 125 136 139 159 163 174 175 193 193 195 195

Figures and tables ix 11.3 The proportion of locally born burghers, 1800–4 and 1843–7 11.4 The proportion of burghers born abroad, 1800–4 and 1843–7 11.5a The distribution of the newly admitted burghers by occupation, 1800–4 11.5b The distribution of the newly admitted burghers by occupation, 1843–7

196 197 198 198

Preface

This volume finds its origins in two conference sessions held in 2014: in Vienna at the Economic Social Science History Conference, and in Lisbon at the International Conference on Urban History. The editors organised these sessions to place their own findings on the history of late-medieval and early modern urban communities into broader comparative and methodological perspectives and to provoke a discussion about the fundamental social and economic nature of urban societies in this key period of change. The discussions at these sessions centred around the following key questions: how are social groups or communities within cities and towns constructed and reconstructed? What types of social and economic institutions emerged from the interactions amongst members of differing groups, and, in turn, how did these institutions structure these interactions? How were social and spatial boundaries between social groups created and sustained within the urban community? How did urban communities and solidarities reflect a sense of social cohesion and identity? Taking these questions as a starting point, this volume aims to tease out the social and economic factors that patterned the formation of urban communities, by comparing developments in cities and towns across Europe. Moreover, the contributors discuss the revolutionary possibilities of digital tools – such as a geographical information system, spatial mapping and database software – in the study of urban communities, which allow the linking of social and economic data to geographic spaces. How can these tools enhance our understanding of the social and economic characteristics of medieval and early modern urban communities? To what extent do they challenge historians to re-examine sources and to revisit current interpretations about the formation of urban communities? We hope that the answers provided by the authors to these questions will stimulate further debate on and research into the evolution of urban communities in the medieval and early modern period from a social and economic perspective. We sincerely thank all the participants and attendees of the conference sessions for their presentations or comments, as well as the authors who made this volume possible in the first place. Special thanks are due to the editors of Routledge, who skilfully and patiently guided us through the publication process. The editors are finally grateful to the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research

Preface xi (NWO) for financially supporting the realisation of this publication through Arie van Steensel’s Veni-grant. We put the final touches to this book at a time when British and European politics have been confronted with paradigmatic challenges. In the creation of this volume, eighteen scholars, working in no less than eight modern European countries and studying more than a dozen cities, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Zagreb, have worked together to explore the diversity and commonalities of urban life. We hope that, in its own small way, this serves as a testament to the importance and value of scholarly collaboration, partnership and solidarity across our continent. Dr Justin Colson, Dr Arie van Steensel, June 2016

Contributors

Colin Arnaud studied history and literature at the universities of Bielefeld (Germany), Paris 7 Denis Diderot (France) and Bologna (Italy). In 2015, he completed his doctoral thesis on the social topography of Bologna and Strasbourg around 1400 at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Germany). Currently, he is an assistant researcher at the University of Münster (Germany). Alexi Baker is a historian of science and of the early modern period, with a PhD from the University of Oxford. She was a postdoctoral researcher on the project ‘The Board of Longitude 1714–1828: Science, innovation and empire in the Georgian world’ at the University of Cambridge with Professor Simon Schaffer, and a Mellon/Newton Interdisciplinary Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities at Cambridge. She first began researching the trade in optical, mathematical and philosophical instruments in early modern London in 2004. Jennifer Bishop is a research fellow in history at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. She has published on civic politics in early modern London, the English translation of More’s ‘Utopia’, record-keeping practices in the livery companies and the sixteenth-century coinage. Andy Burn is postdoctoral research assistant in the History Department at Durham University, working on the Leverhulme Trust-funded project ‘Social relations and everyday life in early modern England’. He co-edited Crises in Economic and Social History. A Comparative Perspective (Boydell Press, 2015) and has written articles about the occupational structure and seasonality of work in Newcastle, in northeastern England, which are due to be published shortly. Justin Colson is lecturer in Digital History at the University of Essex. His research focuses upon social, commercial and geographical networks in English cities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. His publications include papers on the spatial distribution of occupations in late-medieval London in Economic History Review (2016), and (with Robert Ralley) on networks of medical practitioners attempting to establish a college, in English Historical Review (2015). He is currently completing a monograph on the nature of neighbourhood in fifteenth-century London. He specialises in historical Geographical Information Systems and digital prosopography, and is currently reviews editor for the journal Urban History.

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Derek Crosby is a PhD candidate at Queens University Belfast, writing on the spatial aspects of rebellions in Norwich between 1400 and 1800. His research focuses upon the ways in which the usage and framing of urban space during times of strain changed across the early modern period. Gábor Czoch is an associated professor at the Institute for History of the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest. Since 2008, he has been editor in chief of the Hungarian review for social history Korall. His main research interests are urbanisation and the urban society in Hungary in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He has published on several aspects of the history of the city of Kassa (Košice). His current research deals with the rise of modern nationalism and the problems of multi-ethnic urban societies in the Hungarian Kingdom from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. Dana Durkee is completing a PhD in Medieval History at Durham University on craftsmen and guilds in late-medieval Norwich. She has previously studied for degrees in the USA and Germany and worked in IT and web development. Her research interests include urban history, textiles and the digital humanities. John Jordan (DPhil Oxford) is a post-doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Bern. As part of the Textilien und materielle Kultur im Wandel project, his research inquires into consumption and material culture in early modern Switzerland. Previously, his doctoral work examined legal culture in early modern Germany. He has published on both themes and is in the process of revising his dissertation for publication. Hadewijch Masure is working on a PhD at the University of Antwerp/FWO (Belgium). Her main field of interest is on poor relief and social care in medieval and early modern communities, focusing on community structures, craft guilds, confraternities, gender, religion and (in)equality. Suzana Miljan is a research fellow at Department of Historical Research, Institute of Historical and Social Sciences, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She defended her dissertation titled ‘Noble Society of the County of Zagreb during the Reign of Sigismund of Luxemburg (1387–1437)’ at the University of Zagreb in 2015. Her research interests are editing of medieval sources and social and legal history. Her publications include Diplomatarium comitum terrestrium Crisiensium (1274–1439). A Körösi comites terrestres okmánytára (1274–1439). Isprave križevačkih zemaljskih župana (1274.-1439.) (Budapest and Zagreb, 2014) (with Éva B. Halász), and she edited with Gerhard Jaritz, At the Edge of the Law. Socially Unacceptable and Illegal Behaviour in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, Medium Aevum Quotidianum. Sonderband 28 (Krems 2012). István Németh has been senior archivist at the National Archives of Hungary in Budapest since 1994, and the Head of the Department of pre-1945 Government since 2012. He obtained his PhD in 2001, and his main fields of research interest are early modern Hungarian urban history, economy and social history. He published Cities and the Economy in Urban Politics of Hungary in the 16–17th

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Contributors

Century (2 vols, Budapest, 2004) and several articles in peer-reviewed international journals and chapters in collections of studies. He has edited several sources and contributed to digital source publications. Carolina Obradors-Suazo studied first at the University of Barcelona and holds a PhD in History and Civilisation from the European University Institute, Florence. Her doctoral thesis is titled ‘Immigration and Integration in a Mediterranean City: The Making of the Citizen in Fifteenth-Century Barcelona’. Some of her findings are published as: ‘Council, City and Citizens. Citizenship between Legal and Daily Experiences in 15th Century Barcelona’, RiMe. Rivista dell’Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea, 10 (2013), 371–418. Sarah-Maria Schober is assistant lecturer at the University of Basel. In her ongoing PhD project, she explores the social entanglement of Basel physicians around 1600. Her research interests include the history of the body, practices of sociability, and theories of disgust and excess in the early modern period. She wrote a chapter on ‘Hermaphrodites in Basel? Figures of Ambiguity and the Early Modern Physician’, in a forthcoming volume edited by Susanna Burghartz, Lucas Burkart and Christine Göttler (Leiden, 2016). Bruno Škreblin is research assistant at Department of Medieval History, Croatian Institute of History, Zagreb. He defended his dissertation ‘Urban Elite of Gradec of Zagreb from the Mid-Fourteenth to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century’ at the University of Zagreb in 2015. He currently works on a project entitled ‘Towns and Cities of the Croatian Middle Ages: Urban Elites and Urban Space’. His research interests are urban history, urban elites, social structures and urban topography, and he has published ‘Urban Elites and Real Estate in Medieval Town. Owners of Palaces in Medieval Gradec (Zagreb)’, in I. B. Latin and Z. P. Vardić (eds), Towns and Cities of the Croatian Middle Ages. Authority and Property (Zagreb, 2014) and ‘Ethnic Groups in Zagreb’s Gradec in the Late Middle Ages’, Review of Croatian History (2013). Arie van Steensel is lecturer in medieval social and economic history at the University of Groningen. He specialises in the medieval and early modern history of western Europe and has a special interest in the urban history of Italy, England and the Low Countries. Some of his publications are ‘Noblemen in an Urbanised Society. Zeeland and its Nobility in the Late Middle Ages’, Journal of Medieval History (2012), and ‘Guilds and Politics in Medieval Urban Europe. Towards a Comparative Institutional Analysis’, in E. Jullien and M. Pauly (eds), Craftsmen and Guilds in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods (Stuttgart, 2016), 37–56. Árpád Tóth is a Reader at the Institute for History, University of Miskolc. His main research interest is the social transformation of Hungary in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with a special focus on burghers and towns. His dissertation analyses the social roles of the earliest voluntary societies of Hungary (1817–1848), while his other monograph sheds light on the social strategies

Contributors

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of burgher families in Pressburg (Bratislava) between 1780 and 1848. His latest publications reconstruct the historical route of German Lutheran burghers throughout Hungary in the modern period. Bram Vannieuwenhuyze studied medieval history at Ghent University, where he obtained his PhD in 2008. He has worked as assistant professor in Ghent and Leuven and is currently professor of Historical Cartography by special appointment at the University of Amsterdam. He also works as a freelance historian in academic projects that mostly deal with historical cartography and urban history. Some of his publications are ‘Reading History Maps. The Siege of Ypres in 1383 Mapped by Guillaume du Tielt’, Quaerendo (2015), and with E. Vernackt, ‘The Digital Thematic Deconstruction of Historic Town Views and Maps’, in: K. Lichtert et al. (eds), Portraits of the City. Representing Urban Space in Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Turnhout, 2014).

1

Cities and solidarities Urban communities in medieval and early modern Europe Justin Colson and Arie van Steensel

In their earliest forms, human communities were structured by kinship; transcending these boundaries was inextricably linked with the emergence of institutions, networks and beliefs, binding communities together in ties of solidarity. Regardless of whether cooperation or conflict was the norm in human interactions, communities and solidarities did not come easily, but required an active participation among those involved, and their creative imagination. The structures and practices of communities and their dynamism over time has been a topic of extensive historical and sociological research. Amongst the immense diversity of all historical experiences, urban communities speak most to the imagination: they are places of exceptionally complex human interactions, bringing together large numbers of people in a condensed space over prolonged periods of time. Yet, a certain ambivalence exists among scholars about the effects of urbanisation processes on communities, and their social, institutional and ideological underpinnings, both in past and present society. At the turn of the twentieth-first century, for instance, cities were primarily viewed as hotbeds of economic activity and as places where citizens could effectively shape their communities through participatory politics at the local level. More recent events, however, have brought issues such as political polarisation, economic inequalities and declining social cohesion back to the forefront in the interdisciplinary field of urban studies and the historical study of cities and towns.1 This ambivalence partially has its roots in an unease with modernity, but the questions of how present urban societies organise themselves, how their communities relate to one another, and the social and economic implications of these forms, are thus just as valid for the pre-modern period. The meaning of community in an urban context may be regarded first and foremost as a historical question: waves of historiography have crystallised around the role of cities as engines of economic growth or political change, or as aggregations of people responding to challenges. Cities and the nature of their communities, perhaps more than any other area of history, have always been subject to the shifting priorities of generations of historians, reflecting the concerns and debates of each era. Historians continue to debate the nature of urban society and the role of cities in shaping economic, cultural and social change in wider society. Many of the most pressing questions of urban history relate to forms of social and economic organisation and, as emphasised by the geographically and chronologically diverse

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contributions in this volume, emerge in similar forms in the study of very different urban contexts. How could networks and solidarities be formed in urban settings, divorced from traditional networks of kinship, and often among fluid populations shaped by fast-paced migration? How did urban communities – formal, informal or imagined – enable or prevent different types of social and economic interaction and innovation? And how was the inevitable flip side of community, exclusion, accommodated in different urban contexts? These questions allow us to explore not only individual late-medieval and early modern cities and towns, but many commonalities of the Western urban experience. If anything has emerged as a consensus amongst the recent historiography of cities, it is, as in established sociological theory of cities, that urban experience cannot be conceived of in the singular. In particular, medieval and early modern urban historians have come to see their subjects as complex, multi-faceted, plural and individualised; there was no single urban community, but multiplex communities, or rather webs of networks and solidarities. By emphasising the lives of individuals and the social and economic connections they formed, both within and without institutions, it becomes clear that the city itself was never a singular and reified entity, but always a venue situated within a wider social and economic world. In many respects the contributions in this volume both continue and expand this trend, but along the way they use new technologies and new comparisons and examine new case studies from all corners of Europe.

Historiography of communities The essays in this volume address the formation and workings of communities in medieval and early modern urban Europe from social and economic perspectives.2 Indirectly, a better understanding of pre-modern communities has consequences for how we understand modern communities, as both are traditionally defined in opposition to each other by scholars. A brief mention of the different uses of the word ‘community’ is therefore required before exploring the recent historiographical and methodological developments in the study of pre-modern communities which inform the arguments made in the chapters that follow. There is, perhaps, no other topic in medieval and early modern history of which our understanding is more distorted by classic and contemporary sociological interpretations than that of communities. Sociologists from Ferdinand Tönnies to Zygmunt Bauman have assumed that there are fundamental differences between pre-modern and modern times in their typologies of societies, with the underlying belief that the colloquial use of the term of community is ‘to some extent associated with the hope and the wish of reviving once more the closer, warmer, more harmonious type of bonds between people vaguely attributed to past ages’.3 Tönnies defined this idea of community, or Gemeinschaft, as an organic type of association based on kinship, neighbourhood and friendship, in which individuals freely subject themselves to the good of the community. The transformation of towns (Städte) into large cities (Großstädte) was detrimental to communal relations, solidarities and norms, giving way to a new form of mechanical association:

Cities and solidarities 3 a society, or Gesellschaft, artificially bound together by formal relations between individuals who pursue their own interests.4 Although Tönnies introduced these concepts as normal types for analytical purposes, they are most often misunderstood as defining consecutive stages in the historical development of societies. The community of the pre-modern world is, then, no longer accessible to us. Further, Bauman considers that it may never have existed at all, apart from the experience of community as something entirely of the past and at the same time a possibility of the future.5 Although many sociological approaches theorise that communities were the foundation of collective life and individual self-fulfilment in pre-modern times, they tell us very little about the ways in which men and women in medieval and early modern urban communities organised themselves collectively or saw themselves as members of certain social groups. Historians have therefore criticised uncritical attempts at applying modern ideal types to medieval and early modern historical realities, or at retrieving ‘the lost community’. Instead, recent historical studies endeavour ‘to return to early modern understandings and practices of community’.6 Notwithstanding this criticism, over the past decades, the study of historical communities has greatly benefited from concepts and methodologies borrowed from urban sociology and community studies amongst others fields of enquiry. First of all, the social network analysis of communities proposed by Barry Wellman has been highly influential. He sought to answer ‘the community question’, that is, the issue of how urbanisation and industrialisation affected ‘the organization and content of primary ties’.7 In this line of thought, communities have been conceptualised as networks of interpersonal ties, which can be empirically analysed, and as such are not determined by normative or spatial boundaries. A second impetus driving the study of communities came from Benedict Anderson, who contends in his Imagined Communities that modern communities – and particularly nations – are imagined.8 From this point of view, communities are not made up of people bound together by space or social ties; rather, their members are connected through imaginary ties which are in various ways perceived and symbolically constructed. Finally, historians have more recently been inspired by Henri Lefebvre’s work to revisit the relationship between community and space.9 The equation of individual places with a specific and singular community had been especially strong in the tradition of English local history, exemplified in the work of the ‘Leicester School’, but this has long been criticised as the ‘tyranny of the discrete’.10 Communities can no longer be understood as depending on place, or as merely occupying space in the physical sense: they are the product and producers of social and spatial practices, and sometimes conceived in spatial terms. These three broad approaches, each with its own definitions and methodologies, provide complementary social, cultural and spatial analyses of communities. The concept of community – as both the object of study and analytical tool11 – cannot be reduced to a fixed content, thereby making it necessary for historians, and other scholars alike, to provide a working definition that is subject to scrutiny and to specify their methodological approaches. In recent studies on medieval and early

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modern communities, historians have begun to expand their approach to incorporate the various dimensions of community, drawing on social ties, public or private space, discourse, identification and representation, and defining community broadly as a set of interrelated social processes and practices that expresses the collective identity of a group of people.12 It is now a commonplace amongst historians to recognise that both pre-modern and modern communities were and are characterised by a certain degree of heterogeneity and that the fluidity of the pre-modern community boundaries necessitated the structuring and reinforcement of their cohesion by institutions, rituals and rhetoric – harmony and rivalry, inclusion and exclusion were in fact two sides of the same coin. While normative ideals played their part in the formation of communities, they were never a direct representation of normative imagined or ideal communities.13 Connectivity and movement, which necessitated a constant negotiation of boundaries, were inherent to the functioning of these communities, as men and women typically belonged to several, often overlapping, social groups, depending on political interests, occupation, ethnicity, neighbourhoods or confessions, also implying an emphasis on the identity and agency of these actors.14 These insights are also a starting point for an exploration of the social and economic dimensions of medieval and early modern urban communities and solidarities.

Themes and perspectives The word ‘community’ is very common in titles of books and articles on the medieval and early modern periods. It remains a convenient umbrella for research in almost all sub-disciplines of historical study, despite being subject to criticism.15 A brief sketch of the most important research themes serves as a background for the questions raised in this volume, but it is not possible or necessary to summarise all of the literature here.16 If the recent studies on (urban) communities have something in common, it is a shift in the past two or three decades from a socio-economic approach to a more socio-cultural perspective, whereby ‘elites’ and ‘classes’ have been gradually replaced by ‘communities’ and ‘networks’. As a consequence, the focus has moved from the political, social and economic rivalry in pre-modern societies to the binding aspects of cooperation, communication and identification.17 This development is first of all noticeable in a strand of studies dealing with political communities, which emerged at different levels, as people formed governments of all kinds and configurations from the central Middle Ages onwards.18 Some urban communities achieved complete political autonomy, particularly on the Italian peninsula in the twelfth century, but in most parts of Europe cities and towns were part of a broader political community: that of the realm.19 The relationship between princes and cities attracted a lot of attention from historians working on the process of state formation in the later medieval and early modern period.20 More relevant here are studies on the urban polity, as both a united body and as a composite network of communities, which range from studies on power in cities and towns to those on the representation of the body politic and civic

Cities and solidarities 5 identity. Singular communities in the form of political institutions and ruling oligarchies are no longer the main focus of historians; they have turned to the ways in which different groups or sub-communities organised themselves to participate in politics and made efforts to justify their political claims. This has resulted in, for example, a better understanding of the political participation of guilds and less clearly demarcated middle groups – the so-called commons or Gemeinde – and in a wider sense, urban political culture and its underlying ideas.21 The language of the common good was employed as an ideological weapon by both urban authorities and citizens in their political dialogue.22 Recent studies on urban political culture further illustrate that medieval and early modern urban communities were not cohesive entities, although they certainly cultivated this image in the face of external and internal threats.23 Continuous processes of migration resulted in a constant renewal of the urban populace and the necessity to integrate newcomers who were attracted by the political, social and economic opportunities offered by cities and towns.24 In practice, therefore, cities and towns were made up of several, often competing, interest groups and solidarities, which nonetheless thought of themselves as belonging to one political community. This competition, as well as efforts by authorities and townspeople to maintain social hierarchy and order, came to be expressed in religious and civic processions and festivities and other forms of representation.25 The role of ceremony and ritual in the formation of urban society has in particular been highlighted by historians and other scholars, showing that authorities and elites could not easily dominate the urban community – its members had to continuously negotiate their position with each other. The complex interrelatedness of religion with urban political, economic and social relations and the role of religion in the performance of the urban community are now fruitfully studied under the heading of civic religion.26 The religious developments of the sixteenth century had a profound impact on the organisation of early modern urban communities, especially in the early modern German and French cities and towns, where confession was an important force that divided as well as bound communities together.27 This process of confessionalisation reinforced the significance of religion in the formation of urban communities, but it can hardly be called a new factor. The third theme that may be distinguished is the provision of public and social services that came with the construction of solidarity, which was closely related to the political and religious aspects of community formation in medieval and early modern cities and towns. Being part of a particular group, whether a citizen or inhabitant of a city or town, a member of a guild or a resident of a neighbourhood, entailed both benefits and obligations. As a consequence, tensions could arise at different levels, for example between the urban community and solidarities within it, but also between communal and individual interests.28 Charity and poor relief were simultaneously an expression of community and a means to demarcate communities from one another, as has been demonstrated in numerous studies of the medieval and early modern periods.29 The provision of public services in a broad sense of the term (schools, public works, sanitation, regulation) was not subject to a linear movement towards centralisation and expansion of the control of urban authorities,

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but the result of continuous negotiation between different interest groups that constituted the urban community.30 Changing attitudes towards the poor, ideas about the responsibilities of authorities and citizens and the availability of resources all had an impact on the configurations of public services, and access could be restricted for particular groups. A central notion seems to have been that citizens or residents, in the case of urban communities, or members of smaller communities within them, were required to contribute to the common good, from which they profited in exchange. Citizenship, for example, was an important institution that mediated these interests between authorities and urban residents in a legal sense, but which also determined and expressed the social relations between the urban community and those who belonged to it.31 The three key themes come together in the recurrent question (or assumption) that emerges from sociological and historical studies, that is, if and in what ways medieval and early modern urban cities and towns, the members of which were tied together by practices of solidarity, were socially more cohesive than their modern counterparts. Complexity, and the varied networks that are seen as promoting economic and cultural vigour, tend to be perceived as characteristic of modern cities, while the ‘historic community’ is considered to have been cohesive and singular. In particular, the perception in contemporary society of a loss of community has prompted historical interest in the process of community formation and building.32 Recently, the concepts of ‘civil society’ and ‘social capital’ have, in their various definitions, been employed by historians to dissect the perception of social cohesion, or – conversely – the socio-economic inequalities, of medieval and early modern urban communities.33 They found that these concepts did not really stick, particularly because it appeared to be difficult to empirically test the hypothesis that social capital, embodied by norms of reciprocity, networks of interpersonal relations and social institutions, actually fostered solidarity, trust and exchange among townsfolk.34 It is striking, however, that the ingredients of social capital are exactly the same as the defining characteristics of communities, except for the emphasis that some authors put on the spatiality of communities (although others argue that community is about networks and not about place). The same questions are asked over and over, implying that it is no sinecure to formulate an answer that balances the ideal vision of medieval and early modern urban communities as places where justice and peace reigned, and bonds among their members were strengthened by cooperation and solidarity. One important insight coming from the literature is that there is no single answer – the organisation and workings of historical urban communities were highly dependent on contextual factors, which have not yet been clearly identified by urban historians. With regard to the question of (dis)continuity between medieval, early modern and modern times, this entails that inhabitants of cities and towns may have faced similar problems but found very different solutions to solve them. Finally, it reminds us that a pragmatic use of words like ‘community’ and ‘solidarity’ can be semantically problematic as they invoke unhelpful comparisons still very much tied to a binary opposition between pre-modernity and modernity.

Cities and solidarities 7 This pitfall is not easily avoided, but conceptual and empirical rigour with a clear focus on case studies may be a first step to a better understanding of pre-modern communities.

Methodological approaches and new digital tools The last few decades have seen history undergo many ‘turns’, not least the cultural and spatial turns, yet despite the growth of Digital Humanities and Digital History as fields in their own right, we seem to have avoided widespread adoption of the term ‘digital turn’.35 Historians might be tired of turning, or perhaps the range of insights offered through digitally enriched research is so broad as to defy a single categorisation. Nonetheless, the rapid development of digital techniques and resources has, perhaps even more profoundly than the preceding turns, enabled a host of new perspectives upon pre-modern urban societies that would not have been otherwise feasible. The possibilities enabled by digital research range from the simple breadth and depth of information which has been made available and quickly searchable, through digitisation by international and national projects such as Archive.org, Early English Books Online and the efforts of individual scholars. The scale of information available through machine reading quite simply allows for perspectives that would not have been attainable to previous generations of scholars, yet it poses its own challenges. While a historian working through an archive manually tends to acquire a natural understanding of the scope and nature of its materials, making sense of a digital archive, which can be orders of magnitude larger, requires specific tools and approaches to make sense of the mass of data. The longest standing digital research technique used by historians to make sense of their data is the relational database. Since the 1980s databases have become essential tools in almost any historical research project, especially when it comes to the kind of record linkage that enables historians to make the most of the plentiful property and financial records that survive from many medieval and early modern cities. Yet, while methodologies structured around the use of databases offer possibilities in terms of understanding and exploring records, they also impose some of their own challenges. The rigid structure of a database table does not sit well with the vernacular and imprecise nature of many pre-modern records. How can a description of someone, ‘sometime’ residing in a certain town be recorded as part of a logical chronology in a database? The impossibility of recording the multiple affiliations and occupations that were especially common in the pre-modern era in a single database field leads us to take advantage of relational databases, and then set up sub-tables, but these dramatically increase the complexity of a project. Nonetheless, database recording and exploration enable a step-change in the volume of records that historians can examine, and the speed at which they can do it, especially where, as in the case of prosopography, historical and genealogical interests align to justify large-scale record transcription or digital indexing. Techniques to extract standardised data from the large volume of scanned printed materials are also unlocking large amounts of data for database analysis.36 Record linkage is even becoming automated through the use

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of linguistic processing and algorithmic identification of individuals in different sources in order to generate prosopographies.37 The relational database might no longer be ‘state of the art’, but it still offers a relatively accessible way of exploring and making sense of large volumes of complex information. Innovation in digital humanities is opening up approaches to semantic data tagging and Natural Language Processing of records, providing an alternative to the reductive process of categorising information derived from them into a rigid structure, but these methods are some way from being widespread or easily accessible.38 Recent years have seen the growth and maturation of tools that really allow historians to make the most of the digital data that they have accumulated, especially in terms of Social Network Analysis.39 Network analysis is nothing new, and in many senses replicates many of the traditional methods of the prosopographer, but digital tools are becoming available for this transformation, from cumbersome applications requiring detailed curation of multiple plain text input files, to accessible and intuitive desktop applications such as Gephi and cloud-based dedicated humanities tools such as Palladio. More important than the tools themselves is the fact that the network approach is now widely understood by historians, and tailored tutorials and guides are now available, for example at the Programming Historian.40 The possibilities raised by network theory now frame historical approaches to complex social phenomena, especially within cities. However, while formal network analysis as used by sociologists employs complex statistical measures of centrality and integration, the nature of historical sources means that we can seldom hope to record the totality of a network, rendering these measures more problematic. Consequently, historians have tended to use network analysis as an addition to traditional methods of prosopography, and as an exploration and visualisation tool. Mike Burkhardt’s remarkable study of the records of the Hanseatic Bergenfährer shows the full potential of Social Network Analysis for examining a circumscribed community, while the ‘Six Degrees of Francis Bacon’ provides an innovative way of exploring biographical information while punning on a ‘parlour game’ from popular culture.41 Whether or not the technicalities of formal social network analysis are adopted, the concepts and principles of network theory underlie many recent approaches to urban social history. Whether looking at families and citizenship, or particular specialised urban trades, viewing social relationships through the lens of networks, and with the aid of databases, allows us to see the multifaceted nature of pre-modern urban relationships. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have also become much more prominent in the study of early modern cities. The complexity of pre-modern urban forms, as well as the sheer volume of data, such as records of land conveyances, have tended to prevent historians from examining the city in a spatial manner.42 The spatial dimension of communities can now be analysed in more detail by using historical GIS applications which allow historians to map and link data to geographic spaces.43 New insights emerge when sources which are inherently spatial – very many early modern urban sources describe streets, parishes and properties – are actually projected onto a map. This is especially true when combining diverse sources, or where spaces might be described in different ways, or

Cities and solidarities 9 when archaeological, topological and topographic, or even auditory materials and questions are brought into the equation: institutional boundaries might divide, but streets and spaces brought people together. The use of GIS and related technologies makes these kinds of connections and relationships much clearer to researchers. Colin Arnaud’s paper in this volume embraces these digital spatial approaches, and considers locations of residence and business premises throughout the cities of Strasbourg and Bologna in terms of proximity not only to each other, but to other urban features. Alexi Baker, who has written elsewhere of her approaches to ‘vernacular GIS’, uses the technology to examine social networks through a spatial lens.44 These approaches first appeared, in analogue form, through the work of, for example, Derek Keene, but their widespread application is the product not only of the ‘spatial turn’, but also of digital technologies.45 Urban historians have used GIS techniques to understand city spaces in both qualitative and quantitative ways. Projects such as Locating London’s Past have applied GIS technologies in a traditional manner to map social phenomena, such as crimes and occurrences of plague, statistically. Other projects, such as City Witness, have mapped qualitative experiences and testimonies onto the spaces and vistas of medieval Swansea, while the DECIMA project has explored a wide range of social, economic and emotional geographies of Renaissance Florence.46 The possibilities of using GIS to combine historical evidence with other classes of information, especially archaeological finds, offer exciting opportunities for studying the dense urban environment, such as in York, where Gareth Dean has been able to correlate the documentary and material evidence for the distribution of artisanal trades in the late-medieval period.47 At the same time, these projects show that collaboration is a key element in successfully developing historical GIS applications, especially also with cultural heritage institutions, in order to make use of all the technical possibilities and ease the time-consuming process of preparing historical data for analysis.

Approaches and topics The growth of cities and towns in medieval and early modern Europe was a transformative process, although it was not linear and was varied in its outcomes. The intensive interactions between people in urban settlements gave rise to new and changing forms of political, economic and social organisation, as well as to novel institutions and structures. These urban communities had important political and cultural aspects, but the central question of this volume is how the configurations of these communities shaped social and economic processes, and how social and economic factors moulded the institutions, networks, spaces and ideas that constituted urban communities. It was around these questions that two conference sessions were held in Vienna and Lisbon in 2014, where most of the contributions to this volume were presented by their authors. In addition to analysing social and economic processes that characterised medieval and early modern cities and towns from the perspective of communities, the authors explore the new possibilities of digital methods to examine the formation, structures and effects of urban communities.

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To be sure, the notion of community is not entirely absent from recent social and economic histories, not least studies dealing with credit, migration, commercial communities, markets, charity and poor relief, public health and environment.48 Older studies on socio-economic structures, in which class or status groups are used as prime categories of analysis, also make clear that the urban social fabric was more than the sum of its parts.49 Communities cannot be reduced to networks, institutions, spaces or ideas, but might best be understood as specific configurations of these variables. As the initial by-product of human interactions, communities had become a constituent part of the urban social ecology during the central Middle Ages.50 In the medieval and early modern urban contexts, the authors of this volume show that communities can be understood as groups of people delineated or bound together by certain common characteristics, whether objective or perceived, such as social ties, political ideas, religion, education, ethnicity, profession or place. Such communities existed insofar as individuals had a shared sense of belonging to particular groups, which informed their interactions with others and guided their patterns of behaviour, and which brought (self-)recognition and identification, benefits and obligations. Communities as social organisations constituted from repeated human interactions were formed at different levels in cities and towns; their scope and focal points varied accordingly, and their boundaries were fluid and often overlapping. As we have already reflected, although cities and towns are often described as urban communities in the singular (for instance, the body politic), they actually consisted of several, often overlapping sub-communities or solidarities, which were not necessarily restricted to the physical boundaries of the city or town.51 The effects of these communities on economic and social exchanges are not easily measured or captured in a definition. On the one hand, the idea of the urban community as a single entity, a corpus Christianum, body politic or commonwealth, could serve to unite diverse forces in the service of the common good, thereby strengthening the ties of social cohesion and mutual trust within cities and towns that were nonetheless growing more socially heterogeneous throughout our period.52 Concord and unity, however, were inherently unstable, due to the competing interests and dissenting voices within the urban community at large, as well as the economic inequalities and social hierarchies. At a lower level, communities formed the basis for exchange, solidarity and sociability, but, for example, parish and neighbourhood communities were the stage for conflicts and litigation too.53 Strong solidarity can have negative effects for those excluded from membership, and this was no different in the medieval and early modern periods. But it might in fact be helpful to understand solidarity and strife as two sides of the same coin: communities formed contexts for recognition and self-definition, cooperation and competition. This tension can be traced in most of the chapters in this volume. In her contribution on citizenship in early fifteenth-century Barcelona, Carolina ObradorsSuazo demonstrates how (family) networks made and unmade social reputations – the basis for citizenship. By belonging to the community of citizens, members of the

Cities and solidarities 11 Sarrovira family could profit economically from the privileges conferred on them, but they continually had to maintain the delicate balance between personal and collective interests. As a case study, this chapter also shows the variety in ways to access, and privileges derived from, citizenship as a legal status that marked boundaries between the inhabitants of medieval cities and towns. Tensions between groups with different interests within the city walls were also present in fifteenth-century Norwich, where political, economic and social divisions came to the fore in a highly symbolic way during Gladman’s procession. Derek Crosby analyses the multifaceted motivations of the protesters who stood up for their stake in the well-being of the urban community. The political unrest reconfigured Norwich’s political economy in the long run, underscoring the complex interplay between the political relations, socio-economic structures and ideology of which urban communities were composed. The configuration of urban communities was predicated on space; or, more precisely, on the syntax of urban space that structured social relations. In his comparative study on late-medieval Bologna and Strasbourg, Colin Arnaud reconstructs the topography of these cities’ neighbourhoods. Strikingly, services were more or less equally distributed among Strasbourg’s neighbourhoods, whereas Bologna had a clear centre and more peripheral neighbourhoods, making the intermediary ones the most likely to develop active communities, characterised by people living and working together and having access to all kind of services. This chapter raises the question of how neighbourhood topographies, with different degrees of social cohesion, were formed in the Middle Ages across Europe, and how spatial configurations produced distinct processes of community formation and structured the relations among the heterogeneous urban population. These are questions that can be fully addressed by a comparative approach that applies advanced digital mapping. In the same vein, John Jordan studies the role of communal ties in resolving conflicts in the early modern town of Freiberg. Conflicts were inherent to urban society, and courts sought to resolve tensions through (im)material exchange; in the case of Freiberg, aggressors were obliged to name a guarantor. By analysing the social and economic backgrounds of those involved in these legal transactions, as well as the ties between them (in particular kinship, profession, neighbourhood and economic status), Jordan dissects the networks of the inhabitants of Freiberg. None of these variables alone fully explains what kinds of support were sought by pledgees or offered by guarantors, but it is more important to recognise that people did not turn to the established communities to which they belonged as often as one would expect; they also relied on informal networks, which are less visible in the sources. The bottom line, however, is that communities and their members were inclined to restore urban peace, an ideal that was often broken in daily interactions. Another well-known type of exchange that characterised urban communities and solidarities was the support of the poor, whatever the motivation of the benefactors. Charitable practices and mutual aid strengthened social ties within cities and towns and expressed the religious and civic ideal of a corporate body, but

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at the same time these activities targeted specific groups, thereby becoming a means to include and exclude people from the community. Suzana Miljan and Bruno Škreblin describe how the poor were regarded as unavoidable members of the urban community in late-medieval Zagreb, a relatively unknown case study from a western European perspective. The paucity of the extant sources does not permit a detailed analysis of the well-being of the pauperes or the effects of the various forms of charity, but they clearly show that integration and marginalisation were closely entwined in a way that can only be explained by a careful contextual analysis. In her chapter on the mutual aid of the occupational guilds in Mechelen, Brussels and Antwerp, Hadewijch Masure makes a similar point. The support offered by guilds to their members evolved over time, and can only be understood by taking the wider system of urban poor relief into account. From the late thirteenth century, most of the guilds set up poor boxes, which often became obligatory and more exclusionary around 1500. The concurrence of several mutually reinforcing factors – of which the social and economic do not seem to have been decisive – account for this process of formalisation, not least the need among guild masters to demarcate their status and professional communities within the urban community writ large. Moving on from processes of urban community building, the following three chapters thematically and methodologically share the use of advanced databases with ‘shallow’ data to uncover social relations and the characteristics of groups which are difficult to capture at the level of the individual. Bram Vannieuwenhuyze explores the possibilities of his ‘Who was who in late-medieval Brussels?’ database, which contains thousands of topographical and biographical records about ordinary inhabitants of Brussels. It takes a huge effort to realise such an ambitious plan, but the time investment now pays off in the form of a first step towards an ‘urban sociography’, which will result in a more profound understanding of the different layers of Brussels’ population, the networks of these individuals, their places of interest, and the communities to which they belonged. The value of this quantitative approach and the possibilities opened up by these advanced databases are illustrated in more detail by Dana Durkee and Andy Burn, whose contributions offer new insights into urban groups that have left relatively few documentary traces and whose activities are therefore difficult to reconstruct. By painstakingly gathering records in a database, Durkee could provide a prosopographical analysis of a lower status group, the craft community of the worsted weavers of late-medieval Norwich. Her quantitative approach generates qualitative results, allowing her to argue that the career cycle of lesser craftsmen should be viewed from below to understand the chances that belonging to a community offered for craftsmen to establish themselves as business owners or pursue an administrative career within the guild, or even a political career outside of the guild. Guilds are examples of formal institutionalised solidarities, but the focus on these organisations has reduced the lower strata of the medieval and early modern urban population to a rather static group. Burn challenges this characterisation by

Cities and solidarities 13 demonstrating the diversity amongst the large group of labourers in early modern Newcastle upon Tyne, using a database filled with linked snippets of information from diverse sources (including probate inventories) to explore the material reality of these workers, especially the keelmen and watermen. He cannot draw a clear line between poorer guild members – often described as the middling sort of people – and wealthier unincorporated labourers, and thereby questions common assumptions about the place of the latter within urban economy and community, further raising the question whether divisions into classes misses the point of belonging to different communities. The fourth chapter presents a large database is by Árpád Tóth, Gábor Czoch and István Németh, who take a macro perspective on the social structure of forty-eight free royal towns in the Kingdom of Hungary at the turn of the early modern to the modern period. At this time, these towns underwent great transformations, the impact of which is traced by analysing a database of the numbers and characteristics of new burghers or citizens. Their findings about the religious composition of the towns, their occupational structures and the origins of new burghers challenge common assumptions about the limited role of towns and their inhabitants in Hungarian history. Instead, the chapter demonstrates the diversity in developments between different towns, as well as the changing social structure of urban communities. Professional groupings such as guilds formed important communities within which tensions between the collective and the individual existed and could be resolved. Jennifer Bishop analyses the regulation of the use of language by London’s livery companies in the sixteenth century, as well as the role played by the guild courts in maintaining friendly relations between members and their families, and in punishing those who stubbornly refused to moderate their speech. The significance of this form of conflict resolution was not just to ensure harmonious relationships within the closed guild community; the behavioural and moral codes to which guild members adhered also strengthened their trustworthiness within the wider urban community. Although institutionalised solidarities, the livery companies were also deeply embedded in early modern London’s wider social fabric and culture. Sarah-Maria Schober takes on similar questions of community formation, but she focuses in her chapter on individual practices of bonding, and the meaning of belonging to a professional community. Based on the correspondence of two inhabitants of early modern Basel, Felix Platter and Dorothea Gemusein, the first of whom belonged to an ‘imagined’ community of academic physicians, Schober maps the places and social practices, such as gift-giving and salacious jokes, that structured the playful encounters between these two members of Basel’s upper social stratum. By giving marzipan, for example, Platter alluded to his belonging to a relatively fixed professional identity, illustrating that interactions between individuals beyond the seemingly fixed boundaries of communities were enabled by this sense of belonging, as well as how practices of bonding were transferred from one social realm to another. Finally, the intersection of professional communities was important in an economic way, as Alexi Baker demonstrates in her chapter on how the sprawling

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community of ‘scientific’ instrument makers of early modern London, a growing city with a rapidly expanding consumer base, stood at the heart of a flourishing commercial sector. The makers of instruments belonged to different livery companies and formed various networks, and are difficult to delineate, yet Baker shows the economic and technological importance of this ‘commercial community’ through statistical analysis and digital mapping, illustrated further by the fine example of the successful George Willdey. The dynamics of community formation and the places where these processes occurred could have a great impact on socioeconomic developments, as this chapter further illustrates. New digital research techniques also clearly enhance our understanding of the very diverse communities that made up medieval and early modern cities and towns.

Pre-modernity and urban complexity Together, the contributions collected in this volume, in all their thematic and methodological diversity, confirm that late-medieval and early modern urban European societies were not lacking in complexity or plurality. As is to be expected, there is little evidence of a monolithic ‘historic community’ in any of the case studies. On the one hand, the authors demonstrate how late-medieval and early modern cities and towns were characterised by political, cultural and religious practices that underlined and performed the ideal community as a body, and the well-being of the community (utilitas publica or bonum commune) was often expressed in social and economic terms. On the other hand, the ties that bound the urbanites together were as much those of cooperation as of competition. Both urban communities and urban solidarities had to be continually reinforced, as tensions permanently arose among solidarities within the urban community, as well as between individuals and the solidarities to which they belonged, because of existing social hierarchies and economic inequalities. Across the period in question, there was visible growth in the complexity of social institutions and economic structures, but this was certainly not a straightforward development; it was more of an incremental change than a defining shift. Measuring the complexity of medieval and early modern cities and towns against contemporary urban societies does not prove very helpful in any way, and – without denying the qualitative differences in complexities between both periods – in many ways the social and economic institutions and practices that emerged during the earlier period still characterise today’s urban communities and the interactions of their inhabitants. Besides challenging the traditional periodisation of pre-modern urban history, this volume also questions the divide between pre-modern and modern communities. The authors cover a timespan from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, crossing distinctions between the late medieval and early modern. An important question for further research is how time as a factor increased the complexity of urban institutions and structures. Processes of community formation should perhaps be understood rather as commencing at different moments and developing at different paces, but at the same time becoming entangled, than as a diachronic development from pre-modernity to modernity. Cross-European or

Cities and solidarities 15 even wider comparisons would be important to unravel these processes. A single volume cannot possibly cover the whole continent or provide systematic comparisons, but all of these chapters attest to both the similarities and differences in urban experiences across Europe.54 ‘Community’ appears to be a convenient term that by the multiplicity of its meanings answers to the layering and dynamism of late-medieval and early modern urban society. Nonetheless, the contributions clearly attest to the fact that the basis for broader comparisons lies in the development of empirical case studies, so that historians can carefully define communities to analyse how their formation reflected and deflected broader social and economic processes. From an analytical point of view, the term ‘urban communities’, both in the singular and the plural, clearly offers a useful category to unravel the impact of the interrelated process of political, economic, demographic and cultural change on the ways in which urbanites interacted with each other to form durable social organisations at the local level.55 One of the promising opportunities in this respect is offered by historical GIS in its capacity to integrate and analyse cartographic, historical and archaeological data, allowing us to gain a more fluid understanding of the (re-) production and meanings of communities in the process of urban development, and of individuals whose lives were entangled with multiple communities.56 In sum, this volume makes clear that a historical-contextual approach to urban communities is necessary to understand how they were formed and maintained. New digital research tools make it increasingly possible to re-examine sources that provide answers to the question of community. This, together, marks a first step to a theoretically more developed understanding of the dynamic process of urban community formation from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century.

Notes 1 See, for example: Glaeser (2011); Barber (2013); and for a less optimistic view on recent urbanisation processes: Davis (2006). See, for a recent historical overview: Clark (2013). 2 Blackshaw (2009); Delanty (2003) have written concise introductions on the topic of community, while Bell and Newby (1974); Lin and Mele (2013) provide collections of classic and more recent readings. 3 Elias (1974), xiii. 4 Tönnies (1887), 3–5, 27, 282–90. 5 Bauman (2001), 3. 6 Withington and Shepard (2000), 12. However, less effort has been made to go beyond the somewhat obligatory critique of modern sociological concepts, for example by utilising the growing historical knowledge about pre-modern communities to propose alternatives. 7 Wellman (1979). 8 Anderson (1983), 6. 9 Lefebvre (1974); Arnade, Howell and Simons (2002), 515–22. 10 Marshall (1997). 11 Macfarlane, Harrison and Jardine (1977), 1–25. 12 Withington and Shepard (2000), 11; Halvorson and Spierling (2008), 22. 13 Burke (2004), 5.

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14 Nevola (2010), 351–52. 15 Rubin (1991). 16 We do not strive to be exhaustive in listing relevant works, and the studies referred to should be taken as a starting point for further reading. We are also aware of the bias towards English-language literature. 17 See already on the ‘essence of medieval urban communities’: Rosser (1984). 18 Reynolds (1997); Watts (2009), 132–33. 19 Menant (2005); Crouzet-Pavan (2009); Scott (2012); Wickham (2015). According to Blickle’s well-known thesis (2000) the autonomy of towns and villages (communes) resulted in a distinct medieval political culture, which he dubs ‘Kommunalismus’. This form of political organisation was the basis of the republican state, in contrast to feudalism. 20 Chevalier (1982); Tilly and Blockmans (1994); Rivaud (2007); Blockmans, Holenstein and Mathieu (2009). 21 Bernstein (2004); Schlögl (2004); Schmidt and Carl (2007); Cohn (2013); Liddy and Haemers (2013); Dumolyn, Haemers, Oliva Herrer and Challet (2014); Solórzano Telechea, Arizaga Bolumburu and Haemers (2014); Lantschner (2015). 22 Black (2003); Withington (2010); Lecuppre-Desjardin and Van Bruaene (2010); Otchakovsky-Laurens (2014). 23 See studies on civic identity and urban privileges: Boone and Stabel (2000); Attreed (2002); Lee and Pauly (2015), as well as the representation of urban identity in chronicles and paintings: Johanek (2000a); Ratté (2006); Dale, Williams Lewin and Osheim (2007); Benes (2012); Kodres and Mänd (2014); Halbekann, Widder and Von Heusinger (2015); Demets and Dumolyn (2016). 24 See, for the presence of foreigners in medieval and early modern towns: Amelang (2007); Mueller (2010); Cerutti (2012); Lucassen and Willems (2012); Quertier, Chilà and Pluchot (2013). 25 Hanawalt and Reyerson (1994); Chaix (2003); Chittolini and Johanek (2003); LecuppreDesjardin (2004); Howe (2007); Lilley (2009); Arlinghaus (2010); Andrews (2011); Rosenthal (2015). 26 Lancashire (2002); Brand and Monnet (2003); Caby (2008); Brown (2011); Cohn, Fantoni, Franceschi, and Ricciardelli (2013); Terpstra (2015), 30–37. 27 Brady (1998); Ocker (2007); Close (2009); and see, for a synthesis: Tracy (2006). 28 Parker and Bentley (2007); Rosser (2015). 29 See, for a fine synthesis: Lynch (2003). For case studies, see amongst others: Cavallo (1995); Cunningham and Grell (1997); Horden and Smith (1998); Parker (1998); Grell, Cunningham and Arrizabalaga (1999); Johanek (2000b); Rubin (2002); King and Tomkins (2003); Safley (2003); Krausman Ben-Amos (2008); Scheutz (2008); Ammannati (2013); McIntosh (2012); Terpstra (2013); Brenner (2015); Farmer (2016). 30 Van der Heijden, Van Nederveen Meerkerk, Vermeesch and Van der Burg (2009); Van der Heijden (2012); Rawcliffe (2013); Fay (2015); Skelton (2016). 31 Costa (1999); Boone and Prak (1996); Gerber, Studer and Schwinges (2002); Withington (2005); Prak and Van Zanden (2006). 32 See, for example: Forrest and Kearns (2001); cf. Wrightson (2007). 33 The best introduction is by Eckstein and Terpstra (2009) in their volume on social capital, but see for a critique: Fine (2008). The popularity of the concepts of civil society and social capital at the turn of the twenty-first century can be attributed to Robert Putnam’s work. 34 Goddard (2013); Ryckbosch and Decraene (2014). 35 A 2013 special issue of Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies is a notable exception to this (Dipiero and Looser, 2013). For the ‘spatial turn’, see: Kümin and Usborne (2013), and cf. Jerram (2013). 36 Crump (2014). 37 Bell and Ranade (2015).

Cities and solidarities 17 38 Evans (2013). 39 Wetherell (1998); Scott (2000); Fuhse and Mützel (2010); Julien (2013). 40 Düring (2015). See, for an application of social network analysis to urban elites: Martín Romera (2010). 41 Burkhardt (2009); Warren, Shore and Otis (2016); www.sixdegreesoffrancisbacon.com [accessed 14/05/2016]. 42 Boucheron and Mattéoni (2005); Coster and Spicer (2005); Ehrich and Oberste (2009); Kümin (2009); Boone and Howell (2013); Pauly and Scheutz (2014); Williamson (2014). 43 Noizet, Bove and Costa (2013); Rau (2014). See, for a number of examples: Florence (http://decima-map.net), Paris (http://alpage.huma-num.fr), London (http://www.locating london.org), Chester (http://www.medievalchester.ac.uk/index.html), Bruges (http:// magis.kaartenhuisbrugge.be/), and a number of cities in the Netherlands and Belgium (http://www.hisgis.nl). For more theoretical reflections on historical GIS as a methodology, see: Von Lünen and Travis (2013); Gregory and Geddes (2014). 44 Baker (2013). 45 Keene (1985). 46 Hitchcock, Davies and Shoemaker (2011); Clarke and Lilley (2014); Terpstra and Rose (2016). See, also the theme issue of Post-Classical Archaeologies, 2 (2012); http://www. postclassical.it/PCA_vol.2.html [accessed, 22 May 2016]. 47 Dean (2012). 48 A few examples: Muldrew (1998); Harreld (2004); Böninger (2006); Fontaine (2008); Jørgensen (2010); De Munck and Winter (2012); Waddell (2012); Rawcliffe (2013); Litzenburger (2015). 49 Phythian-Adams (1979). 50 Blockmans (2010). 51 Communities of readers are an example that has attracted much interest in recent years, see: Campbell and Larsen (2009); Corbellini, Hoogvliet and Ramakers (2015). See, in general, for the development of a print culture for urban communities: Monteyne (2007); Salzberg (2014). 52 Halliday (1998); Withington (2005); Oberste (2008); Lilley (2009); Rawcliffe (2013), 79–98. 53 Smail (2003); Rexroth (2007). 54 A better incorporation of eastern European cities and towns into historiography is especially wanted; see Keul (2009); Miller (2008), apart, of course, from the non-European world; see Lutter, Pohl and Hovden (2016). 55 Cf. The English tradition of local history: Dyer, Hopper and Tringham (2011). 56 Smail (2000); Torre (2011); Vannieuwenhuyze and Vernackt (2014).

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Torre, A., Luoghi. La produzione di località in età moderna e contemporanea (Rome, 2011). Tracy, J.D., Europe’s Reformations, 1450–1650. Doctrine, Politics, and Community. Critical Issues in History (second edition; Lanham, 2006). Vannieuwenhuyze, B., and E. Vernackt, ‘The Digital Thematic Deconstruction of Historic Town Views and Maps’, in K. Lichtert, J. Dumolyn and M.P.J. Martens (eds), Portraits of the City. Representing Urban Space in Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Turnhout, 2014), 9–31. Waddell, B., God, Duty and Community in English Economic Life, 1660–1720 (Woodbridge, 2012). Warren, C., D. Shore, and J. Otis, ‘Six Degrees of Francis Bacon: A Statistical Method for Reconstructing Large Historical Social Networks’, Digital Humanities Quarterly, www. sixdegreesoffrancisbacon.com [accessed 16 May, 2016]. Watts, J., The Making of Polities. Europe, 1300–1500 (Cambridge, 2009). Wellman, B., ‘The Community Question. The Intimate Networks of East Yorkers’, American Journal of Sociology, 84 (1979), 1201–31. Wetherell, C., ‘Historical Social Network Analysis’, International Review of Social History, 43 (1998), 125–44. Wickham, C., Sleepwalking into a New World. The Emergence of Italian City Communes in the Twelfth Century (Princeton, 2015). Williamson, F., Social Relations and Urban Space. Norwich, 1600–1700 (Woodbridge, 2014). Withington, P., The Politics of Commonwealth. Citizens and Freemen in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2005). Withington, P., ‘Public Discourse, Corporate Citizenship, and State Formation in Early Modern England’, The American Historical Review, 112 (2007), 1016–38. Withington, P., Society in Early Modern England. The Vernacular Origins of Some Powerful Ideas (Cambridge, 2010). Withington, P., and A. Shepard, ‘Introduction. Communities in Early Modern England’, in idem (eds), Communities in Early Modern England. Networks, Place, Rhetoric (Manchester, 2000), 1–15. Wrightson, K., ‘The “Decline of Neighbourliness” Revisited’, in N.L. Jones and D. Woolf (eds), Local Identities in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 2007), 19–49.

2

Making the citizen, building the citizenry Family and citizenship in fifteenth-century Barcelona* Carolina Obradors-Suazo

‘Community, like love, is where we find it’.1 This essay explores processes of community building in pre-modern times by unravelling the power of social networks in urban communities. Indebted to Barry Wellman’s sociological approach, the chapter highlights the cohesive and integrative nature of late-medieval urban citizenries. It is by analysing closely the uses of the privileges of citizenship and by understanding citizenship as a social practice that these citizenries emerge as communities of well-reputed citizens – individuals who related to each other in order to serve their own interests and necessities, while perpetuating in so doing patterns of behaviour with which to build identification with a community they all ought to serve and love. Taking citizenship as a broad measure of urban belonging, I intend to reflect on the social imagination of medieval citizenries,2 thereby following in the footsteps of scholars such as Withington and Shepard, who claim for an approach to the ‘community question’ in proper historical and contextualised terms.3 Although a legally defined institution and an individual privilege, citizenship could also depend on the public acquiescence of a city’s inhabitants. As such, it becomes an analytical tool for the historian to penetrate the social experiences of medieval civic life. To explore the connections among citizenship, urban community building and networks in the later Middle Ages in detail, the essay focuses on how relatives and families participated in the making of the citizen in fifteenth-century Barcelona. To this end, I use microanalysis to retrace a variety of citizenship acquisition experiences with which to evaluate the role of relatives in citizens’ civic integration. The first section of the essay provides a brief account of the nature of citizenship in late-medieval Barcelona. I then consider the interaction between family and citizenship from two different perspectives. After adopting a general approach and reviewing how a variety of kinsmen participated in the processes of citizenship acquisition, I analyse how a well-connected family group used citizenship and created citizens as part of its daily life and development.

Citizenship in late-medieval Barcelona The city of Barcelona conserves unique and outstanding sources with which we can elaborate on the cultural meaning of medieval citizenship, completing historiographical traditions that had been more focused on its juridical value and

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instrumental uses.4 The historical archives of Barcelona preserve, indeed, two citizenship registers (1375–1381 and 1413–1425), in which citizenship oaths of new citizens were recorded, as well as hundreds of reports (1395–1457) which contain the interrogations of other Barcelonese citizens on the adequacy of the candidates for citizenship.5 These documents are the result of the administrative procedures through which one could obtain a citizenship charter. Officially identified as a citizen of Barcelona, the holder of such a charter was personally conferred with the privileges that had been granted to the city by Jaume I in 1232, and later confirmed by his successors. When provided with a charter, a citizen of Barcelona was exempted from royal customs in any port and town under the expanding jurisdiction of the king of the Crown of Aragon. It is beyond doubt that these privileges were highly coveted in late-medieval Barcelona. The leading city of the Crown of Aragon was a powerful commercial pole, well integrated in the main Mediterranean trade networks. Counting more than 30,000 inhabitants at the end of the fourteenth century, the city recovered from the Black Death that it had suffered through the constant arrival of Catalan migrants. It was a dynamic centre of redistribution: products from the Catalan hinterland, as well as from farther ports in northern Europe and the North African coast, were shipped from Barcelona to the eastern Mediterranean.6 The privileges transmitted through the citizenship charter were beneficial to the merchants and seafarers, native and foreign,7 who lived in Barcelona, as well as to artisans, many of whom were attracted by the flourishing Barcelonese textile industry. Yet, a closer reading of the sources demonstrates that citizenship was thought of and experienced as a much more complex phenomenon in the Catalan city. The charter of citizenship and the fiscal privileges it offered did not create citizens but rather confirmed them, as a majority of the candidates had already been treated as citizens in earlier documentation. To analyse both citizenship reports and records, by cross-referencing the data they contain, demonstrates that information on the habits of candidates was not always collected. In a large majority of cases candidates were directly registered as citizens with no need of prior interrogations. It is not easy to explain according to a simple pattern why and when an interrogation was initiated. Public inquiries were generally organised when the application referred to unstable and young merchants, sailors, skippers, peasants – individuals whose ‘nomadic’ lifestyles could call into question their intention to live in the city and which hindered, therefore, their access to citizenship. This was particularly true for wealthy peasants who, although renting or owning houses in Barcelona, continued to live and work in their rural properties.8 From a quantitative as much as a qualitative perspective, these sources put reputation at the basis of citizenship in Barcelona. As a result, the Barcelonese citizenry emerges as a flexible community of self-recognised citizens rather than a narrow community of legally privileged individuals. The Barcelonese built themselves this civic body by deploying a diversity of strategies of identification, creating citizen reputation within networks of kin, professional acquaintances and neighbours. This picture contrasts with the uses and nature of citizenship in other European cities. Venice carefully regulated the granting of citizenship privileges, using them

Family and citizenship in Barcelona 27 as tools with which to classify the beneficiaries of its commercial domains.9 Genoa adopted a more flexible and utilitarian approach, creating weaker forms of citizenship (convenzioni) with which candidates exclusively obtained the fiscal privileges of the citizen, with no political rights and no other obligations than a yearly fee.10 In Florence, citizenship was, first and foremost, a tool of political action, one determined by the powerful Florentine guilds (arti), within which citizens found their recognition as such through political influence.11 In northern cities such as London, guild membership itself determined access to citizenship privileges.12 In contrast, Barcelona’s ruling institutions (the Council of the Hundred and its councillors) sanctioned a broader model of citizenship, as the production of the Informacions show. Citizenship was seen here as a tool with which to examine and renegotiate the relationships of the large diversity of Barcelonese within their civic community: while the early fifteenth century was a relatively peaceful period, Barcelona had grown as a society full of contradictions. The progressive autonomy of the Council, strongly consolidated by the end of the fourteenth century, ensured the political and economic monopoly of an oligarchy whose predominance had provoked riots and revolts since the late thirteenth century. These tensions need to be understood within a context of contrasts: despite its commercial dynamism, Barcelona soon fell into a period of deep economic uncertainty characterised by a shortage of cereal crops, instability of prices and wages, monetary devaluation and, above all, increasing public debt.13 In this context, the authorities supervised the coexistence of formal and informal citizenship. While sanctioning on many occasions the citizenship requests of those who had proved by public opinion that they were citizens, on some rare occasions the authorities might grant charters to rather more unsupported candidates, thinking that such acceptances would be beneficial for the city’s finances. Thus, foreign merchants recently settled in the city and rather unknown to their new neighbours could in exceptional circumstances receive a charter after, for instance, having acquired a taxable property in the city.14 The social experience of citizenship can be grasped from the unique Barcelonese sources, for they connect the interests of the ruling institutions of the city with the individualities of the citizen, recovering many Barcelonese voices of that time. Indeed, witnesses testifying to the legitimacy of their acquaintances as citizens of Barcelona are numerous. A rigorous analysis of the sources might require us to question the reliability of this unique window onto the social imagination. While I argue that the public faith that is embedded in these documents of a notarial nature prevents us from suspecting fictitious witnesses, the accuracy and authenticity of some testimonies can be questioned or tackled as biased. However, the significance of these testimonies does not lie in their content but in their ability and effectiveness in placing candidates within a network which created and ensured their reputation as citizens. Despite their richness, the Informacions de la Ciutadania present a few limitations that need to be considered when using them to explore the nature of the Barcelonese citizenry. To begin with, the material should be used carefully when dealing with the presence and impact of foreigners. While the foreign provenance of candidates was noted in only 189 cases from a total of 767, notarial sources

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suggest that some foreign candidates were not identified as such in citizenship sources. Furthermore, the literature has shown that foreign merchants did not always view the possession of a charter as fundamental for negotiating their social integration and commercial interests.15 Thus, while it is tempting to conclude that the prevalence of behaviour and reputation turned origins into a minor element in the making of the Barcelonese citizen, it remains necessary to highlight that, although partly depicting the diversity of foreigners and illustrating some of their integration strategies, the information provided by these citizenship sources might give a distorted and reduced picture of foreigners’ presence in medieval Barcelona, where access to citizenship was not understood as a naturalisation process. Thus, in Barcelona the presumed automatic dichotomy between citizenship and foreignness did not apply. Although they offer a tool by which to identify and analyse a variety of strategies and experiences of social insertion, Barcelonese citizenship and its sources do not help to quantify rigorously the role of immigration in these processes. In more general terms, it should also be highlighted that the citizenship reports concentrate on successful citizens; that is, on those who managed to gather the necessary support to attain citizenship privileges. In fact, denial of the charter, an action which can only be identified during the period 1413–1425, when both interrogations and final records have been conserved, is rarely documented. From a total of 165 interrogations for this timeframe, only 21 were not recorded as successful. While undesirable characteristics such as unstable residence or the unwillingness to pay taxes might explain some of these denials, the lack of a final registration seems to have resulted on other occasions from a decision to block the process from the candidate himself.16 Thus, Barcelonese citizenship sources show in detail the social mechanisms that ensured the inclusive nature of Barcelona’s citizenry; however, little can be said from this material on the exclusion processes that also conditioned the building of the citizenry. Having considered these limitations, the richness of the Informacions prevails, for they certainly help to nuance substantially the image of the medieval citizen, insisting on the coexistence between informal and formal citizens, the latter being those who requested a charter in a specific moment of need to turn an ambiguous status into a certain one. This seems to have been a very common practice among merchants, who, being interested in the exemptions included in the charter, were the most numerous among the candidates.17 As formal citizens, merchants did not hesitate to use and exhibit their charter, transferring it to their representatives in powers of attorney if necessary. The merchant Antoni Salavert and his associates appointed the sailor Joan Perelló as their representative, allowing him to ‘use for us and on our behalf the exemptions and immunities that were granted to each of us as citizens of the mentioned city’.18 Custom exemptions also motivated the requests of a relatively important number of artisans and free peasants who reached the city markets from the hinterland. From humbler positions, seafarers engaged in these processes in order to encourage their trading activities and fulfil their hopes of social advancement. Some of the seafarers and artisans were identified in the sources as former serfs

Family and citizenship in Barcelona 29 (homs de remença), who, having reached the city, built a reputation as a citizen: they had stayed in the city for more than one year, practiced trades, founded families and showed their commitment to the city through the payment of taxes and their participation in the building of the city walls. Nonetheless, their position within the city walls was easily contested: serfs having run away were often persecuted or only suspiciously accepted in Barcelona, for the city and its rulers possessed lands with serfs in the Catalan countryside and were therefore directly affected by the peasant unrest that arose in the last years of the fourteenth century. Thus, the charter became particularly useful for former serfs inhabiting the city: a tool with which to turn the uncertainty of their citizen reputation into a recognised status, the ultimate instrument with which to help them abandon their servile condition forever.19

Kinsmen in the making of the citizen To a greater or lesser extent, merchants, artisans, seafarers and peasants, foreign as well as native, referred to kinsmen when needing to prove their belonging to the civic body. For the Barcelonese, as well as for the authorities, the role of relatives in the making of a civic image was twofold. To begin with, the family had a powerful indirect influence. Many considered the maintenance of a household (tot son domicili) to be the strongest connection a citizen could establish with his citizenry. It was a proof of commitment and manifested the candidate’s intention to sink roots in the city. From a sample of 741 candidate citizens for the period 1395–1425, witnesses highlighted the familial circle of the candidate in 171 cases (68 merchants, 34 artisans, 41 seafarers and 19 peasants).20 The civic meaning of the household can also be grasped in more qualitative terms from the Informacions. The blind peasant Pere Canyes, for example, testified with these words on the habits of his neighbour, Berenguer Desmas: ‘My lord, I have a poor sight and I cannot see anybody, nonetheless, I have heard Berenguer chatting, as well as his wife and his daughter, in this city and in this neighbourhood and I cannot say anything else’.21 As family was interpreted as a sign of the candidate’s stability and his intention to remain (animus rimanendi), this witness’s limitations did not prevent him from taking the perceived presence of husband, wife and daughter as the strongest proof of the candidate’s citizenship. Barcelonese examples confirm claims made by historians of households in the last decades, according to whom the late-medieval household was a flexible unit which could take different forms (complex or nuclear), including a large range of kinsmen, as well as apprentices and servants.22 In numerous cases, witnesses observed how candidates lived harmoniously together with their wives and children. Yet, small households took several other forms: sons sheltered parents, as was the case of the merchant Joan Bartalot, who lived with his father-in-law in order to help him economically and keep him company.23 It was known that the merchant Joan Xarle lived with a concubine who had borne some of his children.24 Depicting the porousness of the mercantile family, citizenship reports also present larger households. While the Cardonas lodged several members of another

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merchant family, the Claris,25 Francesc Lunes grew up among the family of Ses Avasses.26 The merchant Antoni Salavert sheltered his cousin Guillem Guerau for more than thirty years, presumably housing later on the wife and children of the latter.27 In his early days in Barcelona, the merchant Joan Torralba was already living with some servants (macips) who helped him in his affairs.28 Secondly, a more direct engagement of close relatives in the making of the citizen emerges from the citizenship procedures. It was common for sons to rely on their fathers when the time came to apply for a citizenship charter. In order to avoid having their testimony considered biased, fathers did not act as witnesses in citizenship interrogations, but rather as guarantors of their children’s charters.29 The merchants Francesc Bosc and Pere Antic could count on their fathers as guarantors, who were also merchants and already citizens of Barcelona.30 On several occasions, however, the father’s presence in citizenship records came more as a legal requirement than as a supportive, familial action. As patria potestas maintained children under their father’s authority until their progenitor’s death or their own marriage, young and unmarried individuals confirming their status as citizens had to involve their fathers in the procedure. Thus, it is clearly stated in the record of the tailor Gabriel de Guimerà, whose guarantor was his father Bernat de Guimerà, that the young candidate was acting ‘with the consent and on the will of his father’.31 Under the influence of the patria potestas, fathers had the legal strength to turn their sons into citizens. However, economic self-maintenance remained a fundamental practice of citizenship.32 Thus, parental authority, although formally recognised, did not diminish the economic independence of young offspring within the urban family experiences of the late-medieval Barcelonese.33 Nonetheless, at another stage of their lives, fathers and sons might apply together for a citizenship charter. In most of these cases, sons followed in their fathers’ professional footsteps, suggesting that they were both acting to further their common economic interests, rather than fulfil legal or hierarchical requirements. Across a diversity of professional backgrounds, fathers and sons confirmed together their status as citizens of Barcelona. The merchant Ramon Canyelles was registered as a citizen of Barcelona together with his son Ramon, a merchant himself, in 1415. The skippers of small boats from the coastal locality of Blanes, Antoni Perpunter and his son Jaume, were recorded jointly as citizens of Barcelona in 1416.34 Beyond the support a father could provide, other family relationships were used to prove one’s citizen status. Siblings became an obvious resource. Lett has insisted on placing brothers and sisters at the basis of familial coexistence, as short life expectancy considerably limited the time children shared with their parents and led relatives from the same generation to become main familial reference points. This author perceives the bonds created between siblings as the ‘sensitive axis of kinship’.35 In late-medieval Barcelona, the depth of such feelings was certainly used in the building of the citizen body: brothers helped each other when applying for a citizenship charter and could even come to apply together. In many cases, brothers who applied together for citizenship were merchants, as in the examples of Arnau and Francesc Salavert, Tomàs and Joan Vila, Pere and Macià Català and Joan and Jaume de Querio.36 Most probably they worked together

Family and citizenship in Barcelona 31 and needed to obtain the same fiscal privileges. These dynamics are clear in the case of the brothers de Querio, for whom a shared mercantile enterprise is documented only a few days after the recording of their citizenship charter.37 Brothers also acted as guarantors or representatives of their sibling’s citizenship charters. The venerable Nicolau Coscó acted on behalf of his brother Jaume when promising the councillors that Jaume, who was in Zaragoza at the time, would soon come back to Barcelona and take the citizenship oath that every citizen was supposed to take when being granted a charter.38 Having received a power of attorney from his brothers, the priest Pere Serrió took a citizenship oath on behalf of the notary Francesc Serrió and the merchant Andreu Serrió, who had made a common application for the charter.39 To present brothers as guarantors was partly a calculated strategy, a resource some candidates triggered to secure the public support of a reputable figure within the citizen body. On several occasions, the brother involved in the application for citizenship was a notary: the quintessential depositary of the public faith. For instance, Bartomeu Gomir, a notary citizen of Barcelona, ensured the issue of his brother Arnau’s citizenship charter. Likewise, Pere Ponsgem, also a notary, did not hesitate in risking his own reputation when guaranteeing to the councillors that his brother Guillem, a furrier, would soon return to Barcelona to take the citizenship oath.40 Even among citizens of humbler backgrounds, brothers often showed an interest in ensuring their siblings’ integration and reputation as citizens, thereby avoiding their own reputations coming into question. It is particularly interesting to highlight the contrast between the candidate Pere Pascal, an ‘adventurer’, and his brother and guarantor Francesc. Despite his unstable existence, Pere was registered as a citizen, certainly due to the support of his brother, who, in his position as an innkeeper, appeared as a reliable guarantor of the candidate’s stability.41 In the absence of brothers, candidates turned to other relatives to confirm their civic status. The appeal to other relatives was, however, less common. While sixtyseven cases have been traced in which fraternal ties were directly used by candidates, or have been observed or uncovered by other testimonies, uncles (twelve) or cousins (less) were less frequently involved in citizenship procedures. The merchant Bernat Pellicer had been living in Barcelona for more than ten years when he requested a charter. Nonetheless, his continuous absences made it difficult for witnesses to affirm whether the candidate was able to sustain himself, as any respectable citizen was supposed to do. His uncle, the honourable Berenguer Esteve, had to provide for his support, confirming that, although he had always been hosting Bernat in his house, the candidate had always been living from his own benefits.42 Neighbours observed a household’s stability wherever fathers, brothers, uncles and/or cousins supported their relatives’ claims to citizenship, thereby enhancing the reputation of the whole family. In order to fulfil their moral obligations or to match professional or group interests, such as the development of common businesses, kinsmen and candidates interacted in citizenship acquisition procedures. To help us better grasp the strong connections between citizens, families and citizenship, the specific case of the Sarrovira family will be analysed in more detail. This family of wealthy merchants illustrates the uses of citizenship within a wider familial circle, and the effects of a familial network in the daily experience of the citizen.

daughter

Nicolau Sarrovira

Bernat Perpinyà

1403 Joan Sarrovira

between 1388-1390

Francesc Sarrovira

Figure 2.1 Genealogical tree of the Sarrovira family

Francesca Roses (1st wife)

1403

Francesca

D. ~1403

Ramon Roses

Caterina (1st wife)

Violant Moner (2nd wife)

Pere Moner

Rafael Moner

Margarida

Ramon Sarrovira

Joaneta Montmany

Esteve Desmas

Joana

between 1402-1409

Llorenç Montmany

Bartomeu Desmas

~1402

Guillem Pere Sarrovira

D. ~1417

?

Pere Llobera

between 1392-1394

Pere Llobera

Narcisa Sarrovira

Francesca (2nd wife)

Caterina Desmas

between 1401-1403

Family and citizenship in Barcelona 33

Citizens in the family, families in the city: the Sarrovira In October 1413, citizenship charters were granted to the merchants Guillem Pere Sarrovira, his son Francesc Sarrovira and Ramon Roses, who requested recognition of their civic status together.43 The Sarrovira were active and wealthy merchants. Ferrer suggests they could have been a minor branch of the ‘honoured’ Sarrovira family, which had been holding municipal offices from the early fourteenth century.44 Be that as it may, notarial sources show that these Sarrovira had commercial interests in Aragon, Valencia and Sicily.45 Furthermore, Guillem Pere Sarrovira owned houses and shops in the area of Santa Maria del Mar, the economic heart of Barcelona.46 Years before, in 1377, he had received a substantial dowry of 500 lliures from his second wife, another indication of the prosperity of this family.47 As citizens of Barcelona, the interest of the Sarrovira in a citizenship charter was of a mainly economic nature, for they surely wanted to confirm or renew their trading privileges.48 In so doing, they involved Ramon Roses, relying therefore on old and close alliances, for Ramon Roses’ late daughter or sister, Francesca, used to be Francesc Sarrovira’s wife.49 Commercial activities ensured the family’s inner cohesion, making citizenship and the trading privileges it entailed of fundamental importance for all its members. To focus on the activities and experiences of some of this family’s members certainly shows how the Sarrovira family acted as a network that strengthened its presence in the city through the creation of citizens. Married to Guillem Pere’s daughter Narcisa, Bartomeu Desmas was Guillem Pere’s son-in-law and Francesc’s brother-in-law. Carrère documents the continuous professional relationships binding these three men together. In 1399, Desmas collaborated with Guillem Pere Sarrovira in a joint venture involving trade in coral. Ten years later, he was associated with the brothers Ramon and Francesc Sarrovira, all of them sharing a company through which they participated in the trade of Sicilian wheat.50 Given how closely their professional interests were intertwined, the untimely death of Bartomeu Desmas (sometime before 1416) forced the Sarrovira family to protect the interests and activities that their sister inherited from her late husband. Citizenship became a crucial tool in these endeavours: Francesc Sarrovira, who had moved into the position of head of the family after Guillem Pere’s death in 1417, showed his concern about the civic and economic position of his sister by acting as guarantor of the citizenship charter she requested in 1419.51 In a time when women’s petitions were rare, and generally limited to widows in charge of their late husbands’ affairs,52 it is tempting to speculate that Francesc’s pressure was behind this petition, as Narcisa’s citizenship safeguarded the trading exemptions her husband had enjoyed as a citizen. More importantly, Narcisa’s citizenship petition involved her son Esteve Desmas, who was at that time seventeen years old and was already identified as an adultus. Considering previous cases when young merchants under patria potestas needed their father’s approval to confirm their status as independent citizens, the case of Esteve Desmas could be taken as counterpoint. His uncle Francesc used citizenship to confirm the emancipation of Esteve, who had fallen until then under his guardianship, and strengthen his economic independence.53 The strategy was

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effective: shortly afterwards, Narcisa appointed her son as her legal representative.54 Furthermore, this citizenship pact solidified Esteve Desmas’ ties with his maternal family. As a citizen, Esteve started to participate in his uncle’s deals, occupying the place his late father used to have in the Sarrovira’s professional networks. Later, Francesc gave power of attorney to his nephew, entrusting him with their affairs in Sardinia. He likely also made other deals with him, for both needed to appoint a representative to defend their claims against the merchant Joan Perpinyà.55 Besides the relationships that were woven and maintained with Narcisa, her husband and her son, the experiences of other family members show the extent to which the Sarroviras used citizenship to ensure the success of their common enterprises. Francesc Sarrovira was close to his son-in-law Bernat Perpinyà. There is evidence of this closeness: Bernat was appointed as one of the arbitrators in a conflict between Francesc and his brother Ramon.56 More significantly, Francesc gave a general power of attorney to his son-in-law in 1416, entrusting him with his own citizenship charter.57 It was perhaps after having evaluated their common business interests that they decided to request a proper charter for Bernat, the guarantor of which was Francesc himself.58 Later, Bernat acted as intermediary for his father-in-law in Valencia, and, in return, had Francesc take care of his affairs in Barcelona.59 The Sarrovira used kinship relationships intensively in their commercial deals, although troubles also occurred, as becomes evident from the several arbitrations and conflicts in which Francesc was repeatedly involved, some of them against his own brother Ramon.60 Nonetheless, the family would always remain a space of obligations and solidarity, as the case of Narcisa has shown; this can also be retraced from the difficulties endured by Francesc Sarrovira himself. Very surprisingly, his second wife, Violant, sister of the merchant Rafael Moner, claimed her dowry back in 1418, as she was afraid of losing it due to the severe pressure that creditors and the General Governor of Catalonia were placing on her husband.61 Not much more is known about the reasons for his serious financial troubles. A few days later, Francesc gave powers of attorney to the lawyer Jaume de Sanjoan, his brother Ramon, his brother-in-law Rafael Moner and his son Joan, asking them to represent him in any civil or criminal lawsuit in which he might become involved.62 The following day, Violant again insisted on having her dowry preserved.63 Taking into account the fact that she also chose Rafael Moner and Ramon Sarrovira as her representatives on the matter, it is tempting to speculate that Francesc himself had plotted the complaint with her, so that they could at least save the amount of her dowry from the strong pressures that were threatening him. One of these powers of attorney suggests that Francesc’s problems were caused by unfortunate contracts that he had signed without guarantors.64 Be that as it may, Francesc was probably very close to bankruptcy. Although insolvency was severely punished in medieval Catalonia, with legal regulations stipulating imprisonment and public declarations of infamy as punishment for the bankrupted,65 the turbulent events did not seem to have damaged Francesc’s reputation as a citizen of Barcelona, for he was addressed as a reliable citizen shortly after this episode, both

Family and citizenship in Barcelona 35 by his family and within the city of Barcelona. His sister Narcisa relied on him as the contracting party of her son’s marriage, and he was even charged by the cònsols de mar, the magistrates regulating maritime law and jurisdiction, to return some money that was owed by a French merchant to his nephew-in-law Pere Llobera.66 Despite the troubles he endured, Francesc’s family kept their confidence in him, as did higher magistrates of the city. This reliance can be taken as proof of the solid reputation the Sarrovira had won as good citizens of the city, as well as of their efforts to preserve it. In fact, when many of them decided to confirm their citizen status by requesting a charter, none needed to be assessed by a deeper inquiry, nor a consequent report done in this respect. Their reputation among the Barcelonese was unquestioned, not so much because of their wealth (the dowries given and received on the occasion of Narcisa’s children’s marriage matched the average of medium-high dowries), but for the dynamism of their activities and their integration in the urban community. The Sarrovira built their image as citizens by placing themselves strategically within the urban fabric of the city. Guillem Pere owned and left to his heirs several shops in the street of the Sabateria (shoeshop), close to the cemetery of Santa María del Mar.67 Natives of Barcelona, the Sarrovira lived in a neighbourhood mostly populated by merchants but did not neglect the opportunity to expand their relationships with the rest of the Barcelonese citizenry. For instance, the family possessed strong links with shoemakers like Pere and Bartomeu Suau and Bernat Montserrat – probably their neighbours on the street Sabateria – who were repeatedly involved in the notarial contracts signed by the Sarrovira. Through them, Guillem Pere and his descendants gave a wider dimension to their actions as good citizens. Narcisa provides a very good example, as she gave part of the amount her father had bequeathed to her with beneficent purposes to the shoemaker Bernat Montserrat, who was at that time administrator of the charitable funds of Santa Maria del Mar.68 The desire to consolidate their connections with other occupational sectors of the city becomes even clearer with the marriage of Francesc’s nephew Esteve Desmas to the daughter of the tanner Llorenç Montmany, who was able to provide a decent dowry.69 While it seems that the reputation as citizens of every member of the Sarrovira family was undisputed, a meaningful exception is to be found among their ranks. And this relates, once more, to one of the in-laws. Indeed, a citizenship report was conducted when the young Pere Llobera decided to request a citizenship charter in 1416. From this report, Pere emerged as a young, hard-working merchant who could count on Guillem Pere Sarrovira as witness and guarantor of his charter.70 Sarrovira affirmed that Pere was behaving as an exemplary citizen, working in some of the shops he had rented to him and helping him when illness prevented him from taking care of his affairs. No mention was made by the head of the Sarrovira family about the marriage Pere was to contract in the following month with Caterina Desmas, Narcisa Desmas’ daughter and Guillem Pere Sarrovira’s grandchild.71 It is not possible to determine for how long this union had been planned from the available sources. It is certain, however, that it was not a spontaneous decision, as Pere Llobera’s father specified in the marriage contract

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that Pere was following his wishes when wedding Caterina Desmas. Furthermore, Pere Llobera had acted as witness in notarial documents involving the Sarrovira as early as 1414.72 This all suggests that previous relationships between Guillem Pere Sarrovira and his father had guided Pere Llobera’s first steps in Barcelona. By not mentioning the whole project, Sarrovira seems to have been willing to present his prospective grandchild-in-law as a good citizen in his own right, primarily insisting on the actions he performed within the city. Nonetheless, it is to be highlighted that Pere Llobera’s citizenship request took longer than normal. While in many cases the process was resolved in just a few days, it took two months for Pere to be granted the charter: his record and citizenship oath was dated December 1416, a few days after having contracted his marriage with Caterina Desmas. With this marriage, Guillem Pere Sarrovira leased for free to Pere, for a period of four years, the shops the young merchant had been previously renting. These properties strengthened Pere’s presence within the neighbourhood, consolidating his citizen reputation and preparing him to become the head of a Barcelonese household. The experiences of Pere Llobera are most illustrative of some of the diverse processes determining the making of a citizen in Barcelona. Behaving as a proper citizen, Pere was honestly accepted by the influential merchant to whom he had been recommended by his father. While his efforts to integrate the citizenry hastened his inclusion within a reputed family, it was the final contract of this alliance that seems to have determined his official recognition as a citizen. As member both of a family and of the citizen body, his emergence as a recognised citizen of Barcelona was unconditionally linked to his insertion within such an active and highly reputable family as the Sarrovira.

Conclusions This chapter has dealt with processes of community building in the later Middle Ages by analysing the dynamics that determined the shaping of the citizenry – that is, the community of citizens – in fifteenth-century Barcelona. This has been done in relational terms, exploring how family networks could contribute to the making of the citizen. The family in very diverse forms (households observed by the Barcelonese; kinsmen interacting together both in integration processes and in whole familial groups such as the Sarrovira) are presented in this study as a tool to bring to light, in more general terms, the pillars on which citizens and their community rested: belonging, reputation and a delicate balance between self and common interest. It was through belonging to a smaller circle such as a reputable family that citizens could identify with the urban community, showing publicly their degree of acceptance, as well as their reasons to remain permanently in the city, this having been one of the paramount practices of a good citizen. The family created citizen reputation, yet these processes were based on a subtle combination of common and individual interests. The family acted as a mirror of the self; therefore, the concern for their own reputation as citizens might have convinced fathers, brothers, uncles

Family and citizenship in Barcelona 37 and cousins to act as guarantors of their kin in the citizenship records. As the Sarrovira case shows, common economic and professional interests were also at stake. This family demonstrated how the creation of citizens in their midst became a strategy to consolidate the position of the whole family within the urban civic community. More specifically, this chapter proposes to use family connections, with a Barcelonese family as an example, as lenses through which the dialogical nature of citizenship can be further examined. To retrace solidarity networks and connections such as those of the Sarrovira portrays in detail the primary function of citizenship as a social practice, for it helps us to analyse how networks and citizens shaped each other, creating reputation and affirming belonging within their daily urban experience. Within this dialogue, a third actor, however, needs to be taken into account: indeed, the ultimate sanction of the municipal authorities to access the citizenship privilege ensured the institutional dimension of citizenship. Little space was given to the oficis (occupational corporations) in Barcelonese citizenship processes. Guild membership is never mentioned throughout the Informacions. Although much work on professional associations in medieval Barcelona needs still to be done, such an absence points towards the feeble role of guilds in defining the citizen in medieval Barcelona. These observations fit within an Iberian context, where guilds had a slower development, but they are in strong contrast with other European cities, where the relationship between citizenship and guilds was strong, be it because guild membership ensured citizenship or because citizenship was necessary to access guilds.73 In the case of Barcelona, solidarity networks and the reputation they created were at the basis of citizenship, showing that they had the potential to promote the citizen. From this perspective, the Barcelonese citizenry emerges as a highly flexible and inclusive one, where informally defined citizens were first recognised by their fellow citizens, only to be then sanctioned as such by the authorities when being in need of more certain and official recognition. Nonetheless, the resulting ambiguity and diversity of the citizen benefited the oligarchical groups that controlled the Council of the Hundred, who monopolised the political prerogatives of the citizen, fixing in rather exclusive terms the limits of an honoured citizenry that circumscribed power within a delimited set of families. Despite having been a family of wealthy merchants, the Sarrovira were not among this honoured citizenry (at least not in the early fifteenth century). Their dynamism and strategies of citizen engendering and civic influence can also be retraced among families with similar resources, while those who could not benefit from effective family relationships relied on other solidarities to promote their citizenship, notably on the neighbourhood. This chapter acknowledges that, next to the family, other social contexts engaged in the negotiations of citizenship through which the citizenry was constantly reproduced. I believe, however, that the family experiences described here are significant enough, for they demonstrate the potential and benefits of approaching citizenship in broader terms, taking it as a transversal prism with which to elaborate on the complexities of urban integration in the later Middle Ages, placing a diversity of identification strategies at the core of urban belonging.

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Notes ∗ This article results from the doctoral research I have conducted at the European University Institute under the supervision of Professor Luca Molà, with funding provided by the Spanish Ministry of Education (programme Salvador de Madariaga). My research has also benefited from the collaboration with the Research Project ‘Tripulaciones, armamentos, construcción naval y navegación en el Mediterráneo medieval’, directed by Dr Roser Salicrú i Lluch (CSIC, Barcelona) and funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO HAR2013–48433-C2–1-P). 1 Wellman, Carrington and Hall (1988), 130. 2 I borrow the expression ‘social imagination’ from Amelang (2008), 23. As with Amelang himself, I use the term here with no specific theoretical meaning; I refer solely to the capacity of citizenship sources to provide an actual idea of the opinions of medieval cities’ inhabitants on citizenship. 3 Shepard and Withington (2000), 1–12. The phrase ‘community question’ is in Wellman, Carrington and Hall (1988), 176. 4 For enlightening approaches to early-modern citizenship in cultural terms: Herzog (2003); Cerutti (2012). 5 Historical Archives of the City of Barcelona (hereafter AHCB), 1C-V, 3, 4 and 5. The Informacions de la Ciutadania were first described in Duran (1957). 6 Soldani (2012), 118. 7 Research into the integration of foreigners in late-medieval Barcelona has focused particularly on the presence of Tuscan merchants. See, in this regard, the insightful analysis of Soldani (2010) and earlier work by Ferrer (1980). On the presence of French immigrants: Batlle (1980). Less attention has been given to the arrival and integration of internal Catalan migrants, as already noted in Batlle (1989), 112. 8 Surviving citizenship reports and records are only coeval for the period 1413–1425. This represents an amount numbering 714 documents (179 reports and 535 records). For a more detailed quantitative analysis of the Informacions de la Ciutadania, Obradors (2013), 384–91; Obradors (2015), 88–94. Some notes also in: Carrère (1977), vol. I, 21. 9 Venice had a twofold system of citizenship granting dependent on the years the candidate had resided in the city. In 1305, for instance, these requirements were fixed at fifteen years of residence for a citizenship de intus which enabled the holder for the practice of local trade while twenty-five years of residence were required in order to be granted citizenship de extra, which was needed in order to practice commerce on a more international scale. Mueller (2010), 23. 10 Petti-Balbi (2014), 105–15. 11 ‘Guilds defined citizenship’, Goldthwaite (2009), 346, 348. 12 Farr (2000), 30. 13 Some basic literature on late-medieval Barcelona: Carreras (1916); Batlle (1973); Del Treppo (1976); Carrère (1977); Vinyoles (1985); Ortí (2000); Risques (2007). 14 See the case of the Florentine merchant Giovanni Franceschini. AHCB, 1C-V,3 (18–19 August 1413) and 1C-V,4, Registre, f. 2v (23 August 1413). 15 For the case of Valencia, see: Igual (2012), 136–39. 16 More detailed analysis on these non-recorded cases in Obradors (2015), 134–41. 17 Though it is obvious that the charter was of especial interest to merchants, some authors have noted that many could also have acted without one, putting its use and value into perspective; Carrère (1977), Vol. I, 30; and for Valencia: Igual (2012), 139. 18 ‘[C]onsti et ordi vos dictum Johannem Perelló procuratorem nostrum et cuislibet nostrum etc. ad utendum pro nobis et nomine nostro et cuislibet nostrum franquitatibus et inmunitatibus nobis et cuique nostrorum ut civibus dicte civitatis concessis.’; Historical Archives of Notarial Registers of Barcelona (hereafter AHPB), Bernat Nadal, 58/55 f. 91r (23 February 1417), also mentioned in Obradors (2015), 109. On this common practice, see Soldani (2010), 35.

Family and citizenship in Barcelona 39 19 For literature on Catalan serfdom and a discussion on the extent to which serfs could obtain their ‘freedom’ in Barcelona at the end of the Middle Ages, I refer to my dissertation: Obradors (2015), 119–28. 20 And nine of a non-specified profession. 21 AHCB, 1C-V, 3 (31 May 1408): ‘e dix: sènyer, jo son fort defallent de la vista per que jo no puix affigurar nagú mas sovinement hoyg lo dit Berenguer parlar e així mateix madona sua e sa filla en aquesta ciutat e en aquest veynat e als noy sé.’ 22 For a recent assessment of the classic literature on the nature and forms of the household, see Barbagli and Kerzer (2001), XIV–XVI. 23 AHCB, 1C-V, 3 (3 February 1416). 24 AHCB, 1C-V, 3 (21 March 1401). 25 AHCB, 1C-V, 3 (s.d.). 26 AHCB, 1C-V, 3 (26 November 1406). 27 AHCB, 1C-V, 3 (30 October 1409) for Guillem Guerau’s citizenship report, and AHPB, Bernat Pí 113/99, f. 69v (4 September 1433) for Antoni Salavert’s will. 28 AHCB, 1C-V, 3 (5 January 1412). Joan de Torralba later became a successful merchant, leading one of the most renowned companies in the city together with some other Aragonese associates. Del Treppo (1976), 473–534; and, more recently, López (2013), 313–32. 29 Certainly the prevention of biased testimonies was much more common in trials, but these are considerations that can help to understand the logic of the Informacions. See McDonough (2013), 32–35. 30 For Francesc del Bosc: AHCB, 1C-V, 4, Registre, f. 23r (24 November 1414). For Pere Antic: f. 98r (1 April 1418). 31 AHCB, 1C-V,4 Registre, f. 109v-110r (7 October 1418): ‘de consensu et voluntate dicti patris sui’. On the emancipating nature of marriage in late-medieval Catalonia: Brocà (1918), 360. On the actual mechanisms determining emancipation in late-medieval Barcelona, see Vela (2007), 268–71. 32 For a detailed analysis of citizenship practices in medieval Barcelona, see Obradors (2013), 391–406; Obradors (2015), 94–134. 33 However, a more detailed analysis of these sorts of cases should be conducted in order to better grasp the scope of patria potestas encompassing young recognised citizens. On the long-term evolution of patria potestas and the practices of emancipation in the Christian Mediterranean: Vial-Dumas (2014), 307–29. 34 For the Canyelles: AHCB, 1C-V,4 Registre, f. 32v (25 May 1415). For Antoni and Jaume Perpunter: f. 45r (5 March 1416). 35 Lett (2008), 3. 36 For the Salavert brothers: AHCB, 1C-V, 4, Registre, f. 89v-90r (24 September 1417). For Joan and Tomàs Vila’s citizenship report: AHCB, 1C-V, 3 (16 April 1406). For Pere and Macià Català: AHCB, 1C-V, 4 Registre, f. 87v (2 September 1417). For Joan and Jaume de Querio: f. 83v-84r (3 July 1417). 37 AHPB, Bernat Pí, 113/13 f. 55r (5 July 1417). 38 Nicolau Coscó engagement on f. 55v (4 August 1416) and Jaume Coscó definite citizenship record on f. 61v (8 October 1416). 39 AHCB, 1C-V, 4 Registre, f. 92r (30 October 1417). 40 For the Gomir: AHCB, 1C-V, 4, Registre, f. 96r (26 January 1418). Pere Ponsgem’s engagement on f. 63r (4 November 1416). Guillem Ponsgem’s final registration on f. 64r (23 November 1416). 41 AHCB, 1C-V, 4, Registre, f. 94v. (31 December 1417). Inn owners were generally recognised as guarantors of stability. Thus, Castilians in Barcelona were often supported by countrymen who had settled in the city as innkeepers. Ferrer (2014), 1313. 42 AHCB, 1C-V, 3 (19 December 1415). 43 AHCB, 1C-V, 4, Registre, f. 7v (11 October 1413). 44 Ferrer (2007), 341, defines this minor branch as ‘reputed merchants’.

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45 AHPB, Bernat Nadal, 58/57 f. 9r (4 April 1418) and 58/51, f. 38v (19 April 1413). 46 AHPB, Bernat Pí, 113/11, f. 86v- 89r (18 November 1416). On the social and economic significance, as well as the limits of this area of the city, see, for instance: Amelang (1993), 119–37; Riu (2005), 563–85; García (2007), 36–53; Soldani (2010), 139–40. 47 AHPB, Bernat Nadal, 58/56, f. 68r-69r (1 December 1417). An interpretation of the value of dowries in fourteenth-century Barcelona in: Vinyoles (1985), 181. On dowries as an indicator of wealth and social mobility: Klapisch-Zuber (1976), 953–82. 48 The idea of a renewal is suggested by the previous registration of a citizenship charter entitled to a Guillem Pere Sarrovira, AHCB, 1C-V, 3, Registre, f. 23r (11 February 1380). 49 As it is shown in Francesca’s will, AHPB, Bernat Nadal, 58/173, f. 154v-155v (4 January 1403). 50 Carrère (1977), Vol. I, 432 and Vol. II, 120. 51 AHCB, 1C-V,4 Registre, f. 124r-124v (30 May 1419). 52 On women as citizens in late-medieval Barcelona, Obradors (2015), 328–41. 53 This remains a hypothesis, and it will be necessary to research and analyse the connections that Narcisa and her children maintained with her late husband’s family. 54 AHPB, Bernat Pí, 113/19, f. 87v (21 November 1419). 55 AHPB, Bernat Nadal, 58/64, f. 57r-57v (6 August 1425) and f. 92r (6 April 1426). 56 On the appointment of arbitrators: AHPB, Bernat Nadal, 58/55, f. 27v-28r (19 June 1416). Other references to the arbitration on f. 37v- 38r (22 July 1416) and 58/56, f. 34r (29 July 1417). 57 AHPB, Bernat Nadal, 58/55, f. 34r (9 July 1416). 58 AHCB, 1C-V, 4, Registre, f. 55r (30 July 1416). 59 AHPB, Bernat Nadal, 58/57, f. 9r (4 April 1418) and AHPB, Bernat Pí, 113/15, f. 11r11v (7 November 1418). 60 AHPB, Bernat Nadal, 58/55, f. 27v-28r (19 June 1416); f. 37v-38r (22 July 1416); 58/56, f. 34r (29 July 1417); 58/55, f. 72v-73r (14 November 1417). Unfortunately, these documents mention the arbitrations but do not give any insights into the origins of the tensions. 61 AHPB, Bernat Nadal, 58/57, f. 19r (12 May 1418). 62 Ibidem, f. 21v-22r (10 May 1418). 63 Ibidem, 58/57, f. 22v-23r (21 May 1418). 64 Ibidem, 58/57, f. 22v (21 May 1418): ‘pretextu cuisdam manulente sine fideiussionis per dictum maritum meum facte’. 65 On the regulation and practice of bankruptcy in medieval Catalonia: Madurell (1969), 579–669; Zambrana (2007), 217–41. 66 AHPB, Bernat Nadal, 58/58, f. 79r-79v (2 January 1420). 67 As indicated in Pere Llobera and Caterina Desmas’ marriage in AHPB, Bernat Pí, 113/11, f. 86v-89r (18 November 1416). 68 AHPB, Bernat Pí, 113/14 f. 56v (18 January 1418). 69 AHPB, Bernat Nadal, 58/62, f. 79r-83v (7 August 1423). 70 Pere Llobera’s citizenship report: AHCB, 1C-V, 3 (18 October 1416). Pere Llobera’s citizenship record: AHCB, 1C-V, 4, Registre, f. 67v- 68r. (18 December 1416). 71 AHPB, Bernat Pí, 113/11, f. 86v- 89r (18 November 1416). 72 AHPB, Bernat Nadal, 58/52, f. 87r-87v (14 June 1414). 73 Boone, Cerutti, Descimon and Prak (1996), 5; Epstein and Prak (2008), 5, 9.

Bibliography Amelang, J., ‘People of the Ribera. Popular Politics and Neighbourhood Identity in Early Modern Barcelona’, in B. Diefendorf and C. Hesse (eds), Culture and Identity in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800: Essays in Honour of Natalie Zemon Davis (Ann Arbor, 1993), 119–37.

Family and citizenship in Barcelona 41 Amelang, J., ‘Gent de la Ribera’ i altres assaigs sobre la Barcelona moderna (Vic, 2008). Barbagli, M., and D. Kerzer., ‘Introduction’, in D.I. Kerzer and M. Barbagli (eds), The History of the European Family. Volume I: Family Life in Early Modern Times 1500– 1789 (New Haven-London, 2001), XIV–XVI. Batlle i Gallart, C., La crisis económica y social de Barcelona en el siglo XV (Barcelona, 1973). Batlle i Gallart, C., ‘Els francesos a la Corona d’Aragó’, Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 10 (1980), 361–89. Batlle i Gallart, C., ‘La presenza degli stranieri a Barcellona nei secoli XII-XIII’, in G. Rossetti (ed.), Dentro la città. Stranieri e realtà urbana nell’Europa dei secoli XIII-XVI (Naples, 1989), 95–120. Boone, M., S. Cerutti, R. Descimon, and M. Prak, ‘Citizenship between Individual and Community, 14th-18th Centuries’, in M. Boone and M. Prak (eds), Statuts individuels, statuts corporatifs et statuts judiciaires dans les villes européennes (moyen âge et temps modernes) (Leuven-Apeldoorn, 1996), 3–10. Brocà, G.M de., Historia del derecho de Cataluña, especialmente del civil y exposición de las instituciones del derecho civil del mismo territorio en relación con el código civil de España y de la jurisprudencia (1918; reprint, Barcelona, 1985). Carreras i Candí, F., La ciutat de Barcelona. Geografia General de Catalunya, Vol. 3 (Barcelona, 1916). Carrère, C., Barcelona 1380–1462. Un centre econòmic en època de crisi (Barcelona, 1977) [Translation into Catalan of Barcelone 1380–1462. Centre économique à l’époque des difficultés (Paris, 1967)]. Cerutti, S., Étrangers. Étude d’une condition d’incertitude dans une société d’Ancien Régime (Montrouge, 2012). Del Treppo, M., Els mercaders catalans i l’expasió de la corona catalano-aragonesa (Barcelona, 1976) [Translation into Catalan of I mercanti catalani e l’espansione della Corona d’Aragona nel secolo XV (Naples, 1972)]. Duran, E., ‘Apuntes para un estudio sobre la obtención de la ciudadanía de Barcelona a fines de la Edad Media’, University of Barcelona BA thesis, 1957. Epstein, S.R., and M. Prak, ‘Introduction’, in idem (eds), Guilds, Innovation and the European Economy, 1400–1800 (Cambridge and New York, 2007), 1–24. Farr, R., Artisans in Europe 1300–1914 (Cambridge and New York, 2000). Ferrer i Mallol, M.T., ‘Els Italians a terres catalanes (segles XII-XV)’, Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 10 (1980), 393–465. Ferrer i Mallol, M.T., ‘Altres famílies i membres de l’oligarquia barcelonina’, in C. Batlle, M.T. Ferrer, M.C. Mañé, J. Mutgé, S. Riera, and M. Rovira (eds), El “Llibre del Consell” de la Ciutat de Barcelona. Segle XIV: Les eleccions municipals (Barcelona, 2007), 271–346. Ferrer i Mallol, M.T., ‘Notas sobre patrones y mercaderes cántabros en el Mediterráneo Medieval’, in B. Arízaga, D. Mariño, C. Díez, E. Peña, J.A. Solórzano, S. Guijarro, and J. Añíbarro (eds), Mundos Medievales II. Espacios, sociedades y poder. Homenaje al profesor José Ángel García de Cortázar y Ruiz de Aguirre (Santander, 2014), 1307–19. García Espuche, A., ‘Espais urbans de la gent de mar. Barcelona segles XIV a XVII’, Drassana. Revista del Museu Marítim, 15 (2007), 36–53. Goldthwaite, R., The Economy of Renaissance Florence, (Baltimore, 2009). Herzog, T., Defining Nations. Immigrants and citizens in Early Modern Spain and America (New Haven and London, 2003). Igual, D., ‘¿Los mercaders són egualadors de món? Autóctonos y extranjeros en el comercio bajomedieval de Valencia’, Anales de la Universidad de Alicante, 18 (2012), 121–53.

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Klapisch-Zuber, C., ‘Parenti, amici, Vicini. Il territorio urbano d’una famiglia mercantile nel XV secolo’, Quaderni Storici, 33 (1976), 953–82. Lett, D., ‘Les frères et les soeurs “parents pauvres de la parenté”’, Médiévales [en ligne], 54 (2008) URL: http://medievales.revues.org/4473 López Pérez, M.D., ‘La compañía Torralba y las redes de distribución de la lana en el norte de Italia’, in M. Sánchez, A.Gómez, R.Salicrú, and P. Verdés (eds), A l’entorn de la Barcelona medieval. Estudis dedicats a la Dra. Josefina Mutgé (Barcelona, 2013), 313–32. Madurell i Marimon, J.M., ‘Quiebras en la vida mercantil catalana. Notas históricas documentales 1300–1761’, Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español, 39 (1969), 579–669. McDonough, S.A., Witness, Neighbors and Community in Late Medieval Marseille (New York, 2013). Mueller, R., Immigrazione e cittadinanza nella Venezia medievale (Rome, 2010). Obradors Suazo, C., ‘Council, City and Citizens. Citizenship between Legal and Daily Experiences in 15th Century Barcelona’, RiMe (Rivista dell’Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea), 10 (2013), 371–418. Obradors Suazo, C., ‘Immigration and Integration in a Mediterranean City. The Making of the Citizen in Fifteenth-Century Barcelona’, European University Institute PhD thesis, 2015. Ortí i Gost, P., Renda i fiscalitat en una ciutat medieval: Barcelona, segles XII- XIV (Barcelona, 2000). Petti-Balbi, G., ‘Cittadinanza e altre forme di integrazione nella società genovese (secc. XIV-XV)’, in B. Del Bo (ed.), Cittadinanza e mestieri. Radicamento urbano e integrazione nelle città bassomedievali (Rome, 2014), 95–140. Risques i Corbella, M. (ed.), Història de l’Ajuntament de Barcelona. Dels Orígens a 1808, Vol. I (Barcelona, 2007). Riu i Riu, M., ‘El barri barceloní de Santa Maria del Mar vers 1363’, Acta Historica et Archaelogica Medievalia, 26 (2005), 563–85. Shepard, A., and P. Withington, ‘Communities in Early Modern England. Introduction’, in idem (eds), Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, place, rhetoric (Manchester, 2000), 1–12. Soldani, M.E., Uomini d’affari e mercanti toscani nella Barcellona del Quattrocento (Barcelona, 2010). Soldani, M.E., ‘Mercanti “facitori di facciende grosse”. Fiorentini, pisani e lucchesi a Barcellona nel tardo Medioevo’, in L. Tanzini and S. Tognetti (eds), ‘Mercatura è arte’. Uomini d’affari toscani in Europa e nel Mediterraneo (Roma, 2012), 115–47. Vela i Aulesa, C., Especiers i candelers a Barcelona a la Baixa Edat Mitjana. Testaments, Família i sociabilitat (Barcelona, 2007). Vial-Dumas, M., ‘Parents, Children and Law. Patria Potestas and Emancipation in the Christian Mediterranean during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’, Journal of Family History, 39 (2014), 307–29. Vinyoles, T., La vida quotidiana a Barcelona vers 1400 (Barcelona, 1985). Wellman, B., P. Carrington and A. Hall, ‘Networks as Personal Communities’, in B. Wellman and S.D. Berkowitz (eds), Social Structures. A Network Approach (New York, 1988), 130–84. Zambrana Moral, P., ‘La insolvència i el concurs de creditors en el dret històric català’, Revista d’Història del Dret Històric Català (Societat Catalana d’Estudis Juridics), 7 (2007), 217–41.

3

Gladman’s procession and communal identity in Norwich, 1425–1452* Derek M. Crosby

Scholars of medieval pageantry have traditionally been as obsessed with hierarchy, unity and order as the citizens of their study were, and much has been written on whether or not civic processions, Lords of Misrule, guild days and other festive and civic customs strengthened or weakened the bonds of a community.1 Both Humphrey and McRee have suggested that the answer to this question is dependent upon where the line of ‘the community’ was drawn; specifically, which groups or individuals were excluded from the communal identity being assumed by the participants and spectators.2 Medieval Norwich hosted many overlapping communities, ranging from the imagined communities, such as the civic body and its economic strata, through to the parish communities, guilds and trade groups which formed the base units of everyday life.3 This chapter examines the events surrounding Gladman’s procession in 1443 to determine the way in which rhetoric and symbols were deployed to evoke notions of community and common good and essay the extent to which their usage were indicative of a truly popular protest, or whether they had been appropriated and deployed by civic elites to further their own goals. The wealth of documentation surrounding the procession has led to it being studied before in some detail.4 However, no work to date has attempted to explore the way in which their usage and navigation of the city’s symbolic landscape framed a vision for communal relations, or the way in which jurisdictional anxieties were manifested in that same landscape. This dearth seems especially puzzling given the significant lengths to which the participants went to ensure that the procession was resonant of both festive pageantry and civic processions: appropriating and juxtaposing the symbolic language of both to form something that was wholly neither.

The procession What is known about the procession survives in the form of two remarkable and somewhat contradictory sets of accounts, which each contain distorted elements of truth.5 The first was given by the prior of Norwich Cathedral and his sympathisers at an inquest at Thetford some months after the protest had been repressed. It portrays the procession as organised, militarised and treasonous, in order to ensure the harshest punishment possible and thereby undermine any future claims the citizens made to a series of disputed territories within the city.6 The second recounting of the procession would not be recorded until the citizens tried to reclaim their

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liberties in 1448. By this time, a number of key opponents were either dead or in disgrace, and the citizens attempted to exculpate themselves by claiming that the procession was an innocent festivity wrongfully alleged to have been treasonous by their rivals.7 On 25 January 1443 a crowd of Norwich inhabitants broke into the Guildhall and stole the common seal to prevent a document from being sealed.8 The document was an arbitration made by the Earl of Suffolk on a series of long-standing disputes between the City of Norwich and several of its ecclesiastical neighbours. All parties had agreed to abide by his decision in advance as a precondition of his arbitration. Suffolk found against the city on all counts, and to seal it meant that they must relinquish their claims to a series of disputed areas within the walls: Ratonrowe, Tombland, Holmstreet and Normanslond (see Figure 3.1).9 This would

Figure 3.1 Jurisdictions in the City of Norwich, c. 1443, a plan-analysis of the City of Norwich based on the Ordinance Survey 1884–5 (drawn by Keith Lilley)

Processions and communal identity 45 deprive the city of court revenues from those areas throughout the year and entrench the continuance of the Pentecost fair, during which the priory gained jurisdiction over the whole city.10 Their apprehension was compounded by a rumour that the prior was planning to introduce a number of new customs within his jurisdictions, including tax on washing cloth by the river and bringing food into the city.11 The document also bound the city to destroy its grain mills on the Wensum (called the New Mills) at the behest of the prior of St Benet of Hulme, to surrender grazing rights in a number of outlying hamlets and to pay rents on various properties in the city including their Common Staithe.12 To compound the danger posed by the document, several of the aldermen who were sitting in the Guildhall when the crowd broke in had previously been accused of a range of malfeasances. Of these, most worrying were the repeated instances in which the Common Seal had been either held forged or applied improperly during the preceding decades of electoral controversy, most notably during the elections in 1404, 1413, 1432, and 1437.13 As a result of these controversies, two factions had emerged, both of which had been alleged to have forged the seal in the past and to have used violence in the Guildhall itself. One of these factions, led by Thomas Wetherby, had become allied with the Earl of Suffolk and the prior of Norwich by 1443.14 Their attack on the Guildhall was led by John Gladman, a local merchant, whom the prior alleged was ‘on a horse like a crowned King with a sceptre and sword carried before him by three men unknown, and [caused] (...) others to the number of twenty four persons to ride there in like manner before John Gladman with a crown upon their arms and carrying bows and arrows like valets of the crown of the Lord King’.15 It was later revealed by the citizens that Gladman had been dressed as the King of Christmas, ‘hawyng his hors trappyd with [smale bledders, puddyngs and lynks] tynne foyle and other nyse disgysy thynggis’, ‘corowned as kyng of Cristmesse in token that all myrth that seson shuld ende’.16 Once they had removed the seal, the crowd marched to the precinct gates accompanied by the ringing of church bells.17 They blockaded the gates until Heverlond, the prior, surrendered to them copies of his claim to those lands and a number of evidences, including a previous agreement confirming his right to those lands. While they were in occupation of these areas, the protesters uprooted the prior’s pillory and destroyed his prison at Tombland. Once the documents were surrendered, they left the area and processed around the city walls, closing the gates until the Duke of Norfolk arrived and demanded that they be opened some days later.18

Participants Understanding the vision of communal relations presented by Gladman’s procession is predicated upon knowing exactly who was leading it. Analysing the backgrounds of the participants and leaders of the procession is complicated by the nature of the descriptors used in official documentation. The majority of those named by the prior’s testimony were craftsmen and traders who would have been classified as ‘commons’ in the urban hierarchy. Membership of ‘the Community’ depended on possession of freedom

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of the city, which could be acquired by either birth or craft admission.19 Based on the lists in The Old Free Book Norwich commonly admitted fewer than forty noninheriting freemen per annum. Although the list is perhaps not wholly accurate, it certainly demonstrates that common status was fairly restricted and not necessarily an indicator of humble means.20 Above the community was the citizenry, also referred to as Bon-gents, Concitizens and Prudhommes. In the city’s constitution, the term referred to members of the bench of aldermen, but in common usage, it encompassed past and present civic officers, their families and a few others of high social standing and wealth. Although they were not legally distinct from the community in the same way that freemen were distinct from the un-free, they did form a separate category for taxation and musters with both higher responsibilities and greater prestige.21 A small, but not disproportionate, group of the protesters would have met the financial and political requirements to be considered citizens, and their number included several former mayors and sheriffs.22 While the city’s account sought to limit the culpability of the city as a whole (and the governing citizenry especially) by vaguely alluding to ‘commons’ to describe those who had broken into the Guildhall and ‘neighbours’ to refer to those who had followed Gladman to infer the lack of elite involvement, the prior’s testimony to the Oyer and Terminer commission named over a hundred individuals from across the spectrum of Norwich’s crafts. All of the 28 trades noted in the commission were influential enough to have either held a place in the 1449 Corpus Christi procession or to have assisted with one of the city’s mystery pageants in that same year, ranging from goldsmiths and merchants to leatherworkers and butchers.23 Of all the trades mentioned, none contributed more than seven named individuals, and fewer than ten of ‘pageant’ trades did not receive at least one indictment.24 Given the breadth of crafts mentioned and the small number indicted from each craft, it seems likely that those indicted from each trade were leading figures, and their naming was intended to represent the participation of others from their craft. Among the named individuals at the Thetford inquest, there are very few who would traditionally be considered as having a low status within the civic body, with only a handful of labourers and servants named. Given that the relative legal anonymity of labourers and servants compared with wealthy guild leaders, it would seem that those few labourers and servants named were representative of a minority in the leadership but were possibly a larger minority of the unnamed hangers-on and followers.

Framing a community Although relations between the commons and the citizens tended towards harmony, tensions could flare up when either group imposed on the other (or was perceived to do so). Over the early fifteenth century, the wealthy citizens had attempted to secure an ever-larger stake in Norwich’s governance at the expense of the city’s commons.25 The city’s Common Council had attempted to resist these measures through a series of petitions and (allegedly) the use of violence and

Processions and communal identity 47 threats.26 In 1413 an agreement, mediated by Sir Thomas Erpingham, was reached in which the aldermen retained their life-status and legislative powers, with the proviso that they could do nothing ‘without the common assent’.27 This disputed agency in civic affairs would be one of the major issues which Gladman and his followers performed during their protest. The prior’s assertion that Gladman’s procession was overtly treasonous may not have been strictly true, but the core element of his allegation, that the procession was unusual, certainly was.28 Gladman’s appearance, dressed as the King of Christmas, was juxtaposed by the ringing of church bells throughout the city, a signal which was often used to signal the start of rebellions, but which also held distinctly royal and honorific connotations.29 The costumes which he and his followers had worn to spread the word about gathering in front of the Guildhall were the traditional garb of the King of Christmas and his Lenten followers, but the form which their pageant took more closely resembled a royal riding, with Gladman riding at the front with his valets, rather than following them through the city, as in the traditional procession of months.30 When Gladman and his followers transgressed from their usual festive territory, broke into the Guildhall and took away the town’s seal, they were symbolically assuming control of the civic government. The Guildhall was the font of civic authority and power, the place where the seal, the charters and the mayor’s sword were held, where processions and pageants began (and ended), and the seat of the city’s judicial and legislative assemblies. Its architecture and layout of concentric ‘barriers’ reflected and aimed to emphasise this status.31 Likewise, the Common Seal represented the city’s status as a legal entity and its ability to make decisions as such. To take it was an effective means to delay Suffolk’s arbitration, but it was also a symbolic seizure of the city’s legislative powers. And yet, this seizure of power could hardly be called a mass uprising, since it was led by a collection of substantial craftsmen and citizens, who already held no small share of constitutional authority. Their appropriation of the symbols of civic authority was not an attempt to ‘steal’ the authority of those things upon themselves, but rather to manifest the legitimacy which they felt was already theirs because of their status and agency in the city’s constitution. Rather than assuming the mantle of citizenry, the protesters deliberately emphasised their commonality and popularity by choosing to gather together in the marketplace and dressing their leader as the King of Christmas. The marketplace was a large open space, accessible to all of Norwich’s inhabitants of any degree. It was the gathering place from which a number of processions, including the Corpus Christi and the St George’s Gild pageant, departed and held sites associated with the justice created by open dealing and communal supervision.32 The importance of the King of Christmas as an emblem of popular festivity and inversion is obvious. But the fact that he was not dressed as a mayor or alderman (or indeed a real king) demonstrates the commitment of the protesters to avoiding the appropriation of these roles and asserting their agency as commons. One of the many benefits of civic, guild and religious pageants was the feeling of unity that they could evoke in its participants and audience. The notion that those

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who ‘played’ together stayed together was central to William Yelverton’s mediation which bound the city’s aldermen into the worshipful fraternity of St George in 1452 and to the Corpus Christi processions.33 The effectiveness of these pageants was reinforced by the anxiety of exclusion or marginalisation from the processional body for those who would not conform. Having the King of Christmas break into the Guildhall and take away the seal was a direct accusation by the protesters that the aldermen (especially the Wetherby faction) had ruled badly and had themselves become agents of misrule through their electoral malfeasance and their willingness to work with a rival against the interest of the city.34 His exclusion from the procession to the cathedral mirrored their wish to exclude him from civic affairs, and from the civic body itself. This procession, like those taken in less divided times, played out a hierarchical vision of civic relations, in which status within the parade order could both reflect and reshape the civic hierarchy.35 In Gladman’s procession, the centre of the procession, the king figure was surrounded most closely by a group commons dressed as the valets of Lent. If the King of Christmas was a well-established custom in Norwich, as the citizens claimed he was, then the crowd may have felt some sense of ownership over the character.36 By their proximity to him, the leadership of the pageant framed themselves as the vox communi, showing what their leadership could accomplish for the city.

Performing the common good The obligation of Norwich’s civic leaders to act in the common good was engrained in the city’s constitution. When the mayor took office, he swore to use all of his cunning and power to maintain good peace in the city, as well as all other things necessary for its common profit. Furthermore, his oath stated that he would ‘truly and rightfully treat the people of your bailie, and do right to each man as well as to a stranger and to the poor as well as to a rich man’, and deprive no man of his rights.37 With that said, ‘common good’ was a term as malleable as it was ubiquitous.38 The language of common good could be used to justify many actions (and sometimes mutually oppositional actions) and although the essential definition of an action in the common good was one which was seen to bring some sort of ‘profit’ to the community, whether financial, military or political, discussions about the division of costs and dividends were a source of frequent friction.39 Civic pageantry frequently sought to emphasise the commitment of the civic leaders to upholding a particular interpretation of common good and more importantly their ability to uphold it through demonstrations of the common assent, legal rights and armed might they could deploy.40 As a spectacle, the processions showed an urban audience the way in which deference, obedience and unity could be used to bring strength, wealth and honour for the city.41 Gladman’s procession was similarly an attempt to show the benefits which common agency could bring to the entire civic body. The first major threat to the city’s well-being was its disadvantageous position in its struggle with the ecclesiastical

Processions and communal identity 49 litigants. The sealing of the arbitration and the surrender of jurisdictional and mill rights represented a financial loss to the city, as well as a loss of face. It was a direct insult to the city and its government, undermining the authority of the city’s institutions and the civic body.42 It was therefore essential that the protesters reasserted the strength of the city in relation to this dispute by reclaiming the disputed territory in as striking a manner as possible. Although the bulk of the city’s conflict with the priory was made up of legal manoeuvring, Gladman’s procession was not an isolated incident and formed part of a longer struggle in which both parties used symbolic gestures of dominion to demonstrate the weakness of the other. By demonstrating the weakness of their opponents, especially in grand public gestures, both parties sought to undermine the credibility of the other or force it into an overreaction. Maddern records numerous instances of vandalism, jail breaking and brawling instigated by both the city and the priory, including an incident in 1436 in which some of the prior’s servants had broken into the mayor’s personal garden and stolen some of his trees.43 Territorial gestures undertaken by civic bodies often served to emphasise the combination of might and right discussed above. Even when boundaries were not actively under disputation, such tours reinforced a communal identity, increased confidence in the strength of local authorities and branded the physical extent of jurisdictions in the popular memory.44 Territory can be effective in the reproduction and enforcement of ideas, acting as a physical manifestation and avatar for the less tangible power of the group of people which control it, legitimising their claims to authority through rituals of dominance and subservience at thresholds, boundaries and central places.45 On the other hand, as a type of ‘symbolic power’, the subversion or transgression of territorial signs and norms could be used undermine legitimacy of groups.46 Gladman’s procession had a distinctly territorial aspect, and involved symbolically and physically driving back the prior’s influence. The route taken by the protesters, from the Guildhall to the precinct walls, resembled the route that would usually be taken by the brethren of the gild of St George on their bi-annual processions.47 In more peaceful times, their procession would pass through the Erpingham gate into the cathedral precinct, the peaceful and mutually consensual crossing of the threshold symbolising a harmonious relationship between city and church. On this occasion, however, the prior and his servants closed the gates, locking the protesters out but also locking themselves in. The Cathedral Precinct had three city-facing gates, all of which were adjacent to disputed areas. Bishop Alnwyck’s gate led onto Holmestreet, the Erpingham gate to Tombland and the Ethelbert gate to Ratonrowe.48 The protesters’ blockade of the gates was also an occupation of the disputed areas beyond, demonstrating that they were firmly in control of his thresholds and causing a loss of face for the prior from which the city was symbolically strengthened.49 While in occupation of the disputed areas, the protesters destroyed the prior’s pillory, which had already been uprooted once before, in 1277.50 It would seem that his pillory was located in either Holmestreet outside the prior’s gate or in Tombland. Both would have been suitable locations, being highly visible yet isolated,

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but I am inclined to agree with Robin Storey that Tombland was the more likely site, since the prior held the Assizes of Bread and Ale when the Pentecost Fair was in operation there, and the pillory was a necessary apparatus for the assize holder.51 The pillory and prison were ‘symbols of the punitive means by which the cathedral usurped the jurisdictional rights of the city’ and so their destruction acted as a forceful annulment of his jurisdiction in those areas by publicly challenging his ability to uphold the law and keep the peace.52 Given that the right to hold the Assizes of Bread and Ale and the fair were both predicated on the possession of a pillory, the destruction may have been also an attack on his right to hold the Pentecost Fair, a long-standing source of aggravation for the city. Although the crowd did not enter the precinct itself, they forced Heverlond, the prior, to surrender the documents from which he legitimised his various claims, including a controversially sealed agreement made between a former mayor Robert Baxter and former prior William Worsted in 1429, in which Baxter had agreed to the priory’s jurisdictional claims in exchange for some hollow concessions. The crowd even alleged that the agreement had been ‘sold’ to the prior, under the advice of a young Thomas Wetherby.53 By forcefully rescinding it, they were not only retracting the city’s assent to the priory’s claim but they were restating their agency in civic affairs: destroying a document which they held to be invalid because it had been sealed without common assent.54 Once the crowd had put the prior in his place (both literally and figuratively), they were content to leave him within his precinct to nurse his wounded pride. The protesters then paraded around the city’s gates and locked them. This completed the territorial gesture which had begun when they had forced the prior back into the precinct. Norwich’s civic rulers frequently used the city’s walls as a stage to demonstrate their authority. It was the responsibility of civic officials to walk around the city walls and ensure that they were in good repair and not being improperly used by the citizens. This ceremony would later evolve into the more ceremonial perambulation day held on Whit-Monday.55 Walking around the walls drew a distinct line in the minds of the audience between the unified, contiguous, homogeneous civic body of Norwich and the pernicious outsiders such as the Marquis of Suffolk, the Cathedral Prior and the Abbot of St Benet. This demonstration of unity and dominance was reinforced by the tolling of the church bells which dominated the city soundscape in the same way that the procession dominated the city visually.56 Likewise, the city’s gates and thresholds were important staging points for demonstrations of power, and the negotiation of such liminal points was inescapable for any visitor to the city.57 For example, when a number of royal figures visited the city, such as Henry VI, Elizabeth Woodville and Elizabeth I, the mayor met them outside St Stephen’s Gate, ensuring beforehand that it had been re-leaded, refurbished with timber, and was bedecked both with the royal coat of arms and that of St George and his cross.58 Of course, not all who passed through Norwich’s gates were so honoured. As Peter Fleming described, pre-modern places of execution were ‘often located on the very edge of the communities which owned them symbolising (...) the expulsion of the malefactor from human society’.59 Norwich had two places

Processions and communal identity 51 commonly used for capital punishment: Magdalene gallows and the Lollards’ Pit, both of which were beyond the city’s walls. The marching of individuals to these places demonstrated the strength and justness of the civic government to spectators.60 Closing the gates also enfolded the disputed ‘New Mills’ within the protestors’ territory and as such reasserted that the mills were a part of the city and that the crowd in attendance would be willing to protect them as such.61 Controlling staple foodstuffs was an important obligation of the civic leadership, ensuring the well-being of the poorer inhabitants and the autonomy of the city as a whole.62 An undated mayoral proclamation recorded in the Liber Albus reiterated this commitment to upholding the common good specifically by regulating the food supply and punishing forestallers, regraters and those who sold unwholesome food, mirroring the policies of controlling food via subsidised mills, price controls and hand-outs, which were a regular feature of civic life in cities throughout England.63 Humphrey concluded that Gladman, surrounded by sumptuous foods yet accompanied by the sombre valets of Lent in their herring skins and oyster shells, was an allusion to concerns surrounding the stability of the city’s food supply, which had been threatened by the proposed mill destruction by the Abbot of St Benet.64 Although he is correct to assert that food was significant, it was the ability of the food act as a tangible proxy for a number of other grievances which made it so resonant. Rather than simply being an issue of the protesters defending the mills for themselves, defending the mills whilst led by a figure associated with food was a statement by the crowd that they were acting on the concerns of Norwich’s poorer community over the availability and price of food which was threatened by both the destruction of the mills and the proposed taxes on food in the priory’s jurisdiction.65 There had been recent precedent for this kind of gesture. In 1418, the prior alleged that the mayor and several others had led an armed procession to Trowse Water and there fished the river with dragnets from the city’s barge, catching £10 worth of fish. Thereafter, they processed back singing and shouting: ‘We are in possession by right and by our liberties of this City of Norwich we have caught them and kept them’, before distributing the fish among the city’s community.66 Maddern observed that the act seemed almost biblical, but whether or not it was an intentional homage to Christ, it was certainly a deliberate replication of the gesture and rituals of almsgiving, itself rooted in Christian teaching.67 Both instances featured food, and in both instances food was used as an allusion to future plenty, and the way in which it could be gained by asserting the rights of the city and presenting a unified front against outsiders.

Aftermath After several days of the citizens holding the gates closed, the Duke of Norfolk arrived and demanded that they be opened in the King’s name. The citizens opened the gates, and an inquest was set up at Thetford, later in the year. The city’s advocate did not

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present a version of events at this inquest, and the account of the citizens’ violence was nationally believed. In spite of this, the judges did not apply capital punishment to any of the protesters but limited their punishment to taking the city’s liberties and issuing fines.68 While in London, the mayor was detained. In Norwich, Wetherby sealed the arbitration and had the mills flooded. On appeal, the document was declared void because of the mayor’s arrest. The city rebuilt the mills and the issue was never raised again.69 Although the procession was the apogee of the city’s fifteen disputes with the cathedral priory, it was by no means the end of them and there were other incidents of public violence.70 Eventually, Cardinal Wolsey would be dispatched to arbitrate in 1517. His conclusion was that the city should hold jurisdiction in all land between the precinct and the walls, and the priory would retain rights in the suburbs beyond the city, roughly the same boundaries ‘played out’ during the 1443 procession. Justice Yelverton mediated on the city’s factional disputes in 1452 after Wetherby’s death and bound the city’s aldermen and common councillors together through the gild of St George, bringing enhanced order and unity to the former and increased prestige and standing to the latter.71 After the period of governorship under Sir John Clifton, the mayor and the aldermen of both factions were reinstated to their positions.

Conclusion Although the procession’s leadership contained small groups of Norwich’s elite and its inhabitants of lesser standing, it was neither wholly an instance of an elite faction sicking the mob against its enemies nor a truly popular uprising. Rather, the procession was primarily led by members of Norwich’s artisanal community, eager to assert their constitutionally limited but theoretically sovereign agency in civic affairs by highlighting their right to speak on behalf of the community. In his excellent study of Bruggian revolts, Dumolyn wrote that the symbolic language of popular justice was ultimately reflective of more established forms of justice which the crowd appropriated.72 While it is true that Gladman’s followers used and appropriated some symbols and elements of magisterial authority, including processional routes, territorial gestures and the trappings of legislative power, they did not merely mimic magisterial authority or claim it for themselves. They rather attempted to co-opt these symbols into a more communally focused vision of authority by juxtaposing them with symbols of the community such as gathering in the marketplace and using the King of Christmas character as a leader. The protesters emphasising their commonality and shunning the trappings of magisterial authority was not to last. In the aftermath of Yelverton’s mediation, the aldermen and common councillors were bound tightly together through the St George’s Gild, and by binding them into a confraternity at the expense of the rest of the community, the stage was set for the ‘rise of oligarchy’ observed by Evans.73 This change in allegiance highlights the middlingness of the wealthy artisans, in that they could be associated with both citizens and poorer commons.

Processions and communal identity 53 Medieval Norwich’s community was riven with divisions: between social classes, between trades and between parishes and wards. Gladman’s procession shows that Norwich’s commons did not limit their self-identities to these small groups, but saw that these smaller communities were subsections of a larger civic community of which they were part. Although guild and parish contacts were used to assemble the crowd, the concerns which preoccupied the protesters were not limited to the ‘politics of the parish’ but were broader concerns with the institutions and welfare of the whole city. The protesters felt that they not only had a right to assert themselves within the civic body but that they had a duty to help assert the rights of the city against its opponents.

Notes ∗ My thanks must go to James Davis, Keith Lilley, Megan Liddy and the editorial team, without whose support, advice and patience this chapter could not have been completed. 1 Lindenbaum (1994), 172–74. 2 McRee (1994b), 184, 202; Humphrey (2001), Ch. 2. 3 MacCulloch (1986), 28; Anderson (1991), 6–7; Dunbar (1992), 469–93; Colson (2015), 6–8. 4 Storey (1966), app. 3; Pettit (1984); Tanner (1984); Maddern (1992); McRee (1994a); Humphrey (2001); Cohn (2013). 5 Strohm (1992), 7–8, 14, 206. 6 Although a copy of this appears in Hudson and Tingey (1906), 340, it is much abridged and a superior copy can be found in Tanner (1984), 149–50. 7 Storey (1966), app. 3. 8 Tanner (1984), 149–50. 9 Ewing (1849), 6–7. 10 Hudson and Tingey (1910), 84; Tanner (1984), 144–45; Dodwell (1985), 36. 11 Evidently this rumour was taken quite seriously, as the city dispatched a group to seek advice on this matter at King’s Lynn, and two of the chronicles recorded hearing that the riot was regarding these new impositions and customs; Ellis (1809), 208; Kingsford (1905), 150–51; Storey (1999), 221. 12 Maddern (1992), 95–96. 13 Hudson and Tingey (1906), 66–76, 331–35; Maddern (1992), 189–90; McRee (1994a), 854–57, 861. 14 Although Suffolk’s decisions with regard to the factional disputes were not initially biased towards Wetherby, he became an increasingly unwelcome presence in the city due to his repeated attempts to exculpate him. He and his followers also infiltrated the Gild of St George, and we may judge from his uncharacteristically one-sided arbitration, especially in light of some of the questionable evidence surrounding the New Mills dispute, that by 1443 he had assumed some of the hostility which his followers Tuddenham and Heydon held. McRee (1994a), 859–61; (1994b), 198–99; for the view that Suffolk had always been an ally of Wetherby, see Hudson and Tingey (1906), lxxxv–xc, 346–47; Tanner (1984), 147; Maddern (1992), 187–88, 193–94. 15 Tanner (1984), 149–50. What we know about John Gladman himself is somewhat limited, and appears contradictory. There are at least two appearances of the name in Norwich records – one was a smith sued for debt in 1425, and the other was a merchant who joined the prestigious St George’s Gild in 1430 (this is made more complicated because in 1410, a John Gladsmyth was sued for return of papers, and was potentially the same as John Gladman, the Smith); Norfolk Record Office (hereafter NRO), Norwich Survey Documentary Research, MC 146/52.

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16 The [bracketed] section comes from an earlier draft of the statement. In the final draft, the city claimed that the custom had belonged to ‘ffastyngong Tuesday’; Norfolk Record Office, Norwich, Presentments connected with the foregoing disturbances against Tuddenham, NCR 9c/2; Humphrey (2001), 64–65. Neither costume seems to have been recorded by contemporary chroniclers. In recent years, assumptions that the city’s narrative of an innocent ‘King of Christmas’ was a lie designed to exculpate the city’s leaders (because 25 January was at least a month away from both Christmas and Lent) has been overturned by Chris Humphrey, who asserted that (based on an early draft of the city’s case) that the King of Christmas reigned until Candlemas and his appearance was therefore timely. His assertion is also borne out by John Stow, who noted that in sixteenth-century London, the Lord of Misrule reigned from All Hallow’s Eve until Candlemas; Kingsford (1908), 91–99; Humphrey (2001), 74–76. 17 Tanner (1984), 149–50. 18 The National Archives (hereafter TNA), Kew, Kings Bench Records, KB 9/84/ 1 mm 3–4 and 10–13. 19 Hudson and Tingey (1906), 106; (1910), 278–94. Estimating the exact size of this group in relation to the population is difficult, but in York, a city of comparable size, the burgesses made up between 22–50 per cent of adult males; Kermode (2000), 463. 20 Dunn (2004), 213; Watts (2007), 243–44. 21 Hudson and Tingey (1906), xxxvi, lxii; Frost (2004), 235–53. 22 Maddern (1992), 198–99; TNA, KB 9 84/1, Kings Bench Records, rm. 3–4. 23 TNA, Kew, KB 9 84/1, Kings Bench Records, rm 3–4; Hudson and Tingey (1910), 230. 24 Maddern (1992), 198–99; TNA, Kew, KB 9 84/1, Kings Bench Records, rm. 3–4. 25 Hudson and Tingey (1906), 33, 81–84. 26 Ibidem, 77–92. 27 Ibidem, 93–108. 28 See Humphrey (2001), 11–37, 38–50, 74–76, for a deconstruction of this assertion, and Kingsford (1908), 91–99. 29 Maxwell-Lyte (1904), vol. 3, 277; Lambrick (1966), 130–32; Page (1975), vol. 2, 56–72; Galloway (1984), appendix 2; Wood (2007), 9; Cohn (2013), 149, 155, 194, 209–10, 254, 267, 280; Dumolyn (2014), 279–80. 30 Tanner (1984), 149–50; Humphrey (2001), 74. 31 Blomefield (1806), Ch. 23; Hudson and Tingey (1910), 228–30, 312; Dunn and Sutermeister (1977), 2, 5–6, 20; Lindenbaum (1994), 181–82; Postles (2004), 55; Slater (2009), 240; Blackstone (2010), 111–13. 32 Hudson and Tingey (1910), 87; Priestley (1987), 9; Postles (2004); Davis (2012), 251. 33 McMillan and Chavis (1986), 6–23; Maddern (2004), 209–10. 34 Humphrey (2001), 11–37, 39–50. 35 McRee (1994b), 189. The best example of this in Norwich would be the Corpus Christi procession, in which proximity to the body of Christ was awarded to the mayor and sheriffs, then down through the crafts; Hudson and Tingey (1906), 230. 36 The only other reference to a ‘Lord of Misrule’ in Norwich comes from the St Luke’s gild in the sixteenth century; Nelson (1974), 119; Hudson and Tingey (1910), liii. 37 NRO, Norwich City Records (hereafter NCR), Case 17b, Liber Albus, f. 128r; Hudson and Tingey (1906), 123; see also Lee (2007), 27–38. 38 Watts (2007), 234; Prevenier (2010), 205; Davis (2014), 141–42. 39 Reynolds (1982), 18; Stein, Boele and Blockmans (2010), 149–50. 40 Lindenbaum (1994), 175–81. 41 Reynolds (1982), 18; Stein, Boele and Blockmans (2010), 149–50. 42 Hudson and Tingey (1910), 90; Holt (1987). 43 NRO, NCR, Case 8a/10, Presentments of Assault 1439–41, m4; Maddern (1992), 192–93. 44 Wood (2002), 101–02. 45 Bourdieu (1977), 164; Sack (1980), 23, 167, 181–83.

Processions and communal identity 55 46 Cresswell (1996), 16–18. 47 McRee (1994b), 195–97. 48 Gilchrist (2005); Tombland was also the traditional site for the St Luke’s Gild’s Lord of Misrule; Nelson (1974), 119. 49 The strategy of knocking on gates as a means of intimidation was also used at Abingdon in 1327; Lambrick (1966), 129. 50 Rye (1880), 17–32, 72. 51 For Potential Holmstreet location, see: Rye (1880), 72. For Tombland location, see Storey (1966), 221, although he seems to have confused the prior’s fee with the prior’s precinct, claiming that the pillory was simultaneously in Tombland and inside the prior’s gates. Salzman (1960), 206–07; Dodwell (1974), 34; Flint (2000), 151–53; Masschaele (2002), 402; (1992), 79; Marett-Crosby (2003), 46–47, 65–68; Davis (2011), 86–87. The prison referred to here was clearly a separate structure from the one used for housing unruly brethren, which was within the precinct: Cassidy-Welch (2001), 123–26; Gilchrist (2005), 164, 245. 52 Attreed (2002), 584–85. 53 Kingsford (1905), 151; Hudson and Tingey (1906), 31–33, 321; Tanner (1984), 146; Maddern (1992), 183–84. 54 Maddern (1992), 183. 55 Hudson and Tingey (1906), 313–14, 318; Nelson (1974), 119; Dutka (1978), 108; Galloway (1984), 253–54; Estabrook (2002), 612. 56 Orgel (1985), 103; Whyte (2009), 125–27, 138–42, 146–49. Murray Schaefer (2008), 31. For more work on the use of audial strategies in processions, see Brown (2011), 88–89. 57 Brown (2011), 173. 58 Blomefield (1806), 163–65; Hudson and Tingey (1910), 216–25, 313–14, 318; Nelson (1974), 173; Blackstone (2010), 115, 132. 59 Flint (2000), 150–53; Fleming (2013), 156, note 575. 60 Crouse (1768), 212, 249, 592; Ayers (2009), 50; Carrel (2009a), 284–86, 288; Nuthall (2012), 389–90. 61 Orgel (1985), 103; Whyte (2009), 125–27, 138–42, 146–49. 62 Davis (2014), 145. 63 Hudson and Tingey (1910), 316–17; Wood (2007), 59; Rawcliffe (2013), 277–80. 64 Hudson and Tingey (1906), 352; Humphrey (2001), 74–76. 65 The city paid for the maintenance and construction of these mills, and they fell within its jurisdiction, Figure 1; Hudson and Tingey (1906), 66–67; (1910), 90; Langdon (2004), 288. 66 Hudson and Tingey (1906), 321. 67 Maddern (1992), 182; Matthew, 14:17; Rawcliffe (2013), 251–53. 68 Kingsford (1905), 150–51; Hudson and Tingey (1906), 352; Harriss and Harris (1972); Tanner (1984), 151–53, 189. Although John Hall’s chronicle records that the malefactors were ‘straightly punished and executed’, no other source records executions; Ellis (1809), 208. 69 Hudson and Tingey (1906), 348–53. 70 Blomefield (1806), 175; Hudson and Tingey (1910), 369. 71 Blomefield (1806), 175; Grace (1937), 40–41; McRee (1994a), 91–92. 72 Dumolyn (2014), 256, 286. 73 Evans (1974), 46–48.

Bibliography Anderson, B., Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1991). Attreed, L., ‘The Politics of Welcome. Ceremonies and Constitutional Development in Later Medieval English Towns’, in B.A. Hanawalt and K.L. Reyerson (eds), City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe (Minneapolis, 1994), 208–31.

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Attreed, L., ‘Urban Identity in Medieval English Towns’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 32 (2002), 571–92. Ayers, B., Norwich. Archaeology of a Fine City (Stroud, 2009). Blackstone, M.A., ‘Walking the City Limits. The Performance of Authority and Identity in Mary Tudor’s Norwich’, in G.J. Clark, J. Owens and G.T. Smith (eds), City Limits. Perspectives on the Historical European City (Montreal, 2010), 106–38. Blomefield, F., An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, 5 vols (London, 1805–10). Bourdieu, P., Outline of a Theory of Practice (Harvard, 1977). Bourdieu, P., Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, 1991). Brown, A., Civic Ceremony and Religion in Medieval Bruges, c.1300–1520 (Cambridge, 2011). Camille, M., ‘Signs of the City. Place, Power and Public Fantasy in Medieval Paris’, in B.A. Hanawalt and M. Kobialka (eds), Medieval Practices of Space (Minneapolis, 2000), 1–36. Carrel, H., ‘Disputing Legal Privilege. Civic Relations with the Church in Late Medieval England’, Journal of Medieval History, 35 (2009a), 279–96. Carrel, H., ‘The Ideology of Punishment in Late Medieval Towns’, Social History, 34 (2009b), 301–20. Cassidy-Welch, M., Monastic Spaces and their Meanings. Thirteenth-Century English Cistercian Monasteries (Turnhout, 2001). Cohn, S., Popular Protest in Late Medieval English Towns (Cambridge, 2013). Colson, J., ‘Commerce, Clusters and Community. A Re-Evaluation of the Occupational Geography of London, c.1400-c.1550’, Economic History Review, 68 (2015), 104–30. Cresswell, T., In Place/Out of Place. Geography, Ideology and Transgression (Minneapolis, 1996). Crouse, J., The History of the City and County of Norwich from the Earliest Accounts to the Present Time (Norwich, 1768). Davis, J., ‘Market Regulation in Fifteenth-Century England’, in B. Dodds and C. Liddy (eds), Commercial Activity, Markets and Entrepreneurs in the Middle Ages. Essays in Honour of Richard Britnell (Woodbridge, 2011), 81–106. Davis, J., Medieval Market Morality. Life, Law and Ethics in the English Marketplace, 1200–1500 (Cambridge, 2012). Davis, J., ‘The Common Good and Common Profit in the Trade Regulations of Medieval English Towns’, in J.A.S. Telechea, B.L. Bolumburu and J. Haemers (eds), Los grupos populares en la ciudad medieval Europea (Logroño, 2014), 133–49. De Certeau, M., The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, 1984). De Landa, M., A New Philosophy of Society. Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity (London, 2006). Dodwell, B. (ed.), Charters of Norwich Cathedral Priory, Vol. 1 (London, 1974). Dodwell, B., (ed), Norwich Cathedral Charters, Vol. 1 (London, 1985). Dumolyn, J., ‘The Vengeance of the Commune. Sign Systems of Popular Politics in Medieval Bruges’, in Dumolyn, J., J. Haemers, H.R. Oliva Herrer and V. Challet (eds), La comunidad medieval como esfera pública (Seville, 2014), 251–89. Dunbar, R.I.M., ‘Neocortex Size as a Constraint on Group Size in Primates’, Journal of Human Evolution, 22 (1992), 469–93. Dunn, I., and H. Sutermeister, The Norwich Guildhall (Norwich, 1977). Dunn, P., ‘Trade’, in C. Rawcliffe and R. Wilson (eds), Medieval Norwich (London, 2004), 213–34.

Processions and communal identity 57 Dutka, J., ‘Mystery Plays at Norwich. Their Formation and Development’, Leeds Studies in English, 10 (1978), 107–20. Ellis, H. (ed.), Hall’s Chronicle: Containing the History of England, during the Reign of Henry the Fourth, and the Succeeding Monarchs, to the End of the Reign of Henry the Eighth, in Which are Particularly Described the Manners and Customs of Those Periods (London, 1809). Estabrook, C.B., ‘Ritual, Space and Authority in Seventeenth-Century English Cathedral Cities’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 32 (2002), 593–620. Evans, J.T., ‘The Decline of Oligarchy in Seventeenth-Century Norwich’, Journal of British Studies, 14 (1974), 46–76. Ewing, W.C., ‘Remarks on the Boundary of the City and Hamlets of Norwich’, Norfolk Archaeology, 2 (1849), 1–10. Fleming, P., ‘Time, Space and Power in Later Medieval Bristol’, Working Paper, University of the West of England (2013). Flint, V.I.J., ‘Space and Discipline in Early Medieval Europe’, in B.A. Hanawalt and M. Kobialka (eds), Medieval Practices of Space (Minneapolis, 2000), 149–66. Fox, A., ‘Custom, Memory and the Authority of Writing’, in P. Griffiths, A. Fox and S. Hindle (eds), The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 1996), 89–116. Frost, R., ‘The Urban Elite’, in C. Rawcliffe and R. Wilson (eds), Medieval Norwich (London, 2004), 235–53. Furnivall, F.J. (ed.), Phillip Stubbes’s Anatomy of Abuses in England in Shakspere’s Youth, A.D. 1583. Part II: The Display of Corruptions Requiring Reformation (London, 1882). Galloway, D. (ed.), Norwich 1540–1642 (Toronto, 1984). Gilchrist, R., Norwich Cathedral Close. The Evolution of the English Cathedral Landscape (Woodbridge, 2005). Goffman, E., Behavior in Public Places (New York, 1963). Grace, M. (ed.), Records of the Gild of St George in Norwich, 1389–1547 (London, 1937). Harriss, G.L., and M.L. Harris (eds), ‘John Benet’s Chronicle for the years 1400 to 1462’, Camden Miscellany, xxiv (1972), 151–233. Holstun, J., ‘The Spider, the Fly, and the Commonwealth. Merrie John Heywood and Agrarian Class Struggle’, English Literary History, 71 (2004), 53–88. Holt, R., ‘Whose Were the Profits of Corn Milling? An Aspect of the Changing Relationship between the Abbots of Glastonbury and their Tenants 1086–1350’, Past and Present, 116 (1987), 3–23. Hudson, W., and J.C. Tingey (eds), Records of the City of Norwich, 2 vols (London, 1906–10). Humphrey, C., The Politics of Carnival. Festive Misrule in Medieval England (Manchester, 2001). Johnson, R.J., A Practice of Place. Exploring the Practice of Human Geography (Oxford, 1991). Kermode, J., ‘The Greater Towns, 1300–1450’, in D.M. Palliser (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, 2000), 441–65. Kingsford, C.L. (ed), Chronicles of London (Oxford, 1905). Kingsford, C.L. (ed), A Survey of London, by John Stow. Reprinted from the Text of 1603 (London, 1908). Lambrick, G., ‘Abingdon and the Riots of 1327’, Oxoniesia, 29 (1966), 129–41. Langdon, J., Mills in the Medieval Economy. England, 1300–1540 (Oxford, 2004).

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Lee, J., ‘“Ye Shall Disturbe noe Mans Right.” Oath-Taking and Oath-Breaking in Late Medieval and Early Modern Bristol’, Urban History, 34 (2007), 27–38. Lefebvre, H., The Production of Space (Oxford, 1994). Lindenbaum, S., ‘Ceremony and Oligarchy. The London Midsummer Watch’, in B.A. Hanawalt and K.L. Reyerson (eds), City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe (Minneapolis, 1994), 171–88. MacCulloch, D., Suffolk and the Tudors. Politics and religion in an English County 1500– 1600 (Oxford, 1986). Maddern, P.C., ‘The Legitimation of Power. Riot and Authority in Fifteenth-Century Norwich’, Parergon, 6A (1988), 65–84. Maddern, P.C., Violence and Social Order. East Anglia, 1422–1442 (Oxford, 1992). Maddern, P.C., ‘Order and Disorder’, in C. Rawcliffe and R. Wilson (eds), Medieval Norwich (London, 2004), 189–212 Marett-Crosby, A. (ed.), The Benedictine Handbook (Norwich, 2003). Masschaele, J., ‘Market Rights in Thirteenth-Century England’, English Historical Review, 107 (1992), 78–89. Masschaele, J., ‘The Public Space of the Market Place in Medieval England’, Speculum, 77 (2002), 383–412. Maxwell-Lyte, H.C., Calendar of the Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office Edward II, Vol. 3 (London, 1904), http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/patentrolls/ [accessed January 2016]. McMillan, D.W., and D.M. Chavis, ‘Sense of Community. A Definition and Theory’, American Journal of Community Psychology, 14 (1986), 6–23. McRee, B.R., ‘Religious Gilds and Regulation of Behaviour’, in J. Rosenthal and C. Richmond (eds), People, Politics and Community in the Later Middle Ages (Gloucester, 1987), 108–22. McRee, B.R., ‘Peacemaking and Its Limits in Later Medieval Norwich’, English Historical Review, 109 (1994a), 831–66. McRee, B.R., ‘Unity or Division? The Social Meaning of Guild Ceremony in Urban Communities’, in B.A. Hanawalt and K.L. Reyerson (eds), City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe (Minneapolis, 1994b), 189–207. Murray Schaefer, R., ‘The Music of the Environment’, in C. Cox and D. Warner (eds), Audio Culture. Readings in Modern Music (New York, 2008), 29–39. Nelson, A., The Medieval English Stage (Chicago, 1974). Nuthall, T., ‘Lollard’s Pit, Norwich, a Place of Popular Entertainment’, Norfolk Archaeology, 46 (2012), 387–93. Orgel, S., ‘The Spectacles of the State’, in R. Trexler (ed.), Persons in Groups. Social Behavior as Identity Formation in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (New York, 1985), 101–20. Page, W. (ed.), A History of the Country of Suffolk, Vol. 2 (London, 1975). Pettit, T., ‘“Here Comes I, Jack Straw.” English Folk Drama and Social Revolt’, Folklore, 95 (1984), 3–20. Postles, D., ‘The Market Place as Space in Early Modern England’, Social History, 29 (2004), 41–58. Pound, J.F., ‘The Social and Trade Structure of Norwich, 1525–75’, Past & Present, 34 (1966), 49–69. Prevenier, W., ‘Utilitas Communis in the Low Countries (Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries). From Social Mobilisation to the Legitimation of Power’, in E. Lecuppre-Desjardin and A.-L. Van Bruaene (eds), De Bono Communi. The Discourse and Practice of the Common Good in the European City (13th-16th c.) (Turnhout, 2010), 205–16.

Processions and communal identity 59 Priestley, U., Great Market. Survey of Nine Hundred Years of Norwich Provision Market (Norwich, 1987). Rawcliffe, C., Urban Bodies. Communal Health in Late Medieval Towns and Cities (Woodbridge, 2013). Reynolds, S., ‘Medieval Urban History and the History of Political Thought’, Urban History, 9 (1982), 14–23. Rosenthal, J., and C. Richmond (eds), People, Politics and Community in the Late Middle Ages (Gloucester, 1987). Rye, W. (ed.), The Norfolk Antiquarian Miscellany, Vol. 2 (Norwich, 1880). Sack, R.D., Conceptions of Space in Social Thought (Michigan, 1980). Salzman, L.F., ‘The Legal Status of Markets’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 2 (1960), 205–12. Slater, T.R., ‘Social, Cultural and Political Space in English Medieval Marketplaces’, in S. Ehrich (ed.), Städtische Räume im Mittelalter (Regensburg, 2009), 227–40. Smelser, N.J., Theory of Collective Behaviour (New York, 1963). Stein, R., A. Boele and W. Blockmans, ‘Whose Community? The Origin and Development of the Concept of Bonum Commune in Flanders, Brabant and Holland (Twelfth-Fifteenth Century)’, in E. Lecuppre-Desjardin and A.-L. Van Bruaene (eds), De Bono Communi. The Discourse and Practice of the Common Good in the European City (13th-16th c.) (Turnhout, 2010), 149–69. Storey, R.L., The End of the House of Lancaster (Stroud, 1966). Strohm, P., Hochon’s Arrow. The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, 1992). Sutermeister, H., ‘Merchant Classes of Norwich and the City Government, 1350–1500’, unpublished thesis, Norfolk Record Office (c.1970). Tanner, N.P., The Church in Late Medieval Norwich 1370–1532 (Toronto, 1984). Watts, J., ‘Public or Plebs. The Changing Meaning of “The Commons” 1381–1549’, in H. Price and J. Watts (eds), Power and Identity in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2007), 242–60. Whyte, N., Inhabiting the Landscape. Place, Custom and Memory, 1500–1800 (Oxford, 2009). Williamson, F. (ed.), Locating Agency. Space, Power and Popular Politics (Newcastle, 2010). Wood, A., Riot, Rebellion and Popular Politics in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 2002). Wood, A., The 1549 Rebellions and the Making of Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2007).

4

Mapping urban communities A comparative topography of neighbourhoods in Bologna and Strasbourg in the late Middle Ages* Colin Arnaud

Neighbourhood communities are often presented by historians as the basic institution of towns in the medieval and early modern periods. Wray has shown that the inhabitants of Bologna visited their ill neighbours and assisted them during the years of the Black Death, even though they were aware of the risks of contagion.1 Sutter has studied patterns of activity and relationships within the neighbourhoods of Zurich at the end of the Middle Ages, identifying solidarities but also conflicts between neighbours.2 Other micro-historical analyses of districts or streets have generated equally important insights into medieval neighbourhood solidarities, but so far, few of them have offered a refined analysis of differences between neighbourhoods within the same city.3 Yet there were many different types of neighbourhood communities in medieval towns. Of course, the distinct character of some districts, such as tanners’ quarters or suburbs, has already been recognised.4 Furthermore, the authors of historical topographies of individual towns often emphasise the particular characters of the different districts.5 Those differences surely played a role in the way of life of neighbours and in the making of solidarities between them.6 For this reason it is necessary to ask on the one hand which types of neighbourhoods – here intended to mean a network of neighbours in a social sense, and not a spatial one – were found in which quarters, and on the other hand if this spatial distribution of the different types of neighbourhoods differed from town to town. In order to answer these questions, a comparison of towns from different parts of Europe is necessary. The two middle-sized towns compared here, Bologna and Strasbourg, provide adequate case studies as a starting point. Bologna counted about 25,000 inhabitants around 1400,7 and Strasbourg about 18,000 inhabitants, according to a census of 1444.8 After their maximal expansion at the end of the Middle Ages, Bologna (408 hectares) was twice as large as Strasbourg (202 hectares), but without the younger suburbs they had a similar surface area: the central island of Strasbourg and the area within the old walls of Bologna (Torresotti) counted both about 100 hectares.9 Beyond all their respective particularities, such as wine commerce in Strasbourg and silk production in Bologna, both towns had a comparable economy based on transit commerce and artisan production. Even though the political constitution was relatively stable in Strasbourg, whereas in

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Bologna it was regularly destabilised by factional revolts or by foreign occupations, the social and political structure of both towns was also comparable: both had a civic political system based on the participation of guilds, both could restrain the influence of religious institutions, and neither was a capital for a noble ruler. For both towns, an analysis of the different types of neighbourhood communities is made possible by mapping several indicators of neighbourhood life. The first set of indicators represents the various relations between residence and workplace. The hypothesis that will be tested is straightforward: the more inhabitants’ lives were attached to their homes, the more frequent the interactions between neighbours should have been. In contrast, people who lived and worked in separate districts had fewer opportunities to cultivate intense relationships with their neighbours. From this perspective, the maps of the various relations between dwelling and workplace (unity, proximity or separation) give us indications about the different types of neighbourhood structures within each town. The second set of indicators deals with the places where basic daily services were provided. Such places constituted a reference point for neighbourhoods. Through the mapping of churches, bakers’ shops and bathhouses, it is possible to understand in which quarters neighbours had the opportunity to meet each other and share common spaces. These meeting points certainly served as centres for neighbourhood life, especially where they were equally distributed across the town. An absence of neighbourhood centres evidences the quarters without common spaces for near social relationships. A strong concentration of the same type of services in one quarter indicates that these were not primarily focused on the neighbours, so that the latter missed a centre that structured neighbourhood communities. The topographical information for this analysis has been obtained for Strasbourg from the Book of Commons (Allmendbuch) of 1466.10 This source describes for every street the interfaces between private buildings and the public space (Allmende): every cellar door, booth, shop, stair facing onto the street or jettying onto the public space was registered, along with the name and often the profession of the owner and of the tenant. For Bologna, the declarations of real estate property (estimi) of the Bolognese citizens of 1385 allow a reconstruction of the places of residence and work of the city’s inhabitants. Grouped by parish district, the heads of a household – whose professions are often mentioned – declared their own houses, but also the shops they possessed or rented. Only the estimi for the southern half of the city have been preserved.11 This source, however, gives information about a large and representative part of the city, including central, intermediary and peripheral quarters. For a better topographical comparison of both towns, ‘city centre’ is here defined as the central market zone and ‘peripheral quarters’ as the suburbs – for Strasbourg the quarters outside the large central island, for Bologna those between the Torresotti and the outer city walls – and the ‘intermediary quarters’ as the districts between centre and periphery.

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Topography of places of work and residence Among German-speaking historians, the question of whether medieval people lived and worked in the same place has been discussed for decades. The discussion was provoked by the prominence of the concept of the ganzes Haus, that is, the whole house, introduced by the medievalist Brunner in an article from 1950.12 According to Brunner, there was no mental or spatial separation between family life, working life or consumption activities: all domains were combined within the same house. The ganzes Haus was thus the basis of the economic system and family structures in pre-modern Europe, in both rural and urban contexts. Many historians have discussed this thesis. Mitterauer insists that there were numerous other types of household configurations in medieval cities, showing for instance that it was technically impossible for many occupations to be practised at home.13 Other historians have also questioned the preponderance of the ganzes Haus in the medieval city.14 Fehse, however, has defended the concept by studying the example of Dortmund around 1400, where a majority of households corresponded to the type of the ganzes Haus.15 In this debate, the topography of the different relationships between place of residence and place of work have until now not been studied. Theoretically, four such types can be distinguished. First: cases of spatial unity of work and household (ganzes Haus), and second, cases of proximity between both. These two types are similar to one another because the places of residence and work remained in the same area. In contrast, cases of clear separation between the residence and a fixed workplace – as a third type – reveal a different structure of daily life, as does the fourth type: the cases of the workers with mobile or changing workplaces (masons, journeymen, transportation workers). Cases of unity and of proximity between residence and workplace In the estimi of Bologna of 1385, we can identify 579 probable cases of unity,16 and 12 cases of proximity17 can be found amongst 1,875 occurrences. For Strasbourg, the Book of Commons of 1466 details around 1,200 inhabitants with a specific profession: 590 of them had only one house and are thus considered as cases of unity,18 and 29 can be considered as cases of proximity, where residence and workplace were separated by no more than two streets. For both towns, those cases mostly belonged to the artisan middle class. A fundamental difference between the two cities can be seen in the topographical distribution of unity and proximity of places of living and work. In Strasbourg, the cases of unity are very dense in the central market zone around the city hall (the Pfalz) and become less compact as the distance from the centre increases (Figure 4.1). In contrast, in Bologna there are few cases of unity in the central market zone, even though it was built very compactly (Figure 4.2). The cases where places of work and residence were combined or in close proximity were more numerous in the suburbs than in the centre, despite the suburban quarters being comparatively sparsely built up. Above all, however, cases of unity or proximity were

Figure 4.1 Probable cases of spatial unity or proximity between dwelling and workplace in Strasbourg, 1466 Source: Colin Arnaud

Figure 4.2 Probable cases of spatial unity or proximity between dwelling and workplace in Bologna, 1385 Source: Colin Arnaud

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particularly dominant in the intermediary districts between centre and suburbs. That means that in Bologna the artisans from the middle-class could not afford a house for living and working in the centre, and had to live and work outside the central market zone or rent a separate shop there. Cases of clear separation between residence and workplace At least fifty-six burghers of Bologna declared that they owned or rented a shop outside of their parish. Nearly all of these shops were localised in the central market sector between the city’s main square and the Porta Ravegnana, where the two towers already stood. In the 1466 Book of Commons of Strasbourg, twentythree inhabitants can be identified as having had a shop or other workplace distant enough from their residence to be considered cases of clear separation. In both towns, only inhabitants who owned or rented only one shop are taken into consideration: owners of more shops probably used them as investments. From the point of view of places of residence, the topography of these cases of separation was not really dissimilar between Bologna and Strasbourg: the largest number of separate residences were situated in the intermediary districts. From the perspective of workplaces, the difference between both cities becomes clear: in Strasbourg the separate workplaces were distributed throughout the whole town (Figure 4.1), whereas in Bologna nearly all separate workplaces were shops in the central market zone (Figure 4.2). For example, the porter of the Poor Hostel (Elendherberge) at the Winmerket lived in a central street, the Kesselgässel.19 In fact, the central district in Bologna appears to have been a predominantly economic district with very few residents, while in Strasbourg all types of inhabitants lived there. The cases of workers with mobile or changing workplaces complete the maps, illustrating cases of separate workplaces and residences. This category includes professions associated with transportation (boatmen, carters, carriers) and construction (masons, carpenters) as well as agricultural workers (gardeners, ploughmen), all of whom were hired by many different employers. There were also professions related to the wine trade, as wine transporters, callers, dealers and controllers plied their trades all around the town, wherever they were requested. Furthermore, butchers and fishmongers, who had at least two different workplaces outside their home – the places where they acquired their wares and the clearly defined markets where they sold them – also fall within this category. In the Bologna estimi of 1385, we can be count 492 declarations of such mobile workers. In the Common Books of Strasbourg, the houses of mobile workers are more difficult to identify, because they tended to be poor and did not use their houses for work, nor the public space in front of their houses. Nevertheless, it is possible to place 134 mobile workers using the Strasbourg source. Clear differences in the topography of mobile workers’ houses can be observed between the two towns. In Strasbourg (Figure 4.3) they are found all over the city, even in the centre, while in Bologna (Figure 4.4) they were clearly concentrated in the suburbs. For instance, in the southern suburb of San Procolo extra serraglium, 42 mobile workers can be identified – more than the 38 cases of ganzes Haus.

Figure 4.3 Cases of separation between dwelling and workplace in Strasbourg, 1466 Source: Colin Arnaud

Figure 4.4 Cases of separation between dwelling and workplace in Bologna, 1385 Source: Colin Arnaud

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The Bologna suburbs, therefore, were characterised by a mostly poor population of tenants who worked outside their own homes. Whereas in Bologna the mobile workers seemed to have been cast out of the inner city, in Strasbourg many of them dwelt in places convenient for their profession (Figure 4.3). In fact, many masons lived around the Roßmerket (now Place Broglie),20 near the communal construction workshop (Stadtwerk), where material for the communal construction works was stored.21 Some other masons lived near the cathedral, the most important and lasting building site of the town.22 One carter lived in the central wheat market square at the Holweg, where he directly found clients for wheat transportation.23 In the same way, boatmen lived near their boats,24 fishermen near the fishing ponds,25 gardeners near the gardens.26 Such a coincidence between workplace and residence cannot be observed among the mobile workers of Bologna (Figure 4.4), except for the gardeners and ploughmen, whose residence in the suburbs facilitated their access to the gardens and fields outside the town. The example of the butchers is representative of the distinctly different tendencies between the two towns. While nearly all butchers in Strasbourg dwelt at the Gießen,27 a street from which they only needed to pass the bridge to reach the meat market and the slaughterhouse, most of the butchers of Bologna lived at the end of the Strada Maggiore,28 far from the meat market at the Porta Ravegnana29 and even farther from the slaughterhouse at the Porta Nuova.30 Altogether, the maps of the various relations between workplace and dwelling in Strasbourg show a homogeneous distribution of all categories all over the town, and consequently few differences between neighbourhoods, whereas in Bologna the suburbs contained a major quota of residences alone, with the centre clearly dominated by separate workplaces. In particular, the neighbourhood interactions were especially intense in the centre of Strasbourg and virtually non-existent in the centre of Bologna.

Neighbourhood centres In searching for different types of neighbourhoods, the focus is now on the location of the places where the neighbours met frequently: churches, bakers’ shops and bathhouses. Those places gave neighbours the possibility to experience and to structure their neighbourhood as a genuine community through regular contacts, durable relationships and a common sociability. Therefore, such meeting points can be defined as centres of neighbourhood communities. Similar meeting points, like wells or inns, could have been considered for this study, but the sources give too sparse information about them for a valid comparison. Parish churches Before analysing the topography of parish churches – the most obvious gathering place for a community of neighbours – a few remarks have to be made about the parish as a civic political entity. In Bologna, the boundaries of the parish defined

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the spatial boundaries of civic neighbourhood institutions, which functioned separately from the parish as a religious institution. Each civic parish (cappella) had a representative elected and remunerated by the residents of the district. This socalled ministralis cappelle was responsible for drawing up the estimi and raising the resulting taxes for the proper care of the streets and of fireplaces, and for the coordination of the night watch.31 The ministrales cappelle not only coordinated the neighbourhood’s self-organisation, however, but also worked for the urban authorities as intermediary and overseer of the neighbourhood. In Bologna, inhabitants were always identified along with the name of their parish in official documents; this was not the case in Strasbourg, where the parish did not form the basis of an institution that played such a prominent civic and fiscal role. Consequently, one would expect that neighbourhoods in Bologna were better structured as communities than in Strasbourg. Yet, the character of parish churches differed radically between the two towns, not only through the widely divergent number of parishes – nine in Strasbourg, ninety-one in Bologna – but also because of their contrasting topographical distribution throughout the town. In Strasbourg (Figure 4.5), only two parish churches were situated in the centre: St Martin at the Fischmerket and the parish chapel of St Lawrence in the Cathedral. Two others stood in the suburbs outside of the central island: St Aurelia at the western suburb near the White Gate and St Nicholas at the southern suburb in front of the port. The other parish churches were imposing buildings with canonical

Figure 4.5 Parish churches in Strasbourg in the fifteenth century Source: Colin Arnaud, according to Alioth (1988), 175–77.

Figure 4.6 Parish churches in Bologna in the fifteenth century Source: Colin Arnaud according to Fini (2007); Wray (2009), 266–70. Mendicant orders: A: Franciscans; B: Dominicans; C: Servites; D: Augustinians; E: Carmelites. Parish churches: 1: San Tommaso del Mercato; 2: San Martino dell’Aposa; 3: Santa Maria Mascarella; 4: Santa Maria Maddalena; 5: Santi Giaccomo e Filippo dei Piatesi; 6: Santi Simone e Giuda; 7: San Nicolò degli Albari; 8: San Lorenzo dei Guarini; 9: San Donato; 10: San Pietro (Dom); 11: San Marco; 12: Santa Cecilia; 13: San Sigismondo; 14: Sant’Egidio; 15: San Bartolomeo di Porta Ravegnana; 16: San Cataldo dei Lambertini; 17: San Michele del Mercato di Mezzo; 18: San Vitale; 19: San Leonardo; 20: Sant’Alberto; 21: Sant’Antonino o Sant’Antolino; 22: San Giusta; 23: Santa Maria in Solario; 24: San Matteo degli Accarisi; 25: Santa Maria di Porta Ravegnana; 26: San Michele dei Leprosetti; 27: Santa Maria degli Alemanni; 28: Santo Stefano; 29: San Tommaso della braina; 30: San Biagio; 31: Santa Cristina della Fondazza; 32: Santa Maria del Torleone; 33: Santa Maria del Tempio; 34: Sant’Omobono; 35: San Damiano; 36: San Giuliano; 37: San Tecla di strada di Santo Stefano; 38: San Giovanni in Monte; 39: San Cristoforo dei Geremei; 40: Santa Maria della Chiavica; 41: Santa Maria dei Bulgari; 42: Sant’Agata; 43: Santa Maria Rotonda dei Galluzzi; 44: San Simone dei Maccagnani; 45: Santa Maria dei Guidoscalchi; 46: Sant’Andrea degli Ansaldi; 47: San Domenico; 48: San Procolo; 49: Santa Lucia; 50: San Cristoforo di Saragozza; 51: San Mamolo; 52: Santa Maria delle Muratelle; 53: Santa Caterina di Saragozza; 54: Santa Margherita; 55: San Martino della Croce dei Santi; 56: San Barbaziano; 57: Santi Pietro e Marcellino; 58: Sant’Isaia; 59: Sant’Arcangelo; 60: Santa Cristina; 61: Santa Maria dei Rustigani; 62: San Benedetto di Porta Nuova; 63: San Martino dei Caccianemici; 64: San Tecla di Porta Nuova; 65: San Bartolomeo in Palazzo; 66: San Prospero; 67: Santi Fabiano e Sebastiano; 68: San Luca di Castello; 69: San Siro; 70: San Gervasio e Protasio; 71: San Giorgio in Poggiale; 72: San Colombano; 73: San Lorenzo di Porta Stiera; 74: San Felice; 75: San Nicolò del Borgo di San Felice; 76: Santa Maria della Carità; 77: Santa Croce; 78: San Salvatore; 79: San Marino di Porta Nuova; 80: San Benedetto del Borgo di Galliera; 81: San Giuseppe del Borgo di Galliera; 82: Santa Maria Maggiore; 83: Sant’Andrea dei Piatesi; 84: Sant’Ambrogio; 85: Sant’Antonio; 86: San Dalmasio; 87: San Geminiano; 88: San Giacomo dei Carbonesi; 89: Sant’Ippolito; 90: Santa Maria della Baroncella; 91: Santa Maria dei Carrari (o dei Foscherari); 92: Santa Maria del Castello; 93: Santa Maria del Castel dei Britti; 94: Santa Maria degli Oselitti; 95: San Remedio; 96: San Michele dei Lambertazzi; 97: San Sinesio; 98: San Tecla dei Lambertazzi; 99: San Vito.

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cloisters – except the small St Andrew’s church – and were equally distributed around the internal circumference of the central island along the river, so that all quarters outside the centre had easy access to their parish church. Even the churches of the Dominican and Franciscan orders seem to have unintentionally contributed to the equal distribution of churches in the town by serving the larger parishes. Only a few suburbs were really distant from their parish churches, such as the southern part of the Krutenau around the convent of St Catherine. Thus, the parish churches in Strasbourg were able to serve as gathering places for neighbours from all over the town. In Bologna, in contrast (Figure 4.6), the parish churches, despite being so numerous, were so irregularly distributed that their capacity to serve as neighbourhood centres in all districts is doubtful. On the one hand, the intermediary districts between centre and periphery would have had a church for between 50 and 100 families.32 These parishes would have included only a few streets, which seems to have been an adequate size for a parish church to serve as centre of a neighbourhood. In addition, the five churches of the mendicant orders were distributed along the ancient walls of the Torresotti, which means that they were principally concerned with the same intermediary districts. By comparison, the peripheral districts between the Torresotti and the outer city wall had a looser network of parish churches. Some suburbs even lacked a nearby parish church entirely: the outer southern and northwestern suburbs represented the clearest examples of districts without proper churches. Conversely, in the city centre, where few inhabitants were registered in the individual parishes, the churches were overrepresented in remarkable density. These central parish churches may well not have been a suitable focal point of a parish community, mainly because of the lack of a sufficient number of regular parishioners and the paltry size of their parish districts: in nine central parishes only three heads of household or fewer were registered in the estimi.33 Some of the churches served as family chapels for patrician families, particularly because their central location in the sparsely inhabited but intensively frequented market zone gave them prestige and visibility.34 So, the topography of the parish churches of Bologna indicates that they had the capacity to join together the neighbours around the churches only in the intermediary districts. Consequently, in the context of neighbourhood self-organisation, the larger peripheral parish districts had to be partitioned into further subdivisions with their own ministrales,35 and the central parishes that had very few inhabitants became insignificant. Although the civic organisation of Bologna’s parish districts had no equivalent in Strasbourg, the parish churches of the Alsatian town seemed to be better able to serve as a gathering place for the neighbourhoods of the whole town than those in Bologna. Bakers Other neighbourhood meeting points, like bakeries and bathhouses, are not so easy to identify in a systematic way, but they can complete the results of this topographical analysis. The biggest problem for the identification of these neighbourhood

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facilities is that the estimi of Bologna give precise details about the districts of residence but leave significant doubts concerning the workplaces, so that it is impossible to be sure if bakers or bathhouse keepers really worked in their parishes of residence. Nevertheless, all mentions of ovens and of bakers’ dwellings have been collected to obtain a topography of the bakers in Bologna (Figure 4.7). Bakers not only sold bread, they also cooked the roasts and baked the pastries for their clients.36 The spatial distribution of ovens and bakeries reminds us of the distribution of the cases of ganzes Haus: intermediary districts were very well furnished, while suburbs were supplied with ovens and bakeries in a sporadic way; and the centre lacked them entirely, a shortage only in part compensated for by the two public bread stalls (scaffe del pane) of the main square and the Porta Ravegnana.37 The scaffe del pane provided bread but could not be used as public baking places. The rich families who lived in the centre probably had private ovens that are not mentioned in the sources. In Strasbourg (Figure 4.8), the Book of Commons is full of references to bakers and their bread stalls (Brotbank or Brotladen). As is to be expected, bakers’ shops were found virtually everywhere in the town, although some fluctuations need to be explained. In the centre, between the cathedral and the Dominican church, there

Figure 4.7 Bakers and ovens in Bologna, 1385 Source: Colin Arnaud. Ovens: ASBo, Estimi 1385, Porta Procola, 19v, 113v, 296v, 345v, 424r, 455r, Porta Ravegnana, 62v, 226r; bakers’ dwellings: ASBo, Estimi 1385, Porta Ravegnana: 40r, 206v, 228v, 273v, 302r, 347r, 354r, Porta Procola, 6r, 16v, 119r, 128v-129r, 151v, 152r, 201v, 299r, 400r, 481v, 511v, 556r.

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Figure 4.8 Bakers in Strasbourg, 1466 Source: Colin Arnaud. AVES, VII 1434, 8r, 8v, 9r, 44v, 44v, 65r, 65v, 66v, 80v, 102v, 112v, 134v, 135v, 149v, 150v, 155v, 164v, 178r, 179v, 184v, 188v, 194v, 197v, 198r, 201v, 202r, 203r, 203v-204r, 212v, 214r, 218v, 226r, 228r, 228v, 232r, 240v, 241v, 251r, 252v, 252v, 264v, 266r, 267r.

were no bakeries, but the inhabitants of the centre were provided with bread from the bread markets in front of the cathedral and at the bread stalls under the town hall (Pfalz).38 Bakeries were also rare in the northeastern part of the central island; that is, the district around the Roßmerket and the Brandgasse, where many rich patricians lived who probably had their own ovens. Some suburbs, like the very isolated southern Krutenau around St Catherine and the northern suburb around the Cronenbourg Gate, which counted more gardens and green places than houses, also lacked bakeries. In contrast, in some parts of the city, many bakeries were concentrated in a relatively small area, which means that they not only targeted the immediate neighbourhood: around the port and the nearby bridge (Schintbrücke, nowadays Pont-au-Corbeau), numerous bakers responded to the demand of the travellers who came with the boats which put in at the port. Similarly, many bakers’ shops can be identified at the outer part of the Oberstraße (now Grand’Rue) and around the bridge of the Krutenau, both corresponding to important traffic taxes.39 Moreover, the mills were situated south of the Oberstraße and near the Krutenau, so that the bakers working in those districts had an easy supply of flour. In the rest of the city, bakers’ shops were evenly distributed.

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Bathhouses Finally, public bathhouses can be identified in both towns, potentially representing an important service for the neighbourhood. Once more, the estimi give us only approximate information about the stupe of the city, but allusions to such facilities, mostly as adjacent buildings or as persons with the surname de stupa, enable us to locate some bathhouses in Bologna. On the other hand, the Badehäuser of Strasbourg are well attested in the Book of Commons and have already been the object of study.40 Bathhouses needed watercourses in their proximity for sewerage and water supply. Actually, neither Bologna nor Strasbourg had districts without watercourses: Bologna knew a developed network of canals, ditches and pipes, while Strasbourg was surrounded by the river and was crossed by several canals. Nevertheless, in Bologna (Figure 4.9), bathhouses did not exist in every district: all stupe mentioned were localised in the intermediary districts, along the Torresotti, and especially in the southern part of the city around the monastery of San Procolo. This

Figure 4.9 Bathhouses in Bologna according to the estimi of 1385 Source: Colin Arnaud. 1: Stupa Sancte Marie degli Angeli (Porta Ravegnana, 280v); (2): Checa quondam Petri uxor olim Nanini de Stupa (Porta Procola, 95r); 3: Stupa in contrata Gorgadeli (Portia Priocola, 178r); (4): Chidina uxor olim Johannis de Stupa (Porta Procola, 399v); (5): Magdalucia Lipi de Cinquanta de Stupa (Porta Procola, 403v, 410r); (6): Lippa quondam Oppizonis de Stupa (Porta Procola, 409r); (7): Andreucia de Stupa (Porta Procola, 415r); (8): Dominicus Chechi de Stupa (Porta Procola, 442v).

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district near the hills was situated higher than the rest of the city and was famous for the purity of its water sources.41 Thus, in Bologna, some peripheral and central districts were not provided with bathhouses: their inhabitants probably went to bathe at the numerous bath facilities in the southern part of the town, which therefore played no role as neighbourhood centres. In Strasbourg (Figure 4.10), the flat and swampy landscape meant that there was no difference between districts with pure and less-pure water. Indeed, the bathhouses were distributed in quite a regular way all around the city. Even suburbs were provided with bath facilities, with the exception of the western suburb around the White Gate. However, the regular distribution of bathhouses was not only a result of the landscape: indeed, bathhouses were installed even in the centre, where the access to watercourses was more difficult. In sum, the bathhouses of Strasbourg could function as meeting points for their neighbourhoods in all districts of the town, whereas in Bologna the stupe were too unevenly distributed to play such a role for their neighbourhoods. Once more, the Strasbourg neighbourhood communities seem to have been better structured all over the town than those in Bologna.

Figure 4.10 Bathhouses in Strasbourg in the fifteenth century Source: Colin Arnaud, according to Wittmer (1961), 105–15; references in the Book of Commons of 1466: 1: Dintenhörnlin (89v); 2: Drusenbad (151v); 3: Zum Eber; 4: Glanzhof (209r); 5: Zum Hauer / Hauwart (92v); 6: Auf der Hofstatt (89v); 7: In der Krutenau (267r); 8: Unter den Kürschnern (113v); 9: Zu dem Mühlstein; 10: In Reiffbad (254v); 11: Rindburgertor / vor dem Pfennigturm (179r); 12: Rosenbad (51r); 13: Speierbad / am Bischofsburgtor / am Weinmarkt (184r); 14: Zu der Spitzen (145v).

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Conclusions The topographical analysis of workplaces, dwellings and neighbourhood centres has shown that in Strasbourg, intensive interactions between neighbours, and therefore active community life, were possible in almost every part of town, whereas in Bologna these intensive interactions were primarily limited to the intermediary districts. In the suburbs, and even more in the centre of Bologna, the indicators hint at much less animated neighbourhood communities. Indeed, the condition of the Bolognese suburbs possibly thwarted neighbourhood life. First, many suburban neighbourhoods lacked typical neighbourhood centres, such as churches and bathhouses, and had to find alternative meeting points, or use distant ones. Second, not all inhabitants of the suburbs could participate intensively in neighbourhood life, because they did not work and live in the same neighbourhood, as the strong concentration of dwellings of mobile workers shows. In the city centre, the neighbourhood community was virtually non-existent, due to lack of inhabitants, the tumult of the market and other dynamics that affected the town as a whole, as the exceptional concentration of parish chapels demonstrates. Only the intermediary districts presented a regular distribution of neighbourhood meeting points, such as churches, bakers’ shops and bathhouses, and a large concentration of cases of combined residences and workplaces. In Strasbourg, in contrast, the density of such cases of ganzes Haus followed the general residential structure of the city, which means they were most concentrated in the city centre, just like the cases of proximity between dwellings and workplaces. Separate residences and workplaces were randomly distributed throughout the town; there was no district with a merely commercial nature. In general, Strasbourg inhabitants chose their place of residence according to their place of work, even the mobile workers: masons lived near the communal construction workshop, boatmen near the docks and their boats, fishermen near fishing zones, gardeners near gardens and so on. Moreover, neighbourhood meeting points were much better distributed throughout the whole town than in Bologna: parish churches, bakers’ shops and bathhouses could play the role of gathering places for the neighbourhood in all districts. The results of these comparisons show a functional and hierarchical space division in Bologna and a more mixed and less hierarchical organisation of the urban space in Strasbourg. The reasons for those differences in each town are multiple and difficult to determine. In such social processes, causes and effects can be easily conflated. To be sure, in Bologna the social differences were sharper and more visible in the urban space. The rich families sought to keep their estates undivided and formed durable family clans, especially in the city centre.42 In general, it can be observed that each family clan or civic institution (guilds, confraternities, political institutions) tried to place itself in the city centre as a sign of its political significance. In doing so, it cast out other potential inhabitants. This trend cannot be seen in Strasbourg. Members of the rich families were distributed all over the town; their location in more peripheral districts enabled them to build larger and grander palaces.43 The city centre was densely inhabited by artisans, and

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city residents seemed to be more attached to the proximity of work and dwelling than those in Bologna. Thus, a less vertical social differentiation can be glimpsed in contrast to Bologna, which contributed to an intense neighbourhood community life all over the German town. Topographical indicators – like the spatial relation between place of work and residence, or the distribution of potential meeting points for neighbours – offer only an indirect way of observing neighbourhood solidarities and communities. Admittedly, a merely topographical method can lead to rigid structuralism or geographical determinism, if it is used without caution.44 However, despite their limitations, and the need to complement them with other types of analyses, topographical indicators provide an overview and a reference point for the comparison of both cities, revealing a different topographical structure in each of them. These results demonstrate the need to examine a variety of European cities in order to get a full picture of the diversity of urban neighbourhoods across Europe in the Middle Ages. The digital mapping and database tools greatly facilitate the work of historians, and allow us to hope for a multiplication of such research projects in the near future.

Notes ∗ Many thanks to the editors and to Adam Storring (Cambridge) for proofreading the English text. 1 Wray (2009). 2 Sutter (2002). 3 Kent and Kent (1982); Eckstein (1995); Signori (2000). 4 Cramer (1981); Boulton (1984); Scherman (2007). 5 Igel (2010). 6 D’Amico (1994), 147 et seq. 7 Pini (1965). 8 Dollinger (1972). 9 Kerdilès Weiler (2005), 109–25; Bocchi (2007), 222–45. 10 Archives de la ville et l’eurométropole de Strasbourg (hereafter AVES), VII 1434. The Book of Commons of 1427 has also been preserved, but it is less precise and hence is not considered in this paper. 11 Archivio di Stato di Bologna (hereafter ASBo), Estimi del Comune, serie I, atti relativi agli estimi, 8, estimo descrittivo per il quartiere di Porta Procola, Città, 1385; Ibidem, 9, estimo descrittivo per il quartiere di Porta Ravegnana, Città, 1385 (later: ASBo, Estimi 1385, Porta Procola, or Porta Ravegnana). Bologna was divided into four administrative quarters. Only the estimi for the southern quarters Porta Procola and Porta Ravegnana have been preserved. 12 Brunner (1968). 13 Mitterauer (1984), 1–36. Some workers had to do their business in defined market zones; others worked in the homes of their clients or came into the town for seasonal occupations. 14 Groebner (1993) has analysed ‘the economy outside the house’ of poor workers in Nuremberg. Meinhardt (2009), 212–20, has demonstrated that the princely court in Dresden concentrated many activities in the palace, which led to the separation between workplace and dwelling for those working there. 15 Fehse (2005), 308–16.

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16 Only the inhabitants whose profession is known and who possessed no other shop or workshop in another parish have been counted here. Workers with changing workplaces, such as for transportation or construction activities, or those whose commercial activities had to be conducted in a prescribed market zone (for example, butchers, fishmongers) have all been excluded from the list. 17 In those cases, residence and workplace were situated in the same parish. 18 Only inhabitants whose profession is known, and who owned or rented only one house, have been taken into consideration. The same professions as for Bologna have been excluded. 19 AVES, VII 1434, f. 92v. 20 AVES, VII 1434, f. 168r-170r. 21 Schwien (1992), 128. 22 AVES, VII 1434, f. 53r, 55v. 23 Ibidem, f. 105v. 24 Many boatmen lived at the Staden, the dock opposite to the port, or in the Krutenau around the Rhine canal; Ibidem, f. 49v, 231v, 232r, 259v, 260r, 261r-262r, 263v, 265v. 25 Seven out of nine fishermen lived south of the Covered Bridge beside the water, near their boats; Ibidem, f. 210r-212r. 26 Ibidem, f. 239r-241r, 243v-246r, 250r, 251r, 256r-256v. 27 Ibidem, f. 226r-229r. Some other butchers did not live at the Gießen, but in the central island near to the meat market, f. 3r, 21r, 46v, 162v. 28 ASBo, Estimi 1385, Porta Procola, f. 209v, 212v, 214v, 218r-219r, 221v, 232r, 234r, 235r, 252r, 262r, 267r, 268v, 359v, 367v, 370v, 386v, 390v. 29 About the meat market at the androna dei Giubbonieri near the Porta Ravegnana, see Bocchi (1995), 98. In the estimi of 1385, a butcher’s shop is mentioned there ‘juxta domos becariorum’; ASBo, Estimi 1385, Porta Procola, f. 258v; another ‘juxta cortilem macellatorum’; Porta Ravegnana, f. 341r. 30 The cattle had to be slaughtered at the Porta Nuova: ASBo, Comune – Governo, Statuti, 47, 1389, f. 378r. 31 Pini (1977), 21–23. 32 The parish of San Michele in Leproseto (no. 26 on map 6) had around 100 registered families in the estimi; ASBo, Estimi 1385, Porta Ravegnana, f. 307r et seq. 33 ASBo, Estimi 1385, Porta Procola, f. 565r et seq., Porta Ravegnana, f. 54r-55r, 187r-188r, 401r-405r. 34 Many churches bore the name of patrician families: Santa Maria della Rotonda dei Galluzzi, Santa Maria dei Bulgari, San Lorenzo dei Guarini, San Cataldo dei Lambertini, San Matteo degli Accarisi, San Cristoforo dei Geremei, San Simone dei Maccagnani, Santa Maria dei Guidoscalchi, Sant’Andrea degli Ansaldi, Santa Maria dei Rustigani; Heers (1984), 45–48. 35 Pini (1977), 34–35. 36 See in this regard the tariffs for the use of bakers’ ovens in Bologna: ASBo, Comune – Governo, Statuti, 47, 1389, f. 376r. 37 See mentions of ‘ad scafam platea civitatis bononie’ or ‘ad capsonem platee civitatis’ in: ASBo, Comune, Camera del Comune, Soprastanti, depositari e conduttori dei dazi, 217: Dazio del pane campioni, 1, 1410–1411. 38 Hatt (1929), 257–59. 39 Cf. Schwien (1992), 230. 40 Wittmer (1961), 91–116. 41 Drusiani (2005), 234–39. 42 Heers (1984), 25–55. 43 Many patrician houses were situated around the Brandgasse: Petrazoller (2002), 121–22. 44 Eckstein (2006), 220–21.

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Bibliography Alioth, M., Gruppen an der Macht. Zünfte und Patriziat in Straßburg im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert. Untersuchungen zu Verfassung, Wirtschaftsgefüge und Sozialstruktur, Vol. 1 (Basel, 1988). Bocchi, F. (ed.), Atlante storico delle città italiane, Emilia-Romagna, Bologna. Vol. 2: Il Duecento (Bologna, 1995). Bocchi, F. ‘Lo Sviluppo Urbanistico’, in O. Capitani (ed.), Storia di Bologna. Vol. 2: Bologna nel Medioevo (Bologna, 2007), 187–308. Boulton, J., Neighbourhood and Society. A London Suburb in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1984). Brunner, O., ‘Das “ganze Haus” und die alteuropäische Ökonomik’, Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie 13 (1950), 114–39; reprinted in Idem (ed.), Neue Wege der Verfassungs- und Sozialgeschichte (Göttingen, 1968), 103–27. Cramer, J., Gerberhaus und Gerberviertel in der mittelalterlichen Stadt (Bonn, 1981). D’Amico, S., Le contrade e la città. Sistema produttivo e spazio urbano a Milano fra Cinque e Seicento (Milan, 1994). Dollinger, P., ‘La population de Strasbourg et sa répartition aux XVe et XVIe siècles’, in W. Besch (ed.), Die Stadt in der europäischen Geschichte. Festschrift für Edith Ennen (Bonn, 1972), 521–28. Drusiani, R., ‘Acqua potabile per Bologna’, in G. Pesci, C. Ugolini and G. Venturi (eds), Bologna d’acqua. L’energia idraulica nella storia della città (Bologna, 1994), 109–16; reprinted in M. Poli (ed.), Le acque a Bologna. Antologia (Bologna, 2005), 234–39. Eckstein, N.A., The District of the Green Dragon. Neighbourhood Life and Social Change in Renaissance Florence (Florence, 1995). Eckstein, N.A., ‘The Neighbourhood as Microcosm’, in R.J. Crum and J.T. Paoletti (eds), Renaissance Florence. A Social History (Cambridge, 2006), 219–39. Fehse, M., Dortmund um 1400. Hausbesitz, Wohnverhältnisse und Arbeitsstätten in der spätmittelalterlichen Stadt (Bielefeld, 2005). Fini, M., Bologna sacra. Tutte le chiese in due millenni di storia (Bologna, 2007). Groebner, V., Ökonomie ohne Haus. Zum Wirtschaften armer Leute in Nürnberg am Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 1993). Hatt, J., Une ville du XVe siècle. Strasbourg (Strasbourg, 1929). Heers, Jacques. Espaces publics, espaces privés dans la ville. Le ‘Liber terminorum’ de Bologne (1294) (Paris, 1984). Igel, K., Zwischen Bürgerhaus und Frauenhaus. Stadtgestalt, Grundbesitz und Sozialstruktur im spätmittelalterlichen Greifswald (Cologne, 2010). Kent, D.V., and F.W. Kent, Neighbours and Neighbourhood in Renaissance Florence. The District of the Red Lion in the Fifteenth Century (Locust Valley, 1982). Kerdilès Weiler, A., Limites urbaines de Strasbourg. Évolution et mutation (Strasbourg, 2005). Meinhardt, M., Dresden im Wandel. Raum und Bevölkerung der Stadt im Residenzbildungsprozeß des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 2009). Mitterauer, M., ‘Familie und Arbeitsorganisation in städtischen Gesellschaften des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit’, in Ibidem (ed.), Haus und Familie in der spätmittelalterlichen Stadt (Cologne, 1984), 1–36. Petrazoller, F., L’urbanisme à Strasbourg au XVIème siècle. La pierre et l’idée (Strasbourg, 2002).

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Pini, A.I., ‘Problemi demografici bolognesi del Duecento’, Atti e memorie Deputazione di storia patria per le provincie di Romagna, 17–19 (1965), 147–222. Pini, A.I., Le ripartizioni territoriali urbane di Bologna medievale. Quartiere, contrada, borgo, morello e quartirolo (Bologna, 1977). Scherman, M., ‘La Scorzaria de Trévise au XVe siècle. Territoire et stratégie entrepreneuriales des tanneurs’, in C. Deligne and C. Billen (eds), Voisinages, coexistences, appropriations. Groupes sociaux et territoires urbains (Moyen Âge – 16e siècle) (Turnhout, 2007), 53–76. Schwien, J.-J., Strasbourg. Document d’évaluation du patrimoine archéologique urbain (Tours, 1992). Signori, G., ‘Geschichte/n einer Straße. Gedanken zur lebenszklischen Dynamik und schichtenspezifischen Pluralität städtischer Haushalts- und Familienformen’, in H.-W. Goetz (ed.), Die Aktualität des Mittelalters (Bochum, 2000), 191–230. Sutter, P., Von guten und bösen Nachbarn. Nachbarschaft als Beziehungsform im spätmittelalterlichen Zürich (Zurich, 2002). Wittmer, C., ‘Bains et baigneurs à Strasbourg au Moyen Age’, Cahiers alsaciens d’archéologie, d’art et d’histoire, 5 (1961), 91–116. Wray, S.K., Communities and Crisis. Bologna during the Black Death (Leiden, 2009).

5

Conflict, community, and the law Guarantors and social networks in dispute resolution in early modern Saxony∗ John Jordan

On Friday, 3 July 1545, Barthel Fleischer, Valten Schmid, and Barthel Wolff appeared before Freiberg’s city court after Fleischer and Schmid had quarrelled in public. The cause of the fracas is not specified but it was sufficiently heated that others had to intervene. When they appeared in court, Fleischer, who was clearly seen as the aggressor, named Wolff as his guarantor, and promised to behave peacefully in both words and actions towards Schmid in the future, and to pay a three gulden fine if he failed to do so.1 Who were these three men, and why is this quarrel and its legal resolution of interest to the historian? Answering these questions means looking at the nature of conflict and community in early modern society. As researchers have long noted, conflict and community go hand-in-hand. This is not to say that there is always a harmonious relationship between them: the former can often prove corrosive to the latter. It was not for nothing that others intervened in the above conflict, and brought about a courtsupervised settlement. Conflict, while a normal part of daily life, was not something early modern communities wanted to let fester: resolution was to be sought.2 As the introduction to this volume attests, community has been the subject of substantial historical research whose scope is much broader than conflict. For early modern Germany, two major vectors shaped much of the research on community. The first was Mack Walker’s concept of German home towns: the idea that there was something specific to German cities and their communal dynamic from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century.3 But as Christopher Friedrichs recently pointed out, much of what Walker claimed to be specific to German home towns – their demographic structure, a population of not more than 10,000 to 15,000, the legal status of a city, citizen participation in urban governance, and the importance of guilds and honour – was in fact characteristic of most early modern towns (whether in Europe or elsewhere).4 The second was Peter Blickle’s thesis that communal spirit was central in bringing peasants and burghers together and helping to set in motion the reformations of the sixteenth century.5 As an outgrowth of this, much scholarship has focused on religious and confessional communities and the effects of these reformations on different segments of the population as well as on reformers’ attempts to create communities conforming to their ideals.6

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Much of the historical research on conflict has focused either on specific domains of conflict such as witchcraft or interpersonal violence or on legal and procedural considerations of how conflict was managed.7 For the latter, much of the research for early modern Germany has been carried out within the framework of the history of crime (Kriminalitätsgeschichte). The goal of this chapter is to consider the themes of conflict and community together, and to probe the communal networks involved in resolving or stabilizing conflict. As most researchers on community have noted, people, both past and present, belong to multiple communities: professional, residential, kinship, friendship, patronage networks, and so forth. Of these multiple communities, which were significant in managing conflict in early modern Freiberg?

Legal practices Before proceeding further, it is worth looking into the institutions involved in conflict management. That courts and legal institutions have long stood as central tools for resolving (or at times, exacerbating) disputes is well established. In Freiberg, when assaults or breaches of the peace (such as verbal altercations) were reported to the court, the court’s preferred mode of settlement was to make the aggressor name a guarantor (Bürge).8 It was a resolution the court employed routinely: in the mid-sixteenth century, there were at least 120 to 130 of these agreements each year (around two or more a week), involving approximately 500 people, who acted as a guarantor themselves; were the beneficiary of a guarantor’s pledge (pledgee), or were plaintiffs, such as the victim of an assault or the recipient of an insult. In a town of Freiberg’s size, this was a legal device that everyone would have been familiar with. As a legal practice, Bürgschaft’s roots date at least to Freiberg’s municipal legal code of 1296/1305.9 How frequently it was employed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is difficult to ascertain, since court proceedings were mainly oral. It was not until the sixteenth century that written records became the norm in Freiberg, by which time Bürgschaft was plainly entrenched as a central element in the town’s legal culture.10 Other European polities used similar mechanisms for resolving conflicts. In Zurich, third parties were required to intervene in quarrels and demand that the parties quit the fight (Stallung) and make peace.11 In England, ‘binding over’ was used to give feuding parties a cooling off period in which to negotiate a settlement.12 But neither practice formally included guarantors. The use of compurgation in English church courts bears some similarities, but oath-helpers or compurgators swore to a person’s innocence, whereas guarantors vouched that a resolution would be adhered to.13 Other German cities certainly used guarantors in cases of conflict, but Bürgschaft remains underresearched in the history of conflict resolution, and thus it is difficult to ascertain how distinctive Freiberg was.14 Returning to the three men who appeared before the court on that summer day in 1545, who were they, and what networks were employed in resolving their fracas? The victim, Schmid, proves the most difficult to identify. Two men stand out as

Conflict, community, and the law 81 likely possibilities. The older one, a smith, had become a citizen thirty years prior in 1515, acted as the head (Vormeister) of the smith’s guild in 1518, and served as a neighbourhood watchman for one of the settlements outside of the city’s walls from 1536 to 1540. The younger, and in some way more probable candidate given young men’s propensity to fight, was also a smith and would become a citizen two years later in 1547.15 The other two, however, are easier to identify and are of greater interest. Both had recently become citizens: Fleischer, the agitator, in 1535, and Wolff, his guarantor, in 1541. In the summer of 1546 when Saxon Prince Elector Moritz levied a tax on all Freiberg householders to help finance the pending Schmalkaldic War, both Fleischer and Wolff are found on the rolls for Vorstadt 3, one of the settlements beyond the town walls. Besides living in the same quarter, their declared personal wealth was quite similar: 26 gulden for Wolff, 40 gulden for Fleischer, putting both among the town’s poorest residents. What is to be made of these poorer citizens, one pledging for the other, while living out in the darkness on the edge of town? Were neighbours of similar financial standing (as Fleischer and Wolff were) representative of who vouched for whom in Freiberg? And if not, what kinds of relationships were typical between a guarantor and his pledgee? Were other networks such as kinship or guild more frequently employed? By studying the use of guarantors and the social networks behind them, we can begin to understand how and through whom people sought to bring security and surety to their social and legal lives, and in the process develop a more nuanced appreciation of how communal relations affected conflict resolution.

Sources and people The principal source for this chapter is a city court register from the mid-sixteenth century.16 It contains records of assaults, breaches of the peace, and required court appearances. Besides this information, the register provides only the most skeletal data: the names of the participants and the type of vow (for example, to behave peacefully as Fleischer promised Schmid). Other basic information for reconstructing social networks, such as the profession, place of residence, or familial ties of the participants, must be traced from other sources on sixteenth-century Freiberg and then cross-referenced with the Bürgschaft records. There is considerable biographical data available for inhabitants of mid-sixteenth-century Freiberg. Foremost is the aforementioned 1546 tax register that lists the net worth (Vermögen) and city quarter (Stadtvertiel) of each householder, thereby providing residential and economic information.17 In addition to the tax register, quarter-based registers of house purchases and sales (Kaufbücher), and the city’s lists of neighbourhood watchmen (Gassenschöffe) provide residential data.18 Employment data are provided by the lists of guild masters (posts that typically changed each year) and the city’s annually compiled list of new citizens.19 From the court register on Bürgschaft, I created a sample of cases from 1542 to 1545 that included guarantors.20 By focusing on these years, my aim is to create a sample as temporally close as possible to the tax register.21 While all these

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factors (wealth, residence, and trade) were subject to change, by focusing on a narrow, constricted timeframe, my goal is to capture them in an extended synchronic moment before significant changes could have occurred.22 In the sample there are 486 cases: 81 from 1542, 108 from 1543, 154 from 1544, and 143 from 1545. In some of the cases, there is more than one guarantor, and in others more than one person being pledged for. As a result, the cases include 697 guarantors and 495 pledgees. Both figures include individuals who appear more than once since there were people who served as a guarantor multiple times, or were pledged for multiple times, or found themselves both acting as guarantors and being pledged for. For example, Michael Beher acted as a guarantor seven times from 1542 to 1545, each time for a different person.23 Generally, it is possible to distinguish the involved parties, even if not for every single facet of their lives. For example, Peter Schumann served as a guarantor in 1544 and we know his residence, declared wealth, and citizenship status – but not his profession.24 Despite the abundance of biographical data, some people prove unidentifiable. For example, from 1519 to 1576, fourteen people with the name Hans Richter received citizenship.25 In a nomadic mining region like the Erzgebirge, it is likely that at least one or two of the fourteen were the same person who had simply left Freiberg for another mining town before returning and reacquiring citizenship rights.26 Little else serves to distinguish among the others. Consequently, when such names appear, it is not possible to identify the person with certainty. In these cases, the best historians can do is operate in the zone of the possible or sometimes the probable. With most names, however, there is no duplication and a specific person can be identified. And when there are duplicates, such as with Valten Schmid (the victim in the case at the beginning of the chapter), a temporal gap often helps to identify the person of interest. Beyond those who are undistinguishable because they shared the same name, there remains a small number of people who could not be matched with any of the biographical data. Some were not from Freiberg, and others were likely living on the margins (journeymen and other non-citizens) and thus, not surprisingly, left scant biographical traces. Others shared a common last name with established Freiberg families (and may have been members of those families) but themselves never became citizens, paid the war tax, or served as a neighbourhood watchman. Despite this, some frequently partook in legal life. For example, Lorentz Glaser served three times as a guarantor and was pledged for twice during the sample years.27 Additionally, he appears in the debt registers, borrowing money and serving as a financial guarantor and as a guardian.28 In spite of all this activity, he left no further traces as to where he lived or what trade he plied.

Guarantors and pledgees Before looking into the relationship between guarantor and pledgee, it is worth looking at the guarantors on their own, both who they were and what was required of them. The only legal requirement for being a guarantor was that one had to be a resident with property and possessions (Eigen und Erbe) in Freiberg.29 For if the

Conflict, community, and the law 83 pledgee broke the terms of his agreement, the guarantor stood to forfeit his property and possessions.30 As in most Germanic cities, property and citizenship were tied together. One could not become a citizen without owning property, and one could not buy property without being a citizen.31 As a result, the property requirement meant that guarantors were almost invariably citizens. Of the 697 guarantors in the sample, 625 were citizens (see Table 5.1).32 Studying guarantors, therefore, does not offer a window into the full urban population. Bürgschaft was a legal practice that clearly reflected the boundaries between insiders and outsiders. While most guarantors were not members of Freiberg’s elite, they were communal insiders. Such a distinction is not surprising, since for any system of pledges to work, the word of those pledging (or the collateral they offer) has to have value. In this light, the property stipulation is quite logical. Not owning property signified that one was a temporary, or potentially non-permanent member, and thus perhaps not someone committed to the community.33 Owning property indicated that one was a landed resident and likely citizen – the type of person whose pledge had credibility, and who had something to lose if the pledge was not adhered to.34 Aside from the property qualification, there were few other formal requirements as to whom could be a guarantor, and this is borne out by the data. Members of almost every occupation acted as guarantors. Within the guilds, however, it was masters, and not apprentices or journeymen, who filled this role, since the latter two were unlikely to be property owners. For industries without guilds, such as silver mining, no such distinction existed. Miners, from a simple digger (Hauer) to a shaft manager (Steiger), acted as guarantors. The difference is largely explained by guilds having a clear hierarchical progression from apprentices to masters who alone could commit Eigen und Erbe, whereas no such restrictive role definitions existed in the miners’ brotherhood (Knappschaft).35 Freiberg was divided into four city quarters within the town walls, each clustered around a parish church. There were also three Vorstädte, or suburbs, outside the town walls. Guarantors came from all four quarters and from the three suburbs. The quarter of Nicolai was slightly overrepresented in the number of guarantors: on the tax register, it accounted for 16.4 per cent of householders, while in the sample 26.4 per cent of guarantors lived there.36 In contrast, the suburbs were underrepresented: they made up 35.3 per cent of households on the tax register, but only 25.2 per cent of guarantors in the sample.37 The other three city quarters showed no significant divergence between the tax register and the sample (see Table 5.2).

Table 5.1 Available data on guarantors and pledgees

Guarantors Pledgees

Quarter

Wealth

Profession

Citizenship

Unidentifiable

Total

543 203

477 164

488 250

625 270

49 137

697 495

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Table 5.2 Residence of guarantors and pledgees according to the 1546 tax register (percentage in brackets) Quarter

Petri

Nicolai

Dom-Virginis

Jacobi

Vorstädte

Total

Tax Payers Guarantors Pledgees

240 (20.5) 109 (21.2) 33 (17.4)

192 (16.4) 136 (26.4) 28 (14.7)

167 (14.3) 85 (16.5) 34 (17.9)

158 (13.5) 55 (10.7) 32 (16.8)

413 (35.3) 130 (25.2) 63 (33.2)

1,170 515 190

Table 5.3 Wealth of guarantors and pledgees according to the 1546 tax register (percentage in brackets) Wealth (in gulden)

≥ 1,000

600–999

300–599

100–299

≤ 99

Total

Tax Payers 69 (5.9) 117 (10.0) 208 (17.8) 304 (26.0) 472 (40.2) 1,170 Guarantors 23 (5.0) 65 (14.1) 121 (26.2) 135 (29.2) 118 (25.5) 462 Pledgees 9 (5.8) 15 (9.6) 28 (17.9) 42 (26.9) 62 (39.7) 156 Financially, as Table 5.3 demonstrates, the wealth of guarantors approximated the distribution of wealth found in the tax register, but middle class guarantors were slightly overrepresented. Whereas those with an estimated personal wealth of 300 to 599 gulden made up 17.8 per cent of tax payers, 26.2 per cent of the identifiable guarantors from the sample fell into this financial range. Conversely, guarantors were underrepresented in the poor segments. While 40 per cent of those on the tax register had a personal wealth of 99 gulden or less, only 25.5 per cent of guarantors fell into this same group. In short, guarantors were typically middleclass citizens living within the town walls. As Table 5.1 shows, biographical data on pledgees is less plentiful, since pledgees did not have to be citizens or householders, the type of person for whom these data are more likely to exist. Indeed, any person could insult or assault another person. The result, however, is that pledgees are more difficult to identify, and many prove untraceable. Of the ones that are discernible, some general patterns can be sketched. Unlike guarantors, there was almost no deviation from the tax register with regard to which quarter the pledgee came from. Pledgees were spread proportionately throughout the city. Similarly, with regard to financial status, the pledgees show little deviation from the tax register. They were slightly overrepresented among the poor (especially those with a personal wealth less than 50 gulden) but generally matched the tax register. As for the unidentifiable, it is obviously impossible to gauge them precisely, but some broad patterns can be surmised. Given the predilection of the wealthy to leave archival traces of their lives, it is highly probable that many unidentifiables were from the poorer segment of the population. Some were likely dependents – wives, apprentices, journeymen – who would not have appeared in the tax register, since they were not householders.38 As this was a period of considerable temporary migration, other unidentifiables were probably from out of town, whether they

Conflict, community, and the law 85 were miners (who were especially prone to moving between towns), traveling merchants, or itinerants looking for a better life in the city.39 Finally, what of women within Bürgschaft? Women were only rarely involved in these cases: of the 697 guarantors in the sample, none was female, and of the 495 pledgees, only 17 were women. This was clearly a gendered practice. The absence of women in the sample can be explained partly by many of the cases in the sample being physical altercations – a type of conflict that males were more likely to engage in. In the cases where women do name guarantors, it was generally their male relatives – husbands and fathers – who served as their guarantor.40 The lack of women in the sample means it is not possible to explore women’s networks in these cases, as sufficient data simply do not exist. This is not to deny that women had their own networks through which they could socialise, recruit support, manage conflicts and apply pressure on others. Julie Hardwick has shown how in cases of domestic violence, women turned to their neighbours for support and protection.41 But as Sheilagh Ogilvie has argued, women’s ability to tap into more formal networks (guild, property, economic, legal, and others) was often quite restricted.42 For Freiberg, these networks unfortunately remain beyond the purview of these sources and this chapter.

Social networks. Who for whom? While the archival data are not helpful in reconstructing female networks, it is quite productive for examining male networks. Considering what was potentially at stake – the loss of one’s house, and possibly citizenship and social standing – it was a substantial decision to commit oneself to be a guarantor. Yet the frequency with which it occurred attests that committing oneself to be a guarantor was clearly something Freibergers were comfortable doing. For whom, then, was one willing to pledge? And correspondingly, where did those in need of a pledge look for a guarantor? For the purpose of this analysis, I examined four variables that could have been the source of the relationship between guarantors and pledgees: kinship, profession, neighbourhood, and economic status. Historians have shown that each of the four was a central network for sociability, companionship, mutual aid, and other activities central to daily life.43 Studying all four at the same time makes it possible to assess the relative importance of these communal networks when it came to resolving conflicts. In total, 511 guarantor-pledgee relationships in the sample are analysed. Complicating matters, however, is that in some cases there was more than one guarantor or more than one pledgee. Consequently, the sample is divided into two for this stage of the analysis. One set consisted of 323 cases with one guarantor, and the other of 188 cases with two or more guarantors.44 In most cases it was possible to compare all four variables. However, in some cases data on one of the variables were missing: in 103 of the 323 single guarantor cases, and 61 of the 188 multiple guarantors cases, there were no usable data on at least one of the parties, generally the pledgee, making a comparison impossible. Consequently, the usable sample shrank to 220 single guarantor cases, and 127 multiple guarantor cases (see Tables 5.4 and 5.5). What did the analysis reveal? Let us begin with kinship.

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For kinship, the main test was whether the guarantor and pledgee shared the same last name. Unfortunately, this means looking only at cases of patrilineal kinship, since German cultural practice rarely recorded the woman’s first name or maiden name. Instead, the German feminine definite article (die) was used and the suffix ‘-in’ was added to the husband’s surname, making it impossible to identify matrilineal ties. For example, Erhart Ludwig’s wife, who was pledged for in 1544, is simply referred to as ‘die Erhart Ludwigin’ (dÿ Erhart Ludwigin).45 Obviously, kinship ties can extend beyond sharing a surname, but recreating marriage lists and family trees for a sixteenth-century town is a Herculean task, beyond the scope of this paper.46 Still, by looking only at patrilineal ties, some broad conclusions can be drawn. Discernible instances of family members acting as guarantors were infrequent. Amongst the 220 identifiable relationships with one guarantor, only 16 showed a clear familial relationship. In another 13, a familial relationship was possible but could not be definitively established. When there were two or more guarantors, in only 17 of the 127 identifiable cases was at least one of the guarantors a relative. When there was a kin relationship, most frequently it was a father pledging for his son, or a husband vouching for his wife.47 Brothers, cousins, and brothers-in-law are rarely explicitly mentioned and without recreating family trees, those relationships cannot be identified.48 Even if one doubled the positive matches to account for the missing matrilineal kinship ties, there would still be few cases explained by kinship: it would increase the total from 10 to approximately 20 per cent, and would not be enough to change the general conclusion that the guarantor-pledgee relationship was not typically based on kinship.49 Compared with the importance of kinship elsewhere in Europe, such a result is surprising.50 We can only speculate on why this should be the case. Perhaps it was a form of risk diversification. Since family members might well have to contribute to the cost (fines/reparations) of repairing the indiscretions of one of its members, it might have been thought that the risks inherent in Bürgschaft were better spread beyond the family. If kin is of limited help in explaining the relationship, what of guild and profession? Here, there is a somewhat contradictory image. On the one hand, there are a considerable number of tradesmen who pledged for a fellow guild member: 49 of the 125 cases with one guarantor, and 23 of the 79 cases with two or more guarantors.51 There was no specific trade that showed a higher tendency to find a guarantor from fellow guild members: shoemakers pledged for shoemakers; tailors pledged for tailors; and miners pledged for miners. In a handful of cases, one finds a master serving as a guarantor for his apprentice or journeyman.52 On the other hand, the majority of cases (69 of 125 with one guarantor, and 52 of the 79 cases with two or more guarantors) showed a divergence between the profession of the guarantor and that of the pledgee. What to make of this difference? Freiberg’s guild culture was marked by extensive specialisation; despite the town’s moderate size, there were a robust 36 guilds. Many had formed in the early sixteenth century due to greater specialisation. For example, the cutlers,

Conflict, community, and the law 87 locksmiths, ironsmiths, mining smiths, and farriers (horse hardware) each split off from the general smith’s guild (Schmiede) to form their own. The cutler’s guild, which originally separated from the smith’s guild between 1390 and 1440, split into separate guilds again in 1562: one (Langenmesserschmied) for extensive pieces of work (der langen Arbeit, likely swords) and one for smaller items.53 Given this fragmentation, it is remarkable that there were so many positive matches, since the pool of possible guarantors in most guilds could not have been large, especially when compared with the number of neighbours or financial peers one could have had. As such, it lends further confirmation to the importance of guilds in early modern Europe and likely to guild membership in itself, constituting a shared ethos that gave confidence to a guarantor.54 When one found a guarantor in a guild other than his own, there usually was little connection between the trades. Consider the case of a digger in the mines, Thomas Steffan, who had stabbed an unnamed victim in the armpit. Steffan’s guarantor was a baker named Martin Kuchler.55 Or the case of Valten Fritzsch, a baker who was vouched for by Hans Blum, a barber-surgeon (Balbirer/Barbirer) and Christoff Behr a mine-shaft manager (Steiger).56 In each of these cases, the divergence in profession is significant (for example, digger and baker; baker and barber-surgeon/mine-shaft manager), suggesting that other networks besides profession were at work. One of those was neighbourhood. Of the 134 identifiable cases with one guarantor, the guarantor and pledgee were from the same quarter in 52 (an additional 16 were considered possible). Only 66 (approximately half ) were from other quarters. With two or more guarantors, 36 of 72 cases feature the same quarter for at least one of the guarantors (with another 8 counting as possible). In short, in slightly less than half of the identifiable cases, the guarantor and pledgee were from the same quarter. One’s neighbours, therefore, even if they were unrelated or of disparate professions, were a promising place to look for and find a guarantor. Returning to the case of Valten Fritzsch, the baker vouched for by the surgeon Hans Blum and mine-shaft manager Christoff Behr, all three shared a common Viertel, Freiberg’s Petri quarter. Since each neighbourhood constituted a parish with its own church, neighbours shared the additional bond of parish membership. Closely aligned with neighbourhood as an explanatory factor is personal wealth (as represented in the 1546 tax register).57 Of the 101 cases with one guarantor, 58 had personal wealth comparable to that of their pledgee. Only 36 did not. Likewise, with cases of two or more guarantors, 35 of the 53 cases displayed similar financial status between guarantor and pledgee. In only 10 cases was there a significant divergence. The case of Matthias Schneider pledging for Martin Stuler illustrates this well. Despite living in different quarters (Freiberg’s Dom quarter for Schneider, and Petri for Stuler), their wealth was similar: 230 gulden for Schneider, and 400 gulden for Stuler.58 In other cases, both neighbourhood and personal wealth matched between guarantor and pledgee. For example, Lorentz Krumpholz and Christoff Koler were not just both residents of Freiberg’s Jacobi quarter, but of similar financial standing (100 gulden for Krumpholz; 300 gulden for Koler).59

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Table 5.4 Relationship of guarantor to pledgee: cases with one guarantor (percentage of identifiable cases in brackets)

Kinship Profession Neighbourhood Wealth Citizenship

Positive Match

Possible Match

Negative Match

Total Identifiable Cases

Unknown*

16 (7.3) 49 (39.2) 52 (38.8) 58 (57.4) 127 (79.4)

13 (5.9) 7 (5.6) 16 (11.9) 7 (6.9) 6 (3.8)

179 (81.4) 69 (55.2) 66 (49.3) 36 (35.6) 27 (16.9)

220 125 134 101 160

0 95 86 119 46

Table 5.5 Relationship of guarantor to pledgee: cases with ≥2 guarantors (percentage of identifiable cases in brackets)

Kinship Profession Neighbourhood Wealth Citizenship

Positive Match for 1 guarantor

Possible Match

Negative Match

Total Identifiable Cases

Unknown*

17 (13.4) 23 (29.1) 36 (50.0) 35 (66.0) 98 (83.8)

0 (0.0) 4 (5.1) 8 (11.1) 8 (15.1) 3 (2.6)

110 (86.6) 52 (65.8) 28 (38.9) 10 (18.9) 16 (13.7)

127 79 72 53 117

0 48 55 74 10

* Not included in the unknown column are the 103 cases for cases with one guarantor, and 61 cases with multiple guarantors where no data were available on the pledgee.

Table 5.6 Wealth in Freiberg by neighbourhood according to the 1546 tax register, in gulden (percentage of quarter in brackets) Quarter

≥ 1,000

600–999

300–599

100–299

≤99

Total

Petri Nicolai Dom/Virginis Jacobi Vorstädte

47 (19.6) 10 (5.2) 11 (6.6) 1 (0.6) 0

56 (23.3) 35 (18.2) 21 (12.6) 4 (2.5) 1 (0.2)

75 (31.3) 63 (32.8) 47 (28.1) 18 (11.4) 5 (1.2)

42 (17.5) 70 (36.5) 64 (38.3) 60 (38.0) 68 (16.5)

20 (8.3) 14 (7.3) 24 (14.4) 75 (47.5) 339 (82.1)

240 192 167 158 413

The correlation between neighbourhood and personal wealth is not surprising. Each of the four quarters and the three ‘suburbs’ had distinct financial profiles. While within each quarter, there was a wide range of wealth from rich to poor, there were also clear socioeconomic groupings (see Table 5.6): one’s neighbours were predominantly going to be one’s financial peers.60

Conflict, community, and the law 89

Conclusions How then to answer the question as to which communal network was the most important in resolving conflicts? The short answer is that there was no singular network that emerged as being more central than the others. Instead, profession, neighbourhood, and comparable financial standing appear as similarly important, each explaining the relationship in around 40 to 50 per cent of the cases. Only kinship stands out as being of less importance. Of these networks, three other salient points stand out as being worth further discussion. First, personal wealth and citizenship. Among all the factors, these explained the relationship in the highest percentage of cases. No doubt source bias plays a role, since the data on Bürgschaft are most abundant for those with an established position within the urban commune. Still, it is revealing that aside from a few cases of a master vouching for his apprentice or journeyman, there does not appear to be a patron-client or other vertical relationship at work in selecting a guarantor. Indeed, the wealthiest burghers rarely acted as guarantors. Instead when resolving conflicts, citizens turned to other citizens and to people of comparable financial standing: horizontal networks of peers. Second, the importance of neighbourhood. Since most early modern polities had only nugatory ‘police’ forces, it was incumbent upon burghers to keep the peace and intervene when it had been broken.61 Freiberg was no exception. To supervise its 9,000 to 10,000 residents, Freiberg had only one bailiff and approximately 20 neighbourhood watchmen, whose effectiveness was constrained by their poor pay and low social status.62 That many guarantors were from the same neighbourhood as those they pledged for is almost a natural extension of and tonic to this dynamic. What the polity could not (yet) do on its own, the neighbourhood could. Who better to make sure that a resolved quarrel did not erupt again than one’s neighbours? The very people that one depended on for so much of the mutual aid that made daily life possible.63 Third, the negative matches. As important as profession, neighbourhood, and wealth were for finding a guarantor, it cannot be overlooked that with profession and neighbourhood, there were more cases where there was divergence between guarantor and pledgee. In these cases, the relationship is typically not explained by one of the other factors tested (wealth, neighbourhood, family, and profession) but rather by something else that cannot be definitely determined by these archival sources.64 Therefore, while neighbours, fellow tradesmen or miners, or financial equals were all communities to which one could and frequently did turn, it appears Freiberg was rich with other informal networks (whether friendship, patronage, club, society, or other) that people relied on in finding a guarantor.65 Successfully navigating social and legal life required Freibergers to assiduously cultivate relationships not just with neighbours, fellow guildsmen, and those of comparable wealth, but more broadly within the urban commune. More generally, when one looks at the field of conflict resolution, and the numerous networks it involved, the early modern ideal of urban peace is seen in a new light. While the ideal of the peace may have been often broken, restoring it was something that many communities – citizens, guilds, neighbours, friends,

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courts, the law, and guarantors – did together. In short, it was not the purview or power of any single institution but rather a complex web of relationships that was responsible for maintaining the urban peace.

Notes ∗ Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2012 European Association of Urban History and the 2014 European Social Science History conferences. My thanks to participants of both sessions as well as Carla Roth, Justin Colson, Arie van Steensel, and John E. Jordan for their feedback on successive drafts. 1 See Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Dresden (hereafter SHStA), 13749, Bürgschaftsbuch der Stadt Freiberg (1533–1545), no. 425, f. 231r. This was the typical resolution in cases of this type. 2 This is not to say all parties sought resolution. Indeed, as legal anthropologists have long shown, some people are quite content to remain in a protracted state of conflict; see Roberts (1979). On conflict resolution in early modern Europe more generally, see Cummins and Kounine (2016). 3 Walker (1971). 4 Friedrichs acknowledges two distinctive attributes of the German home town: the greater importance of property ownership, and artisanal honour. See Friedrichs (2014), 488–95. See as well the other articles in this special issue of Central European History, and an earlier article by Friedrichs (1997), 163–85. 5 For a thorough overview of Blickle’s work and responses to it, see Brady (2007), 33–51. For his own work, see especially Blickle (1975, 1987, 1998). 6 See the introduction and many of the essays in Halvorson and Spierling (2008). Within German historiography, there is also an older tradition of Verflechtungsgechichte that examined the social networks of nobles and other elites. See for example, Reinhard (1979). 7 The literature on this is voluminous; for an overview of and suggestions for future research, see Jordan (2016), 30–50. Of the history of crime, see Schwerhoff (2011). 8 The centrality of guarantors to Freiberg’s legal practices is explored in greater depth in my forthcoming book on Freiberg’s legal culture, Bonding through the Law. Legal Culture in Early Modern Germany. Besides being used to provide surety for peaceful behaviour, Freibergers, mediated through the court, used guarantors for numerous other purposes. 9 For Freiberg’s distinctive municipal code, see See Ermisch (1891a). No good English translation exists for Bürgschaft, the practice of using guarantors. For this reason, I retain the German term throughout the text. 10 On the growth of the written word in urban record keeping, see Mostert and Adamska (2014). In German, this is known as Verschriftlichung. For a thorough account, see Isenmann (2001), 1–94, 161–261. 11 Pohl-Zucker (2003), 28–54. 12 Hindle (1996), 213–48. 13 Houlbrooke (1979), 45–46; Wunderli (1981), 40–49; Brigden (1989), 147–48. 14 For criminal cases, Gerd Schwerhoff and Ulrich Henselmeyer mention the use of guarantors in Cologne and Nuremberg respectively, but only in passing; see Schwerhoff (1991), 133; Henselmeyer (2002), 77, 139, 143, 145. Most previous research on guarantors concentrates on their roles in financial cases. See, for example, Postles (1993), 65–78; Hoppe (1997). 15 Given their common name, profession, and gap in years between their becoming citizens, it is possible they were father and son, but I have not found archival confirmation for this. 16 See SHStA Dresden, 13749, Bürgschaftsbuch der Stadt Freiberg (1533–1545), no. 425, f. 169–234. 17 For a published version of the tax register, see Hingst and Gerlach (1882), 25–60.

Conflict, community, and the law 91 18 As indicated by the high overlap between the tax register and watchmen lists, Freibergers were generally watchmen in the quarter in which they lived. For the registers of housing purchases, see for example, SHStA Dresden, 12613, Kaufbücher von St. Nicolai in Freiberg, nos. 71–79. For the list of neighbourhood watchmen, see Herrmann (1965), 189–207. If, and how often, people moved between quarters is not something I have had a chance to investigate thoroughly. 19 For the annual list of new citizens, see Herrmann (1965), 1–139; for the guild masters, 158–88. Further data are provided by a series of articles by Konrad Knebel on Freiberg’s guilds in the early modern period. The articles include biographical sketches of many of the masters. See Knebel (1894), 1–116; (1897), 1–145; (1899), 7–114; (1900), 13–37; (1903), 7–76; (1904), 29–68; (1907a), 34–45; (1907b), 46–50; (1908), 83–128. 20 For those years, there were an additional 47 cases in the register that did not include guarantors. 21 The aforementioned court register concludes in 1545, and the next regularly recorded register does not start until 1561. There are no other tax registers from the sixteenth century as comprehensive as that of 1546. 22 This means the essay will prescind from engaging in the debate about the changing nature of community over the early modern period. Significant research has been done on this topic, much of it sparked by the nineteenth-century sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies and his argument that there was a transition from a Gemeinschaft of face-to-face communication to a Gesellschaft of more institution-based relationships, an idea that as Joel Harrington notes, historians have thoroughly modified over the last century. See Tönnies (1887); Harrington (2008), 103. For England, there has been much debate on whether there was a decline in communal relations over the early modern period, particularly as a result of the massive increase in (mainly financial) litigation, and whether this represents the decaying of neighbourly and communal relationships. See, especially Muldrew (1996), 915–42; more recently, Stretton (2013), 189–209. 23 See SHStA Dresden, 13749, Bürgschaftsbuch der Stadt Freiberg (1533–1545), no. 425, f. 171r, 181r, 197v, 202v, 224v, and 228v. 24 Ibidem, f. 199v. 25 In addition to the fourteen, there was also a thief who went by the alias Hans Richter (his real name was Hans Geisler), who was banished for theft, begging, and using multiple identities. SHStA Dresden, 13749, Urfriede- und Zetergeschreibuch (1559– 1578), Nr. 420, f. 124r. 26 When a person left a city for a number of years, he or she had to repurchase citizenship rights upon return. The cost of acquiring citizenship was nominal; in 1577, it typically cost one or two gulden. Not including the offspring of existing burghers, fifty newcomers gained citizenship in 1577. Combined, they paid 102 gulden, 15 groschen and 6 pennies. See Gerlach (1872), 827. 27 See SHStA Dresden, 13749, Bürgschaftsbuch der Stadt Freiberg (1533–1545), no. 425, f. 184r, 188v, 197r, 211r, and 212r. 28 See SHStA Dresden, 13749, Gelübdebuch der Stadt Freiberg (1540–1547), no. 381, f. 36r, 60v, and SHStA Dresden, 13749, Gelübdebuch der Stadt Freiberg (1547–1561), no. 382, f. 17r, 320r, and 325r. 29 Section 2 of the Stadtrecht details the conditions to be a property owner in Freiberg. Section 2.1 includes the stipulation requiring guarantors to be property owners. Sections 5.16 to 5.18 detail the stipulations on forfeiting one’s property. See Ermisch (1891a), 25–28 and 37. 30 The Freiberg city court recorded all purchases and sales of residential and commercial properties (and indexed them by the first-name of the buyer), making it easy (in principle) to check whether someone held property in Freiberg. 31 This stipulation stemmed from a 1516 amendment to the Freiberg Stadtrecht. See Ermisch (1891b), 171. As Christopher Friedrichs (1996), 243, notes, there were some exceptions to this rule since cities did sometimes permit non-citizens to own property.

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32 There seems to have been some flexibility in the rule’s application. For example, in 1568, the organist Balthasar Springer served as guarantor for his relative Elias Springer, but it was not until two years later that Balthasar became a citizen. See SHStA Dresden, 13749, Gelübdebuch: Real und Verbalinjurien (1561–1587), no. 385, fol 117r. 33 Migration is a topic that has received much historical attention in recent years. For a thorough assessment of the historiography and suggestions for future research, see the introduction to De Munck and Winter (2012). 34 As Paul Griffiths warns, we must be careful not to draw too hard and fast a line between insiders and outsiders. The boundary between the two could be quite fluid: people moved from one to the other, even in early modern Germany, where such demarcations were usually more rigid than in England. See Paul Griffiths (2000), 115–33. On insiders and outsiders generally, see amongst others, Boone and Prak (1996); Coy (2008); Gestrich, lutz and Uerlings (2009). 35 Silver mining was by far the dominant industry in Freiberg at this time. Miners, however, did not have a guild but rather a brotherhood (Knappschaft), a less well-defined form of organization. See Löscher (1956), 162–90. On the different jobs in mining, especially those done by women, see Karant-Nunn (1989), 29–46. 36 It is not clear why Nicolai is overrepresented. Perhaps as the second wealthiest quarter, it was more of a middle ground between those of lower and higher social status. 37 The higher representation of guarantors from within the city walls is another indication of the importance of town walls in marking a boundary between insider and outsider. See Mintzker (2012), 19–40. 38 A few widows are included in the tax register. 39 For an overview of the different types of people (besides citizens) that one found in an early modern city, see Amelang (2007), 42–55. 40 Freiberg’s municipal legal code does not address whether women were allowed to act as guarantors. Such clarification of women’s legal standing in Saxony only came about in 1572 with the promulgation of the Saxon Constitution. See Eberle (1964). Women did occasionally serve as financial guarantors. For an example, see SHStA Dresden 13749: Gelübdebuch der Stadt Freiberg (1569–1575), no. 386, f. 308r. 41 Hardwick (2009), 183–221. On women’s work networks, see Chojnacka (2001). 42 Ogilvie (2004), 325–59. 43 Which is not to say that each of them could not also have been a major source of conflict. On kinship, see Sabean (1998); Teuscher (1998); Sabean, Teuscher and Mathieu (2007); Tadmor (2010), 15–48; on guilds, see Simon-Muscheid (1988); on neighbourhood, see Boulton (1987); Sutter (2002); Garrioch and Peel (2007), 663–76; Schedensack (2007); Piltz (2015). With wealth, much of the research has to do with questions of patronage, and thus unequal wealth; see Kettering (2002). 44 When there was more than one person being pledged for, I checked the relationship of each pledgee against every guarantor in that case. When there was more than one guarantor, I checked the relationship of the pledgee to all the guarantors, assessing whether the criteria matched for at least one of the guarantors. For medieval England, Dave Postles found that certain kinds of cases needed at least two pledges. I have yet to see any legal statute or pattern in the Freiberg cases that suggests why some cases needed more than one guarantor. See Postles (1993), 69. 45 See SHStA Dresden, 13749, Bürgschaftsbuch der Stadt Freiberg (1533–1545), no. 425, f. 213r. 46 A task made all the more challenging by the common practice of widows remarrying and taking their new husband’s surname. Further, god parentage could be an important source of kin dynamics, but here too one would need to consult birth registers and then reconstruct family trees. On god parentage in late-medieval Bern, see Teuscher (1998), 115–34. 47 Thus in 1543, Martin Backoffen acted as a guarantor for his son Valten after the latter had struck Adam Bartisch. SHStA Dresden 13749: Bürgschaftsbuch der Stadt Freiberg (1533–1545), no. 425, f. 187r.

Conflict, community, and the law 93 48 A scribe would infrequently note that someone had vouched for his brother-in-law. For example, in a 1542 case, the record states that Bastian Steinmetz pledged for his brother-in-law (Schwager) without giving the latter’s name. See SHStA Dresden 13749: Bürgschaftsbuch der Stadt Freiberg (1533–1545), no. 425, f. 178r. 49 One could even add a few more percentage points to account for remarrying widows, but absent a significant number of cases, it would not change the impression that kinship was not behind most of these cases. 50 See for example, Teuscher (1998), 39–113. 51 That there was a lower percentage of positive matches, and a higher percentage of negative matches with two or more guarantors, is quite surprising, since only one of the two guarantors had to share the same profession as the pledgee to count as it being a positive match. Therefore, by doubling the number of guarantors, one would statistically expect more positive matches (as indeed was found with all the other factors analysed). 52 For example, the smith Jacuff Schrotter pledged for his apprentice Simon (his surname is not given) in 1542. See SHStA Dresden 13749: Bürgschaftsbuch der Stadt Freiberg (1533–1545), no. 425, f. 172v. 53 See Schulze (1917), 34. 54 For more on guilds, see the contribution of Hadewijch Masure to this volume. 55 SHStA Dresden, 13749: Bürgschaftsbuch der Stadt Freiberg (1533–1545), no. 425, f. 230r. 56 Ibidem, f. 187v. 57 When the guarantor and pledgee had a net worth (Vermögen) within two hundred gulden of each other, I considered them to be financial peers. 58 See SHStA Dresden, 13749: Bürgschaftsbuch der Stadt Freiberg (1533–1545), no. 425, f. 217r. Even though Saxony was thoroughly Lutheran at this time, Freiberg’s main church still was called the Freiberger Dom, and the quarter was referred to as Dom Virginis. 59 Krumpholz pledged that Koler would present himself before the mine-master (Bergmeister) of Marienberg within fourteen days’ time. See SHStA Dresden, 13749: Bürgschaftsbuch der Stadt Freiberg (1533–1545), no. 425, f. 173v. 60 On neighbourhoods, see Boulton (1987). 61 On the urban peace, see Eibach (2005), 189–205. For an excellent overview on the relationship between community members and governing institutions in the early modern period, see the set of essays in Urban History 34.1 (2007), especially the introduction by Joachim Eibach and Reingard Esser. See also Dinges and Sack (2000). 62 For a thorough investigation into early modern court personnel in Nuremberg, see Bendlage (2003, 2002), 71–93. 63 See Horden and Smith (London 1998); Fontaine and Schlumbohm (2000). 64 Perhaps a more extensive analysis of kinship and god parentage would be profitable. 65 On these potential other networks, see Clark (2000); Lynch (2003); Eckstein and Terpstra (2009).

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Knebel, K., ‘Rot-, Zinn- und Glockengießer Freibergs. Fünfter Beitrag zur Kenntnis des älteren Kunsthandwerkes in Sachsen’, MFA, 39 (1903), 7–76. Knebel, K., ‘Balistarii, Schußmeister oder Armbrustmacher. Sechster Beitrag zur Geschichte des älteren Handwerkes in Sachsen’, MFA, 40 (1904), 29–68. Knebel, K., ‘Die Freiberger Kupferschmiede. Siebenter Beitrag zur Kenntnis des älteren Handwerks in Sachsen’, MFA, 43 (1907a), 34–45. Knebel, K., ‘Die Zarworchten, Plattner oder Panzermacher. Achter Beitrag zur Kenntnis des älteren Kandwerkes in Sachsen’, MFA, 43 (1907b), 46–50. Knebel, K., ‘Die Gewerken der Schmiedehandwerke, besonders der Waffenzünfte Freibergs. Neunter Beitrag zur Geschichte der Kunst und des Handwerks’, MFA, 44 (1908), 83–128. Löscher, H., ‘Die Erzgebirgischen Knappschaften vor und nach der Reformation’, Blätter für Deutsche Landesgeschichte, 92 (1956), 162–90. Lynch, K.A., Individuals, Families, and Communities in Europe, 1200–1800. The Urban Foundations of Western Society (Cambridge, 2003). Mintzker, Y., The Defortification of the German City, 1689–1866 (Cambridge, 2012). Mostert, M., and A. Adamska (eds), Writing and the Administration of Medieval Towns. Medieval Urban Literacy I (Turnhout, 2014). Muldrew, C., ‘The Culture of Reconciliation. Community and the Settlement of Economic Disputes in Early Modern England’, The Historical Journal, 39 (1996), 915–42. Ogilvie, S., ‘How Does Social Capital Affect Women? Guilds and Communities in Early Modern Germany’, American Historical Review, 109 (2004), 325–59. Piltz, E., ‘Nachbarschaft und Gemeinschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit. Studien zu Funktionsweisen organisierter Nachbarschaften am Beispiel von Coesfeld und Andernach’, Technical University of Dresden PhD thesis, 2015. Pohl-Zucker, S., ‘Uneasy Peace. The Practice of the Stallung Ritual in Zürich, 1400–1525’, Journal of Early Modern History, 7 (2003), 28–54. Postles, D., ‘Personal Pledging in Manorial Courts in the later Middle Ages’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 75 (1993), 65–78. Reinhard, W., Freunde und Kreaturen. ‘Verflechtung’ als Konzept zur Erforschung historischer Führungsgruppen. Römische Oligarchie um 1600 (Munich, 1979). Roberts, S., Order and Dispute. An Introduction to Legal Anthropology (Harmondsworth, 1979). Sabean, D., Kinship in Neckarhausen, 1700–1870 (Cambridge, 1998). Sabean, D., S. Teuscher and J. Mathieu (eds), Kinship in Europe. Approaches to Long-Term Developments (1300–1900) (New York, 2007). Schedensack, C., Nachbarn im Konflikt. Zur Entstehung und Beilegung von Rechtsstreitigkeiten um Haus und Hof im frühneuzeitlichen Münster (Munster, 2007). Schulze, F., ‘Die Handwerkerorganisation in Freiberg i. Sa. bis zum Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts’, MFA, 52 (1917), 1–86. Schwerhoff, G., Köln im Kreuzverhör. Kriminalität, Herrschaft und Gesellschaft in einer frühneuzeitlichen Stadt (Bonn, 1991). Schwerhoff, G., Historische Kriminalitätsforschung (Frankfurt, 2011). Simon-Muscheid, K., Basler Handwerkszünfte im Spätmittelalter. Zunftinterne Strukturen und innerstädtische Konflikte (Bern, 1988). Stretton, T., ‘Written Obligations, Litigation and Neighbourliness, 1580–1680’, in S. Hindle, A. Shepard and J. Walter (eds), Remaking English Society. Social Relations and Social Change in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 2013), 189–209. Sutter, P., Von guten und bösen Nachbarn. Nachbarschaft als Beziehungsform im spätmittelalterlichen Zürich (Zurich, 2002).

Conflict, community, and the law 97 Tadmor, N., ‘Early Modern English Kinship in the Long Run. Reflections on Continuity and Change’, Continuity and Change, 25 (2010), 15–48. Teuscher, S., Bekannte – Klienten – Verwandte. Soziabilität und Politik in der Stadt Bern um 1500 (Cologne, 1998). Tönnies, F., Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Abhandlung des Communismus und des Socialismus als empirischer Culturformen (Leipzig, 1887). Walker, M., German Home Towns. Community, State, and General Estate, 1648–1871 (Ithaca, NY, 1971). Wunderli, R., London Church Courts and Society on the Eve of the Reformation (Cambridge, MA, 1981).

6

The poor of medieval Zagreb between solidarity, marginalisation and integration* Suzana Miljan and Bruno Škreblin

Poverty was an omnipresent social phenomenon in the medieval period; however, the poor have not left many traces in the sources. They were not a unified group; on the contrary, they were heterogeneous and belonged to all social groups. Since the idea of poverty was to an extent a matter of perception, it is a relative concept. Urbanites, peasants, nobles and clerics are all mentioned as being poor in medieval sources. The poor were most visible in medieval urban society, which was far from static due to the large masses of people coming to cities and towns, carried by waves of colonisation and urbanisation. The aim of this chapter is to show how institutions, individuals and secular and ecclesiastical authorities took care of the poor within a relatively small town in Central Europe. Zagreb had a population of several thousands by the end of the medieval period, and the basis of its community and urban life was founded on networks of family and kin. Consequently, the care for the poor was a local matter, and there was no particular reason for everyday acts of kindness to be recorded in the sources. The medieval poor were in general a social group that left few traces in the written documents; thus, to create a comprehensive picture of them, it is necessary to use a wide range of available sources. The fact that the sources most commonly used in such research, the last wills and testaments, are extremely rarely preserved for medieval Zagreb, unlike urban Mediterranean communities, poses an additional problem. In this chapter, then, the care for the poor has to be looked at through normative, legal and administrative sources, such as the court and finance records and cadastral books (caternae) of the town magistrate.1 The problem of poverty can be analysed at different levels, reflecting the relative notion of being poor, and of being perceived as poor by others. This chapter analyses the urban poor of late-medieval Zagreb, asking how they were integrated into urban society, and which kind of activities pertaining to this group can be elicited from the documents. The main part of the text, which is preceded by a short introduction to medieval Zagreb and its settlements, is divided into four major parts. The first deals with normative and legislative texts regarding poverty in Zagreb, whose content will be contrasted with examples from everyday life and the functioning of the urban community. The second part addresses theoretical approaches to poverty, as reflected in the early fourteenth-century treatises by Bishop Augustin of Zagreb. Following this, the third part surveys the history of institutionalised care

The poor of medieval Zagreb 99

Figure 6.1 Map of Gradec and Kaptol in the sixteenth century Source: M. Stier, Mappae geographicae regni Hungariae et terrarum adiacentium, Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, Cod. 8609, f. 17v.

for the poor, mainly by the hospitals in both settlements of medieval Zagreb. The argument is that the increase in the number of hospitals was the consequence of a period of growth and prosperity of the town. The final section discusses some cases of individual poverty, using names identified in the sources, to explore the sources of aid and assistance to the poor who were at the margins of society.

Medieval Zagreb From the beginning of the twelfth century, Croatian lands gradually came under the Crown of St Stephen, after the extinction of the ruling dynasties. Thus, Hungary became united with the lands south of its borders, Croatia-Dalmatia and Slavonia. However, unlike western parts of Europe, the Kingdom of Hungary did not experience a wave of proper urbanisation in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In this ‘pre-urban period’, larger and more significant settlements were formed: in most cases, next to centres of bishoprics (or archbishoprics) or to centres of secular authorities (royal residences or centres of counties); however, these settlements did not enjoy full right of autonomy. The bishopric of Zagreb, for example, was

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founded in 1094, and the first settlement of ‘guests’ (hospites) is mentioned in the twelfth century as Vicus latinorum, situated in close proximity to the cathedral. Similar examples of Latin settlers can be found in Pécs, Esztergom, Eger and Várad, all centres of bishoprics.2 Proper urbanisation processes in the Kingdom of Hungary-Croatia started only in the thirteenth century, in large part as a consequence of the revival of the Kingdom after the Mongol invasion. Medieval Hungary also comprised the territory of Dalmatia, including the urban communes on the eastern Adriatic coast, which had maintained a certain continuity from antiquity, as had Zadar, Trogir, Split and Dubrovnik. Because of the distance between centralised authority and these towns, the latter were able to preserve their urban autonomy. This situation was only interrupted by Venice, which eventually absorbed them (with the exception of Dubrovnik) into its maritime commonwealth.3 When speaking of ‘medieval Croatian cities’, one has to bear in mind the differences in the origins and development of two types of medieval Croatian cities. Those along the coast generally had ancient origins and were exposed more to the social and political influence of Venice and other Italian cities, while those situated more inland, in Slavonia (present-day Croatia), were founded over the course of the mid–Middle Ages, and had the same characteristics as Hungarian and Central European towns. All urban communes in Dalmatia closed their high councils and formed an elite layer in the form of a patriciate, while in the second type of towns, the councils and magistrate were of an open type, incorporating all full-rights citizens, as was the case in other central European towns.4 The history of medieval Zagreb fits with the latter type and is a story of two independent communities. The free royal town of Gradec (Civitas montis Grecensis) was founded in 1242, as a result of a royal policy of creating fortified urban settlements in the aftermath of the Mongol invasion. This new town gained full independence from the older urban settlement of the bishop’s borough of Zagreb, which was situated nearby and remained under the rule of the bishop and his chapter, henceforth known as the Chapter (Kaptol), and continued to function as the centre of the diocese of Zagreb.5 Although the bishop’s borough was considered a town, historians of medieval Zagreb tend to focus on Gradec because this settlement developed into an economic centre, and its trades and crafts gave it a more intensive urban life than that of the nearby bishop’s borough.6 In this chapter, however, the history of the bishop’s borough is also very important because the cathedral and several monastic communities were located within it, which certainly played a significant role in the urban development of Gradec, despite the legal and jurisdictional boundaries existing between two communities. Although the bishop’s borough was a smaller urban community than Gradec’s, it was the seat of an important ecclesiastical institution, which by the end of the medieval period had become the principal landlord in medieval Slavonia and one of the wealthiest dioceses of the Kingdom.7 Gradec had an estimated population of 3,000 in the mid-fourteenth century, but growth stagnated in the fifteenth century, and the urban population had even slightly declined by the end of the century.8 In comparison to the other contemporary urban

The poor of medieval Zagreb 101 settlements in western Europe, Gradec should be considered a small town; but compared with the population of other towns in Hungary and Slavonia, Gradec can be considered a medium-sized or even large town within the Kingdom.9 Extensive research on the urban network of the Kingdom of Hungary has been done by András Kubinyi, but initially he omitted Slavonia completely and later ranked Zagreb in the middle in the urban hierarchy.10 Recently, Szabolcs Varga has demonstrated that the position of Zagreb on Kubinyi’s scale should have been much higher: it occupied third place (right after Buda and Pozsony/Bratislava).11 The existence of a leper-house also gave it urban importance, since leper-houses were founded in urban centres of significance.12 In any case, Gradec was the most developed and important town in medieval Slavonia, and its relatively small number of inhabitants were also a characteristic of other towns in the Kingdom of Hungary.13 The town magistrate of Gradec was headed by a judge (iudex), who was elected by the citizens annually, on the Feast of St Blaise (3 February). Beside the judge, the government consisted of eight jurors (jurati) and twenty councillors; only fully fledged citizens (cives) could fulfil these functions. In 1377, formal division of the town magistrate into four major ethnic groups – Slavs, Germans, Latins and Hungarians – was established (called the linguae). Each ethnic group had the right to choose two jurors and five councillors, while the town judge was elected from a different ethnic group each year. These ethnic divisions only concerned the organisation of the town magistrate; it did not really influence everyday urban life. There are several examples of marriages between family members belonging to different language groups;14 on the other hand, however, some ethnic groups clustered in certain parts of the town in the mid-fourteenth century: witness the name of one of Gradec’s suburbs, Vicus teutonicorum, and in one case the main town gates (the Stone Gate) are referred to as the ‘Latin Gate’.15 Similar divisions were also introduced in Buda in 1439, between Germans and Hungarians. Katalin Szende suggested a classification of towns based on ethnic composition and the organisation of governance, thereby distinguishing three types of towns. The first encompassed towns which ignored ethnic structure and whose councils consisted of the most distinguished citizens regardless of ethnicity (Szeged, Sopron). The second included towns in which a specific group was privileged. Such towns were mainly situated in Transylvania, where the Germans (Saxons) accounted for the majority, such as Braşov, Sibiu, Sighişoara and Bistriţa. The third were towns that decided on parity in governance; such linguistic divisions existed in other Transylvanian towns during the sixteenth century.16 Although it is not clear whether Gradec’s parishes were organised according to language, the membership of some confraternities seem to have been along ethnic lines, as the sources mention confraternities of Germans, Latins and Slavs (but not of Hungarians, interestingly enough). These confraternities were most certainly, amongst other things, helping members of their respective languages socially.17 In general, the second half of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century was the period of the strongest urban development of Gradec. Towards the second half of the century gradual stagnation of development occurred, which manifested itself in a smaller number of foreign merchants. Yet it seems that

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initially the bishop’s borough of Zagreb was not affected by this process, since its development flourished, attracting more settlers and merchants. The growing Ottoman threat caused problems in the wider area around Zagreb, and many refugees from Croatia found shelter in Zagreb and its surrounding areas. But the Ottomans were not the main reason for stagnation, since burghers were affected by the increasing self-interest of the nobility, who were engaging extensively in pursuing trading opportunities. Be that as it may, by the end of the medieval period, Zagreb’s role became more defensive, as the town was situated close to the borders of the Kingdom.18

The poor and poverty in the normative sources The community of medieval Zagreb had a long tradition of taking good care of its poor, who were mentioned in civic records as early as the Golden Bull of King Béla IV (the foundation charter of the town of 1242). This charter stipulated that the poor ought to receive at least a third of the property of those who died heirless and intestate (the other two-thirds were destined for the urban community and the Church).19 Documents from a later date confirm that this stipulation was put into practice. For example, in a case from 1528 a dispute arose with regard to the legacy of a certain Verbek. Martin Čermek claimed to be his heir, although the former did not draw up a testament. The conclusion of the court was that if Martin could not prove himself Verbek’s heir, the property should be divided in a manner that twothirds were given to the poor.20 Although this case only partially conforms to the rules set out in the Golden Bull, since the poor were awarded more than formally required, it proves without doubt that this charter continued to influence care for the poor in practice. The only theoretical treatise directly addressing the issue of poverty extant from medieval Zagreb is De bonis et usu Christi et discipulorum seu apostolorum [On material goods of Christ and his disciples] from 1321/1322.21 Its author, Bishop Augustin Kažotić of Zagreb, was a Dominican who studied in Paris. After taking his seat in Zagreb, Kažotić started an all-encompassing ecclesiastical, cultural and educational reform of the diocese, and renewed the liturgy.22 Kažotić wrote the treatise in Avignon, where he was involved in a debate with Franciscans, who claimed that Christ and the apostles held no property and that poverty was a supreme ideal in itself. Although Kažotić was an expert theologian, he also had day-to-day contact with the poor within the town and in the surrounding countryside.23 His treatise was basically a speech that was written down by a notary of the Avignon curia. As a bishop, Kažotić was considered a protector of poor, marginalised individuals, as well as of those who had willingly given up their earthly possessions to live among the poor.24 Several interesting ideas can be found in this text. Weighing in with other debates, Kažotić begins his exposition with the question as to whether Christ and his disciples owned property, giving examples from the scriptures, starting with the Gospel of John. He argues, for instance, that Judas with his money bag was certainly Jesus’ chosen treasurer.25 Kažotić thought that Christ, poor himself, received what was offered to him ‘and then spent it

The poor of medieval Zagreb 103 abundantly on his needs, those of his disciples and others in need’.26 Kažotić follows up on that by presenting several other examples to demonstrate that Christ and his disciples held money or goods in their possession. From the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, Kažotić draws the conclusion that Christ did not own property because he was travelling and preaching.27 The second topic of discussion in his work is whether poverty is perfect per se, or instead imperfect, and a means to obtain perfection, and Kažotić tries to show that poverty is imperfect. Ultimate poverty is a path towards destruction, he insists, with the understanding that poverty is not a virtue.28 The text is a product of the European religious intellectual milieu of his time, but in a way precedes the clear demarcation line between idealised spiritual poverty and the bitter reality of material poverty, which would characterise European thought from the mid-fourteenth century onwards.29 However, Kažotić on several occasions mentions Judas’ money bag, and to a certain extent its counterpart would be charity boxes in hospitals, which were intended for the destitute sick. Besides writing this influential text, Kažotić initiated the foundation of a cathedral school in Zagreb, guided by the idea that the poor needed education.30 It was as a consequence of Kažotić’s reforms and broader developments in this period that the statutes of the Chapter of Zagreb were instituted from the midfourteenth century, compiled by Archdeacon John of Gorica; they emphasised the regulations of Bishop Kažotić, which determined the stipend for the master of the school, who in turn was required to educate clerics and poor students for free. According to the statutes, the master should not require gifts from poor students who had to beg, or would have to beg if someone could or would not support them. Those students who received support from parents or family but who did not have estates and revenues of their own had to provide the master a capon and four breads for Christmas, four breads and cheese or twenty eggs for Easter, and, finally, a chicken and breads for the feast of St Stephen the King (20 August).31 They seem to have been symbolic gifts; however, they also reflect the ideas of Kažotić about the intellectual development of the inhabitants of Zagreb. His educational reforms were important, because not all were able to afford to study abroad.

Hospitals in medieval Zagreb Several hospitals are mentioned in the sources of late-medieval Zagreb, three of which were located in the bishop’s borough and one in the town. This mirrors developments elsewhere in Europe, for example in late-medieval Florence, where numerous hospitals were founded in the later Middle Ages; and these institutions also became specialised.32 An increase in numbers is also noticeable in the Kingdom of Hungary-Croatia, as has been shown by Judit Majorossy and Katalin Szende.33 In the following section we argue that the foundation of several hospitals in different parts of late-medieval Zagreb was the consequence of the town’s prosperity, as well as of the charitable sentiments evoked by poverty, which led to the authorities learning how to deal with it.

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The first hospital in Zagreb is mentioned in a fourteenth-century source.34 It was only in the fifteenth century that four different hospitals could be distinguished: St Elisabeth’s, St Mary’s, St Anthony’s and St Peter’s – the latter a leperhouse. The oldest hospital was St Elisabeth’s, situated in the bishop’s borough of Zagreb.35 It is uncertain when it was built, but in 1357 it was fully functional and received half of the adjacent building from a canon named Dionysius.36 In 1429, the rector of the hospital was Master Stephen, a canon of Čazma,37 and a few years later Bishop John Alben bequeathed 25 golden florins to the hospital.38 A nobleman, Mark of Čava, also left one of his estates to the hospital.39 It seems that the hospital was abandoned by the mid-fifteenth century, as can be concluded from a papal charter of 1451 by which the pope ordered the Abbot of St Mary in Zagreb to solemnly introduce the bishop of Zagreb to the office of the patron of the hospital of St Elisabeth. The bishop had to find a chaplain and other personnel.40 The fact is that the bishop had to reorganise the hospital’s management, which was still functioning and had poor and sick people on its premises. The responsibility of the bishop of Zagreb was further underlined by the donation charter for the fief ( predium) Obreš in the territory of Ivanić. In 1454 Bishop Benedict of Zagreb donated it to his sister Barbara, with the clause that if she were not to have any heirs it should be bequeathed to the hospital of St Elisabeth. The value of the fief was estimated at 332 golden florins, which were supposed to be used to care for the poor. From the same charter it is known that a chapel devoted to St Mary was erected near the hospital as result of the bishop’s intervention.41 The hospital of St Elisabeth continued functioning into the sixteenth century. From a dispute regarding bequeaths of a certain canon, Paul of Sisak, it is for instance known that in 1506 the hospital received five golden florins, and another three for the poor staying in the hospital.42 In 1512 the hospital required a new rector, and Archbishop Thomas Bakócz appointed Canon Mark of Zagreb, the former chaplain of the Ban Andrew Bot, to this position, to ensure that the poor would not be left without supervision. The new rector supported the poor living in the hospital drawing on the income from his personal estates.43 A kind of an inventory of the hospital was compiled approximately at the time of this appointment, consisting of a combination of ecclesiastical and everyday objects, as well as money (12 florins in total) intended to be distributed among the poor. Unfortunately, there is no list of beneficiaries, nor are the sums and frequencies of the gifts specified; however, the estates belonging to the hospital are mentioned in the charters. From the beginning of the sixteenth century, the sources documenting the history of St Elisabeth’s hospital become more and more abundant, but this history is not part of this analysis.44 The second hospital, St Anthony’s, located in the bishop’s borough, is rarely mentioned in the sources.45 It is possible that the parish priest of St Anthony’s church was in charge of running this foundation and that one of the very few sources mentioning it is again a will: in this case, Bishop John Alben of Zagreb, who left 25 florins to the hospital in 1433.46 The aforementioned Paul of Sisak also bequeathed 3 florins to the hospital of St Anthony in the Latin Borough (hospital sancti Anthonii in vico Latinorum) in 1506. At that time, it is certain that there were

The poor of medieval Zagreb 105 actually poor residing in the hospital (even though we do not know how many of them), since Canon Paul left some money to be given to them.47 The leper-house of St Peter was the third charitable institution in the borough.48 Leper-houses were institutions for the confinement of people suffering from leprosy, who were permanently expelled from inhabited areas.49 Therefore, the leperhouse of St Peter was situated outside the town, in an area under the bishop’s jurisdiction, far enough away to contain the disease.50 The first mention of leprosy in the Zagreb region dates back to 1217, when King Andrew II confirmed the estates of a certain Giles: the border of the estate, called Prevlaka, ran from the River Sava to a place indicated as the transitum leprosorum.51 It is interesting that later sources testify to the connection between lepers and water. Augustin Kažotić emphasises in one of his treatises that many within his congregation believed that submerging into water while reciting the words of baptism could cure leprosy.52 The leper-house is mentioned for the first time in 1433.53 Unfortunately, none of the lepers living in the leper-house can be identified.54 Over the course of the sixteenth century, the extant sources no longer mention the presence of any lepers in references to the hospital. In 1560, for instance, the archdeacon of Čazma, who managed the hospital of St Peter, gave a vineyard in Laščina to Archdeacon George of Petrovina, under condition that he would take over spiritual care of the poor in the hospital and offer them his services as chaplain.55 It needs to be emphasised that according to the literature, the two hospitals in the Latin borough, St Anthony and St Peter, were merged at some point in the sixteenth century, as the latter ceased to function as a leper-house.56 It is more likely, however, that the hospital of St Anthony simply disappeared, while that of St Peter got a different function. The fourth and last hospital was located in the town itself and was dedicated to the Virgin Mary.57 It was first mentioned in 1429,58 and there are debates about its position within the town, but it was most likely to have been situated on the main square, opposite to the town hall and the Church of St Mark.59 The hospital was likely expanded from the 1440s.60 In general, the hospital was financially supported by the urban authorities, and received monetary gifts from artisans, and bequests and the charitable deeds of the town’s inhabitants.61 Regarding the administration of the town’s hospital, several rectors are mentioned in the sources. In fact, to be appointed rector of the hospital sometimes played a decisive role in becoming a member of the town magistrate as a judge at a later stage. Andrew Šafar, for example, was mentioned in a fraud case related to bequests made to the hospital in 1431;62 and due to the nature of the case, it is possible that he was in charge of the hospital at that time. He was later elected as judge. Another member of the urban elite who is mentioned unmistakably as rector was Martin Tomić. His function as rector of the hospital likely helped him to obtain his position of town judge in 1439. Thus, it is not surprising that he bequeathed to the hospital in 1471.63 Not all rectors in charge of the hospital of St Mary were necessarily town councillors, since Clemens, mentioned in 1466, was a priest. Furthermore, there is a case of a woman being procurator of the hospital. A certain Margaret was the procuratrix pauperum hospitalensium shortly before 1450.64 This is an unusual case from the history of the hospitals in medieval Zagreb, since

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no other women are mentioned in the extant sources as being in charge of the hospital. The hospital owned various estates within and outside the town walls.65 These properties are frequently mentioned in sources from the second half of the fifteenth century. In 1471, Judge Martin made a bequest of hayfields to the altar of St Nicholas in the chapel of the hospital of the Virgin Mary.66 Arable lands owned by the hospital were situated in the fields outside the town, but there was also a vineyard and hayfield within the walls.67 These landed estates were the economic basis for the management of the hospital; however, from the sixteenth century the community stepped in by helping the hospital in money and in kind. These charitable acts were recorded in the town’s account book from the 1550s and 1580s, especially during the periods of Easter and Christmas.68

Paupers and beggars The few extant testaments from Zagreb reflect the attitude typical for other parts of medieval Europe,69 in the sense that they were frequently generous to the poor in general but rarely mention poor beneficiaries by name, although they occasionally mention widows or girls who required a dowry.70 They were more focused on groups of the poor,71 such as orphans or the poor of a certain hospital, than on specific individuals.72 However, there are several cases in which actual paupers are mentioned in the sources from medieval Zagreb. In 1368, for example, a poor man was living in the home of a certain Kursa (in domo Kurse, unus pauper homo).73 This was a poorer part of the town, as were the northern and western parts within the town walls.74 The suburbs were generally even poorer: paupers Blaise and John were living in the house of a certain John Jarić, according to the same source.75 From the mid-fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century, sources provide more information about the identity of the poor. One of them was a beggar (mendicus) by the name of Matthias, who is mentioned in 1451 in the course of a dispute between him and his son-in-law, Barnabas, son of Blaise of Mlaka. Matthias wounded Barnabas and, since he had admitted to the crime, was sentenced to a monetary penalty, which had to be divided between the victim and the urban authorities, and he had to cover the expenses of medical treatments.76 This case clearly reflects the notion that beggars were, at least partially, considered a part of the community.77 Although impoverished, Matthias had a family, namely a daughter with a husband, and his son-in-law might have even been a member of a petty noble family from outside the town. Although the sources do not tell us whether Matthias paid the fine, certainly the community did not perceive him to be that poor – in spite of styling him as a beggar – because he was fined; this was certainly not just a symbolic statement, but the most common form of punitive action of the town court, based on the crime and not on the social status of the defendant. The next case involving a beggar comes from 1501, when the beggar Čehko accused Peter of Osel of the theft of 14 florins, and the latter was tortured to force a confession. He claimed that he had stolen ‘nothing, but an old tunic and some nails for horse shoes’. Although he did not confess to stealing the money – and in truth

The poor of medieval Zagreb 107 14 florins was probably more than a beggar could have seen in a lifetime – Peter was found to have taken from the poor beggar his old rags, which was probably even worse. The conclusion of the court case was that Peter ‘was to be banished from the town by whipping’. However, in the end he was pardoned.78 Mid-sixteenth-century sources describe another dispute involving a beggar and his tunic. This time, the name of the beggar is not mentioned; the source only states that a shoemaker, Martin, stole the beggar’s tunic. ‘Bearing in mind pure justice, the shoemaker Martin should be broken on the wheel, since he stole some tunic in his house during night’.79 He was sentenced to death by torture for this misdeed. Again, it is not known whether the punishment was carried out. In all likelihood, it was not, because many cases attest to the leniency of the courts in Zagreb. However, the severity of the punishment shows that crimes towards weak members of society were considered extremely serious, to the level of capital offence. Finally, it is worth mentioning that the urban community of late-medieval Zagreb was aware of poverty as a social problem, which was used as an argument by the town council in their correspondence with the royal authorities about the condition of their walls,80 collection of royal revenues,81 conflicts on the right to trade between the town and the bishop’s borough,82 fear of the Ottomans, poverty in the town83 and infectious diseases or fire.84 All such situations might result, and in fact resulted, in the financial weakening of the entire community; even the community’s statements about their poverty should not be taken at face value; they might just play upon them to escape various taxes. However, what can be taken for granted is that such complaints demonstrate their awareness that poverty is a deplorable condition of which neither individuals nor communities were immune, and which had to provoke the compassion of the well-off and those who lived happier and easier lives.

Conclusions This chapter on the urban poor of Zagreb shows that the poor were present in the everyday life of the town. The question is whether the attempts to integrate them into the community or to marginalise them from all the spheres of social life prevailed as a general practice. In support of the idea that they were marginalised speaks the fact that the poor were excluded from any kind of decision making in the town, but in this respect they were no different from most other inhabitants. More likely, they were treated as an integral part of the community, especially because the few surviving cases of actual paupers show that the community demonstrated great understanding for them. Compassion was expected from all the members of the community, because everyone could have seen from the cases of their neighbours and family members how easily one could become poor and lose economic and social standing. Solidarity was therefore expected from a social, as well as a Christian, perspective. Systematic charitable aid, which the urban authorities gave to the poor residing in hospitals, also testifies to the level of care the urban community demonstrated. The charitable motivation of the authorities to care for the poor

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was probably more important than their concerns about the problem of poverty, because the relatively few poor in such a small town as Zagreb could not have been a major cause of social unrest. More probably, the authorities were influenced in their actions and ideas by prevailing models of social conduct adapted from other communities, among which the principles of medieval social Christianity were not the least important. The principles behind the care of and solidarity with the poor were written in the very core of the town’s organisation from the thirteenth century onwards. The Golden Bull and its operation in practice demonstrate that it was actually employed up to the end of the medieval period. Furthermore, ecclesiastical institutions and individuals were engaged in providing support, and their records – as, for example, the treatise of Bishop Augustin Kažotić of Zagreb – reflect actual social circumstances of such practical social support. The bishop not only put forward the idea that poverty is not a desirable state but took practical measures to elevate the circumstances of the poor. In his educational and charitable activities, he showed understanding for the fact that material rewards were needed for masters and students alike. There are some indications that he was involved in the founding of the hospital of St Elisabeth, establishing his legacy in this way. Hospitals in general were popular means for expressing charity, as they were very visible within the community, but also useful means for redeeming sins. Within the medieval Kingdom of Hungary-Croatia, the high number of Zagreb’s hospitals can be compared only with Buda, which also had four hospitals in total, putting the Croatian town side by side with the largest urban centre in the Kingdom. The developments were in many ways similar to the histories of charitable institutions in medieval England, which have been studied in much more detail. Although Zagreb’s hospitals were self-sufficient, the town’s support for them had both a practical and a symbolic meaning. The urban authorities gave charity in kind – wood, oil or meat. They also distributed charity in the period of Lent and Easter, when it was expected and when people were more prone to give it, since they are the most important Christian feasts. The mentioning of actual paupers in the sources testifies to some rather interesting ideas. Paupers were certainly on the margins of society and completely excluded from the town’s administration, but they were not the only ones (women were in the same position, for example): thus, poverty is not a designate marker of marginalisation. Still, although their economic position was extremely weak, it was understood that poverty could happen to anyone in the community, which made it another good reason to express charity, mercy and understanding. Some paupers were mentioned as fathers and were therefore integrated into a network of family and kin, providing them with a safe ground for a living. This further indicates that Zagreb was relatively small, and so the fact that its community cared for its neighbours is not so surprising. In turn this meant that Zagreb’s community understood the interrelationship between rich and poor, town and citizen, charity and community – tota communitas, dives et pauperes.

The poor of medieval Zagreb 109

Notes ∗ Research for this chapter has been supported in part by the Croatian Science Foundation under the projects ‘Sources, Manuals and Studies for Croatian History from the Middle Ages to the End of the Long Nineteenth Century’, no. IP-2014–09–6547 and ‘Towns and Cities of the Croatian Middle Ages: Urban Elites and Urban Space’, no. IP-2014–09–7235. We would like to express special thanks to Justin Colson and Arie van Steensel for giving us useful comments to improve the text. 1 Almost all of the extant sources regarding medieval Zagreb have been published systematically since the nineteenth century, regardless of provenance. Thus, documents from the royal and cathedral chancelleries and other diplomatic materials pertaining to Gradec, as well as the town’s court documents and land registers, were published by Ivan Krstitelj Tkalčić in the series Povjesni spomenici slobodnog kraljevskog grada Zagreba. Monumenta historica liberae regiae civitatis Zagrabiae, 11 vols. (Zagreb, 1889–1905; hereafter MHCZ). The oldest preserved court documents are from 1355, while land registers exist from 1384, so that the social structure of Gradec can best be traced from the latter half of the fourteenth century. Tkalčić’s efforts to publish the original source materials was continued by Emilij Laszowski (vol. 12–16, 1929–1939) for the sixteenth century. Tkalčić also edited Povjesni spomenici Zagrebačke biskupije. Monumenta historica episcopatus Zagrabiensis, of which vol. 2 includes the statutes of the Chapter of Zagreb. The other documents connected with the diocese of Zagreb in the late-medieval period are edited by Andrija Lukinović (vol. 5–7, 1992–2004; hereafter MHEZ). 2 Petrovics (2009), 69–70. 3 The struggle for supremacy over the Dalmatian urban communes was a long-standing aim of Venice, with a special interest in obtaining Zadar, which changed suzerain (Venice and Kings of Hungary-Croatia) in the medieval period on several occasions. One of the most noteworthy sieges happened in 1202, when Venice took over Zadar with the help of the Crusaders, keeping it under its power until 1358. King Louis I of HungaryCroatia managed to take all Dalmatian cities in 1358; however, problems again occurred during the reign of King Sigismund of Luxembourg, whose rival, King Ladislas of Naples, sold Dalmatia to Venice in 1409, who would keep it under its rule until the fall of the Republic in 1797. 4 On various types of Croatian cities, see Benyovsky Latin and Pešorda Vardić (2014). 5 On variations in development of towns and cities in medieval Central Europe, see Steindorff (1994), 21–22. 6 The literature on the history of medieval Zagreb is rather abundant, especially after the beginning of the publication of Tkalčić’s source series; thus, here is given only a selection of the most important works: Szabo (1940); Horvat (1942); Klaić (1982); Dobronić (1991, 1992); Kampuš and Karaman (1994); Škreblin (2015). 7 Varga (2008) in Hungarian; thus see: Varga (2009), 65, in the Croatian language. 8 All of Zagreb, i.e., Gradec and Kaptol, not including the surrounding villages, had between 4,000 and 5,000 inhabitants. See: Krivošić (1981), 63, 65, 69. 9 Kontler (2007), 114. See also: Backsai (1995), 77–89; Keene (2004), 50–53. 10 Kubinyi (2000). 11 Varga (2009), 70. 12 This was also the case in medieval England; Sweetinburgh (2004), 27–28. 13 Škreblin (2013), 25–59. 14 Škreblin (2015), 51–88. 15 In the latter case, it should be underlined that the part of town in the vicinity of these gates belonged to the elites, and Latins in the mid- and second half of the fifteenth century were amongst the wealthier citizens. Besides, Latins – or to be precise, Italians – coming from northern Italy were in the business of trading, and their shops were situated in the vicinity of the Stone Gate. So, in the case of the Latin Gate it is difficult to determine to

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what extent there was ethnic clustering going on. Furthermore, Vicus teutonicorum was also called Vicus sutorum or Vicus lutifigulum, indicating that it had an artisan character. It is possible that Germans, upon their arrival in the beginning of the fourteenth century, populated this suburb in large numbers, so that it got its name in a similar manner as the Vicus Latinorum near the Chapter, regardless of the fact that in the late-medieval period these parts, other than their names, did not have an ethnic character in the sense that there were residents who spoke certain languages. Szende (2009), 213–14. Information about ethnic confraternities is scarce. In a very few cases, the deans of certain confraternities, or some parts of land belonging to them, are mentioned in the sources. Škreblin (2015), 23. MHCZ 1, 17. The charter was confirmed again in 1266 (MHCZ 1, 40–44, especially 42). MHCZ 14, 44–45. Kažotić authored two treatises; the one mentioned above deals with the nature of the possessions of Christ and his disciples, or, to put it simply, medieval poverty, while the second concerns the question of baptism of images and other forms of superstition (Dicta super questionibus de baptizacione ymaginum et aliarum superstitionum). Both are published in a critical edition by Franjo Šanjek in (2007). See more in: Šanjek (2007), 216–20, and the bibliography listed there. Pavlović and Šanjek (1977), 67–90. Šanjek (2007), 14, 20–21, 65, 70–71. Ibidem, 76–77. Ibidem, 78–79. Ibidem, 80–81. Ibidem, 92–93. For a general overview of the treatment of poverty according to the intellectual trends of the time, see: Mollat (1986), 251. For a general overview of recent scholarship on the topic, cf. Rawcliffe (1999), 5–8; McIntosh (2012), 15–25. Šanjek (2007), 14. MHEZ 2, 78. Park (1991), 26–45; Henderson (2006). Majorossy and Szende (2008), 409–54. MHCZ 1, 267. For more on the hospital of St Elisabeth, see: Barlé (1901), 165; Thaller (1929), 315, 318–19; Bazala (1970), 35–40; Klaić (1982), 294. The dedication to St Elisabeth is not surprising bearing in mind the popularity of the cult of the Árpádian saint promoted in the Kingdom and her depiction in hagiography. For other hospitals in the Kingdom bearing that name, cf. Majorossy and Szende (2008), and the literature they refer to. MHCZ 1, 211. MHEZ 6, 267. MHEZ 6, 358–60. MHCZ 2, 301. MHEZ 7, 243–44. MHEZ 7, 253–55. MHCZ 3, 52. MHCZ 3, 117–19. Vladimir Bazala (1970), 35–40, gives a detailed overview of the activities and development of the hospital until the nineteenth century. See, for the hospital of St Anthony: Barlé (1901), 165; Thaller (1929), 319; Bazala (1970), 40–41; Klaić (1982), 293. MHEZ 6, 358–60. MHCZ 3, 49–52.

The poor of medieval Zagreb 111 48 Various authors mention the leper-house, but only briefly: Barlé (1901), 166; Thaller (1929), 316; Bazala (1970), 45–46; Klaić (1982), 293; Belicza (1994), 145. 49 Leprosy caused ambivalent emotions towards the sick, depending on their social standing. Lepers of lower status were dependent on begging and charity. Leprosy is a classic example of marginalisation connected with an infectious disease, and the Church and public institutions worked side by side to separate lepers from society. See: Geremek (1990), 367–68. Still, there was also a different attitude, seeing leprosy not as a shame but as the result of misfortune, constituting a danger to society; Mollat (1986), 267; Rawcliffe (2009), 226–32. 50 Some leper-houses were closer, some were farther away; however, in both cases, there were everyday contacts with them. On different types of segregation, see: Rawcliffe (2009), 307–22. 51 MHEZ 1, 36–39. The same passage is mentioned in the charters from 1404 and 1405, in which it is styled as the place of the former transition of lepers, which was then a river port ( portus olim vocabatur transitus leprosorum); MHEZ 5, 213–14, 242–44. It is worth noting that theologians and mystics described medieval English hospitals situated on marginal land as islands of charity in a troubled sea, or as spiritual bridges; Rawcliffe (2005), 252–53. Otok is a Croatian vernacular word for island, so it can also be regarded as such an idea. A second possibility is that it was named as such due to marshy lands near to the river bank, just as Rawcliffe notes in the case of London. 52 Šanjek (2007), 13, 57. Medieval medical manuscripts mention bathing in combination with the curing of leprosy: namely, scrubbing with or without herbs was thought to restore the lost feeling in the limbs; Rawcliffe (2009), 227. 53 MHEZ 6, 358–60. 54 In contrast to the case of Zagreb, there are sources preserved for the leper-house of St Lazar in Zadar, from which its organisation and the names of the resident lepers in 1389 can be gleaned; State Archive of Zadar, Deeds of Zaratin Notaries, Articutius de Rivignano, b. 1, fasc. 3/4, f. 9v-10r. 55 MHCZ 12, 404–06. The history of the hospital after its dedication to St Peter is not part of this study. It is worth noting that the hospital was transformed into an orphanage in the nineteenth century. 56 Bazala (1970), 41–45. 57 For the hospital of the Virgin Mary, see: Barlé (1901), 163–64; Thaller (1929), 315–18; Bazala (1969), 153–57; Klaić (1982), 295. 58 MHCZ 9, 171. 59 More precisely, on the southeastern corner of the fifth insula. Cf. Klaić (1982), 295; Bedenko (1994), 48; Belicza (1994), 147. 60 Bedenko (1989), 101–02; Bedenko (1994), 42. 61 Baloban (1994), 134. For more on the precise gifts from town authorities, see: Miljan (forthcoming). 62 On dispute of 1431, see: MHCZ 6, 138–39, 189–90; Škreblin (2009), 90–91. 63 MHCZ 11, 3. 64 MHCZ 7, 5. 65 For various types of handling of the finances of the hospital, see: Rawcliffe (1999), 65–102. 66 MHCZ 11, 3. 67 MHCZ 11, 53–54, 77, 90, 114. 68 MHCZ 13, 37–68; idem, 16, 235–39; 257–61; Miljan (2012), 89–92. For similar information about English hospitals, see: McIntosh (2012), 78–85. 69 Chiffoleau (1976), 271–303; Mollat (1986), 264; Howell (1996), 11–16; Ladić (2012). 70 A similar case is the last will of Bishop John Alben of Zagreb from 1433, by means of which he bequeathed money to poor girls, priests and residents of hospitals. He left his linen to be sold for the purpose of dressing the poor; MHEZ 6, 358–60. 71 MHNC 1, 399–402.

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72 In 1377, Paul, son of Stephen, captain of the fortress of Zagreb, bequeathed to Zagreb’s hospitals and their poor; MHCZ 1, 267. Similar stipulations can be found in the last wills of Judge Martin in 1471; MHCZ 11, 3; and of Canon Paul of Sisak from the beginning of the sixteenth century; MHCZ 3, 52. 73 MHCZ 11, 239. 74 Bedenko (1989), 62; Škreblin (2015), 132. 75 MHCZ 11, 245. 76 MHCZ 7, 26. On the way in which Barnabas was integrated into the urban community, see: Karbić (2005), 258. 77 Michel Mollat (1986), 247, states that beggars, unlike vagabonds, were tolerated. Contemporaries were afraid of vagabonds because they were not well rooted into society. Geremek (1990), 369, emphasises that beggars were accepted by society because they enabled others to show mercy by giving charity. 78 MHCZ 8, 135. Pardon after a verdict was a frequent practice of the judicial system in Gradec. The mercy shown in Peter’s case is no surprise; even more so since the punishment was rather excessive. 79 MHCZ 14, 112. 80 A lot of money was invested in the management and building of town walls, and the literature emphasises that it was necessary to keep them in good condition; see: Dobronić (1992), 23–24. Budak (1994), 85–90, deals with the gradual impoverishment of the town over the course of the fifteenth century, which he connects with the departure of wealthy Italian merchants and an increasing Ottoman threat. 81 Dobronić (1992), 23. 82 Another reason for the impoverishment of the town came from its conflict with the bishop’s borough, because the latter lured customers into their shops by giving them, allegedly, various advantages; Budak (1994), 88. 83 In this period the fear of the Ottomans was reasonably high. King Matthias Corvinus was notified that Zagreb was in a bad condition because of hunger, long periods of plague and Ottoman incursions, all of which caused the cracking of the walls and, finally, their collapse. The town itself was not able to renovate the walls, so the king ordered his officials to participate in their renovation; MHCZ 2, 367. On several more occasions, the king gave financial support to the town, sympathising with its poverty; Dobronić (1992), 23. The situation was the same over the course of the sixteenth century too, when the king, once again, provided aid; MHCZ 3, 115, 246, 234, 246. The gravity of the situation is attested to by the king’s letter to Ban Nicholas of Zrin in 1544, who resided in his own palace in the town, where the king encouraged Ban to protect the citizens from paying special taxes and take them into personal protection; cf. MHCZ 12, 252; Dobronić (1992), 80. 84 Plague was also a problem, since it affected the town four times – in 1468, 1475, 1544 and at the end of the sixteenth century. The community wrote to King Rudolf about 125 deserted urban fundi; cf. MHCZ 16, 12; Budak (1994), 89.

Bibliography Backsai, V., ‘Small Towns in Eastern Central Europe’, in P. Clark (ed.), Small Towns in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1995), 77–89. Baloban, J., ‘Župa sv. Marka u društvenom, kulturnom i religioznom životu Gradeca’, in I. Kampuš (ed.), Zagrebački Gradec: 1242.-1850 (Zagreb, 1994), 129–36. Barlè, J., ‘O zdravstvu staroga Zagreba’, Liečnički viestnik, 23 (1901) 5, 163–67. Bazala, V., ‘Povijest zagrebačkih bolnica. I.’, Acta historica medicinae, pharmachiae, veterinae, 9 (1969) 1, 147–62. Bazala, V., ‘Povijest zagrebačkih bolnica. II.’, Acta historica medicinae, pharmachiae, veterinae, 10 (1970) 1, 35–55.

The poor of medieval Zagreb 113 Bedenko, V., Zagrebački Gradec. Kuća i grad u srednjem vijeku (Zagreb, 1989). Bedenko, V., ‘Društvo i prostor srednjovjekovnoga Gradeca’, in I. Kampuš (ed.), Zagrebački Gradec: 1242–1850 (Zagreb, 1994), 37–49. Belicza, B., ‘Zdravstvene prilike i zdravstvena zaštita u Gradecu do 16. stoljeća’, in I. Kampuš (ed.), Zagrebački Gradec: 1242–1850 (Zagreb, 1994), 143–48. Benyovsky Latin, I., and Z. Pešorda Vardić, Towns and Cities of the Croatian Middle Ages. Authority and Property (Zagreb, 2014). Budak, N., ‘Gradec u kasnom srednjem vijeku’, in I. Kampuš (ed.), Zagrebački Gradec: 1242–1850 (Zagreb, 1994). Chiffoleau, J., ‘Pratiques funéraires et images de la mort à Marseille, en Avignon et dans le Comtat Venaissin (vers 1280-vers 1350)’, Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 11 (1976), 271–303. Dobronić, L., Biskupski i Kaptolski Zagreb (Zagreb, 1991). Dobronić, L., Slobodni i kraljevski grad Zagreb (Zagreb, 1992). Geremek, B., ‘The Marginal Man’, in J. Le Goff (ed.), Medieval Callings (Chicago, 1990), 347–73. Geremek, B., Poverty. A History (Oxford, 1997). Henderson, J., The Renaissance Hospital. Healing the Body and Healing the Soul (New Haven and London, 2006). Horvat, R., Prošlost grada Zagreba (Zagreb, 1942). Howell, M.C., ‘Fixing Movables. Gifts by Testament in Late Medieval Douai’, Past & Present, 150 (1996), 11–16. Kampuš, I., and Lj. Karaman, Tisućuljetni Zagreb: od davnih naselja do suvremenog velegrada (Zagreb, 1994). Karbić, M., ‘Proximi et consanguinei. Prilog poznavanju značenja rodbinskih veza u gradskim naseljima međurječja Save i Drave tijekom srednjega vijeka’, in N. Budak (ed.), Raukarov zbornik. Zbornik u čast Tomislava Raukara (Zagreb, 2005), 245–62. Keene, D., ‘Towns and the Growth of Trade’, in D. Luscombe and J. Riley-Smith (eds), The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 4/1 (Cambridge, 2004), 47–85. Klaić, N., Zagreb u srednjem vijeku (Zagreb, 1982). Kontler, L., Povijest Mađarske: Tisuću godina u srednjoj Europi (Zagreb, 2007). Krivošić, S., Zagreb i njegovo stanovništvo od najstarijih vremena do sredine 19. st., Građa za gospodarsku povijest Hrvatske, Vol. 19 (Zagreb, 1981). Kubinyi, A., Városfejlődés és vásárhálózat a középkori Alföldön és a Alföld szélén (Szeged, 2000). Ladić, Z., Last Will. Passport to Heaven. Urban Last Wills from Late Medieval Dalmatia (Zagreb, 2012). Majorossy, J., and K. Szende, ‘Hospitals in Medieval and Early Modern Hungary’, in M. Scheutz, A. Sommerlechener, H. Weigl, and A.S. Weiß (eds), Europäisches Spitalwesen. Institutionelle Fürsorge in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Wien and München, 2008), 409–54. McIntosh, M.K., Poor Relief in England, 1350–1600 (Cambridge, 2012). Miljan, S., ‘Siromasi kasnosrednjovjekovnog Zagreba’, Povijesni prilozi, 31 (2012) 42, 81–102. Miljan, S., ‘Neighbours, Friends and Communal Sentiment in Late Medieval Zagreb’, in B. Kane and S. Sandall (eds), The Experience of Neighbourliness in Europe, c. 1000– 1600 (forthcoming). Mollat, M., The Poor in the Middle Ages (New Haven, 1986). Park, K., ‘Healing the Poor. Hospitals and Medical Assistance in Renaissance Florence’, in J. Barry and C. Jones (eds), Medicine and Charity Before the Welfare State (London, 1991), 26–45.

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Pavlović, A., and F. Šanjek, ‘Augustin Kažotić, Rasprava o siromaštvu’, Croatica Christiana Periodica. časopis Instituta za crkvenu povijest Katoličkog bogoslovnog fakulteta Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, 1 (1977), 67–90. Petrovics, I., ‘Foreign Ethnic Groups in the Towns of Southern Hungary in the Middle Ages’, in D. Keene, B. Nagy and K. Szende (eds), Segregation – Integration – Assimilation. Religious and Ethnic Groups in the Medieval Towns of Central and Eastern Europe (Farnham, 2009), 67–87. Rawcliffe, C., Medicine for the Soul. The Life, Death and Resurrection of an English Medieval Hospital (Stroud, 1999). Rawcliffe, C., ‘The Earthly and Spiritual Topography of Suburban Hospitals’, in K. Giles and C. Dyer (eds), Contrasts, Contacts and Interconnections, 1100–1500 (Leeds, 2005), 251–74. Rawcliffe, C., Leprosy in Medieval England (Woodbrige, 2009). Šanjek, F., Augustin Kažotić, Bogoslovni spisi. Rasprava o pitanjima krštenja slika i drugim oblicima praznovjerja (1320.) – O imetku Kristovu i (njegovih) učenika ili apostola i o (njegovoj) uporabi (1321./22.) (Zagreb, 2007). Škreblin, B., ‘Obitelj Šafar – iz života jedne njemačke obitelji na srednjovjekovnom Gradecu’, Godišnjak Njemačke narodnosne zajednice. DG Jahrbuch, 16 (2009), 83–100. Škreblin, B., ‘Ethnic Groups in Zagreb’s Gradec in Late Middle Ages’, Review of Croatian History, 9 (2013), 25–59. Škreblin, B., ‘Urbana elita zagrebačkog Gradeca od sredine 14. do početka 16. stoljeća’, University of Zagreb PhD thesis, 2015. Steindorff, L., ‘Srednjovjekovni Zagreb-obrazac povijesti srednjoeuropskog grada’, in I. Kampuš (ed.), Zagrebački Gradec: 1242–1850 (Zagreb, 1994), 19–27. Sweetinburgh, S., The Role of the Hospital in Medieval England. Gift-Giving and the Spiritual Economy (Dublin, 2004). Szabo, Gj., Stari Zagreb (Zagreb, 1940). Szende, K., ‘Integration through Language. The Multilingual Character of Late Medieval Hungarian Towns’, in D. Keene, B. Nagy and K. Szende (eds), Segregation – Integration – Assimilation. Religious and Ethnic Groups in the Medieval Towns of Central and Eastern Europe (Farnham, 2009), 205–33. Thaller, L., ‘Zagrebački hospitali u Srednjemu vijeku’, in G. Novak (ed.), Šišićev zbornik (Zagreb, 1929), 315–20. Tkalčić, I.K., E. Laszowski and L. Dobronić, Povjesni spomenici Zagrebačke biskupije. Monumenta historica episcopatus Zagrabiensis, Vol. 1–7 (Zagreb, 1873–2005). Tkalčić, I.K. and A. Lukinović, Povjesni spomenici slobodnog kraljevskog grada Zagreba. Monumenta historica liberae regiae civitatis Zagrabiae, Vol. 1–19 (Zagreb, 1889–1953). Varga, Sz., ‘Zágráb szerepe a magyarországi városhálózatban a későközépkorban’, Urbs. Magyar Várostörténeti évkönyv, 3 (2008), 249–73. Varga, Sz., ‘Uloga grada Zagreba u gradskom sustavu Ugarske u kasnom srednjem vijeku’, Podravina: časopis za multidisciplinarna istraživanja, 8 (2009) 16, 56–72.

7

Poor boxes, guild ethic and urban community building in Brabant, c. 1250–1600 Hadewijch Masure

In the later Middle Ages – sometimes earlier, sometimes later – craft guilds in the blooming towns of northwestern Europe started to set up their own formal relief insurance systems. The most common scheme was called a poor box: a mutual aid fund providing a small income replacement for a member unable to work due to illness. In the past few decades, researchers have begun to examine these welfare schemes in late-medieval England (Rosser, McRee) and the early modern northern Netherlands in particular (Bos, Van Leeuwen). This chapter adds a number of cities from the late-medieval southern Low Countries to this growing literature. While observing that poor boxes in the northern Netherlands often appeared precisely in the period when Dutch towns became dominantly Protestant, Bos stresses the importance of the Reformation in both contemporary thinking on poverty and charity and, more practically, the guilds’ financial reorganisation towards material relief. Van Leeuwen departs from this interpretation to explain the emergence of formal poor boxes. To him, poor boxes should instead be considered in the context of such typical insurance-related problems as free riding, adverse selection and moral hazard.1 Both perspectives are partial and preliminary at best. Focusing on the specific context and chronology of the northern Netherlands results in attributing causal force to the Reformation almost automatically, whereas in other regions the time period and the religious, political and economic circumstances of it point to very different causal factors, as earlier research has revealed.2 Viewing the phenomenon of poor boxes from the perspective of the emergence of insurance mechanisms likewise results in excluding possible alternative explanations, creating a rather teleological view. What is missing is an integrated view, in which different contextual factors are taken into account. For one thing, the findings about guild relief are seldom considered in relation to the evolution in public poor relief more generally, even though in many parts of Europe public relief went through a period of important change during the sixteenth century, most importantly centralisation (often at the urban level) and more explicit differentiation between groups of poor.3 In this chapter, I will therefore present an in-depth and integrated analysis of the emergence of guild-related poor boxes, focusing on one well-chosen case study. I shall analyse the early development of poor boxes founded by craft guilds in the Brabantine towns of Mechelen, Brussels and Antwerp in the Southern Low Countries.

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Two questions will be addressed in particular. First, I will look at the factors that influenced the establishment of poor boxes. What was the role of economic circumstances or their relation to public assistance and the urban community? Could guild relief be combined with public relief, or was the latter considered shameful? Was the implementation of poor boxes motivated by the guildsmasters’ wish to distinguish themselves from the poorest of the poor, who needed the support of public relief? Was mutual aid a way to express guild identity and build a stronger community of craftsmen, intensifying the feeling that they belonged together? Related to this, I will analyse how the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion evolved. Who could profit from guild-related poor relief or mutual aid (the first being vertical charity, the latter more horizontal aid within a group), and how did that change due to the establishment of poor boxes in fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury Brabant? Within the territory of Brabant (which includes Mechelen only as an enclave, as this city was not part of the duchy in a political sense) significant differences between cities took place, making a comparative approach valuable. As is well known, Antwerp experienced a spectacular expansion during the sixteenth century, but economic circumstances were more difficult in most other Brabantine cities.4 While Antwerp became an international hub for goods and capital, Brussels and Mechelen were administrative centres in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries but marked by a declining textile industry, causing a shift from mass production to luxury products.5 Both cities had large ‘middling groups’, while Mechelen, moreover, harboured an important central court and a powerful (prince-)bishop, making it into a scene of intriguing interactions among civic values, church power and state formation.6 The evolution of Mechelen’s corporative aid systems can be traced from their first glimpsed appearances in the city’s archives in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, more regularly in the fifteenth century, up until and including some structural changes in the sixteenth century. Guilds experienced important transformations in this period. On the one hand, they expanded in number, owing in part to economic specialisation.7 On the other hand, they were susceptible to both the political forces of elite formation and the economic forces of concentration and subcontracting among masters.8 Last but not least, a process of formalisation and bureaucratisation has been identified as well, which occurred in part with an eye to exclusion, and in defence of privileges.9 The long period from roughly 1250 to 1600 is crucial: the first mention of guild aid dates from 1254 (in Mechelen, and somewhat later in Brussels and Antwerp), while 1600 is late enough to follow developments such as polarisation, formalisation, confessionalisation and economic difficulties that pertained throughout the sixteenth century. My findings are based on an extensive search in, and analysis of, guild records. First, a list was made of all guilds that had a mutual aid system, such as a poor box. The Mechelen list is as complete as could be achieved, based on all the guild archives found in the cities’ archives, such as statutes, ordinances, accounts of guilds, poor boxes, guild hospices and guild chapels, and extending up to and including deeds of gifts, sales and leases (where records of busmeesters or

Poor boxes, guilds and urban community 117 administrators of the poor boxes were sometimes found) in the archives of the public assistance institutions. The Antwerp and Brussels research is based on inventories, archival samples and publications; this resulted in a list that might not yet be fully complete, but can be worked with to frame the bigger picture. The rules and functioning of poor boxes and hospices were analysed on the basis of their statutes, ordinances and accounts; the accounts were used only on a qualitative level and for some sample years, so as to check the practical implementation of regulations. Based on these sources, the following paragraphs first sketch the various forms of guild aid in Mechelen, Brussels and Antwerp. Subsequently, I turn to solidarity mechanisms in the first occupational groups, not yet organised into powerful, officially recognised craft guilds. In the third part I discuss the poor box foundations. I show when they were established, in which city and by which guilds, charting whether poor boxes were typical of specific economic sectors and whether they emerged first in guilds or towns that were small or large, homogeneous or heterogeneous, rich or poor, et cetera. I can then hypothesise about the reasons for their emergence within their broader context. The fourth and last part focuses on inclusion and exclusion and on how the mechanisms involved changed during the sixteenth century.

Types of guild aid Craft guilds offered several economic, social and spiritual services. Most basically, guilds provided economic protection by safeguarding their monopoly on the production, trade and sometimes even price of a product. All the guilds studied here, moreover, organised funerals and memorial masses for their deceased members and their wives. As a rule, the funerals were not financed by the guilds; but guild insignia and chapels could be used, and all members were obliged to participate in funeral processions, masses and prayers for deceased members – rituals which were as important for securing social standing as ensuring the salvation of the eternal soul. When aware of their dire need, many guilds would pay for a basic funeral for their members.10 On top of these basic provisions, a minority of guilds also founded almshouses and provided hospice residence for elderly masters or widows (5 percent in Mechelen and a similar number in Antwerp and Brussels), as can be seen in Table 7.1. The guilds managing a hospice thus differed from town to town. In Ghent, for instance, the Weavers and Fullers offered hospice care, although some other guilds had smaller and more provisional housing as well.11 Part of the reason must have been the coincidence of having obtained capital from private gifts, but all had in common that they were large, prominent and wealthy. A final provision for impoverished guildsmen was all the kinds of private endowments that were bestowed on guilds and their chapels. Guilds with hospices were especially likely to receive donations periodically, often in exchange for memorial masses, stipulating that they made yearly distributions to impoverished non-resident guildsmen and women.

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Table 7.1 Guild hospices in Mechelen, Brussels and Antwerp Hospice founded Mechelen Tanners (hereditary): S. Barbara Tanners (hereditary): S. Magdalen

Brussels

Antwerp

°1422 °1505

Private testament → guild Private testament → guild

Fish sellers (hereditary): S. Jacob Mercers: S. Salvator

°