The development of towns

The Guilds

There were no factories in the Middle Ages. Craftspeople set up stalls outside their own homes or used their front room. They made goods in full view of the public. Above the stall they hung a sign so everyone could tell what they sold. In time, these craftspeople organized themselves into guilds.

There were two kinds of guilds: merchant and craft. The merchant guild ensured a monopoly of trade within a given locality. All foreign merchants were supervised closely and made to pay tolls. Disputes among merchants were settled at the guild court according to its own legal code. As towns developed guilds started  to be formed by members of the same craft. These were craft guilds. There was one guild for each trade. Only skilled workers could join. The guild made sure that their products were good quality and that members charged honest prices.

Each year, the guild chose some of its members as 'searchers'. Their job was to visit traders to make sure the rules were obeyed. They checked scales; they tasted food; they inspected the work. Members whose work was poor were often fined. The guild could also force them to do the work again. Once in a while, it actually expelled someone. This meant they could no longer trade in the town. The government did not help the old and sick, so the guild looked after its members when they were sick. They helped the relatives of dead craftspeople. They also gave money to the church and the town. Guilds became very wealthy and through their involvement in the politics of the town, very powerful. (Below the guild buildings in the Grand Place in Brussels, just to the right is where Marx wrote his most famous work, The Communist Manifesto.)

The youngest guild members were the apprentices. These were boys or girls, aged about twelve, who wanted to learn a trade. Their parents made an agreement with a master craftsman (or crafts woman) who would teach them. Usually, they paid the master for this. The agreement was written down on a piece of paper which was then cut up. One piece was given to each side. If, in the future, there was any argument about it, they simply put the two bits together to prove the agreement had been made. The apprentice went to live with the master for between 4 and 14 years.  The master promised that he or she would teach the young person the trade. They also had to look after the apprentice; food and clothing were provided; and the apprentice was taught how to behave. In return, the apprentice promised to work hard and not to give away any of the employer's secrets. The young person could not go to an inn. Usually, they were not allowed to get married either.

When the time was up, the apprentice often went on working for the master. Now the young person received a daily wage, so he or she was called a journeyman (from the word journée, meaning 'a day'). Journeymen were free to work for a different master. Earnings were carefully saved up, ready for the day when they could set up their own business. Before this happened, the guild set a test. Journeymen had to produce a 'masterpiece'. This was one piece of work to show that they were fit to open their own shop. If they passed, they, too, became masters of their craft. Only guild members could sell inside the town, except on market days. People came from far and wide to sell goods at the market. Even more people, including foreign merchants, turned up for the annual fair. This was usually held after the harvest, when people could afford to buy.

The growth of towns.

The number and size of towns grew significantly in the later middle ages. Part of the reason was the growth in trade and another was the general population growth, but just as important was the attitude of those who benefitted from this growth. For the townspeople, a bigger town meant a bigger market, which meant more income. In order to hold a market  and to be able to raise their own taxes, townspeople needed to receive a charter from the landowner. For kings, lords and bishops who owned the land, selling a charter to the town's citizens generated a healthy income.  Bartlett cites the instance of Stratford upon Avon in England. It was initially a small hamlet belonging in the Bishop of Worcester. Then in 1196 a law created a borough with tax raising powers. Within 50 years Stratford was a market town with a population of 1,000, with artisans and craftsmen serving the surrounding area. The rents alone brought the Bishop £12 a year which was considerably more than he could have obtained from the same area as farmland. But although the Bishop was getting richer, so were the leading townspeople and with this wealth came increasing political independence.

The increasing independence of medieval towns was most apparent in the rich cities of northern Italy and Flanders (modern day Belgium and Holland).  Here political leaders and leaders of the guilds exercised increasing power, independent of feudal overlords. Important families grew influential and did not necessarily depend on ownership of land as a basis for their power. A new class emerged in Europe, they were the powerful citizens of towns, burghers, later they would be called the bourgeoisie. At the top of this new social pyramid were the great merchant and banking families: the Medici, Fugger and Coeur.

Jews in medieval towns

Jews were the only non-Christian religious group tolerated in medieval Europe. In the early Middle Ages, Jews had been traders. They were accepted by both Christians and Muslims and could travel across frontiers in a way that the two dominant groups could not. But as a minority they were often subject to terrible persecution. As the great Renaissance philosopher Erasmus later said: 'If hating Jews is to be a good Christian, then we are all Christians.' This anti-Semitism had its origin in the beginning of Christianity itself, The church preached that Jews had been responsible for the death of Jesus; their punishment was to wander, to never be accepted until they converted to Christianity. This made the life of Jews very precarious.  Amongst other things, Jews were not allowed to own land. Christians who could own land, were not allowed to lend money. Therefore Jews did not farm, lived in towns in Jewish ghettos and lent money to the Christians who needed it. Jews were also barred from holding posts in government and the military, and excluded from membership of guilds. Jews’ economic and cultural successes tended to arouse the envy of the populace.

Although persecution of Jews happened throughout the Middle Ages, times of unusual upheaval often triggered anti-Semitic attacks and pogroms (organized massacres). Jews were accused of  killing Christian children - blood libel - to obtain blood to put in their bread for Passover. During the First Crusade knights  unleashed a wave of anti-Semitic violence in France and the Holy Roman Empire, including massacres in Worms, Trier (both now in Germany), and Metz (now in France). Jews were blamed for having poisoned the wells and therefore causing the Black Death and thousands were killed all over Europe. In Basel, the guilds organised the arrest of 600 Jews, who were tied up in a wooden barn on the river Rhine which was then set on fire. The most common punishment was banishment. gradually Jews were expelled from almost all of western Europe England (1290), France (14th century), Germany (1350s), Portugal (1496), and the largest population from Spain 1492. Jews headed east and found sanctuary in Poland, which until the Holocaust during the Second World War had the biggest population of Jews in Europe.