Prerequisites and ways of the emergence of cities in the Middle Ages. Formation of medieval cities. The emergence and development of medieval cities in Europe

WITH X-XI centuries Cities grew rapidly in Europe. Many of them gained freedom from their lords. Crafts and trade developed faster in cities. New forms of associations of artisans and merchants arose there.

Growth of the medieval city

During the era of German invasions, the population of cities declined sharply. Cities at this time had already ceased to be centers of craft and trade, but remained only fortified points, residences of bishops and secular lords.

From the X-XI centuries. In Western Europe, old cities began to revive again and new ones appeared. Why did this happen?

Firstly, with the cessation of the attacks of the Hungarians, Normans and Arabs, the life and work of the peasants became safer and therefore more productive. The peasants could feed not only themselves and the lords, but also the artisans who produced higher quality products. Craftsmen began to engage less in agriculture, and peasants began to engage in crafts. Secondly, the population of Europe was growing rapidly. Those who lacked arable land began to engage in crafts. Craftsmen settled in cities.

As a result, it happens separation of crafts from agriculture, and both industries began to develop faster than before.

The city arose on the land of the lord, and many townspeople depended on the lord and bore duties in his favor. The cities brought large incomes to the lords, so they protected them from enemies and granted them privileges. But, having grown stronger, the cities did not want to submit to the arbitrariness of the lords and began to fight for their rights. Sometimes they managed to buy back their freedom from the lords, and sometimes they managed to overthrow the power of the lords and gain self management.

Cities arose in the safest and most convenient places, often visited by merchants: near the walls of a castle or monastery, on a hill, in a bend of a river, at a crossroads, at a ford, bridge or crossing, at the mouth of a river, near a convenient sea harbor. First, ancient cities were revived. And in the X-XIII centuries. New cities are emerging throughout Europe: first in Italy, Southern France, along the Rhine, then in England and Northern France, and even later in Scandinavia, Poland, and the Czech Republic.

Castle of the Lords of Ghent

Medieval urban society

Full-fledged citizens in Germany were called burghers, in France - bourgeois. Among them stood out a narrow layer of the most influential people. Usually these were rich merchants - a kind of city nobility. They were proud of the antiquity of their family and often imitated the knights in everyday life. They consisted of city ​​Council.

The bulk of the city's population were craftsmen, merchants and traders. But Monks, knights, notaries, servants, and beggars also lived here. The peasants found in the cities personal freedom and protection from the tyranny of the lord. In those days, there was a saying: “City air makes you free.” Usually there was a rule: if the lord did not find a peasant who had fled to the city within a year and one day, then he would no longer be extradited. The cities were interested in this: after all, they grew precisely at the expense of newcomers.

Craftsmen entered into a struggle for power with the city nobility. Where it was possible to limit the power of the most influential families, city councils often became elected and arose city ​​republic. At a time when the monarchical system prevailed, it was new form state structure. However, even in this case, a narrow circle of townspeople came to power. Material from the site

Paris in the 9th-14th centuries.

Medieval houses and castle in the city of Nuremberg

On the streets of a medieval city

An ordinary medieval city was small - several thousand inhabitants. A city with a population of 10 thousand inhabitants was considered large, and 40-50 thousand or more - huge (Paris, Florence, London and some others).

Stone walls protected the city and were a symbol of its power and freedom. The center of city life was the market square. Were here or nearby Cathedral or main church, as well as the city council building - town hall

Since there was not enough space in the city, the streets were usually narrow. The houses were built on two to four floors. They did not have numbers; they were called by some signs. Often a workshop or trading shop was located on the ground floor, and the owner lived on the second floor. Many houses were made of wood, and entire neighborhoods burned out in a fire. Therefore, the construction of stone houses was encouraged.

The townspeople were noticeably different from the peasants: they knew more about the world, were more businesslike and energetic. The townspeople wanted to get rich and succeed. They were always in a hurry, they valued time - it is no coincidence that it was on the towers of cities from the 13th century. The first mechanical watches appear.

On this page there is material on the following topics:

• Medieval city 10th -11th century Nuremberg presentation

• Medieval town castle of lords

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The specific historical paths of the emergence of cities are very diverse. Peasants and artisans leaving the villages settled in different places depending on the availability favorable conditions for doing “city affairs”, i.e. matters related to the market. Sometimes, especially in Italy and Southern France, these were administrative, military and church centers, often located on the territory of old Roman cities that were revived to a new life - already as cities of the feudal type. The fortifications of these points provided the residents with the necessary security.

The concentration of the population in such centers, including feudal lords with their servants and retinue, clergy, representatives of the royal and local administration, created favorable conditions for artisans to sell their products. But more often, especially in Northwestern and Central Europe, artisans and traders settled near large estates, estates, castles and monasteries, the inhabitants of which purchased their goods. They settled at the intersection of important roads, at river crossings and bridges, on the shores of bays, bays, etc., convenient for ships, where traditional markets had long operated. Such “market towns,” with a significant increase in their population and the presence of favorable conditions for craft production and market activities, also turned into cities.1

Urban growth in selected areas Western Europe happened at different paces. First of all, in the VIII - IX centuries. feudal cities, primarily as centers of craft and trade, were formed in Italy (Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Bari, Naples, Amalfi); in the 10th century - in the south of France (Marseille, Arles, Narbonne, Montpellier, Toulouse, etc.). In these and other areas, with rich ancient traditions, crafts specialized faster than in others, and the formation of a feudal state with its reliance on cities took place.

The early emergence and growth of Italian and southern French cities was also facilitated by trade relations between these regions and the then more developed Byzantium and the countries of the East. Of course, the preservation of the remains of numerous ancient cities and fortresses there, where it was easier to find shelter, protection, traditional markets, rudiments of craft organizations and Roman municipal law, also played a certain role.

In the X - XI centuries. Feudal cities began to emerge in Northern France, the Netherlands, England and Germany - along the Rhine and the upper Danube. The Flemish cities of Bruges, Ypres, Ghent, Lille, Douai, Arras and others were famous for their fine cloth, which they supplied to many European countries. There were no longer many Roman settlements in these areas; most cities arose anew.

Later, in the XII - XII centuries, feudal cities grew on the northern outskirts and in the interior regions of Trans-Rhine Germany, in the Scandinavian countries, in Ireland, Hungary, the Danube principalities, i.e. where the development of feudal relations was slower. Here, all cities grew, as a rule, from market towns, as well as regional (former tribal) centers.

The distribution of cities across Europe was uneven. There were especially many of them in Northern and Central Italy, in Flanders and Brabant, along the Rhine.

“With all the differences in place, time, and specific conditions for the emergence of this or that city, it has always been the result of a social division of labor common to all of Europe. In the socio-economic sphere, it was expressed in the separation of crafts from agriculture, the development of commodity production and exchange between different spheres of the economy and different territories; in the political sphere - in the development of statehood structures"

The transition from the early feudal period to the period of developed feudalism was due to the emergence and growth of cities, which quickly became centers of craft and exchange, as well as the widespread development of commodity production. These were qualitatively new phenomena in feudal society, which had a significant impact on its economy, political system and spiritual life. Therefore, the 11th century, a time when cities had basically already formed in most countries of Western Europe, is the chronological boundary between the early Middle Ages (V-XI centuries) and the period of the most complete development of feudalism (XI-XV centuries).

The dominance of subsistence farming in the early Middle Ages

The first centuries of the Middle Ages in Western Europe were characterized by the almost unchallenged dominance of subsistence farming. The peasant family itself produced all agricultural products and handicrafts, tools and clothing, not only for its own needs, but also for paying rent to the feudal lord. The combination of rural labor with crafts is a characteristic feature of subsistence farming. Only a small number of specialist craftsmen, usually as courtyard people, lived on the estates of large feudal lords. A few rural artisans - blacksmiths, potters, tanners - were also engaged in agriculture along with crafts.

The exchange of products was very insignificant. They traded mainly in goods mined in a few places, but important in the economy: iron, tin, copper, salt, etc., as well as luxury goods that were not then produced in Europe and brought from the East: silk fabrics, expensive jewelry, fine crafted weapons, spices, etc. The main role in this trade was played by wandering, most often foreign merchants (Byzantines, Arabs, Syrians, Jews, etc.). The production of agricultural products and handicrafts specifically designed for sale, that is, commodity production, was almost not developed in most of Western Europe. The old Roman cities fell into decay, and the economy became agrarian.

During the early Middle Ages, urban-type settlements were preserved mainly on the sites of deserted and dilapidated Roman cities (Milan, Florence, Bologna, Naples, Amalfi, Paris, Lyon, Arles, Cologne, Mainz, Strasbourg, Trier, Augsburg, Vienna, London, York, Chester , Gloucester, etc.) But for the most part they were either administrative centers, or fortified points (fortresses - “burgs”), or church centers (residences of archbishops, bishops, etc.). But cities had not yet become the focus of crafts and trade during this period. Their small population was usually not much different from the inhabitants of the villages. In many cities, squares and vacant lots were used for arable land and pastures. The few artisans and merchants who lived in the early medieval city served mainly only its inhabitants, without having a noticeable impact on the surrounding villages. The largest number of urban-type settlements have been preserved in the most Romanized regions of Europe: in Italy, Southern Gaul, Visigothic and then Arab Spain, as well as in Byzantium. Although in these areas of the city in the V-VI centuries. fell into decay, some of them were still relatively populous, specialized crafts and permanent markets continued to exist in them. Individual cities, especially in Italy and Byzantium, were major centers of intermediary trade with the East. But even in these areas, cities did not have a decisive influence on the genesis of feudalism. In most of the European continent, urban-type settlements were rare, sparsely populated and did not have any noticeable economic significance.

In general, Western Europe lagged behind the East and even Byzantium in its development, where numerous cities flourished with highly developed handicraft production and lively trade.

Growth of productive forces. Separation of crafts from agriculture

By the X-XI centuries. Important changes took place in the economic life of Western Europe. The growth of productive forces, which occurred in connection with the establishment of the feudal mode of production, occurred most rapidly in the early Middle Ages in crafts and was expressed in the gradual change and development of technology and craft skills, the expansion and differentiation of social production. Certain types of crafts have been significantly improved: smelting and processing of metals - primarily blacksmithing and weaponry; manufacturing of fabrics - linen and cloth; leather treatment; production of more advanced clay products using a potter's wheel; milling and construction. Trades also developed: mining of metals, salt, logging, fish, furs, and sea animals. The production of handicraft products increasingly turned into a special sphere of labor activity, different from agricultural, which required further specialization of the artisan, no longer compatible with the work of the peasant.

The moment came when the transformation of craft into an independent branch of production became inevitable.

Another prerequisite for the separation of crafts from agriculture was progress in the development of the latter. With the improvement of tools and methods of soil cultivation, especially with the widespread spread of the iron plow with a team of several pairs of oxen, as well as two-field and three-field systems, labor productivity in agriculture increased, the area of ​​cultivated land increased, largely through internal colonization and economic development of new lands. The cultivation of grain and industrial crops expanded: flax, hemp, woad (the plant from which the substance for dyeing fabrics was extracted), oilseeds, etc.; Vegetable gardening, horticulture, viticulture, and crafts closely related to agriculture such as winemaking and butter-making developed and improved. The number and breed of livestock increased, in particular horses, which increasingly began to be used not only in military affairs, but also as vehicle; In some areas, horses began to be used instead of oxen in agriculture, which significantly speeded up the process of cultivating the soil.

As a result of all these changes in agriculture, productivity has increased, the time for producing agricultural products has decreased, and, consequently, the quantity of the latter has increased. Despite the growth of feudal rent, a certain surplus of products began to remain in the hands of the peasant over what was produced for consumption needs. This made it possible to exchange part of agricultural products for products of specialist artisans, which freed the peasant from the need to produce all handicraft products on his farm.

In addition to the above-mentioned economic prerequisites, at the turn of the 1st and 2nd millennia, the most important social prerequisites for the formation of medieval cities were created; The process of feudalization was completed, which immediately revealed the deep class contradictions of the new system. On the one hand, a ruling class emerged, whose need for luxury contributed to an increase in the layer of professional artisans. On the other hand, the peasantry, subjected to increasing oppression, increasingly began to flee to the cities. Fugitive peasants formed the basis of the population of the first cities.

Separation of city and village

Thus, by the X-XI centuries. In Europe, all the necessary conditions appeared for the separation of crafts from agriculture. In the process of separation from agriculture, craft - small-scale industrial production based on manual labor - went through a number of stages in its development. At first, craft appeared primarily in the form of producing products to order from the consumer, sometimes from his material, and first of all - in the village as an integral part of the natural economy, and then in the cities. At the same time, commodity production was still in its infancy, because the product of labor did not appear on the market.

The next stage in the development of the craft is characterized mainly by the work of the artisan not for a specific customer, but for the market, without turning to which the artisan could no longer exist in this case. The artisan becomes a commodity producer. Thus, the emergence of crafts, isolated from agriculture, meant the emergence of commodity production and commodity relations, the emergence of exchange between city and countryside. “With the division of production into two large main sectors, agriculture and crafts,” wrote F. Engels, “production arises directly for exchange—commodity production, and with it trade...” Exchange between individual producers becomes a vital necessity for society.

But in the village, where the market for handicraft products was narrow, and the power of the feudal lord deprived the manufacturer of the independence he needed, the opportunities for the development of commercial crafts were very limited. Therefore, artisans fled from the village and settled where they found the most favorable conditions for running an independent economy, marketing their products, and obtaining the necessary raw materials. The movement of artisans to market centers and cities was part of a general movement of rural residents there.

The flight of peasants, including those who knew any craft, from the village was at that time one of the expressions of their resistance to feudal oppression.

In the X-XIII centuries. (in Italy from the 9th century) cities of a new, feudal type grew rapidly throughout Western Europe, standing out from the rural area in terms of the composition of the population, its main occupations and social structure.

Thus, as a result of the separation of crafts from agriculture, medieval cities arose. Their appearance determined a new stage in the history of feudalism.

Bourgeois theories of the origin of medieval cities and their criticism

The question of the reasons for the emergence of medieval cities is of great interest. Bourgeois scientists, trying to answer it, put forward in the 19th and 20th centuries. various theories. Most of these theories are characterized by a formal legal approach to the problem. Most attention is paid to the origin and development of specific urban institutions, urban law, and not to the socio-economic conditions that led to the emergence of medieval cities. Therefore, bourgeois historical science cannot explain the root causes of their origin.

Bourgeois scholars were mainly concerned with the question of what form of settlement the medieval city came from and how the institutions of this previous form were transformed into the institutions of the medieval city? The “romanistic” theory (Savigny, Thierry, Guizot, Renoir), which was based primarily on the material of the Romanized regions of Europe, considered medieval cities and their institutions to be a direct continuation of the cities of the late Roman Empire. Historians, relying mainly on material from Northwestern and Central Europe (primarily German and English), saw the origins of medieval cities in the legal phenomena of a new, feudal society. According to the “patrimonial” theory (Eichhorn, Nitsch), the city developed from the feudal patrimonial estate, and city institutions - from patrimonial management and patrimonial law. The “Mark” theory (Maurer, Gierke, and later G. von Below) put city institutions and the law of the free rural community-mark out of action. Representatives of the “burg” theory (Keitgen, Matland) believed that the fortress (“burg”) and burg law were the grain from which the city was created. The “market” theory (R. Som, Schroeder, Schulte) derived city law from the “market law” that operated in places where trade was carried out.

In addition to their formal legal orientation, all these theories suffered from extreme one-sidedness, each putting forward one, supposedly the only way for the emergence of cities. Moreover, they did not explain why most of the estates, communities, castles and even market places never turned into cities.

German historian Ritschel at the end of the 19th century. tried to combine the “burg” and “market” theories, seeing in cities settlements of merchants around a fortified point (“burg”), ignoring the craft basis of the origin of medieval cities. A concept close to this theory was developed by the Belgian historian A. Pirenne, who, however, unlike most of his predecessors, assigned a decisive role in the emergence of cities to the economic factor - intercontinental and interregional transit trade and its carrier - the merchants. However, this “trade” theory, according to which cities in Western Europe arose initially around “merchant trading posts,” ignored the role of the separation of crafts from agriculture in the emergence of cities. Therefore, A. Pirenne was also unable to scientifically explain the origins and specifics of the feudal city. This theory is now criticized by many foreign medievalists (R. Boutrouche, E. Dupont, F. Vercauteren, D. Luzzatto, C. Cipolla, etc.), who refute A. Pirenne’s thesis about the purely commercial origin of cities.

In modern bourgeois historiography, great importance is attached to archaeological data, topography and plans of medieval cities (F. Ganshof, Planitz, E. Ennen, F. Vercauteren, etc.). But these data, without considering the socio-economic conditions that gave birth to the city, do not answer the question about the reasons for the emergence of the medieval city and its character. In some cases, these data are unlawfully used to revive the theory of the Roman continuity of medieval cities, which rejects the connection of their origin with the laws of the evolution of feudal society. Bourgeois science, although it has accumulated a large amount of factual material on the history of cities, due to its idealistic methodology, was unable to develop a scientific understanding of the city of that era as a center of craft and trade, and the process of its emergence - as a result of the development of the social division of labor - the separation of crafts from agriculture farms.

The emergence of cities - centers of craft and trade

The specific historical paths of the emergence of cities are very diverse. Peasant artisans who left and fled from villages settled in various places depending on the availability of favorable conditions for practicing their craft. Sometimes, especially in Italy and southern France, these were administrative, military and ecclesiastical centers of the early Middle Ages, often located in old Roman cities. Now these old cities were being revived to a new life, but as cities of a different, feudal type. Many of these points were fortified, which provided the artisans with the necessary security.

The concentration of a significant population in these centers - feudal lords with their servants and numerous retinues, clergy, representatives of the royal and local administration, etc. - created here favorable conditions for artisans to sell their products. But more often, especially in North-Western and Central Europe, artisans settled near large feudal estates, estates, estates, castles, near the walls of monasteries, the inhabitants of which, as well as pilgrims and pilgrims visiting the monasteries, could become consumers of their goods. Craftsmen also settled in settlements located at the intersections of important roads, at river crossings and bridges, at river mouths, on the banks of bays, bays, etc., convenient for ships, which have long been places of traditional markets. Such “market places” (in some countries they were called “ports”), with a significant concentration of population and craft production there, also turned into cities.

Cities grew at different rates in different areas of Western Europe. The earliest time was in the 9th century. - cities as centers of craft and trade appeared in Italy (Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Bari, Naples, Amalfi); in the 10th century - in the south of France (Marseille, Arles, Narbonne, Montpellier, Toulouse, etc.). In these areas, which already knew a developed class society (Roman Empire), earlier than in others, the growth of productive forces based on the development of feudal relations led to the separation of crafts from agriculture, as well as to an intensification of class struggle in the countryside and mass escapes of serfs.

One of the factors contributing to the early emergence and growth of Italian and southern French cities was the trade relations of Italy and southern France with Byzantium and the more developed countries of the East at that time. Finally, the preservation of the remains of numerous Roman cities and fortresses played a certain role here, where fugitive peasants could more easily find shelter, protection, traditional markets, and the rudiments of Roman municipal law than in uninhabited places.

In the X-XI centuries. Cities began to emerge in Northern France, the Netherlands, England and Germany - along the Rhine and the upper Danube. The Flanders cities - Bruges, Ypres, Ghent, Lille, Douai, Arras, etc. - were famous for the production of thin cloth, which they supplied to many European countries. In these areas, only a few cities arose on the sites of old (Roman) ones; most were founded anew. Later - in the XII-XIII centuries - feudal cities began to grow on the northern outskirts and in the internal regions of Trans-Rhine Germany, in the Scandinavian countries, as well as in Ireland, Hungary and the Danube principalities, i.e. where the development of feudal relations took place more slowly. Here all the cities were new formations, growing, as a rule, from “market towns” and “ports”.

The network of cities in Western and Central Europe was uneven. It reached particular density in Northern and Central Italy, as well as in Flanders and Brabant. But in other countries and regions, the number of cities, including small towns, was such that a peasant could reach any of them within one day.

Despite all the differences in place, time and specific conditions for the emergence of a particular city, it was always the result of an economic process common to all of medieval Europe - the social division of labor between crafts and agriculture and the development on this basis of commodity production and exchange.

This process was lengthy and was not completed within the framework of the feudal social formation. However, in the X-XIII centuries. it proceeded particularly intensively and led to an important qualitative shift in the development of feudal society.

Simple commodity economy under feudalism

Commodity production and the exchange associated with it, concentrated in cities, began to play a huge role in the development of productive forces not only in the cities themselves, but also in the countryside. The subsistence economy of direct producers - peasants - was gradually drawn into commodity relations, conditions were created for the development of the internal market on the basis of further social division of labor and specialization of individual regions and sectors of the economy (agriculture, cattle breeding, mining, different types crafts).

Commodity production of the Middle Ages should not be identified with capitalist production or see in it the direct origins of the latter, as many bourgeois historians do (A. Pirenne, A. Dopsch and many others). It was simple (non-capitalist) commodity production and economy, based on the own labor of small isolated commodity producers - artisans and peasants, who were increasingly drawn into commodity exchange, but did not exploit the labor of others on a large scale. Such production, unlike capitalist production, was small-scale, involved only a small part of the social product in market relations, served a relatively narrow market and did not know expanded reproduction.

Simple commodity production arose and existed long before capitalism and before feudalism, adapting to the conditions of different social formations and submitting to them. In the form in which it was inherent in feudal society, commodity production grew on its soil and depended on the prevailing conditions in it, developed along with it, subject to the general laws of its evolution. Only at a certain stage of the existence of feudal society, under the conditions of the separation of small independent producers from the means of production and the transformation of labor into goods on a mass scale, did simple commodity production begin to develop into capitalist production. Until this time, it remained an organic and integral element of the economy and social structure of feudal society, just as the medieval city was the main center of commodity production and exchange in feudal society.

Population and appearance medieval cities

The main population of the cities were people involved in the production and circulation of goods: artisans of various specialties, who at first were also small traders. Significant groups of people were employed in the service sector: sailors on merchant ships, drivers and porters, innkeepers, barbers, and inn keepers.

The townspeople, whose ancestors usually came from the village, retained their fields, pastures and vegetable gardens both outside and inside the city for a long time, and kept livestock. This was partly due to the insufficient marketability of agriculture in the 11th-13th centuries.

Gradually, professional traders appeared in the cities - merchants from local residents. This was a new social stratum, whose sphere of activity was only the exchange of goods. Unlike the traveling merchants of the early Middle Ages, they were primarily engaged in internal trade and exchanged goods between city and countryside. The separation of merchant activities from crafts was a new step in the social division of labor. In large cities, especially in political and administrative centers, feudal lords often lived with their entourage (servants, military detachments), representatives of the royal and seigneurial administration, as well as the clergy. Already in the XII-XIII centuries. in large cities, a significant part of the population were poor people who lived on odd jobs (day laborers, temporary hired workers), as well as begging and theft.

The size of Western European medieval cities was very small. Usually their population was 1 or 3-5 thousand inhabitants. Even in the XIV-XV centuries. Cities with 20-30 thousand inhabitants were considered large. Only a few cities had a population exceeding 80-100 thousand people (Paris, Milan, Venice, Florence, Cordoba, Seville).

Medieval cities differed from the villages around them in their appearance and in the degree of population concentration. They were usually surrounded by high stone, sometimes wooden walls with towers and massive gates, as well as deep ditches for protection from attacks by feudal lords and enemy invasions. Craftsmen and merchants served as guards and formed the city's military militia. The city gates were closed at night. The walls surrounding the medieval city became cramped over time and did not accommodate all the city buildings. Around the walls that formed the original center of the city (burg, cite), city suburbs gradually arose - suburbs, settlements, inhabited mainly by artisans. Craftsmen of the same profession usually lived on the same street. The suburbs were later, in turn, surrounded by a new ring of walls and fortifications. The central place in the city was the market square, not far from which the city cathedral was located, and in cities where there was self-government of citizens, there was also the city hall (city council).

Outside the city walls, and sometimes within their borders, lay fields, pastures, and vegetable gardens that belonged to the townspeople. Small livestock (goats, sheep and pigs) often grazed right in the city. The walls prevented the city from growing in width, so the streets were made extremely narrow, the houses (often wooden) were closely adjacent to each other, their upper floors often protruded in the form of protrusions above the lower ones and the roofs of houses located on opposite sides of the street almost touched each other . The rays of the sun often did not penetrate into the narrow and crooked city streets. There was no street lighting. Garbage, leftover food and sewage were usually thrown directly into the street. Due to unsanitary conditions, epidemics broke out in cities and devastating fires occurred.

The struggle of cities with feudal lords and the formation of city self-government

Medieval cities arose on the land of the feudal lord and therefore inevitably had to submit to him. The majority of the townspeople at first were peasants who had long lived in this place, who fled from their former masters or were released by them on quitrent. Often at first they found themselves personally dependent on the new master - the lord of the city. All power in the city was initially concentrated in the hands of the lord. The feudal lord was interested in the emergence of cities on his land, since urban trades and trade brought him additional income.

Former peasants who settled in the emerging cities brought with them from the village the customs and skills of the communal structure that existed there, which had a noticeable impact on the organization of city government in the Middle Ages. Over time, however, it increasingly took on forms that corresponded to the characteristics and needs of urban society itself.

The desire of the feudal lords to extract as much income as possible from the city inevitably led to the struggle between cities and lords, which took place throughout Western Europe in the X-XIII centuries. The townspeople fought first for liberation from the most severe forms of feudal oppression, for a reduction in the lord's exactions, and for trade privileges. Later it developed into a political struggle for city self-government, which in the literature is usually called the “communal movement.” The outcome of this struggle determined the degree of independence of the city in relation to the feudal lord, its economic prosperity and political system. However, the struggle of cities with lords was not carried out against the feudal system as a whole, but to ensure the existence and development of cities within the framework of this system.

Sometimes cities managed to obtain from the feudal lord certain liberties and privileges, recorded in city charters, for money; in other cases, these privileges, especially the rights of self-government, were achieved as a result of prolonged, sometimes armed struggle.

Communal movements proceeded in different European countries in different ways, depending on the conditions of their historical development, and led to different results. In Northern and Central Italy, as well as in Southern France, where in the 9th-12th centuries. There was no strong central government; the townspeople achieved independence already in these centuries. Many cities of Northern and Central Italy - Venice, Genoa, Florence, Siena, Lucca, Ravenna, Bologna, Milan, etc. - already at this time became city-states. In fact, the Slavic city of Dubrovnik on the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic was an independent urban republic, although nominally it recognized the supreme power of first Byzantium, then Venice, and from the end of the 14th century. - Hungary.

A similar position was occupied in Germany in the 12th-13th centuries. The most significant of the so-called imperial cities are the “free cities.” Formally they were subordinate to the emperor, but in reality they were independent city republics (Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Frankfurt am Main, etc.). They were governed by a city council headed by a burgomaster and had the right to independently declare war, make peace, mint coins, etc.

Many cities of Northern France - Amiens, Saint-Quentin, Noy-on, Beauvais, Soissons, Laon, etc., as well as Flanders - Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, Lille, Douai, Saint-Omer, Arras - as a result of persistent, often armed fighting their feudal overlords, they became self-governing city-communes. They could elect from among themselves the city council, its head - the mayor - and other city officials, had their own city court and city military militia, their own finances and the right of self-taxation. Cities-communes were exempted from performing corvée and quitrents in favor of the seigneur and from other seigneurial payments. In return for all these duties and payments, the townspeople annually paid the lord a certain, relatively low cash rent and, in case of war, sent a small military detachment to help him. Commune cities themselves often acted as a collective lord in relation to the peasants living in the area surrounding the city. On the other hand, in relation to their lord, the cities that retained a certain dependence on him were formally in the position of his collective vassal.

But some even very significant and rich cities, especially those located on royal land, in countries with a relatively strong central government, could not achieve complete self-government. They enjoyed a number of privileges and liberties, including the right to have their own elected bodies of city government. But these bodies acted together with an official appointed by the king or another lord (for example, Paris, Orleans, Bourges, Lorris, Nantes, Chartres and many others - in France; London, Lincoln, Ipswich, Oxford, Cambridge, Gloucester, Norwich, York - in England). This form of city government was also typical for Ireland, the Scandinavian countries, and many cities in Germany and Hungary. The privileges and liberties received by medieval cities were in many ways similar to immunity privileges and were of a feudal nature. These cities themselves constituted closed corporations.” for a long time placing local urban interests above all else.

Many, especially small, cities that did not have the necessary forces and funds to fight their lords remained entirely under the control of the seigneurial administration. This is, in particular, characteristic of cities that belonged to spiritual lords, who oppressed their citizens especially hard.

Despite all the differences in the results of the struggle between the cities and their lords, they had one thing in common. All townspeople achieved personal liberation from serfdom. In medieval Europe, a rule was established according to which a serf who fled to the city, after living there for a certain period of time (in Germany and England, usually one year and one day), also became free. “City air makes you free,” said a medieval proverb.

Urban craft. Workshops

The production basis of the medieval city was crafts. A craftsman, like a peasant, was a small producer who owned the tools of production and independently ran his own private farm based on personal labor. “An existence appropriate to his position—and not exchange value as such, not enrichment as such...” was the goal of the artisan’s work. But unlike the peasant, the expert craftsman, firstly, from the very beginning was a commodity producer, ran a commodity economy; secondly, he did not need land as a means of production, therefore, in urban crafts, non-economic coercion in the form of personal dependence of the direct producer on the feudal lord was not necessary and quickly disappeared as the city grew. Here, however, there were other types of non-economic coercion related to the guild organization of crafts and the corporate-class, essentially feudal, nature of the urban system (guild coercion, guild and trade regulation, etc.). But this coercion came not from the feudal lord, but from the townspeople themselves.

A characteristic feature of medieval craft in Western Europe was its guild organization - the unification of artisans of a certain profession within a given city into special unions - guilds, craft guilds. Guilds appeared almost simultaneously with the cities themselves: in Italy - already from the 10th century, in France, England and Germany - from the 11th - early 12th centuries, although the final registration of the guilds (receiving special charters from kings and other lords, drawing up and recording shop regulations) occurred, as a rule, later.

The guilds arose as organizations of independent small commodity producers - urban artisans who needed to unite to fight against the feudal lords and to protect their production and income from the competition of people from the countryside who were constantly arriving in the city. Among the reasons that determined the need for the formation of guilds, Marx and Engels also noted the need of artisans for common market premises for the sale of goods and the need to protect the common property of artisans; The main function of the guilds is to establish control over the production and sale of handicraft products. The unification of artisans into guilds was determined by the level of development of the productive forces achieved at that time and the entire feudal-class structure of society. The model for the guild organization was also partly the structure of the rural commune-mark.

The artisans united in workshops were the direct producers and owners of the means of production. Each of them worked in his own separate workshop, with his own tools and raw materials. He “fused with his means of production,” as Marx put it, “as closely as a snail with its shell.” The craft, as a rule, was passed on by inheritance. Many generations of artisans worked with the same tools and in the same ways as their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. There was almost no division of labor within the craft workshop. It was carried out by isolating new craft specialties, organized in the form of separate workshops, the number of which increased with the growth of the division of labor. In many cities, there were dozens of workshops, and in the largest - even hundreds .

The craftsman was usually helped in his work by his family. He often had one or two apprentices and one or more apprentices working with him. But only the master, the owner of the craft workshop, was a member of the guild. One of important functions the workshop was to regulate the relations of masters with apprentices and apprentices. The master, journeyman and apprentice stood at different levels of the guild hierarchy. Preliminary completion of the two lower levels was mandatory for anyone who wanted to join the workshop and become its member. In the first period of the development of guilds, every student could become an apprentice in a few years, and an apprentice could become a master. In most cities, belonging to a guild was a prerequisite for practicing a craft, i.e., a guild monopoly was established for this type of craft. In Germany it was called Zunftzwang - guild coercion. This eliminated the possibility of competition from artisans who were not part of the workshop, which, in the conditions of a very narrow market at that time and relatively insignificant demand, was dangerous for many manufacturers.

Members of each workshop were interested in ensuring unhindered sales of their products. Therefore, the workshop strictly regulated production and, through specially elected workshop officials, ensured that each master member of the workshop produced products of a certain type and quality. The workshop prescribed, for example, what width and color the fabric should be, how many threads should be in the base, what tools and materials should be used, etc. Regulation of production also served other purposes: being an association of independent small commodity producers, the workshop zealously monitored , so that the production of all its members remains small-scale, so that none of them displaces other craftsmen from the market by producing more products. To this end, the guild regulations strictly limited the number of apprentices and apprentices that one master could have, prohibited work at night and during holidays, limited the number of machines on which an artisan could work, regulated stocks of raw materials, prices for handicraft products, etc.

The guild organization of crafts in cities was one of the manifestations of their feudal nature: “... the feudal structure of land ownership corresponded in cities to corporate ownership, the feudal organization of crafts.” Such an organization created in medieval society the most favorable conditions for the development of productive forces and commodity production in cities until a certain time. Within the framework of guild production, it was possible to further develop and deepen the social division of labor in the form of the allocation of more and more craft workshops. The guild system contributed to expanding the range and improving the quality of manufactured goods. During this first period of their existence, the guilds contributed to the gradual, albeit slow, improvement of craft tools and craft skills.

Therefore, until approximately the end of the XIV - beginning of the XV centuries. workshops in Western Europe played a progressive role. They protected artisans from excessive exploitation by feudal lords; given the extremely narrow market of that time, they ensured the existence of urban small producers, softening competition between them and protecting them from the competition of rural artisans arriving in the cities.

Thus, during the heyday of the feudal mode of production, as K. Marx noted, “privileges, the establishment of guilds and corporations, the entire regime of medieval regulation were social relations that were the only ones corresponding to the acquired productive forces and the pre-existing social order from which these institutions emerged.”

The guild organization was not limited to the implementation of its most important socio-economic functions, but covered all aspects of the life of an urban artisan. The guilds played an important role in uniting townspeople to fight the feudal lords, and then the rule of the patriciate. The workshop was a military organization that participated in the protection of the city and acted as a separate combat unit in the event of war. The workshop had its own “saint,” whose day it celebrated, its own churches or chapels, being a kind of religious organization. The guild was also a mutual aid organization for artisans, providing assistance to its needy members and their families in the event of illness or death of a guild member.

The guild system in medieval Europe was still not universal. In a number of countries it was relatively little widespread and did not reach its completed form everywhere. Along with it, in some countries there was a so-called “free craft” (for example, in the south of France and in some other areas). But even in those cities where “free craft” dominated, there was regulation of production and protection of the monopoly of urban artisans, carried out by local governments.

The struggle of the guilds with the urban patriciate

The struggle of cities with feudal lords led in the overwhelming majority of cases to the transfer, to one degree or another, of city government into the hands of citizens. But by this time there was already a noticeable social stratification in the cities. Therefore, although the fight against the feudal lords was carried out by all the townspeople, it was usually the top of the urban population who benefited from its results - homeowners, landowners, including those of the feudal type, moneylenders, rich merchant-wholesalers engaged in transit trade.

This upper, privileged layer was a narrow, closed group - the hereditary urban aristocracy (patriciate), which had difficulty admitting new members into its midst. The city council, the head of the city, as well as the city judicial panel (scheffen, echeven, skabini) were elected only from among those who belonged to the patriciate. The entire city administration, court and finance, including taxation, were in the hands of the city elite, used in their interests and to the detriment of the interests of the broad masses of the city's trade and craft population.

But as crafts developed and the importance of the guilds grew stronger, artisans, small traders, and the urban poor entered into a struggle with the urban patriciate for power in the city. In the XIII-XV centuries. This struggle unfolded in almost all countries of medieval Europe and often took on a very acute character, even leading to armed uprisings. In some cities where handicraft production was highly developed, guilds won (for example, in Cologne, Augsburg, Florence). In others, where large-scale trade and merchants played the leading role, the city elite emerged victorious from the struggle (this was the case, for example, in Hamburg, Lübeck, Rostock and other cities of the Hanseatic League). But even where the guilds won, city governance did not become truly democratic, since the wealthy elite of the most influential guilds united after their victory with part of the patriciate and established a new oligarchic government that acted in the interests of the richest citizens.

The beginning of the decomposition of the guild system

In the XIV-XV centuries. The role of the workshops has changed in many ways. Their conservatism and routine, the desire to preserve and perpetuate small-scale production, traditional techniques and tools, and to prevent technical improvements for fear of competition turned the workshops into a brake on technical progress and further growth of production.

However, as the productive forces grew and the domestic and foreign markets expanded, competition between individual artisans within the workshop grew more and more. Individual artisans, contrary to the guild regulations, expanded their production, and property and social inequality developed in the guilds. Owners of larger workshops began the practice of renting out work to poorer craftsmen, supplying them with raw materials or semi-finished products and receiving finished products. From among the previously unified mass of small artisans and traders, a wealthy guild elite gradually emerged, exploiting the small craftsmen - the direct producers.

Stratification within the guild craft was expressed in the division of guilds into more prosperous and rich (“senior” or “large” guilds) and poorer (“junior” or “small” guilds). This division took place, first of all, in the largest cities: Florence, Perugia, London, Bristol, Paris, Basel, etc. The “older”, economically stronger workshops established their dominance over the “younger” ones, subjecting them to exploitation. This sometimes led to the loss of economic independence by members of the junior workshops and their actual status as hired workers.

Position of apprentices and journeymen; their struggle with the masters

Over time, apprentices and apprentices also fell into the position of being exploited. This was due to the fact that the medieval craft, based on manual labor, required a very long time for training. In different crafts and workshops this period ranged from 2 to 7 years, and in some workshops it reached 10-12 years. Under such conditions, the master could, with great benefit, use the free labor of his already sufficiently qualified student for a very long time.

Guild foremen also exploited apprentices. The duration of their working day was usually very long - 14-16, and sometimes 18 hours. The apprentices were judged by a guild court, in which the masters again sat. The workshops controlled the life of apprentices and apprentices, their pastime, spending, and acquaintances. In the 14th-15th centuries, when the decline and disintegration of the guild craft began, the exploitation of apprentices and journeymen increased noticeably and, most importantly, became virtually permanent. In the initial period of the existence of the guild system, a student, having completed an apprenticeship and becoming a journeyman, and then having worked for a while for a master and having accumulated a small amount of money, could expect to become a master. Now, access to the position of a master for students and apprentices was actually closed. In an effort to defend their privileges in the face of growing competition, the masters began to put all sorts of obstacles in their way.

The so-called closure of the workshops began; the title of master became practically accessible to journeymen and apprentices only if they were close relatives of the masters. Others, in order to receive the title of master, had to pay a very large entrance fee to the workshop’s cash desk, perform exemplary work—a “masterpiece”—from expensive material, arrange an expensive treat for the members of the workshop, etc. Apprentices thus turned into “eternal apprentices” ", i.e. essentially hired workers.

To protect their interests, they create special organizations - “brotherhoods”, “companions”, which are mutual aid unions and organizations to fight against guild foremen. In the fight against them, apprentices put forward economic demands, achieve higher wages and shorter working hours. To achieve their goal they resort to such acute forms class struggle, such as a strike and boycott against the most hated masters.

Pupils and journeymen constituted the most organized and advanced part of a fairly broad culture in the cities of the 14th and 15th centuries. layer of hired workers. It also included non-guild day laborers, various kinds of unorganized workers, whose ranks were constantly replenished by peasants who had lost their land who came to the cities, as well as impoverished members of the guilds - small artisans. The latter, becoming dependent on the large masters who had become rich, differed from the apprentices only in that they worked at home. Not being a working class in the modern sense of the word, this layer already constituted an element of the pre-proletariat, which was fully formed later, during the period of widespread and widespread development of manufacture.

As social contradictions within the medieval city developed and intensified, the exploited sections of the urban population began to openly oppose the city elite in power, which now in many cities included, along with the patriciate, the guild aristocracy. This struggle also included the lowest disenfranchised layer of the urban population: people deprived of certain occupations and permanent residence, declassed elements who were outside the feudal class structure - they made up the urban plebeianism.

In the XIV-XV centuries. the lower strata of the urban population raise uprisings against the city oligarchy and the guild elite in a number of cities in Western Europe - in Florence, Perugia, Siena, Cologne, etc. In these uprisings, which were the most acute manifestations of social contradictions within the medieval city, hired workers played a particularly significant and progressive role workers.

Thus, in the social struggle that unfolded in the medieval cities of Western Europe, three main stages can be distinguished. At first, the entire mass of townspeople fought against the feudal lords for the liberation of cities from their power. Then the guilds waged a struggle against the city patriciate. Later, the struggle of the urban plebeians unfolded against the rich masters and merchants who exploited and oppressed them, as well as against the urban oligarchy.

The formation and growth of the urban class

In the process of urban development, the growth of craft and merchant corporations, the struggle of townspeople against feudal lords and internal social conflicts among them in feudal Europe, a special medieval class of townspeople took shape.

Economically, the new class was associated, to one degree or another, with craft and trade activities, with property, in contrast to other types of property under feudalism, “based only on labor and exchange.” In political and legal terms, all members of this class enjoyed a number of specific privileges and liberties (personal freedom, jurisdiction of the city court, participation in the city militia), which constituted the status of a full citizen. Initially, the urban class was identified with the concept of “burgherdom”, when the word “burgher” in a number of European countries denoted all urban residents (from the German “burg” - a city, where the medieval Latin “bur-gensis” came from, and from the French term “burgeoisie”, coming from the Middle Ages and at first meaning “city dweller”). According to its property and social status The urban class of the Middle Ages was not united. Within it there existed, on the one hand, the urban patriciate, on the other, a layer of wealthy merchants and artisans, and, finally, the urban plebeians. As this stratification developed in the cities, the term "burgher" gradually changed its meaning. Already in the XII-XIII centuries. it began to be used only to designate “full-fledged”, most prosperous townspeople, which could not include representatives of the plebeians who were excluded from city government. In the XIV - XV centuries. this term usually designated only the rich and prosperous trade and craft strata of the city, from which the first elements of the bourgeoisie later grew.

The population of cities occupied a special place in the socio-political life of feudal society. Often it acted as a single force in the fight against feudal lords (sometimes in alliance with the king). Later, the urban class began to play a prominent role in class-representative meetings.

Thus, the inhabitants of medieval cities did not constitute a single class or socially monolithic layer, but were constituted as an estate. Their disunity was reinforced by the dominance of the corporate system within the cities. The predominance of local interests in each city, which were sometimes intensified by trade rivalry between cities, also prevented their joint actions as an estate on the scale of the whole country.

Development of trade and credit in Western Europe

The growth of cities in Western Europe was promoted in the 11th–15th centuries. significant development of domestic and foreign trade. Cities, including small ones, primarily formed the local market, where exchanges were carried out with the rural district, and the foundations were laid for the formation of a single internal market.

But during the period of developed feudalism, long-distance, transit trade, carried out mainly by merchants not associated with production, continued to play a larger role in terms of the volume and value of products sold.

In the XIII-XV centuries. such interregional trade in Europe was concentrated mainly in two areas. One of them was the Mediterranean, which served as a link in the trade of Western European countries - Spain, Southern and Central France, Italy - among themselves, as well as with Byzantium and the countries of the East. From the 12th-13th centuries, especially in connection with the Crusades, primacy in this trade passed from the Byzantines and Arabs to the merchants of Genoa and Venice, Marseille and Barcelona. The main objects of trade here were luxury goods exported from the East, spices, and partly wine; In addition to other goods, slaves were also exported to the East.

Another area of ​​European trade covered the Baltic and North Seas. The northwestern regions of Rus' (especially Novgorod, Pskov and Polotsk), the Baltic states (Riga), Northern Germany, the Scandinavian countries, Flanders, Brabant and the Northern Netherlands, Northern France and England took part in it. In this area they traded goods of wider consumption: mainly fish, salt, furs, wool, cloth, flax, hemp, wax, resin, timber (especially ship timber), and from the 15th century. - bread.

Connections between these two areas of international trade were carried out along a trade route that went through the Alpine passes and then along the Rhine, where there were many large cities involved in this transit trade. Fairs, which became widespread in France, Italy, Germany, and England already in the 11th-12th centuries, played a major role in trade, including international trade. Wholesale trade in goods of high demand was carried out here: wool, leather, cloth, linen fabrics, metals and products made from them, grain. At fairs in the French county of Champagne in the 12th-13th centuries, which lasted almost all year round, merchants from many European countries met. The Venetians and Genoese brought expensive oriental goods there. Flemish merchants and merchants from Florence brought well-made cloth, merchants from Germany brought linen fabrics, Czech merchants brought cloth, leather and metal products, wool, tin, lead and iron were delivered from England. In the XIV-XV centuries. Bruges (Flanders) became the main center of European fair trade.

The scale of trade at that time should not be exaggerated: it was hampered by the dominance of subsistence farming in the countryside, as well as by the lawlessness of the feudal lords and feudal fragmentation. Duties and all kinds of levies were collected from merchants when moving from the possessions of one lord to the lands of another, when crossing bridges and even river fords, when traveling along a river that flowed in the possessions of one or another lord.

The most noble knights and even kings did not hesitate to carry out predatory attacks on merchant caravans. However, gradual growth commodity-money relations and exchange created the possibility of accumulating monetary capital in the hands of individuals - primarily merchants and moneylenders. The accumulation of funds was also facilitated by money exchange operations, which were necessary in the Middle Ages due to the endless variety of monetary systems and monetary units, since money was minted not only by emperors and kings, but also by all prominent lords and bishops, as well as large cities.

To exchange some money for others and establish the value of a particular coin, a special profession of money changer was created. Money changers were engaged not only in exchange operations, but also in transferring sums of money, from which credit transactions arose. Usury was usually associated with this. Exchange operations and credit operations led to the creation of special banking offices. The first such banking offices arose in the cities of Northern Italy - in Lombardy. Therefore, the word “pawnbroker” in the Middle Ages became synonymous with banker and moneylender and was later preserved in the name of pawnshops.

The largest moneylender in the Middle Ages was Catholic Church. The largest credit and usury operations were carried out by the Roman Curia, into which enormous amounts of money flowed from all European countries.

The beginnings of capitalist exploitation in urban craft production

Progress in the development of domestic and foreign trade by the end of the XIV-XV centuries. contributed to the accumulation of significant funds in the hands of the merchant elite of the cities and the formation of commercial capital. Merchant or merchant (as well as usurer) capital is older than the capitalist mode of production and represents the oldest free form of capital. It operates in the sphere of circulation, serving the exchange of goods in slave, feudal, and capitalist societies. But at a certain level of development of commodity production under feudalism, in the conditions of the beginning of the disintegration of guild craft, commercial capital began to gradually penetrate into the sphere of production. This was usually expressed in the fact that the merchant bought raw materials in bulk and resold them to artisans, and then bought finished products from them for further sale. As a result, the low-income artisan found himself in a position dependent on the merchant, and he had no choice but to continue working for the merchant-buyer, but no longer as an independent commodity producer, but as a de facto hired worker (although sometimes he continued to work as before in his workshop). This penetration into the production of trading and usurious capital served as one of the sources of capitalist manufacture that emerged during the period of disintegration of medieval handicraft production.

Another embryo of capitalist production in the cities was the above-mentioned transformation of the mass of apprentices and journeymen into permanent hired workers who had no prospect of becoming masters. However, the emergence of elements of capitalist relations in cities in the XIV-XV centuries. This should not be exaggerated: it occurred only sporadically, in a few of the largest centers (mainly in Italy) and in the most developed branches of production, mainly in cloth making. The development of these new phenomena occurred earlier and faster in those countries and those branches of craft where there was a wide external market, which encouraged the expansion of production, its improvement, and the investment of new, significant capital in it. It did not yet mean the presence of an established capitalist structure. It is characteristic that even in large cities of Western Europe, including Italian ones, a significant part of the capital accumulated in trade and usury was invested not in the expansion of industrial production, but in the acquisition of land; The owners of these capitals sought in this way to become part of the ruling class of feudal lords.

Development of commodity-money relations and changes in the socio-economic life of feudal society

Cities, as the main centers of commodity production and exchange, exerted an ever-increasing and multifaceted influence on the feudal countryside. In it, consumer goods made by urban artisans began to find increasing sales: shoes, clothing, metal products, etc. The involvement of agricultural products in trade turnover—bread, wine, wool, livestock, etc.—increased, albeit slowly. The exchange also included products of rural crafts and trades (especially homespun coarse cloth, flax, wooden products, etc.). Their production increasingly turned into auxiliary commercial branches of the village economy. All this led to the emergence and development large number local markets, which subsequently formed the basis for the formation of a broader internal market, connecting various regions of the country with more or less strong economic relations. The ever-expanding involvement of the peasant economy in market relations intensified the growth of property inequality and social stratification among the peasantry. From the mass of peasants, on the one hand, the wealthy peasant elite stands out, and on the other, numerous rural poor people, sometimes completely landless, living by some kind of craft or hired work as farm laborers for the feudal lord or rich peasants. Part of these poor people, who were exploited not only by feudal lords, but also by their more prosperous fellow villagers, constantly went to the cities in the hope of finding more tolerable conditions. There they joined the masses of the urban plebeians. Sometimes wealthy peasants also moved to cities, seeking to use the funds accumulated in the countryside in the commercial and industrial sphere.

Not only the peasant but also the lord's domain economy was drawn into commodity-money relations, which led to significant changes in the relationships between them. The most typical and characteristic for most countries of Western Europe - Italy, France, West Germany and partly England - was the path in which in the XII-XV centuries. The process of rent commutation developed—replacing labor and food rents with cash payments. The feudal lords, therefore, transferred to the peasants all the concerns of producing and selling agricultural products on the market, usually the nearby, local market. This path of development gradually led in the 13th-15th centuries. to the liquidation of the domain and the distribution of all the land of the feudal lord to the peasants in holdings or for rent of a semi-feudal type. The liquidation of the domain and the commutation of rent was also associated with the liberation of the bulk of the peasants from personal dependence, which ended in most countries of Western Europe in the 15th century. However, despite some benefits of such development for the peasantry as a whole, its economic exploitation often increased; commutation of rent and personal emancipation of peasants were often paid for by a significant increase in their payments to the feudal lords.

In some areas where a wide external market for agricultural products was developing, with which only the feudal lords were able to communicate (South-East England, Central and Eastern Germany), development took a different path: here the feudal lords, on the contrary, expanded the domain economy, which led to an increase in the corvee of peasants and attempts to strengthen personal dependence.

The consequence of the general increase in exploitation of peasants under these different paths of development was the growth of peasant resistance to feudal oppression and the intensification of class struggle in all spheres of life of feudal society. In the XIV-XV centuries. In a number of countries, the largest peasant uprisings in the history of the Western European Middle Ages took place, which affected the entire socio-economic and political development of these countries. By the beginning of the 15th century, not without the influence of these large peasant movements, the first, more progressive path of agrarian evolution triumphed in the countries of Western Europe. The consequence of this was the decline, the crisis of the classical patrimonial system and the complete displacement of the center of agricultural production and its connections with the market from the feudal lord's economy to small-scale farming. peasant farm, which became increasingly marketable.

The crisis of the patrimonial economy, however, did not mean a general crisis of the feudal system. He expressed, on the contrary, its generally successful adaptation to changed economic conditions, when the relatively high level of commodity-money relations began to undermine the subsistence economy. Such a restructuring of the agrarian economy of feudal society was associated with a number of temporary difficulties, especially for the economy of the feudal lords - a shortage of workers (including holders), the abandonment of part of the arable land, and a drop in the profitability of many feudal estates.

However, one cannot agree with those foreign historians who saw in these phenomena a general “agrarian crisis” (V. Abel), “economic depression” (M. Postan) or even a “crisis of feudalism” (R. Hilton), considering the main reason for these “ crises" demographic factor - population decline after the plague epidemic that swept across Europe in the middle of the 14th century. Firstly, the listed phenomena of “decline” were not universal: they did not exist in the Netherlands or in the countries of the Iberian Peninsula; in a number of other areas of Europe they were weakly expressed. Secondly, these phenomena coexisted with notable success in many countries of peasant farming and urban production, especially in the 15th century. As for the “loss” of the rural population, it began several decades before the epidemic of the mid-14th century. and during the 15th century. mostly replenished. The theory of “crises” put forward by bourgeois scientists cannot be considered valid, since it gives a very superficial explanation of the economic development of Western Europe in the 14th-15th centuries and ignores the social foundations of the feudal system and the general patterns of its development.

The real crisis of feudalism as a social phenomenon, even in the most advanced countries of Europe, came much later (in the 16th or even 17th centuries). The changes that took place in the feudal villages of Western Europe in the 14th-15th centuries represented a further stage in the evolution of the feudal formation in the conditions of the increased role of commodity farming.

Cities and their trade and craft population had a large, although very different, influence everywhere. different countries, influence both on the agrarian system and the position of peasants and feudal lords, and on the development of the feudal state (see chapters on the history of individual countries in the 11th-15th centuries). The role of cities and the urban class was also great in the development medieval culture, the progress of which in the XII-XV centuries. they contributed a lot.

The emergence of medieval cities as centers of crafts and trade Thus, approximately by the X-XI centuries. In Europe, all the necessary conditions appeared for the separation of crafts from agriculture. At the same time, the craft, small industrial production based on manual labor, separated from agriculture, went through a number of stages in its development. The first of these was the production of products to order from the consumer, when the material could belong to both the consumer-customer and the artisan himself, and payment for labor was made either in kind or in money. Such a craft could exist not only in the city; it was also widespread in the countryside, being an addition to the peasant economy. However, when a craftsman worked to order, commodity production did not yet arise, because the product of labor did not appear on the market. The next stage in the development of the craft was associated with the artisan’s entry into the market. This was a new and important phenomenon in the development of feudal society. A craftsman specially engaged in the manufacture of handicraft products could not exist if he did not turn to the market and did not receive there the agricultural products he needed in exchange for his products. But by producing products for sale on the market, the artisan became a commodity producer. Thus, the emergence of crafts, isolated from agriculture, meant the emergence of commodity production and commodity relations, the emergence of exchange between city and countryside and the emergence of opposition between them. Craftsmen, who gradually emerged from the mass of the enslaved and feudally dependent rural population, sought to leave the village, escape from the power of their masters and settle where they could find the most favorable conditions for selling their products and running their own independent craft economy. The flight of peasants from the countryside led directly to the formation of medieval cities as centers of crafts and trade. Peasant artisans who left and fled from the village settled in different places depending on the availability of favorable conditions for practicing their craft (possibility of selling products, proximity to sources of raw materials, relative safety, etc.). Craftsmen often chose as their place of settlement precisely those points that played the role of administrative, military and church centers in the early Middle Ages. Many of these points were fortified, which provided the artisans with the necessary security. The concentration in these centers of a significant population - feudal lords with their servants and numerous retinues, clergy, representatives of the royal and local administration, etc. - created favorable conditions for artisans to sell their products here. Craftsmen also settled near large feudal estates, estates, and castles, the inhabitants of which could become consumers of their goods. Craftsmen also settled near the walls of monasteries, where many people flocked on pilgrimage, in settlements located at the intersection of important roads, at river crossings and bridges, at river mouths, on the banks of bays, bays, convenient for ships, etc. Despite the differences in the places where they arose, all these settlements of artisans became centers of population engaged in the production of handicrafts for sale, centers of commodity production and exchange in feudal society. Cities played a vital role in the development of the internal market under feudalism. Expanding, albeit slowly, handicraft production and trade, they drew both master's and peasant economies into commodity circulation and thereby contributed to the development of productive forces in agriculture, the emergence and development of commodity production in it, and the growth of the internal market in the country.

Population and appearance of cities.

In Western Europe, medieval cities first appeared in Italy (Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Naples, Amalfi, etc.), as well as in the south of France (Marseille, Arles, Narbonne and Montpellier), since here, starting from the 9th century. the development of feudal relations led to a significant increase in productive forces and the separation of crafts from agriculture. One of the favorable factors that contributed to the development of Italian and southern French cities was the trade relations of Italy and southern France with Byzantium and the East, where there were numerous and flourishing craft and trading centers that had survived from antiquity. Rich cities with developed handicraft production and lively trade activities were cities such as Constantinople, Thessalonica (Thessalonica), Alexandria, Damascus and Bakhdad. Even richer and more populous, with an extremely high level of material and spiritual culture for that time, were the cities of China - Chang'an (Xi'an), Luoyang, Chengdu, Yangzhou, Guangzhou (Canton) and the cities of India - Kanyakubja (Kanauj), Varanasi (Benares) , Ujjain, Surashtra (Surat), Tanjore, Tamralipti (Tamluk), etc. As for medieval cities in Northern France, the Netherlands, England, South-West Germany, along the Rhine and along the Danube, their emergence and development relate only to X and XI centuries. In Eastern Europe ancient cities , which early began to play the role of centers of craft and trade were Kyiv, Chernigov, Smolensk, Polotsk and Novgorod. Already in the X-XI centuries. Kyiv was a very significant craft and trade center and amazed its contemporaries with its splendor. He was called a rival of Constantinople. According to contemporaries, by the beginning of the 11th century. There were 8 markets in Kyiv. Novgorod was also a big and rich holy fool at this time. As excavations by Soviet archaeologists have shown, the streets of Novgorod were paved with wooden pavements already in the 11th century. In Novgorod in the XI-XII centuries. There was also a water supply: water flowed through hollowed out wooden pipes. This was one of the earliest urban aqueducts in medieval Europe. Cities of ancient Rus' in the X-XI centuries. already had extensive trade relations with many regions and countries of the East and West - with the Volga region, the Caucasus, Byzantium, Central Asia, Iran, Arab countries, the Mediterranean, Slavic Pomerania, Scandinavia, the Baltic states, as well as with the countries of Central and Western Europe - the Czech Republic, Moravia , Poland, Hungary and Germany. A particularly important role in international trade from the beginning of the 10th century. Novgorod played. The successes of Russian cities in the development of crafts were significant (especially in the processing of metals and the manufacture of weapons, in jewelry, etc.). Cities also developed early in Slavic Pomerania along the southern shore of the Baltic Sea - Wolin, Kamen, Arkona (on the island of Rujan, modern Rügen), Stargrad, Szczecin, Gdansk, Kolobrzeg, cities of the southern Slavs on the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic Sea - Dubrovnik, Zadar, Sibenik, Split, Kotor, etc. Prague was a significant center of crafts and trade in Europe. The famous Arab traveler geographer Ibrahim ibn Yaqub, who visited the Czech Republic in the middle of the 10th century, wrote about Prague that it “is the richest of cities in trade.” The main population of cities that arose in the X-XI centuries. in Europe, were craftsmen. Peasants who fled from their masters or went to the cities on the condition of paying a quitrent to the master, becoming townspeople, gradually freed themselves from their excellent dependence on the feudal lord “From the serfs of the Middle Ages,” wrote Marx Engels, “the free population of the first cities emerged” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Works, vol. 4, ed. 2, p. 425,). But even with the advent of medieval cities, the process of separating crafts from agriculture did not end. On the one hand, artisans, having become city dwellers, retained traces of their rural origin for a very long time. On the other hand, in the villages both the master's and the peasant farms continued for a long time to satisfy most of their needs for handicraft products with their own funds. The separation of crafts from agriculture, which began to take place in Europe in the 9th-11th centuries, was still far from complete and complete. In addition, at first the artisan was also a merchant. Only later did merchants appear in the cities - a new social stratum whose sphere of activity was no longer production, but only the exchange of goods. In contrast to the traveling merchants who existed in feudal society in the previous period and were engaged almost exclusively in foreign trade, the merchants who appeared in European cities in the 11th-12th centuries were already engaged primarily in internal trade associated with the development of local markets, i.e. exchange of goods between city and countryside. The separation of merchant activities from crafts was a new step in the social division of labor. Medieval cities were very different in appearance from modern cities. They were usually surrounded by high walls - wooden, often stone, with towers and massive gates, as well as deep ditches for protection from attacks by feudal lords and enemy invasions. Residents of the city - artisans and merchants - carried out guard duty and formed the city's military militia. The walls surrounding the medieval city became cramped over time and did not accommodate all the city buildings. Around the walls, city suburbs gradually arose - settlements, inhabited mainly by artisans, and artisans of the same specialty usually lived on the same street. This is how streets arose - blacksmith shops, weapons shops, carpentry shops, weaving shops, etc. The suburbs, in turn, were surrounded by a new ring of walls and fortifications. The size of European cities was very small. As a rule, cities were small and cramped and numbered only from one to three to five thousand inhabitants. Only very large cities had a population of several tens of thousands of people. Although the bulk of the townspeople were engaged in crafts and trade, agriculture continued to play a certain role in the life of the urban population. Many city residents had their own fields, pastures and vegetable gardens outside the city walls, and partly within the city limits. Small livestock (goats, sheep and pigs) often grazed right in the city, and the pigs found plenty of food there, since garbage, food scraps and odds and ends were usually thrown directly into the street. In cities, due to unsanitary conditions, epidemics often broke out, the mortality rate from which was very high. Fires often occurred, since a significant part of the city buildings were wooden and the houses were adjacent to each other. The walls prevented the city from growing in width, so the streets were made extremely narrow, and the upper floors of houses often protruded in the form of protrusions above the lower ones, and the roofs of houses located on opposite sides of the street almost touched each other. The narrow and crooked city streets were often dimly lit, some of them never reaching the rays of the sun. There was no street lighting. The central place in the city was usually the market square, not far from which the city cathedral was located.

The countries in which medieval cities began to form first were Italy and France, the reason for this being that it was here that feudal relations first began to emerge. This is what served to separate agriculture from crafts, which contributed to increased productivity, and hence the growth of trade.

Prerequisites for the emergence of medieval cities

Trade connections were an advantage that contributed not only to the emergence, but also to the prosperity of medieval cities. Therefore, cities with access to the sea - Venice, Naples, Marseille, Montpalier - very soon became the leading centers of trade in medieval Europe.

The largest center of crafts was Prague. It was here that the workshops of the most skilled jewelers and blacksmiths were concentrated. Therefore, it is natural that the population of cities was represented mainly by artisans and peasants who managed to pay off feudal duties.

In cities where navigation was not possible, artisans themselves acted as traders. Over time, a new class of society emerged - merchants, who were not direct producers of goods, but only intermediaries in trade. This was the reason for the emergence of the first markets in cities.

Appearance of cities

Medieval cities were radically different from the cities of the New and, especially, the Contemporary times. The traditions of antiquity are still preserved in the construction of cities. They were surrounded by stone or wooden walls and deep ditches, which were supposed to protect the population from possible invasion by enemies.

Residents of the city united into a people's militia and took turns performing guard duty. Medieval cities were not large in size; as a rule, they accommodated from five to twenty thousand inhabitants. Since the population of cities was represented in the majority by immigrants from rural areas, residents were not particularly worried about the cleanliness of the city and threw garbage directly onto the streets.

As a result, horrific unsanitary conditions reigned in the cities, which gave rise to masses infectious diseases. The residents' houses were made of wood, they were located on narrow and crooked streets and often touched each other. The city center was represented by a market square. Cathedrals were built not far from it.

The rise of medieval cities

The flourishing of medieval cities is primarily associated with the beginning of the introduction of various innovations into production that increased labor productivity. Craftsmen began to unite into workshops. Private forms of ownership appear for the first time in light industry. Market relations go beyond the boundaries of the city and state.

An increase in cash flow contributes to the transformation of the city: cathedrals are created that amaze with their architecture, and the appearance of streets and residential areas is significantly improved. Significant changes also affected cultural life in the Middle Ages: the first theaters and exhibitions were opened, various festivals and competitions were organized.