Sketch by Jacques-Louis David of the Tennis Court Oath (1791), which marked the emancipation of the French bourgeoisie, or the Third Estate, from the Estates-General.

Urban charters had grown out of collective efforts to sustain collective responsibility in the medieval town. Even though urban administrators were elected to their positions, medieval towns were not centers for democracy or equality. Quite the opposite, in fact. The medieval town was ruled by an urban oligarchy. A burgher was “elected,” or chosen, by his fellow burghers to serve at his administrative post. Prosperous merchants had the most to gain from charters, as it was they who controlled their towns’ governments. Generation after generation they looked out for themselves and their economic interests.

Did the development of urban charters and laws contribute to the bourgeoisie’s achieving class consciousness in the Middle Ages?

I would argue that establishing the customs of the towns—which emphasized the rights, privileges, and liberties of the medieval bourgeoisie— was a crucial process that set the bourgeoisie apart from both their seigniorial lords and the rural peasantry.

Sheila Delany provides a succinct overview of the reasons for which the medieval bourgeoisie began to claim for themselves specific legal freedoms and privileges, which she rather brilliantly connects to the bourgeois revolutions that marked the end of a bloody 18th century:

From the start the medieval bourgeoisie were in competition with feudal lords. They competed first for labour-power, for they required a pool of free workers and artisans to produce what they would sell. Free, that is, from feudal ties, free to move where they were needed, free to work when they were needed, and free from property. To this end most town charters guaranteed freedom to any serf who lived peacefully in the town for a year and a day…But the bourgeois himself, whether merchant, employer or financier, also required freedom from domination by lay and ecclesiastical lords. He wanted freedom to trade unimpeded and travel safely, freedom to hire and release employees, to raise or lower prices, wages or interest, to accumulate a fortune, marry a noblewoman or purchase an estate. The political privileges granted to the urban bourgeoisie were known as ‘liberties.’ Indeed the notion of ‘liberty’ was the distinctive contribution to European thought of the bourgeoisie breaking free of feudal bonds; it culminated in the slogans of French and American bourgeois revolutionaries of the 18th century.

I emphasize the last point of this passage to highlight the continuing relevance of the medieval bourgeoisie to our modern political discourse. Our modern conceptions of liberty and freedoms were derived, at least partly, from definitions that the medieval bourgeoisie had begun to codify in urban charters so that they could adequately protect and defend their economic interests.

Detail from the frontispiece to De Regimine Principum by Giles of Rome (c. 1243-1316), Bibliothèque nationale de France

See part one here on the origins of the bourgeoisie.

Town members made considerable investments in the fortifications of the town, for whose upkeep they must have collected financial resources. Thus, urban governments and book-keeping were first developed for safeguarding the community.

Some fortified areas, or burgs, eventually became towns, for by the 12^th century a borough was a town or city, inhabited by burghers or burgesses, who will become to be known as the bourgeoisie. Even today, the association lingers in such places as Edinburgh in Scotland, Hamburg in Germany, and— to use U.S. city as an example— Pittsburgh!

Townspeople were initially subject to the tolls and taxes levied by the noble, bishop, or monastery within whose territory their town lay. But, at an early date, the town’s wealthiest inhabitants, primarily those who made their living by trade (the merchants), began to band together to oppose these taxes and to agitate for privileges essential to their calling: freedom from servile dues; freedom of movement; freedom from having to pay inordinate tolls at every bridge or castle; freedom to hold property without any feudal or manorial services; and freedom for legal self-management.

By the 12^th century townspeople began to obtain charters that guaranteed many or all of these privileges. The agitation for urban autonomy was so widespread that historians have labeled this phenomenon the communal movement of 12^th-century Europe. In effect, each charter issued to the bourgeoisie of each town helped them carve out semi-autonomous political and legal entities— called communes in many parts of Europe— which had their own local government, courts, tax-collecting agencies, and legal customs (which will be the subject of the next post in this series on the medieval bourgeoisie).

Cute, but incorrect.

As mentioned in my previous post about the rise of the bourgeoisie as a distinctly urban class in the Middle Ages, the bourgeoisie were not responsible for taxing the peasants. The nobility and other great landlords who held large estates (think abbots, kings, dukes, bishops, etc.) were the beneficiaries of both peasant labor and taxes. In fact, the medieval bourgeoisie themselves had to render their own taxes to their local lord (who could also be a king) because the towns and cities they lived in were technically on lands belonging to some lord. Lest they held a charter that exempted them from these taxes, the bourgeoisie (or the elite men of the town, in this case) were largely responsible for collecting the necessary dues. 

Even later on, when some members of the bourgeoisie began to increasingly marry into noble families, the taxes levied on peasants were important because they supported the very structures on which seignorial lordship rested— not because these taxes benefited the bourgeoisie in particular.

Woodcut Print of Medieval Town from the Liber Chronicarum (Compiled by Hartmann Schedel [c. 1493])

bourgeoisie
1707, “body of freemen in a French town; the French middle class,” from Fr. bourgeois, from O.Fr. burgeis, borjois (12c.) “town dweller” (as distinct from “peasant”), from borc “town, village,” from Frank. *burg “city” (see borough).  Communist use for “the capitalist class generally” attested from 1886.  

The bourgeoisie began as, and largely remained, an urban class in the Middle Ages. One must understand the origins of the bourgeoisie in the context of urban development. Even though the medieval bourgeoisie were lumped in with peasants as “those who work” (the other two socio-economic groups in this tripartite order being “those who pray,” the clergy, and “those who fight,” the knights and nobles) they were, of course, distinct from their rural counterparts. The driving force of the rural, peasant economy was agriculture—and, indeed, peasants represented, according to some estimations, over 90% of the medieval population.

The Three Orders: Cleric, Knight, and Workman [Image from the British Library MS Sloane 2435,  f.85.]

Agricultural surpluses can stimulate population growth and, most importantly, migration from the countryside to the town. Indeed, a town is at first distinct from the village because the urban economy relies on trade and manufacturing, not agriculture. Once a population can eat without having to rely on themselves for actually producing the food, then they can engage in other activities that do not involve farming.

So what sort of labor did townspeople do in the Middle Ages? Watch this space for more entries on this topic.

The product description for this board game imagines this scenario:

Europe during the Middle Ages. You are a merchant, owner of important markets in six majestic cities of Europe. At the heart of this commercial trade are six different kinds of goods: cloth, iron, wine, food, silk and salt. These goods are, as much as possible, acquired at a low price. They are then transported by wagon to another city where, if the market is properly managed, they will be sold for a considerable profit. And what do you want to do with all that money? Make a name for yourself by raising your social status. At the end of the game, the player who managed to make the most prestigious name for himself wins the game.

Bold emphasis mine. I’ve not played this game (yet), but am pleased to see that the creators of this game seem to know a little about the world from which they drew their inspiration— and have rightly identified that having money and prestige were one and the same, and of equal importance, to the bourgeoisie in the Middle Ages. Since the medieval bourgeoisie (the most influential members being merchants) were moneyed but not aristocratic, financial success usually brought prestige, honor, and reputation to their families. Honor and prestige were valuable forms of political capital with which positions of power and influence could be secured and bought.

In the next few posts I’m going to be exploring the origins of the bourgeoisie in the Middle Ages. In the age of ‘feudalism’ (a problematic term, I know) contractual relationships between lord and serf, lord and vassal reigned supreme, so where did the bourgeoisie come from? Who were they? How did they start to become economically and politically influential?

Stay tuned.

A topic that greatly interests me is bourgeois guilt. Bourgeois guilt manifests itself in interesting and distinct ways in medieval cultures because of the strong influence of Christianity. This was never so true as in the case of Peter Waldo (c. 1140 – c. 1218), a rich merchant from the southern French town of Lyons. He was eventually condemned for heresy after he began preaching without a license to do so, and his main beliefs - centered on vernacular readings of scripture, a priesthood of all believers, and embracing poverty - give us some ideas about how the medieval bourgeoisie, in their own way, tried to find ways to level the playing field between the rich and the poor, and the clergy and laity.

Jesus, as we all know, had some pretty strong opinions about the possession of wealth and economic privilege.

Matthew 19:21-23:

Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth. Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”

An anonymous chronicle from 1218 described the depths of Peter Waldo’s guilt about bourgeois privilege:

There was at Lyons in France a certain citizen, Waldo by name, who had made himself much money by wicked usury…One Sunday, when he had joined a crowd which he saw gathered around a troubadour, he was smitten by his words and, taking him to his house, he took care hear him at length. The passage he was reciting was the holy Alexis died a blessed death in his father’s house. When morning had come, the prudent citizen hurried to the schools of theology to seek counsel for his soul, and when he was taught many ways of going to God, he asked master what way was more certain and more perfect than all others. The master answered him with this text: “Thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast,” etc…

This passage above is purposely copying similar hagiographies of saints who were inspired to sell off or give away all of their possessions in order to lead a life of poverty and prayer. And Waldo wished to do just that:

Then Waldo went to his wife and gave her the choice of keeping his personal property or his real estate, namely, he had in ponds, groves and fields, houses, rents, vineyards, mills, and fishing rights… At the Assumption of the blessed Virgin, casting some money among the village poor, he cried: “No man can serve two masters, God and mammon.” Then his fellow-citizens ran up, thinking he had lost his mind. But going on to a higher place, he said: “My fellow-citizens and friends, I am not insane, as you think, but am avenging myself on my enemies, who made me a slave, so that I was always more careful of money than of God, and served the creature rather than the Creator…”

Of course, it would be foolish to think that embracing poverty and distributing alms were merely bourgeois acts that aimed to help the poor. At the core of this bourgeois guilt was, we might assume, a deep anxiety about the salvation of one’s soul.