What was the difference between a feudal estate and a medieval city. Forms of feudal tenure
Chapter 7
Developed Middle Ages XI-XV centuries.
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 crafts 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, the time when cities were already largely 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 undivided dominance of subsistence farming. The peasant family itself produced all agricultural products and handicrafts, tools and clothing, not only for their own needs, but also to pay the dues to the feudal lord. The combination of rural labor with handicraft is a characteristic feature of subsistence farming. Only a small number of specialist artisans, usually as householders, lived on the estates of large feudal lords. A few rural artisans - blacksmiths, potters, leather workers - along with the craft were also engaged in agriculture.
The exchange of products was very small. They traded mainly 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, well crafted weapons, spices, etc. main role wandering, most often foreign merchants (Byzantines, Arabs, Syrians, Jews, etc.) played in this trade. The production of agricultural products and handicrafts specially designed for sale, i.e., commodity production, was hardly developed in most of Western Europe. The old Roman cities fell into decay, the agrarianization of the economy took place.
During the early Middle Ages, urban-type settlements were preserved mainly on the site 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 have not yet become the center of craft and trade during this period. Their small population usually differed little from the inhabitants of the villages. In many cities, squares and wastelands were used for arable land and pastures. The few craftsmen and merchants who lived in the early medieval city served mainly only its inhabitants, without having a noticeable impact on the surrounding villages. Most of the urban-type settlements survived in the most Romanized areas of Europe: in Italy, Southern Gaul, Visigothic and then Arab Spain, and also in Byzantium. Although in these areas of the city in the V-VI centuries. fell into decay, some of them were still relatively crowded, they continued to have a specialized craft, permanent markets. Individual cities, especially in Italy and Byzantium, were major centers of intermediary trade with the East. But even in these areas, the cities did not have a decisive influence on the genesis of feudalism. In the greater part of the European continent, however, urban-type settlements were rare, sparsely populated, and had no 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.
The growth of productive forces. Separation of craft from agriculture
By the X-XI centuries. important changes took place in the economic life of Western Europe. The growth of productive forces, which took place in connection with the establishment of the feudal mode of production, in the early Middle Ages proceeded most rapidly in the craft and was expressed in the gradual change and development of the technology and skills of handicraft work, the expansion and differentiation of social production. Certain types of craft have been significantly improved: smelting and processing of metals - primarily blacksmithing and weapons; dressing of fabrics - linen and cloth; skin treatment; production of more advanced clay products using a potter's wheel; mill and construction business. Crafts also developed: mining of metals, salt, logging, fish, furs, sea animals. The production of handicraft products has increasingly become a special area labor activity, different from agricultural, which required further specialization of the artisan, no longer compatible with the labor of the peasant.
The moment has come when the transformation of handicraft into an independent branch of production has become inevitable.
Another prerequisite for the separation of handicrafts from agriculture was the progress in the development of the latter. With the improvement of tools and methods of tillage, especially with the ubiquity of an iron plow with a team of several pairs of oxen, as well as two-field and three-field, labor productivity in agriculture increased, the area of cultivated land increased, to a greater extent through internal colonization and the economic development of new lands. The sowing of grain and industrial crops expanded: flax, hemp, woad (a plant from which a substance for dyeing fabrics was extracted), oilseeds, etc.; horticulture, horticulture, viticulture and such trades closely related to agriculture as winemaking and butter-making developed and improved. The number and breed of livestock has increased and improved, in particular horses, which are increasingly being used not only in military affairs, but also as a means of transport; in some areas, horses began to be used instead of oxen in agriculture, which significantly accelerated the process of tillage.
As a result of all these changes in agriculture, yields have increased, the time for the production of 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 the agricultural products for the products of craftsmen-specialists, which freed the peasant from the need to produce all handicraft products on his farm.
In addition to the above 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 ended, which immediately revealed the deep class contradictions of the new system. On the one hand, a ruling class stood out, whose need for luxury contributed to an increase in the layer of professional artisans. On the other hand, the peasantry, subjected to ever greater oppression, increasingly began to flee to the cities. Fugitive peasants formed the basis of the population of the first cities.
Separation of the city from the countryside
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, handicraft - small-scale industrial production based on manual labor - went through a number of stages in its development. At first, the craft acted mainly in the form of the production of products by order of the consumer, sometimes from his material, and first of all - in the village as an integral part of the subsistence 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 mainly characterized by the work of the craftsman not for a specific customer, but for the market, without which the craftsman could no longer exist in this case. The craftsman becomes a commodity producer. Thus, the appearance of a handicraft, separate from agriculture, meant the emergence of commodity production and commodity relations, the emergence of exchange between town and country. “With the division of production into two major main industries, agriculture and handicraft,” F. Engels wrote, “production arises directly for exchange, commodity production, and with it trade ...”, Exchange between individual producers becomes a vital necessity for society.
But in the countryside, where the market for the sale of handicrafts was narrow, and the power of the feudal lord deprived the producer of the independence he needed, the opportunities for the development of commercial crafts were very limited. Therefore, artisans fled the village and settled where they found the most favorable conditions for conducting an independent economy, marketing their products, and obtaining the necessary raw materials. The resettlement of artisans to market centers and cities was part of the general movement of rural residents there.
The flight of peasants, including those who knew any craft, from the countryside was at that time one of the expressions of their resistance to feudal oppression.
In the X-XIII centuries. (in Italy since the 9th century) cities of the new, feudal type, allocated from the rural district according to the composition of the population, its main occupations and social structure.
Thus, as a result of the separation of craft from agriculture, medieval cities arose. Their appearance marked a new stage in the history of feudalism.
Bourgeois theories of the origin of medieval cities and their criticism
The question of the causes of 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. The greatest 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, the 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 originated 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 mainly 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, who relied mainly on the material of Northwestern and Central Europe (primarily German and English), saw the origins of medieval cities in the legal phenomena of the new, feudal society. According to the "patrimonial" theory (Eichhorn, Nitsch), the city developed from the feudal estate, and city institutions - from the patrimonial administration and patrimonial law. The "Markov" theory (Maurer, Girke, later G. von Below) put the city institutions and the law out of action of the free rural community-mark. 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. Zohm, Schroeder, Schulte) derived city law from the “market law” that was in force 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. In addition, they did not explain why most of the estates, communities, castles, and even market places did not turn into cities.
German historian Ritschel at the end of the 19th century. tried to combine the "burg" and "market" theories, seeing in the cities settlements of merchants around a fortified point ("burg"), ignoring the handicraft 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 the decisive role in the emergence of cities to the economic factor - intercontinental and interregional transit trade and its carrier - the merchant class. However, this "commercial" theory, according to which cities in Western Europe arose initially around "merchant trading posts", ignored the role in the emergence of cities of the separation of crafts from agriculture. Therefore, A. Pirenne also could not scientifically explain the origins and specifics of the feudal city. This theory is now being criticized by many foreign medievalists (R. Butrush, E. Dupont, F. Vercauteren, D. Luzzatto, C. Cipolla, and others), who refute A. Pirenne's thesis about the purely commercial origin of cities.
In modern bourgeois historiography great importance attached to archaeological data, topography and plans of medieval cities (F. Hanshof, Planitz, E. Ennen, F. Verkoteren and others). But these data, without considering the socio-economic conditions that gave rise to the city, do not answer the question of the causes of the emergence of the medieval city and its character. In some cases, these data are incorrectly used to revive the theory of the Roman continuity of medieval cities, which rejects the connection of their emergence 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 not able to develop a scientific understanding of the city of that era as a center of crafts and trade, and the process of its emergence - as a result of the development of the social division of labor - the separation of craft from agriculture. economy.
The emergence of cities - centers of crafts and trade
The specific historical paths of the emergence of cities are very diverse. The peasant artisans who left and fled the villages settled in different places, depending on the availability of favorable conditions for crafts. Sometimes, especially in Italy and southern France, these were the administrative, military and ecclesiastical centers of the early Middle Ages, often located in old Roman cities. Now these old cities were reborn to a new life, but already 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 retinue, clergy, representatives of the royal and local administration, etc. - created favorable conditions for the sale of their products to artisans. But more often, especially in Northwestern 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 who visited monasteries, could be consumers of their goods. Craftsmen settled in settlements lying at the intersection of important roads, at river crossings and bridges, at river mouths, on the banks of bays, bays, etc., convenient for parking 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 handicraft production there, also turned into cities.
The growth of cities in different areas of Western Europe occurred at different rates. First of all - in the IX century. - cities as centers of crafts and trade appeared in Italy (Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Bari, Naples, Amalfi); in the X century. - in the south of France (Marseille, Arles, Narbonne, Montpellier, Toulouse, etc.). In these areas, which already knew a developed class society (the Roman Empire), earlier than in others, the growth of productive forces based on the development of feudal relations led to the separation of handicrafts from agriculture, as well as to an intensification of the class struggle in the countryside and mass flight of serfs.
One of the factors that contributed 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, a certain role was played here by the preservation of the remains of numerous Roman cities and fortresses, where fugitive peasants could find shelter, protection, traditional markets, and the rudiments of Roman municipal law more easily than in uninhabited places.
In the X-XI centuries. cities began to appear in northern France, in the Netherlands, in England and in Germany - along the Rhine and along the upper Danube. The Flanders cities - Bruges, Ypres, Ghent, Lille, Douai, Arras, etc. - were famous for the production of fine cloth, which they supplied to many European countries. In these areas, only a few cities arose on the sites of the old (Roman), most were founded anew. Later - in the XII-XIII centuries - feudal cities began to grow on the northern outskirts and in the interior regions of Zareinskaya 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 neoplasms, growing, as a rule, from "market places" and "ports".
The network of cities in Western and Central Europe was uneven. It reached a special 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 get to any of them within one day.
With all the difference 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 medieval Europe - the social division of labor between craft and agriculture and the development of commodity production and exchange on this basis.
This process was of a lengthy nature and was not completed within the framework of the feudal social formation. However, in the X-XIII centuries. it proceeded especially 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 the cities, began to play an enormous role in the development of the 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 domestic market on the basis of further social division of labor and specialization of individual regions and sectors of the economy (agriculture, cattle breeding, mining, various types of handicrafts).
The commodity production of the Middle Ages should not be identified with capitalist production or seen as the direct sources of the latter, as many bourgeois historians (A. Pirenne, A. Dopsch and many others) do. It was a 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 on a large scale the labor of others. Such production, in contrast to capitalist production, was of a small scale, involving only a small part of the economy in market relations. public product, 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 various social formations and obeying them. In the form in which it was inherent in feudal society, commodity production grew on its soil and depended on the conditions prevailing in it, developed along with it, obeying the general laws of its evolution. Only at a certain stage in 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 power into a commodity on a mass scale, did simple commodity production begin to grow into capitalist production. Until that time, it remained an organic and inalienable element of the economy and social structure of feudal society, just like a medieval city - the main center of commodity production and exchange in feudal society.
Population and appearance of medieval cities
The main population of the cities was made up of people employed in the sphere of production and circulation of goods: artisans of various specialties, at first they were also small traders. Significant groups of people were employed in the service sector: sailors of merchant ships, carters and porters, innkeepers, barbers, innkeepers.
The townspeople, whose ancestors usually came from the village, kept their fields, pastures and gardens both outside and inside the city for a long time, kept cattle. This was partly due to the insufficient marketability of agriculture in the 11th-13th centuries.
Gradually, professional merchants appeared in the cities - merchants from local residents. It was a new social stratum, the sphere of activity of which was only the exchange of goods. Unlike the wandering merchants of the early Middle Ages, they were mainly engaged in domestic trade, exchanging goods between the city and the countryside. The separation of merchant activity from handicraft activity was a new step in the social division of labor. AT major cities, especially in the political and administrative centers, feudal lords often lived with their entourage (servants, military detachments), representatives of the royal and seigniorial administration, as well as the clergy. Already in the XII-XIII centuries. in large cities, a significant part of the population was made up of poor people who lived by odd jobs (day laborers, temporary hired workers), as well as begging and theft.
The sizes of Western European medieval cities were very small. Usually their population was estimated at 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 surrounding villages in their own way. appearance and the degree of concentration of the population. They were usually surrounded by high stone, sometimes wooden walls with towers and massive gates, as well as deep moats to protect against attacks by feudal lords and enemy invasion. Craftsmen and merchants carried out guard duty and made up the city military militia. The city gates were closed at night. The walls that surrounded the medieval city became cramped over time and could not accommodate all the city buildings. Around the walls that formed the original center of the city (burg, sieve), urban suburbs gradually arose - settlements, settlements, inhabited mainly by artisans. Craftsmen of the same profession usually lived on the same street. The suburbs, in turn, were 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 the townspeople, there was also the city hall (city council).
Beyond the city walls, and sometimes within their borders, lay fields, pastures, 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 breadth, so the streets became extremely narrow, the houses (often wooden) closely adjoined each other, their upper floors often protruded in the form of ledges above the lower ones, and the roofs of the 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 the unsanitary condition in the cities, epidemics broke out, there were devastating fires.
The struggle of cities with feudal lords and the folding of urban self-government
Medieval cities arose on the land of the feudal lord and therefore inevitably had to obey him. Most of the townspeople at first were peasants who had lived in this place for a long time, who fled from their former masters or were released by them for quitrent. Often at first they found themselves in personal dependence on the new master - the seigneur 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 crafts and trade brought him additional income.
Former peasants who settled in the emerging cities brought with them from the countryside the customs and skills of the communal structure that existed there, which had a noticeable influence on the organization of urban self-government in the Middle Ages. Over time, however, it increasingly took on forms that corresponded to the characteristics and needs of the urban society itself.
The desire of the feudal lords to extract as much income from the city as possible inevitably led to the struggle between cities and lords, which took place throughout Western Europe in the 10th-13th centuries. The townspeople fought first for liberation from the most severe forms of feudal oppression, for a reduction in the lord's requisitions, 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 seniors was not 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 get certain liberties and privileges from the feudal lord for money, fixed in city charters; in other cases, these privileges, especially the rights of self-government, were achieved as a result of a long, sometimes armed struggle.
Communal movements proceeded in different countries of Europe 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 IX-XII centuries. there was no strong central authority, 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 that time became city-states. In fact, the Slavic city of Dubrovnik on the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic was an independent city republic, although nominally it recognized the supreme power first of Byzantium, then of Venice, and with late XIV in. - Hungary.
A similar position in Germany was occupied in the XII-XIII 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 the city council headed by the burgomaster, had the right to independently declare war, conclude 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 stubborn, often armed struggle with their feudal lords became self-governing commune cities. They could choose from among themselves the city council, its head - the mayor - and other city officials, they had their own city court and city military militia, their own finances and the right to self-taxation. Communal cities were exempted from performing corvée and dues in favor of the seignior and from other seigniorial payments. In return for all these duties and payments, the townspeople annually paid the lord a certain, relatively low monetary rent, and in case of war they sent a small military detachment to help him. Communal cities themselves often acted as a collective lord in relation to the peasants who lived in the territory 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 standing on royal land, in countries with a relatively strong central government could not achieve full self-government. They enjoyed a number of privileges and liberties, including the right to have their own elected bodies of city self-government. But these bodies acted in conjunction with an official appointed by the king or other 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 urban self-government was also characteristic of Ireland, the Scandinavian countries, many cities in Germany and Hungary. The privileges and liberties received by medieval cities were in many respects similar to immunity privileges and were of a feudal nature. These cities themselves were closed corporations that for a long time put local city 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 lord administration. This, in particular, is characteristic of cities that belonged to spiritual lords, who oppressed their citizens especially hard.
With all the differences in the results of the struggle of cities with their lords, they coincided in one thing. All citizens 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 (in Germany and England, usually one year and one day), also became free. "City air makes you free" - said a medieval proverb.
City craft. Workshops
The production basis of the medieval city was craft. The craftsman, like the peasant, was a small producer who owned the tools of production and ran his own private economy based on personal labor. "An existence worthy of 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 specialist-artisan, firstly, from the very beginning was a commodity producer, led a commodity economy; secondly, he did not need land as a means of production, therefore, in urban craft, non-economic coercion in the form of personal dependence of the direct producer on the feudal lord was not necessary and quickly disappeared in the process of city growth. Here, however, other types of non-economic coercion took place, connected with the guild organization of the craft and the corporate-estate, basically feudal, nature of the urban system (guild coercion, guild and trade regulation, etc.). But this coercion did not come from the feudal lord, but from the townspeople themselves.
characteristic feature Medieval craft in Western Europe was its guild organization - the association of artisans of a certain profession within a given city in special unions - workshops, craft guilds. Workshops 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 design of the workshops (obtaining special charters from kings and other lords, compiling and recording shop charters) occurred, as a rule, later.
The guilds arose as organizations of independent small commodity producers - urban artisans who needed to unite in order to fight against the feudal lords and to protect their production and income from competition from the people of the countryside who constantly arrived in the city. Among the reasons that necessitated the formation of workshops, Marx and Engels also noted the need for artisans in common market premises for the sale of goods and the need to protect the common property of artisans; The main function of the workshops is to establish control over the production and sale of handicrafts. The unification of artisans into workshops was due to the level of development of productive forces achieved at that time and the entire feudal-class structure of society. The model for the guild organization was partly also the structure of the rural commune-brand.
Artisans united in guilds were 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 "merged with his means of production", in the words of Marx, "as closely as a snail with a shell"". The craft, as a rule, was inherited. Many generations of artisans worked with the same tools and in the same ways as their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. Inside the craft workshop, there was almost no division of labor. It was carried out by allocating new craft specialties, which took shape 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 assisted in his work by his family. One or two apprentices and one or more apprentices often worked with him. But only the master, the owner of the craft workshop, was a member of the guild. One of the important functions of the workshop was to regulate the relationship of masters with apprentices and apprentices. Master, apprentice and apprentice stood at different levels of the shop hierarchy. The preliminary passage of the two lower steps was obligatory for anyone who wished to join the guild and become its member. In the first period of the development of workshops, each student could become an apprentice in a few years, and an apprentice - a master. In most cities, belonging to a guild was a prerequisite for practicing a craft, that is, 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.
The members of each workshop were interested in ensuring that their products were sold without hindrance. Therefore, the workshop strictly regulated production and, through specially elected shop 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 warp, what tools and materials should be used, etc. The regulation of production also served other purposes: being an association of independent small commodity producers, the workshop zealously followed so that the production of all its members retains a small character, so that none of them would force other craftsmen out of the market by releasing more products. To this end, shop charters strictly limited the number of apprentices and apprentices that one master could have, forbade work at night and on holidays, limited the number of machines on which an artisan could work, regulated stocks of raw materials, prices for handicrafts, etc. . P.
The guild organization of handicrafts in cities was one of the manifestations of their feudal nature: "... the feudal structure of land ownership in cities corresponded to corporate ownership, the feudal organization of handicrafts." Such an organization created in medieval society the most favorable conditions for the development of productive forces, commodity production in cities up to 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 new craft workshops. The guild system contributed to the expansion of the range and improvement of the quality of manufactured goods. During this first period of their existence, the guilds contributed to a gradual, albeit slow, improvement in handicraft tools and handicraft skills.
Therefore, approximately until the end of the XIV - beginning of the XV century. the guilds in Western Europe played a progressive role. They protected the artisans from excessive exploitation by the feudal lords, with the extremely narrow market of that time, they ensured the existence of urban small producers, softening the competition between them and protecting them from the competition of the rural artisans who arrived in the cities.
Thus, during the heyday of the feudal mode of production, as K. Marx noted, “privileges, the establishment of workshops and corporations, the entire regime of medieval regulation were social relations that only corresponded to the acquired productive forces and 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 the townspeople to fight the feudal lords, and then the domination 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 case of war. The workshop had its own “saint”, whose day it celebrated, its churches or chapels, being a kind of religious organization. The guild was also an artisans' mutual aid organization that provided assistance to its needy members and their families in case 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 uncommon and did not reach its final 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 a regulation of production and protection of the monopoly of urban artisans, carried out by local governments.
The struggle of the shops with the urban patriciate
The struggle of the cities with the feudal lords led in the overwhelming majority of cases to the transfer, to one degree or another, of urban administration into the hands of the townspeople. But in the cities by this time there was already a noticeable social stratification. Therefore, although the struggle against the feudal lords was carried out by the forces of all the townspeople, it was usually the top of the urban population that used its results - homeowners, landowners, including those of the feudal type, usurers, rich wholesale merchants engaged in transit trade.
This upper, privileged stratum was a narrow, closed group - the hereditary urban aristocracy (patriciate), which hardly allowed new members into its environment. The city council, the head of the city, as well as the city judicial board (scheffens, eshevens, scabins) were selected only from among the persons belonging to the patriciate. The entire city administration, courts and finances, 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 the craft developed and the significance of the workshops grew stronger, artisans, small merchants, 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, up to armed uprisings. In some cities where handicraft production was greatly developed, the guilds won (for example, in Cologne, Augsburg, and Florence). In others, where trade on a large scale and the merchants played the leading role, the urban 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, the management of the city did not become truly democratic, since the wealthy top of the most influential guilds united after their victory with part of the patriciate and established a new oligarchic administration 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 workshops has changed in many ways. Their conservatism and routine, the desire to preserve and perpetuate small-scale production, traditional methods and tools, to prevent technical improvements, out of fear of competition, turned the workshops into a brake. technical progress and further growth in production.
However, with the growth of productive forces and the expansion of the domestic and foreign markets, competition between individual artisans within the workshop grew more and more. Individual artisans, contrary to the guild charters, expanded their production, property and social inequality developed in the guilds. The owners of larger workshops began to practice handing over 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 merchants, a prosperous guild elite gradually emerged, exploiting small craftsmen - direct producers.
The stratification within the guild craft found expression in the division of the guilds into more prosperous and wealthy ("senior" or "large" guilds) and poorer ("junior" or "small" guilds). Such a division took place, first of all, in the largest cities: in Florence, Perugia, London, Bristol, Paris, Basel, etc. The "older", economically stronger workshops established their dominance over the "younger ones", exposing them to exploitation. This sometimes led to the loss of economic independence by the members of the junior guilds and their actual position turning into hired workers.
The position of apprentices and apprentices; their fight with the masters
Over time, apprentices and apprentices also fell into the position of the exploited. This was due to the fact that the medieval craft, based on manual labor, required a very long time to learn. 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 use the free labor of his already sufficiently qualified student with great profit for a very long time.
The guild masters also exploited the apprentices. The duration of their working day was usually very long - 14-16, and sometimes 18 hours. The apprentices were judged by the guild court, in which, again, the masters sat. The workshops controlled the life of apprentices and students, their pastime, spending, acquaintances. In the XIV-XV centuries, when the decline and decay of the guild craft began, the exploitation of apprentices and apprentices noticeably intensified and, most importantly, acquired a virtually permanent character. In the initial period of the existence of the guild system, an apprentice, having passed the apprenticeship and becoming an apprentice, and then having worked for a master for some time and having accumulated a small amount of money, could expect to become a master. Now, however, access to the position of a master for apprentices and apprentices was actually closed. In an effort to defend their privileges in the face of growing competition, the masters began to put up all sorts of obstacles for them on this path.
The so-called closure of workshops began, the title of master became practically accessible to apprentices 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 entry fee to the cash desk of the workshop, perform an exemplary work - a "masterpiece" - from expensive material, arrange an expensive treat for members of the workshop, etc. Apprentices thus turned into "eternal apprentices ”, i.e. in fact, hired workers.
To protect their interests, they create special organizations - "brotherhoods", "companions", which are mutual aid unions and organizations to fight the guild masters. In the struggle against them, apprentices put forward economic demands, seek higher wages and a shorter working day. To achieve their goal, they resort to such acute forms of class struggle as strikes and boycotts against the most hated masters.
Apprentices and apprentices were the most organized and advanced part of a fairly wide in the cities of the XIV-XV centuries. layer of employees. It also included non-shop day laborers, various kinds of unorganized workers, whose ranks were constantly replenished by peasants who came to the cities who had lost their land, as well as impoverished members of the shops - small artisans. The latter, becoming dependent on the rich masters, differed from apprentices only in that they worked at home. Not being a working class in the modern sense of the word, this stratum was already an element of the pre-proletariat, fully formed later, during the period of widespread and widespread development of manufacture.
With the development and aggravation of social contradictions within the medieval city, the exploited sections of the urban population began to openly oppose the urban elite that was in power, which now in many cities included, along with the patriciate, the guild aristocracy. This struggle also included the lowest, disenfranchised stratum of the urban population: people deprived of certain occupations and permanent residence, declassed elements who were outside the feudal estate structure - they constituted the urban plebeian.
In the XIV-XV centuries. the lower strata of the urban population raise uprisings against the urban 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 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 the townspeople fought against the feudal lords for the liberation of the cities from their power. Then the guilds waged a struggle with the urban patriciate. Later, the struggle of the urban plebeians against the rich craftsmen and merchants who exploited and oppressed them, as well as against the urban oligarchy, unfolded.
The formation and growth of the urban class
In the process of urban development, the growth of handicraft and merchant corporations, the struggle of the townspeople against the feudal lords and internal social conflicts among them in feudal Europe, a special medieval class of townspeople took shape.
In economic terms, the new estate was connected to some extent with handicraft and trading 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-fledged citizen. Initially, the urban estate was identified with the concept of "burghers", when the word "burgher" in a number of European countries denoted all urban residents (from the German "burg" - the city from which the medieval Latin "bur-gensis" came from, and from the French term "burgeoisie", coming from the Middle Ages and at first meaning "citizen"). In terms of their property and social status, the urban estate of the Middle Ages was not unified. Inside it 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", the most prosperous citizens, among whom representatives of the plebeians, eliminated from city government, could not fall. In the XIV - XV centuries. this term usually denoted 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 the feudal lords (sometimes in alliance with the king). Later, the urban estate began to play a prominent role in estate-representative assemblies.
Thus, the inhabitants of medieval cities did not constitute a single class or socially monolithic stratum, 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 estates on a countrywide scale.
Development of trade and credit in Western Europe
The growth of cities in Western Europe contributed in the XI-XV centuries. significant development of domestic and foreign trade. Cities, including small ones, first of all formed the local market, where exchange with the rural district was carried out, the foundations were laid for the formation of a single internal market.
But in the period of developed feudalism, long-distance, transit trade continued to play a larger role in terms of the volume and value of products sold, carried out mainly by merchants not connected with production.
In the XIII-XV centuries. such inter-regional 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, South 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, the primacy in this trade passed from the Byzantines and Arabs to the merchants of Genoa and Venice, Marseilles and Barcelona. The main objects of trade here were luxury items exported from the East, spices, and, to some extent, 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 Russia (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, consumer goods were traded: mainly fish, salt, furs, wool, cloth, flax, hemp, wax, resin, timber (especially ship timber), and from the 15th century. - bread.
The connections between these two areas of international trade were carried out along the trade route, which went through the Alpine passes, and then along the Rhine, where there were many large cities involved in this transit trade. An important role in trade, including international trade, was played by fairs, which became widespread in France, Italy, Germany, and England already in the 11th-12th centuries. Wholesale trade in high-demand goods was carried out here: wool, leather, cloth, linen fabrics, metals and products from them, grain. At fairs in the French county of Champagne in the XII-XIII centuries, which lasted almost all year round, merchants from many European countries met. Venetians and Genoese delivered expensive oriental goods there. Flemish merchants and merchants from Florence brought well-dressed cloth, merchants from Germany - linen, Czech merchants - 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 the then trade 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 fees 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 noblest knights and even kings did not stop before robber attacks on merchant caravans. Nevertheless, the gradual growth of commodity-money relations and exchange made it possible to accumulate monetary capital in the hands of individuals - primarily merchants and usurers. 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 more or less prominent lords and bishops, as well as large cities.
To exchange one money for another and establish the value of a particular coin, a special profession of changers emerged. Money changers were engaged not only in exchange transactions, but also in money transfers, from which credit transactions arose. Usury was usually associated with this. Exchange transactions and credit transactions 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 "Lombard" in the Middle Ages became synonymous with a banker and usurer and was later preserved in the name of pawnshops.
The largest usurer in the Middle Ages was the Catholic Church. The largest credit and usury operations were carried out by the Roman Curia, into which huge sums of money flowed from all European countries.
The beginnings of capitalist exploitation in urban handicraft production
Successes in the development of domestic and foreign trade by the end of the XIV-XV centuries. contributed to the accumulation in the hands of the merchant elite of the cities of significant funds and the formation of commercial capital. Merchant's or merchant's (as well as usurer's) capital is older than the capitalist mode of production and represents the oldest free form of capital. Op operates in the sphere of circulation, servicing the exchange of goods in slave-owning, feudal, and capitalist societies. But at a certain level of development of commodity production under feudalism, under the conditions of the beginning disintegration of guild craft, commercial capital began to gradually penetrate into the sphere of production. Usually this was 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, a low-income artisan fell into a position dependent on the merchant, and he had no choice but to continue working for the merchant-buyer, but not 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 commercial and usurious capital served as one of the sources of the capitalist manufactory that was emerging during the period of the disintegration of medieval handicraft production.
Another germ of capitalist production in the cities was the above-noted transformation of a mass of apprentices and apprentices into permanent wage-workers with no prospect of breaking out into masters. However, the emergence of elements of capitalist relations in cities in the XIV-XV centuries. it 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 the cloth industry. The development of these new phenomena took place earlier and faster in those countries and those branches of crafts where there was a wide external market, prompting the expansion of production, its improvement, and the investment of new, significant capital in it. It did not yet mean the existence of an established capitalist structure. It is characteristic that even in the large cities of Western Europe, including Italian ones, a significant part of the capital accumulated in trade and usury was not invested in expanding industrial production and in the acquisition of land; the owners of these capitals sought in this way to become part of the ruling class of feudal lords.
The development of commodity-money relations and changes in the socio-economic life of feudal society
The cities, as the main centers of commodity production and exchange, exerted an ever-increasing and many-sided influence on the feudal countryside. In it, consumer goods made by urban artisans began to find more and more sales: shoes, clothing, metal products, etc. There was an increase, albeit slowly, in the involvement of agricultural products in the trade turnover - bread, wine, wool, livestock, etc. the exchange involved also products of rural crafts and crafts (especially homespun coarse cloth, linen, wooden products, etc.). Their production more and more turned into ancillary commodity branches of the rural economy. All this led to the emergence and development a large number local markets, which later formed the basis for the formation of a wider internal market, linking various regions of the country with more or less strong economic relations. The growing 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 prosperous peasant elite stands out, and on the other, numerous rural poor, sometimes completely landless, living in some kind of craft or work for hire as farm laborers for the feudal lord or rich peasants. Some of these poor peasants, who were exploited not only by the 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 poured into the masses of the urban plebeians. Sometimes wealthy peasants also moved to the cities, seeking to use the funds accumulated in the countryside in the commercial and industrial sphere.
Commodity-money relations involved not only the peasant but also the master's domain economy, which led to significant changes in the relationship 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 - the replacement of labor and product rent with cash payments. The feudal lords, therefore, shifted to the peasants all the concerns for the production and marketing of agricultural products in the market, usually near, local. 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. With the liquidation of the domain and the commutation of rent, the liberation of the bulk of the peasants from personal dependence was also connected, which was completed in most countries of Western Europe in the 15th century. However, despite some advantages of such development for the peasantry as a whole, its economic exploitation often increased; the commutation of rent and the personal emancipation of the peasants were often paid for by a significant increase in their payments to the feudal lords.
In some areas where a broad external market for agricultural products was developing, with which only the feudal lords could connect (Southeast England, Central and East Germany), development went the other way: here the feudal lords, on the contrary, expanded the domain economy, which led to an increase in the corvée of the peasants and attempts to strengthen their personal dependence.
The result of the general intensification of the exploitation of the peasants under these different paths of development was an increase in the resistance of the peasants to feudal oppression and an intensification of the class struggle in all spheres of the 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 take place, which are reflected in 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 shift of the center of agricultural production and its links with the market from the economy of the feudal lord to the small peasant economy, which became more and more marketable.
The crisis of the patrimonial economy, however, did not mean general crisis feudal system. On the contrary, it expressed its generally successful adaptation to the 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 the feudal society was associated with a number of temporary difficulties, especially for the economy of the feudal lords - a lack of labor (including holders), the desolation of part of the arable land, 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 "the demographic factor is the 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 were not in the Netherlands, in the countries of the Iberian Peninsula; in a number of other regions of Europe they were weakly expressed. Secondly, these phenomena coexisted with noticeable success in many countries of peasant economy 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 fifteenth century. basically replenished. The theory of "crises" put forward by bourgeois scholars 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 countryside of Western Europe in the 14th-15th centuries represented a further step in the evolution of the feudal system under the conditions of the increased role of the commodity economy.
Cities and their trade and handicraft populations were everywhere large, although very different in 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 individual countries in the 11th-15th centuries). The role of cities and the urban class was also great in the development of medieval culture, the progress of which in the XII-XV centuries. they helped a lot.
During the early Middle Ages, cities of Roman origin fell into decay. From the end of the 11th century, the economic revival of European cities began, caused by the social division of labor. The main reasons for the separation of craft and agriculture:
1. Growth in productivity
2. Increasing the volume of raw materials and food produced
3. The state and the church counted on the creation of their strongholds in the cities, so they strongly supported the development of urban settlements.
The emergence of urban artisans led to an increase in the quality of products, as well as to the revival of trade between townspeople and rural residents.
In 11-13 century, the rapid development of handicraft production (textile industry, footwear production, metallurgy, blacksmithing and jewelry).
Locations of new settlements:
1. At the intersection of land and sea routes
2. Near the walls of castles and monasteries
3. + revival of the cities of Rome
At 11-13 - eight crusades to the Middle East by the Catholic Church.
This contributed to the development of Levantine trade through the Mediterranean along the Silk Road with the Far East (India, China). For Western Europe, these are precious stones, weapons, spices, glass, luxury goods. For the East: gold, silver, fur coats, linen. Unprofitable trade for Western Europe.
As a rule, cities had their own center (burg, siete, city, city), which included the city's cathedral, town hall, and market square. They lived in the city; artisans, people connected in the service sector, merchants, moneylenders, large homeowners, administration, doctors, teachers and others.
European cities:
1. No dependent people
2. System of self-government
3. Own eq policy
Medieval cities were usually surrounded by high walls. The inhabitants of the city - artisans and merchants carried out guard duty and made up the city military militia. Urban suburbs gradually arose around the walls. European cities were very small.
In cities, due to unsanitary conditions, epidemics often broke out, the death rate from which was very high.
Medieval cities always arose on the land of the feudal lord and therefore inevitably had to submit to the feudal lord. The feudal lord was interested in the emergence of a city on his land, since crafts and trade brought him additional income.
The struggle between the lords and townspeople, in the process of which urban self-government arose and took shape, proceeded in different countries of Europe in different ways, depending on the conditions of their historical development. Many cities of Northern and Central Italy subjugated large areas around the city and became city-states.
Question 3: Features of feudalism by country (England, France, Germany, Russia).
France.
In the genesis of feudalism throughout Europe, and in particular in France, an important role was played by the feudal system, borrowed from the Roman Empire (agricultural slavery, patronage, large landownership).
There are several stages of development.
1. Information about the early Middle Ages is contained in the "Salic Truth" (6th century). When cultivating the land, the Franks used a plow, as a traction force - bulls, horses, donkeys. Sowed crops, beans, flax, etc. There is information about the existence of the community. She owned the right to dispose of the land in the village-villa. The Franks had not yet formed classes, but social and property stratification was observed.
2. By the end of the Merovingian dynasty (751), many Frankish peasants had already lost their freedom. This was facilitated by feudal strife and wars against other tribes. Under Charles Martel (715-741), a military reform was carried out, during which the peasants were removed from military service. The basis of the army was the knightly cavalry. The armament of an equestrian knight was expensive, so the exactions from the peasants increased and their enslavement intensified. Under Charles Martell, the distribution of beneficiaries was widely practiced. For these purposes, even a partial secularization of church and monastic land ownership was carried out. In the second half of the VIII century. there was a real agrarian revolution in land relations. During the reign of the Carolingian dynasty (751-987), large feudal land ownership took shape in the Frankish kingdom and the main classes of feudal society arose. In the era of the Carolingians, a feudal estate developed. The economy of the Carolingian estate was deeply natural. Most of the products were intended for consumption by the royal court, only surplus agricultural products were sold. Many peasants of the estate were already serfs. Consequently, for the royal estates of the VIII-IX centuries. was characterized by natural-serf organization of production. Most dependent peasants had the status of columns. They had to pay dues and work off corvee on the master's land. In second place were the serfs. The main form of exploitation of the serfs was corvée, but dues were also of great importance. An intermediate position between the serfs and the columns was occupied by the litas, who were under patronage.
3. French lordship of the XI-XIII centuries. In the IX-XII centuries. French feudalism reached its greatest development. France developed a clear system of feudal hierarchy and conditional land ownership. The exploitation of the peasantry was typically feudal in nature, and the French estate - seigneury - was the personification of a feudal subsistence economy. Almost all the lands belonged to the feudal lords, that is, there was a rule "there is no land without a lord." The completion of the genesis of feudalism was marked by increased political fragmentation. The French centralized state took shape only under Louis XI (1461-1483). Most of the French peasants in the XI-XIII centuries. were fortresses. The numerous stratum of the feudal-dependent peasantry were serfs. French lordship XI-XIII centuries. was a closed subsistence economy. She sought to solve all the problems of reproduction at the expense of her own resources, using the possibilities of subsistence farming and serfdom. The peasant community continued to exist, but already as a form of land use, and not land ownership.
4. Censive - quitrent system of the XIV-XV centuries. In the XIV-XV centuries. the lords reduce and even liquidate the dominal economy, transferring the peasants from corvee to natural, and subsequently to cash rent. The consequence is higher labor productivity in the peasant economy than in the corvée. The growth of cities and the development of commodity-money relations contributed to the spread of monetary rent. The conditions for the redemption of duties and freedom were difficult, often the redemption payments were distributed over a number of years and added to the old rent. Banalities continued to exist, patrimonial courts operated. The "large tithe" (paid with part of the crop) was preserved, as well as the "small tithe" (paid with livestock products) in favor of the church. Government taxes have risen sharply. Under the domination of monetary rent, the stratification of the peasantry began, and laborers and the rich appeared in the countryside.
5. The economy of France in the late Middle Ages. In terms of population (15 million people), France in the 16th century. surpassed all other Western European states. However, in terms of its economic development, it lagged behind England and Holland, where capitalist relations were successfully developing. In France, there was still a monopoly feudal ownership of land. The French economy in the XVI-XVII centuries. was under the influence of very conflicting factors. As a result of the shift of the main routes of international trade to Atlantic Ocean the port cities of Le Havre, Bordeaux, Dieppe, Nantes and others acquired particular importance. Lyon became a major center of fair trade and credit. French absolutism patronized the development of manufactories and trade. Colonial expansion and overseas trade became possible. However, in the 16th-17th centuries. The economic development of France was hampered by the political and economic dominance of the nobility, its disregard for industrial and commercial activities, the inferiority of the third estate, including the bourgeoisie. In the 16th century. In France, capitalist manufacture arose. Very characteristic of the industrial development of France was the orientation towards the production of luxury goods, perfumery goods, which were consumed mainly by the ruling classes. French manufactories, as a rule, were unprofitable or unprofitable and therefore needed state subsidies. Giving nothing to the peasantry, they placed an additional tax burden on it. The economic policy of absolutism in the 16th-17th centuries contributed to the development of the manufacturing industry and trade, and and agriculture.
Germany.
Peculiarities:
1 Lack of Roman influence.
2 Feudalism grows out of the community and proceeds more slowly than in other countries.
3 Weak state power. Germany is the most fragmented country.
4 Wooded area, which hindered the rapid development of the domain economy.
5 Feudalization slowed down the availability of large amounts of land. Free for the Germans.
6 The phenomenon of the "second edition of serfdom" - the strengthening of corvée and personal dependence after the commutation of rent began.
1. By the end of the 11th century, the main classes of feudal society had developed in Germany. The feudal class included secular landowners and petty knights, as well as spiritual feudal lords. There are few free peasants left. Many peasants, who were considered free, were the holders of someone else's land and paid dues for it. Serfs predominated - land and personally dependent peasants.
2. Feudal estate in Germany in the XII-XIII centuries.
In the XII-XIII centuries. important shifts in the development of the productive forces took place in Germany. Due to the involvement in agricultural circulation of lands that used to be occupied by forests and swamps, the area of agriculture has expanded. Rye increasingly replaced barley, flax, woad and other industrial crops became widespread, viticulture and horticulture developed successfully. Sheep breeding became more and more important. For harvesting grain, scythes began to be used instead of sickles. The feudal lords had a monopoly on land. The economy was dominated by the feudal estate. In the XII-XIV centuries. in Germany, the process of emancipation of the serfs took place. They received land on the terms of hereditary land use, and were alienated, like other dependent peasants, only with land.
3. Transition to quitrent system. In the XIV-XV centuries. the relations of production in the German countryside are changing. In Saxony, Bavaria, Swabia, the “pure seigneury”, in which there was no master's plowing, became widespread. Domain lands were leased to prosperous peasants (meiers). Meiers cultivated these lands using the labor of former hereditary holders, now turned into short-term tenants. The main form of feudal rent was quitrent in kind, cash payments. Some elements of personal dependence disappeared, which indicated an improvement in the position of the German peasantry. The transition to an economy of the “pure seigneury” type was beneficial to the feudal lord, as it eased his worries. The quitrent system did not mean the complete disappearance of serfdom. In the XIV-XV centuries. peasants continued to depend on the feudal lords. They could not wield weapons, carry military service, were subject to the patrimonial court. The landowners managed to enslave the community, take away its rights to forests and pastures. The feudal lords, seeking to expand pastures for sheep, seized communal lands. Increased pressure on the German peasantry in the XIV-XV centuries. led to peasant uprisings, which sometimes took on a large scale.
4. In the XIV-XVII centuries. Germany was in economic decline. It was associated with the Great Geographical Discoveries, which caused a reduction in the Levantine trade of the southern German cities due to the movement of the main trade routes to the oceans. The conservation of the reactionary features of the guild system, the political and economic fragmentation of the country, the orientation of the feudal lords towards the most backward form of serf exploitation - corvée - also had an effect. The Peasant War of 1524-1525 was the answer to the strengthening of feudal oppression. It covered a significant part of the territory of Germany, and the existence of feudal exploitation was threatened.
England.
1. In 407, the Roman legionnaires left the territory of Britain. In the 5th-7th centuries, several Anglo-Saxon kingdoms arose. The basis of the socio-economic system of the Anglo-Saxons is the rural community. Already in the 7-8 centuries. social stratification begins. The farms used the labor of semi-free and slaves. The private power of the feudal lords increased as a result of the development of patronage relations. Strong people, under whose patronage the peasants entered, were called glafords (later lords). Every free man was ordered to find himself a Glaford. Glafords were forbidden to take under their protection the people of other Glafords. Persons who did not come under private protection were declared fugitives, and they could be killed with impunity. In the 11th century. the Anglo-Saxon kingdom was dominated by free peasants. However, already at that time there were manors - estates in which the labor of the feudally dependent population was exploited.
2. Economic consequences of the Norman conquest. In 1066 England was conquered by the Duke of Normandy William. On the occupied lands, the French feudal lords sought to establish serfdom, similar to those that existed in France. Since French feudalism in the XI century. was more mature than the Anglo-Saxon, the Norman conquest contributed to the acceleration of feudal development in England. A significant part of the land of the Anglo-Saxon feudal lords who refused to recognize the power of William, was confiscated. The king himself became a major landowner. The inventory included 108,500 villans. They were considered personally dependent people and. in many ways resembled the French serfs of the 11th-13th centuries. As a rule, villans had a plot of land. The villans ran their own economy, had their own livestock and implements, which they also used in the cultivation of the master's (domain) land. The peasants of this category paid the wedding tax and posthumous dues to the seigneur, the tithe - to the church. The most disenfranchised category of the peasantry was the serfs (slaves). Often they did not have land allotments and were in the position of courtyards. They had the hardest work to do. Sometimes the serfs were given land. In this case, their economic independence grew, and the socio-economic situation approached that of the Villans.
3. Feudal legislation of the XII-XIII centuries. A large number of feudal estates already existed in the Anglo-Saxon period. The Norman Conquest further intensified the process of enslavement of the free peasantry. The wars for the English throne (1335-1153) led to the ruin of many peasant farms and to the development of relations of personal and land dependence of the peasants on the feudal lords. John Landless (1199-1216) signed the Magna Carta in 1215. According to Art. 20 of the charter it was forbidden to collect arbitrary fines from free peasants who had land plots. This decree also extended to the main category of the peasantry, the Villans. In 1290, a law was passed, according to which every land holder, who was a free person, could alienate this land. However, the buyer became the holder of the land of the lord, whose vassal was the seller. In favor of this lord, the buyer had to perform the appropriate duties. This law expressed the interests of the land magnates, who lost a lot as a result of the transfer of land by their vassals to other vassals who were not directly dependent on the magnates and the king.
4. Manorial system. 13th century is the heyday of the manorial system in England. In England, the three-field crop rotation was widespread, agricultural areas expanded, and there was a system of open fields. A heavy plow was used with the help of oxen. The arable land was fertilized with manure. The geographical specialization of agricultural production developed. The manors of the south, east, and center of England produced mainly grain; the production of milk, meat and wool was highly developed in the manors located in the northwest, northeast and west of England. Market trends arose, the wool trade developed. But purely natural forms of exploitation dominated, corvee prevailed. The classical manor geographically coincided with the villa and with the rural community. Up to half of the land of the manor was the master's economy (domain), the rest was the allotments of villans and a number of free holders. The owner of the manor was the lord. In turn, he received a manor from the king and even another lord. The manor may not have coincided with the villa and the community. A characteristic feature of the manorial system was the close connection between the master's economy and the economy of the peasants, who had to cultivate the master's land (master's plowing) with their tools and using their cattle. The lands of the lord and the peasant allotments were arranged in stripes.
5. The economy of the English countryside in the 14th century is undergoing significant changes. There is a process of switching rent. Corvee and quitrents in kind were replaced by quitrents in cash. This was beneficial to wealthy peasants. At the beginning of the 15th century. English feudalism enters a new phase of development. It is characterized by the liquidation of the domain economy, the strengthening of the rights of the peasants to land, the expansion of quitrent exploitation, and the expansion of the use of the labor of farm laborers. The restructuring of agriculture was accompanied by a reduction in the area of arable land, the development of sheep breeding, and a fall in prices for agricultural products. While the corvee system was in a state of severe crisis, and the old nobility was ruined, in the 15th century. small and medium landowners (knights, gentlemen) strengthened their farms. As a rule, they leased land for a short period, used the labor of farm laborers, were closely connected with the market, supplying wool, bread, hops, etc. to the city. wars of the Scarlet and White Roses (1455 - 1485) the feudal nobility was exterminated. The Tudors who came to power relied on the "new nobility" and the urban bourgeoisie. The decay of English feudalism accelerated as a result of the further development of industry and trade. In the 15th century, despite the crisis of the corvée-serf system and the intensification of political anarchy during the Hundred Years War between England and France, as well as during the War of the Scarlet and White Roses, the productive forces were growing. A large number of peasants leave for the cities; the "new nobles" seek to get rid of copyholders and replace them with farmers; fencing begins. Foreign trade begins to exert a strong influence on the policy of England, on her attitude towards other states.
Russia.
The period of developed feudalism was characterized by the strengthening of large-scale feudal land ownership and the political role of feudal lords. The strengthening of feudal relations, the emergence of new local centers led to feudal fragmentation. Feudal fragmentation in Russia set in in the second quarter of the 12th century. after the final collapse of the Kievan state.
In the 13th century the development of feudal relations in Transcaucasia, Central Asia, and Russia was slowed down by the Mongol-Tatar invasion. In the 15th–17th centuries The defining trend in the socio-economic relations of Russia was the further evolution of F.
A wide range of transformations in various areas of the economy, state system and culture was carried out only at the beginning of the 18th century.
Among the main factors in the conservation of philosophies were the strength of the feudal-absolutist state, the strength of the nobility of land ownership, and the weakness of the emerging Russian culture. bourgeoisie, which was closely connected with the feudal autocracy and the feudal system as a whole. However, even after the abolition of serfdom in Russia, which had embarked on the path of relatively rapid development of capitalism, for more than half a century powerful remnants of F.
Enough is known about the high level of development of private property relations in the Roman Empire, in particular in Gaul. Along with the large landed property of the Gallo-Roman aristocrats, who increasingly strengthened their estates during the 3rd-5th centuries. in connection with the barbarian invasions, the collapse of the imperial structure and the general naturalization of the economy, the free peasantry, as well as free artisans and merchants, remained here at that time, with various forms of personal dependence being widespread in rural areas.
In other words, the evolution of the Western Roman provinces, primarily Gaul, created optimal conditions for the emergence of elements of the proto-feudal public structure. Their foundations, as mentioned above, are clearly traced back to Celtic times. Roman conquest legitimized, introduced into a rigid legal framework, but thereby ensured and legally secured the transition from the traditional relations of power-property of the Celtic aristocrats to, in essence, already private ownership of the land of the provincial Gallo-Roman (as well as the Iberian-Roman, African-Roman, etc. .) know.
In the Celtic territories that became part of the Roman Empire, the Gallo-Roman synthesis at the turn of the eras, on the one hand, led to active urbanization and Latinization (through the spread of school education), and on the other hand, the establishment of both large and medium or small landownership. on a private property basis.
In the conditions of the “crisis of the third century”, which shook the very foundations of the empire, as fiscal oppression and administrative arbitrariness grew, life in the cities began to gradually fade. The importance of large rural estates is growing. Their owners, in whose social status and lifestyle it is no longer difficult to discern the prototype of future feudal lords, are surrounded by domestic slaves and various categories of dependent (including voluntarily seeking their patronage) peasant population, in fact, become real holders of power on the scale of their land holdings.
Entire villages, and even small towns, pass under the tutelage of influential magnates. This somewhat obscures the proprietary relationship as 490 ___________________________
such, intertwining them with personal relationships, but on the whole in no way cancels them. The features of the future feudalism are even more pronounced when, in the conditions of the progressive agony of the Western Roman Empire, increasing anarchy and barbarian invasions, the villas of magnates begin to strengthen, and their owners begin to arm people dependent on them (colons, servants, even slaves), which increases the social status of the latter. .
All this, together with the decline of cities, the fading of trade and the almost complete naturalization of the economy, contributed to the formation by the middle of the 1st millennium on the territory of Gaul and other late Roman provinces, in fact, already a feudal-serf, in its economic understanding, a system, the further evolutionary development of which to some extent was violated by the establishment of the power of the German kings. However, it should be emphasized that here we still do not see such an important element of feudalism proper as the combination of the hierarchy of land ownership with the pyramid of power, as well as the conditional nature of land ownership, the vassal-seigneurial ladder, etc.
It would be a strong simplification to believe that the Germans, who asserted their power over the former Roman provinces, carried with them "primitive communal relations." After the conquests of the barbarians, as J. Le Goff notes, attachment to personal property was even stronger than that of the Romans. The Frankish Salic truth is especially meticulous and severe in relation to various forms of encroachment on property, up to the destruction of someone else's fields by cattle, mowing grass in someone else's field, picking someone else's grapes, etc. And even with the absorption of small free peasant landownership by large, feudal, throughout the medieval era, the idea of the severity of economic offenses and crimes was preserved.
The barbarian kingdoms created by the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, Franks and Vandals, Burgundians and Langobords imposed the relations of personal loyalty-dependence of military leaders and their warriors (who were allocated separate areas to manage) that were customary for the Germans on social forms that had developed in the Romance-speaking provinces of the collapsed Roman Empire, including large, associated with the exploitation of the dependent population - the columns - land ownership, as well as self-governing communes of degraded cities and the already formed, common to all Western Europe, church structure headed by the high priest of the "Eternal City".
The newly minted German kings, in order to strengthen their power, had to reckon with the authority of the church (even when they themselves were Arians) and the traditions of municipal self-government, attract the authoritative local landowning aristocracy to their side and use the remnants of the Roman administration. At the same time, they appropriated the lands of the Roman imperial fiscus with the free peasant population living there, becoming the supreme landowners on the scale of the developing kingdoms of the early Middle Ages. This allowed them to distribute land in conditional holding, with the right to use parts of local income for personal purposes, to relatives, close associates and trusted persons who - like counts - were sent to manage separate areas-counties.
As a result of all these complex processes, with the increasing Romanization of the barbarians in the territory of the former imperial provinces and a certain Western Christian civilization of the Middle Ages 491
The barbarization of the life of the descendants of the local nobility, who mixed with the newcomers through marriage, formed a more or less unified social structure, which was based on the division into "powerful" people of barbarian and Roman origin and "humble" in both ethnic groups. Land and power were concentrated in the hands of the former, while others were dependent on them.
At one time, M. Blok expressed, supported by L. Fevre and other medievalists, the idea of dividing the history of the medieval West into "two feudal periods" with very different leading tones. The French historian reasonably considered the 11th century to be the boundary between them. Since that time, a new aristocracy has been growing stronger, firmly, by right of inheritance, holding its lands and considering itself not as royal governors or officials, but as sovereign masters, recognizing only the rights of the "first among equals" for the king himself.
At the end of the XI century. the "economic revolution of the second feudal period" begins, laying the foundation for the subsequent growth of the Western Christian world. The latter, dynamically developing during the XII-XIII centuries, is experiencing a painful crisis of the XIV century. (a terrible plague epidemic in its middle, the flaring Hundred Years War, etc.) and enters its new phase - the Renaissance in Italy and that difficult time that lasted until the beginning of the 16th century, in essence until the Reformation, which I. Huizinga aptly called " Autumn of the Middle Ages.
Having recovered from the devastating invasions from the outside (Arab, Norman, Hungarian), Western Europe of the 11th century, retaining the Latin individualistic-rationalistic-practical potential filled with the energy of the settled barbarians, begins active economic activity. At first, at the forefront of this transformation were the monasteries, which organized their large farms on a rational basis, came to life with the beginning of the Kluny movement for renewal. church life. However, soon developed in them and sanctified by the authority of Christianity, the spirit of respect for physical labor, for the activities of engineers, in general, the spirit of ingenuity and enterprise gradually goes beyond the walls of monasteries and penetrates secular life. Its main carrier is the urban trade and craft people.
The rational rationalism of scholasticism in the person of Roger Bacon, the harbinger of the future British empiricism, is being converted - for the first time in the history of human culture! - to the experimental study of nature as the basis of knowledge, and the goal of science is to increase the power of man over nature. Therefore, citing numerous data on the improvement of agricultural technology, rationalization in other areas of economic activity, modern researchers come to the conclusion that the process of technical development, which, gaining momentum in the Renaissance, will then determine the nature of European civilization in modern times, originates in the Middle Ages - from the second, according to M. Blok, period of feudalism: the first three centuries of the II millennium BC
The formation of an efficient agricultural system north of the Alps and the Loire, the associated population growth and its colonization activities in Western Europe itself and on its periphery (from the plateau of Spain to the marshy and wooded lowlands of the Baltic), the development of a thirst for prestigious consumption among the nobility, which stimulated the development trade relations with 492 _____________________________Civilizations of the third generation in the Middle Ages
civilizations, and much more - all this contributed to the rise of urban economic life based on the spirit of rationalism and pragmatism associated with money and calculation.
This developed abstract thinking with the acceptance of attention to quantitative categories to the detriment of qualitative categories, with attachment to the plane of empirically given being. Evaluated by abstract quantitative categories, the specifics of business life becomes the basis for the orientation of the burgher consciousness, which prepares the Protestant business ethics of hoarding, labor and entrepreneurship analyzed by M. Weber in connection with the formation of capitalism.
The evolution of the economy during this period entailed a real reassessment of social values. If previously few and scattered artisans and merchants, in some cases sometimes further playing an important role, as social groups did not matter, then from the end of the 11th century. they are consolidated within the communes and become in many places important, and in some regions northern Italy, then northern Germany and partly the Netherlands with Flanders - with time and the leading force. First of all, the merchants, who form predominantly an urban patriciate, merchants and usurious capital associated with it, come forward. As a result, according to M. Blok, born in a very sparsely woven society, where trade meant little and money was rare, European feudalism changed profoundly when the cells of the human network became denser, and the circulation of goods and specie became more intense.
The feudal system, with anarchism and self-will which they unsuccessfully tried in the X-XII centuries. cope with the papacy and imperial power, from the XII-XIII centuries. from within is undermined (and in northern Italy around such prosperous cities as Venice, Florence or Genoa, and liquidated) by the development of cities. At the same time, feudalism in Northern France, then England, as well as the Pyrenean states (where it was developed much weaker) begins to be curbed from above by royal power. But if the royal power during the XIII-XV centuries. formed the frames and contours of the new European territorial-state structures, within which modern nations were born, then new types of socio-economic relations and the corresponding forms of mentality developed in the cities, which for centuries used ideas-images rethought in their own way, but perceived from official Christianity.
This kind of new, not coming from the Catholic Church, but often deliberately directed against it, rethinking of Christianity, often with noticeable non-Christian or at least unorthodox Christian injections, invariably gave rise to teachings declared heretical by the popes. The Catholic Church fought such currents cruelly and mercilessly, as evidenced by the history of the persecution of the Waldensians and Cathars in the 12th century, the defeat and extermination of the southern French Albigensians with the parallel introduction of the Inquisition at the beginning of the 13th century, the manic hunt for witches, etc.
The basic principles of the New European civilization, which largely inherited and developed, but otherwise categorically rejected the foundations of the Western Christian world of the feudal period, were developed and approved during the entire first half of the 2nd millennium precisely in cities that were, by their nature, alien elements in relation to the dominant feudalism . As per-Western Christian civilization of the Middle Ages 493
As mammals, they managed to survive and grow stronger in the conditions of the dominance of feudal dinosaurs, having developed in themselves those qualities that (when they developed sufficiently) the previously dominant forces were unable to fight.
But it was not so much the cities themselves that won, but the spirit of individualism developed in their midst, combined with a high ability for self-organization, rationalism and pragmatism, entrepreneurship and practical calculation, inclined to translate all costs and values into a monetary equivalent. Therefore, a medieval city with its workshops, guilds, petty regulation, etc., no matter how far it is from the realities of developed capitalism, can be considered an embryo of the bourgeoisie, ripening in the bosom of the feudal Catholic Western Christian world.
The specificity and uniqueness of the medieval city against a broad historical background, in its completely fair opposition to the type of an eastern city and a certain, but not at all absolutized rapprochement with the ancient city (with which it was connected by a thin dotted line of historical continuity), were disclosed in a specially dedicated to this topic M. Weber's research. The German scholar rightly emphasized that the medieval western city was not only an economic center of trade and crafts, politically (usually) a fortress and often a garrison seat, an administrative judicial district, but also a brotherhood sealed by an oath. As in the ancient Greek policy, relations between its full-fledged citizens-owners are built horizontally as union-contractual, with elected and accountable to citizens authorities.
The individual acts as an owner, a citizen and a warrior, a full-fledged and free (within the norms adopted by the commune and protected by the church) counterparty in principle of any economic, socio-political or cultural relations. The prohibitions and self-restraints imposed by the commune are ultimately called upon to serve the interests, if not of all without exception, then at least of the bulk of its members. And as long as the division on the basis of wealth and poverty did not go very far in the burgher environment itself, these restrictions were not perceived with hostility even by the most successful entrepreneurs, who understood that their private interest was directly related to the prosperity of the city as a whole.
The communal-guild system itself was blown up from within by its enriched members only with the creation centralized states predominantly already in the era of absolutism, in the 16th-17th centuries, when the interests and rights of the young bourgeoisie were taken to defend the asserting national state. For this reason (although, of course, not only for this reason) capitalism developed rapidly in the indicated centuries in the Netherlands, England and France, while Italy and Germany, which did not create such states, lag behind sharply. But the foundations of individual rights and freedoms, including (and primarily) in the sphere of the economy and entrepreneurship, were laid precisely in medieval western cities.
Thus, summing up what has been said, it should be emphasized that in the conditions of confrontation and struggle of the main principles of the medieval Western Christian world in the first third of the 2nd millennium, in urban communes, an individual, legally formalized freedom based on property is born, realizing its capabilities, first of all, in a utilitarian way. -entrepreneurial, rationalized activity. 494 Civilizations of the third generation in the Middle Ages
By the XV-XVI centuries. Western Europe is ripe for the idea of personal, including spiritual freedom, which found its expression in two different forms, seeking to rely on, respectively, ancient and early Christian traditions. This refers, on the one hand, to Romanesque, at first - actually Italian, humanism, which emphasizes individuality in its sensual-artistic, hedonistic and aesthetic relation to the world, and, on the other hand, the German (and then Swiss, etc.) Reformation, focusing attention on the individuality actively operating in the material and practical plane in its final connection with the transcendental principle - God.
Hence the ethical richness of the Protestant mentality, combined (in contrast to the Orthodox or even Catholic consciousness) with the religious sanctioning of enrichment as the basis for further practical activity, essentially aimed at even greater enrichment. This naturally led to the accumulation of capital, while renaissance psychology (quite in accordance with the ancient value scale so revered by it) looked at acquired wealth from the point of view of their realization in the non-economic sphere: from the creation of artistic masterpieces to household luxury and refined sensual pleasures.
During the Renaissance and especially the Reformation in the Western Christian world, the human personality finds support in itself through the affirmation of its ultimate rootedness in the divine origin of being. But if the Romanesque world interprets this rootedness in the vein of pantheistically perceived Neoplatonism (With his last chord in the natural philosophy of Giordano Bruno), which reduces the tragedy of the personal drama of each of the living, making the transcendental depersonalized primary reality of little significance for everyday practice, then the German world brings the drama of the personal relationships of each believer and God, which do not have any intermediaries between them, to extreme tension, receiving its ultimate expression in the philosophy of S. Kierkiegaard.
The deep consonance of Kierkiegaard's philosophy with the intuitions of B. Pascal, as well as the spirit of the semi-Protestant movement of Jansenism as a whole, convinces that the corresponding mindsets were also characteristic of the northern regions of the Roman Catholic world drawn into the epicenter of the formation of the New European civilization, which included Northern France with Paris.
The individual "I" is conceived to the extent that behind it (and in connection with it) stands directly God. reverse side This is the confidence of the new European bourgeoisie in their "God's chosen people" and superiority over all other people, especially representatives of other civilizations.
§ 18. Medieval city
Medieval city phenomenon.
In the Middle Ages, the vast majority of the population lived in the countryside. There were few townspeople, their role in society far exceeded their numbers. During the Great Migration of Nations, many cities were destroyed. In the few remaining fortress cities lived kings, dukes, bishops with close associates and servants. The townspeople were engaged in agriculture in the vicinity of the city, and sometimes """ inside it.
Around the 10th century big changes are taking place. In cities, crafts and trade become the main occupation of the inhabitants. Cities preserved from Roman times are growing rapidly. Appear
new cities.
By the XIV century. there were so many cities that from almost anywhere in Europe it was possible to drive to the nearest city within one day. The townspeople by that time differed from the peasants not only in their occupations. They had special rights and duties, wore special clothes, and so on. The class of workers was divided into two parts - peasants and townspeople.
emergencecitieshowtrade and craft centers.
The formation of cities as centers of crafts and trade was caused by the progressive development of society. As the population grew, so did its needs. So, the feudal lords were increasingly in need of things that merchants brought from Byzantium and eastern countries.
The first cities of the new type developed as settlements of merchants. who traded With these distant countries. In Italy, in the south of France in Spain since the end of the 9th century. some Roman cities were revived, new ones were built. The cities of Amalfi became especially large. Pisa, Genoa, Marseille, Barcelona, Venice. Some merchants from these cities sailed on ships in the Mediterranean, others transported the goods they delivered to all corners of Western Europe. There were places of exchange of goods - trade fairs(annual markets). I especially had them in the county of Champagne in France.
Later, in the XII-XIII centuries, in the north of Europe, trading cities also appeared - Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck, Danzig, etc. Here, merchants transported goods across the North and Baltic Seas. Their ships often fell prey to the elements, and even more often to pirates. On land, in addition to bad roads, merchants had to deal with robbers, often played by knights. Therefore, trading cities united to protect sea and land caravans. The union of cities in Northern Europe was called the Hansa. Not only individual feudal lords, but also the rulers of entire states were forced to reckon with the Hansa.
There were merchants, but in all cities, but in most of them the main occupation of the population of the herd was not trade, but handicraft. Initially, artisans lived in the villages and castles of the feudal lords. However, it is difficult to live by handicraft in rural areas. Here, few people bought handicrafts, because subsistence farming dominated. Therefore, artisans sought to move to places where they could sell their products. These were areas of fairs, crossroads of trade routes, river crossings, etc. In such places there was usually a castle of a feudal lord or a monastery. Craftsmen built dwellings around the castle and the monastery, later such graying turned into cities.
The feudal lords were also interested in these settlements. After all, they could get a big quitrent. Seniors sometimes brought artisans from their feud to one place, and even lured them from their neighbors. However, most of the inhabitants, coming to the city on their own. Often serf artisans and peasants fled from their lords to the cities.
The earliest cities - centers of crafts - arose in the county of Flanders (modern Belgium). In such of them as Bruges, Ghent, Ypres, woolen fabrics were made. In these places, breeds of sheep with thick wool were bred and convenient looms were created.
From the 11th century cities grew especially rapidly. A large city in the Middle Ages was considered a city with a population of 5-10 thousand inhabitants. The largest cities in Europe were Paris, London, Florence, Milan, Venice, Seville, Cordoba.
Cities and seniors.
The weight of the city arose on the land of the feudal lords. Many townspeople were in personal dependence on the lord. The feudal lords, with the help of servants, ruled the cities. Settlers from the villages brought to the cities the habit of living in the community. Very soon, the townspeople began to gather together to discuss issues of city government, they elected the head of the city (mayor or burgomaster), and gathered militia to protect themselves from enemies.
People of the same profession usually settled together, attended the same church, and communicated closely with each other. They created their unions - craft workshops and trade guilds. The guilds monitored the quality of handicrafts, established the order of work in workshops, guarded the property of their members, fought competitors among non-price artisans, peasants, and so on. Guilds and guilds, in order to protect their interests, sought to participate in the management of the city. They exhibited their detachments in the city militia.
As the wealth of the townspeople grew, the feudal lords increased the exactions from them. Urban communities - communes over time, they began to resist such actions of the feudal lords. Some seniors per a solid ransom expanded the rights of cities. However, in the overwhelming majority of cases, a stubborn struggle unfolded between the feudal lords and the communes. It sometimes lasted for many decades and was accompanied by hostilities.
The outcome of the struggle depended on the balance of forces of the parties. The rich cities of Italy not only freed themselves from the power of the feudal lords, but also took away all their lands from them. Their castles were destroyed, and the lords were forcibly relocated to the cities, where they began to serve the communes. The surrounding peasants became dependent on the cities. Many cities (Florence, Genoa, Venice, Milan) became the centers of small state-republics.
In other countries, the success of cities was not so impressive. However, almost everywhere the townspeople freed themselves from the power of the feudal lords and became free. Moreover, any serf who fled to the city was made free if the lord could not find him there and return him within one year and one day. “City air makes a person free,” said a medieval saying. A number of cities have achieved full self-government.
Some small towns remained under the rule of seniors. A number of large cities, in which kings and other strong rulers lived, failed to become independent. The inhabitants of Paris and London received freedom and many rights, but along with city councils, these cities were also ruled by royal
officials.
Shop organizations.
The main body of the workshop management was the general meeting of all members of the workshop, which was attended only by independent members of the workshop - masters. The craftsmen were the owners of the tools of labor, the handicraft workshop.
As demand increased, it became difficult for the craftsman to work alone. So there were pupils, after apprentices. The student took an oath not to leave the master until the end of the training: the master was obliged to teach him honestly his craft and fully support him. But the position of the students was, as a rule, not easy: they were overwhelmed with overwork, kept starving, beaten for the slightest offense.
Gradually, the student became an assistant to the master - an apprentice. His position improved, but he remained a part-time worker. To become a master, an apprentice had to fulfill two conditions: after learning to wander to improve the craft, and then pass the exam, which consisted in making an exemplary work (masterpiece).
At the end of the Middle Ages, workshops become in many ways a brake on the development of crafts. Masters made it difficult for apprentices to join the guild. There were benefits for the sons of masters.
Contradictions within urban communities.
In the struggle against the lords, all the townspeople were united. However, the leading position in the cities was occupied by large merchants, owners of urban land and houses (patriciate). All of them were often relatives and firmly held the city government in their hands. In many cities, only such people could participate in the elections of the mayor and members of the city council. In other cities, one vote of a rich man was equal to several votes of ordinary citizens.
When distributing taxes, when recruiting into the militia, in the courts, the patriciate acted in his own interests. This situation aroused the resistance of the rest of the inhabitants. Particularly dissatisfied were the craft workshops, which brought the city the greatest income. In a number of cities the guilds rebelled against the patriciate. Sometimes the rebels overthrew the old rulers and established more just laws, chose rulers from among themselves.
Significance of medieval cities.
The townspeople lived much better than most peasants. They were free people, fully owned their property, had the right to fight with weapons in their hands in the ranks of the militia, they could only be punished by a court decision. Such orders contributed to the successful development of cities and medieval society as a whole. Cities have become centers of technological progress and culture. In a number of countries, the townspeople became allies of the kings in their struggle for centralization. Thanks to the activities of the townspeople, the commodity-money relations, in which feudal lords and peasants are involved. The growth of commodity-money relations eventually led to the liberation of the peasants from personal dependence on the feudal lords.
Final attestation work on the course: General History: Middle Ages. East-West.
Lecturer Petrova Maya Stanislavovna, Doctor of Historical Sciences, prof.
1st course, evening department, FII HSR, student Sigaev F.V.
Medieval city in the system of feudal society (on the example of France).
The development of French feudal society as a whole gives us classic examples of how profound changes in the economic and political structure of society entail an inevitable and natural change in the forms of organization of the state, let's try to analyze how cities were born and what they changed in the state, where the emerging small "new estate "becomes a key element in strengthening royal power in France in the 9th-18th centuries.
The development of the feudal state among the Franks can be divided into two stages: 1) VI-VII centuries. - the period of the Merovingian monarchy and 2) VIII century. - first half of the ninth century period of the Carolingian monarchy. The French kingdom arose after the collapse of the Carolingian empire and went through the following stages in its development: 1) seignorial monarchy (IX-XIII centuries); 2) estate-representative monarchy (XIV-XV centuries); 3) absolute monarchy (XVI-XVIII centuries). This period will, if possible, be considered by us.
A characteristic feature of developed feudalism was the emergence and flourishing of cities as centers of crafts and trade, centers of commodity production. In the IX-XI centuries. feudal relations in France become dominant. Medieval cities had an enormous impact on the economy of the countryside and contributed to the growth of productive forces in agriculture.
The reason for the emergence and rapid growth of cities was the separation of handicrafts from agriculture. On the one hand, the development of the craft followed the path of its specialization. Previously, the village blacksmith was a jack of all trades: he shod horses, made sickles, knives and weapons for the feudal lord's army. He had enough work. But now there are gunsmiths who can't shoe horses, armor-makers who can't make swords. Now highly specialized craftsmen do not have enough work with the feudal lord, they need a market.
At first, the market under feudalism remained narrow and the artisan did not immediately find the required number of buyers in the city, so at first the townspeople continued to engage in agriculture, had vegetable gardens and fields. Inside Paris back in the XIII-XV centuries. there were not only vegetable gardens, but also arable fields, which only later will be taken out initially outside the cities.
At first, the cities were under the rule of the feudal lord on whose land he grew up. Sometimes the feudal lords themselves “organized” cities on their land, in order to later impose high taxes on them: after all, the city brought in much more income than a village with fields occupying the same area, and the townspeople were richer than the peasants. The feudal lord tried to manage in the city, as in his fiefdom.
"In the X century. begins the rapid growth of medieval cities in France, first in its Romanized part - Southern Gaul (Marseille, Toulouse), and then in central and northern France. The growth of cities was high, first of all, where ancient cities were preserved, with their experience of urban life, urban production, trade relations with Byzantium and the countries of the East. (Karev V.V., Ist.sr.v., vol. 2., 5) Sedmitza.ru (December 2010)
But already in the 11th century. everywhere the cities began to struggle for their independence from the feudal lords, and in this struggle the cities more often won. The fortress walls of the cities were not inferior to the walls of feudal castles, and the freedom-loving and close-knit citizens were noticeably richer than the peasants, they themselves made weapons, including for the feudal lords. In addition, the cities often acted in alliance with the royal power, which sought to weaken the power of large feudal lords.
A high level and independence of handicraft production is achieved by blacksmithing and weaponry, fabric dressing, and construction. At the same time, crafts began to develop: mining of metals, salt, harvesting of fish, furs, forests, etc. In connection with the development of feudalism, handicraft is becoming an increasingly independent and leading industry in cities. A high level and independence of handicraft production is achieved primarily by blacksmithing and weapons crafts, fabric dressing, and construction. Simultaneously with an increase in the level of handicraft production, crafts began to develop: mining of metals, salt, harvesting of fish, furs, and forests. With the evolution of developed feudalism, handicraft becomes more and more independent and the leading industry in the city. Craftsmen, like the peasants, were small producers, owned the tools of production, independently ran their own economy based on personal labor. Unlike the peasant, the specialist artisan from the very beginning was a commodity producer, led a commodity economy, besides this, he did not need land as a means of production. As a result, urban craft developed and improved incomparably faster than agriculture and rural craft.
From the 12th century the process of fragmentation of land holdings is stopped. Feudal estates take on a tribal character. The hierarchical structure of the ruling class is more clearly fixed, and feudal titles and ranks acquire a hereditary character. Thus, by the XIII century. the prerequisites for the formation of a closed class of the nobility are taking shape. In the IX-XII centuries. in conditions of political decentralization, which led to deep territorial fragmentation, royal power lost its former significance. The king was regarded by the feudal lords as "first among equals" (primus inter pares). In fact, the power of the king extended only to the territory of his domain, but even there he had to wage a stubborn struggle with recalcitrant vassals. Outside the royal domain, power belonged to large landowners (the dukes of Burgundy and Normandy, the counts of Flanders, Toulouse, Champagne, etc.)
The decisive feature of the craft and other activities in many medieval cities of Western Europe were corporate associations of persons of certain specialties in specialized unions - brotherhoods, workshops, guilds. Craft workshops appeared almost simultaneously with the cities of France themselves from the 11th - early 12th centuries, but the final design of the workshops (drawing up and recording workshop charters, receiving special letters from kings and other seniors) occurred later. The main function of the workshops was to establish a monopoly on this type of craft, as well as to establish control over the production and sale of products of their own production. The workshop was not a production association. Each master, a member of the guild, had his own workshop (often in his own house), where he worked with several apprentices and apprentices. Later, in the XIV-XV centuries, it was apprentices and apprentices who would make up the most competent and organized part of the hired workers of large cities.
In connection with the growth of handicraft and merchant corporations in growing cities, their struggle with feudal lords and internal social conflicts, a special estate of townspeople, burghers, is emerging (from the German Burg - the city from where the medieval Latin burgensis and the French term bourgeoisie came from, which originally also denoted townspeople) . In economic terms, the new class was associated with handicraft and trading activities, enjoyed a number of benefits and privileges. The word "burgher" in a number of European countries originally denoted all urban residents. In the XIV-XV centuries. this word usually denoted the wealthy sections of the townspeople, from which the first elements of the bourgeoisie subsequently grew. The urban estate was not uniform in its social and property status, it included the patriciate, a layer of wealthy merchants, artisans and homeowners, ordinary workers and urban plebeians. The status of a burgher meant that a citizen had property; making strictly defined contributions to the city; ownership of land in and around the city; availability of movable property; certificate of professional skill; personal integrity; participation in one of the city corporations, guard and garrison service. Receiving its privileges and immunity, the city gradually turned into a closed community, the full rights in which - the right of citizenship or burghership - also had a personal, local character, relating only to this city, not representing an integral social community, the townspeople stood out as a special estate or, as it was in France, a class group, the disunity within which was intensified by the dominance of the corporate system within the cities, and the predominance of local interests in each city and trade rivalry between cities, only hindered the joint actions of medieval townspeople as an estate on a countrywide scale.
Fairs develop within the boundaries of cities (derived from the German name for the annual market (Jahrmarkt), another name is messe, fair, faire, feria - a holiday dedicated to religious holidays). From the X-XI centuries. fairs spread throughout European countries. The assortment of autumn fairs was especially wide. In France, in the seventh century formed and operated in the XII-XIII centuries. fairs in Saint-Denis, from the end of the XII century. - in Chalons, from the XIII century. - in Champagne, in the XV century. - Lyon. "In the XII-XIII centuries. there is another new phenomenon trade fairs, how major centers wholesale trade. The largest fair center at that time was Champagne. (Karev V.V., Ist.sr.v., vol. 2., 5) Sedmitza.ru (December 2010)
Cities achieved independence by becoming city-communes, city-states that were ruled by an elected magistrate, entered into agreements with other states, fought wars, minted their own coins, that is, they really acted as completely independent states. Such city-states were Genoa, Venice and Florence in Italy, and many cities in France. “Many cities of northern France, practically not Romanized, such as Soissons, Amiens, etc., as well as the cities of Flanders - Bruges, Ghent, etc. - as a result of the communal movement became commune cities, with their own self-government, free from seigneurial dependence.” (Karev V.V., Ist.sr.v., vol. 2., 5) Sedmitza.ru (December 2010) However, most of the cities of France, countries with a strong central government, although they had elected bodies, paid regular and often extraordinary state tribute.
The class division of feudal society, being an expression of the actual and formal inequality of people, was accompanied by the establishment of a special legal place for each group of the population. Special development has been city law. With the growth and development of cities, their own city courts appeared here, initially dealing with market disputes, but gradually covering the entire population of the city with their jurisdiction and displacing the use of fief and palace law in cities ... The Roman Catholic Church played a large role in the feudal society of Western Europe. It was a powerful economic, political and cultural organization and the bearer of the ideology of the Middle Ages. The Christian religion was closely intertwined with feudal relations. Therefore, the entire culture of feudalism is subordinated to theology. The dogmas of the church became political axioms, and the biblical texts received the force of law. The church monopolized the regulation of marriage and family relations, the right to control the distribution of property between legal heirs and the execution of wills, the church also developed its own law, which was called canonical, since its main provisions were set forth in the resolutions of Church Councils (canons). A set of these canons was compiled in the 16th century. In addition, the normative acts of the Roman popes, which were called the constitution, bulls and encyclicals, were the sources of canon law.
The further growth of cities and commodity production entailed not only an increase in the number and political activity of the urban population. He caused the restructuring of the traditional feudal economy, forms of exploitation of the peasantry. Under the influence of commodity-money relations, there were significant changes in the legal status of the peasants. By the XIV century. servage disappears in most of France. The bulk of the peasantry is personally free censors, obliged to pay to the lord a monetary rent (qualification), the size of which increased. In the XIV-XV centuries. in France, the restructuring of the estate system was completed, expressed in the internal consolidation of the estates. The formation of three large estates did not mean the disappearance of the hierarchical structure of the feudal class inherited from the previous period. However, in order to strengthen their common positions, the feudal lords were forced to give up their former independence, to give up some traditional senior privileges. Consolidation of the estate system meant a gradual cessation of internecine feudal wars of extermination and the establishment of new mechanisms for settling intra-class conflicts.
At the beginning of the XIV century. in France, the seigneurial monarchy is being replaced by a new form of the feudal state - estate-representative monarchy. The formation of a class-representative monarchy here is inextricably linked with the progressive process of political centralization for this period (by the beginning of the 14th century, 3/4 of the country's territory was united), the further rise of royal power, the elimination of autocracy of individual feudal lords, in addition, in the 14th-15th centuries. basically completed the formation and " third estate"(tiers etat), which was replenished due to the rapidly growing urban population and an increase in the number of peasant censors (the first estate was considered the clergy, the second nobility). This estate was very diverse in its composition and practically combined the working population and the emerging bourgeoisie. Members of this estate were considered as "ignoble", did not have any special personal or property rights. They were not protected from arbitrariness on the part of the royal administration and even individual feudal lords. The third estate was the only taxable estate in France, and it fell all the burden of paying state taxes.It acted primarily as a set of urban associations and has not yet realized itself as a single nationwide force.
In the XV century. Charles VII generally abolished the collection of taglia by individual large seigneurs. The king forbade the feudal lords to establish new indirect taxes, which gradually led to their complete disappearance. Louis XI took away the right to mint coins from the feudal lords. In the XV century. in circulation in France there was only a single royal coin. The kings deprived the feudal lords and their traditional privilege - to wage private wars. Only a few large feudal lords kept in the XV century. their independent armies, which gave them some political autonomy (Burgundy, Brittany, Armagnac). The victory of the French crown over the Roman papacy, the gradual elimination of the independent rights of the feudal lords was accompanied in the XIV-XV centuries. the steady increase in the authority and political weight of royal power, and by the beginning of the XIV century. built on a political compromise, and therefore not always a strong union of the king and representatives of different estates, including the third estate, is finally formalized.
The political expression of this union, in which each of the parties had its own specific interests, became special class-representative institutions - the States General and the provincial states, which marked the beginning of a change in the form of the state in France - turning it into a class-representative monarchy. The estates-general as a whole were not a mere tool of the royal nobility, although objectively they helped her to strengthen and strengthen her position in the state.
The rise of absolutism new form monarchy in France caused by profound changes that have occurred in the estate-legal structure of the country. These changes were caused primarily by the emergence of capitalist relations that emerged and are gaining momentum thanks to the emergence of cities. The formation of capitalism proceeded more rapidly in industry and trade; in agriculture, feudal ownership of land became an ever greater obstacle to it. The archaic estate system, which came into conflict with the needs of capitalist development, became a serious brake on the path of social progress. The vast majority of the population in France in the XVI-XVII centuries. was third estate, which became more and more inhomogeneous. It increased social and property differentiation. At the very bottom of the third estate were peasants, artisans, laborers, and the unemployed. On its upper steps stood the persons from which the bourgeois class was formed: financiers, merchants, craftsmen, notaries, lawyers. The rise of absolutism in the 16th century had a progressive character, since the royal power contributed to the completion of the territorial unification of France, the formation of a single French nation, the faster development of industry and trade, and the optimization of the administrative management system. During the period of absolutism, the creation of a centrally built standing army, which was one of the largest in Europe, as well as a regular royal fleet, was completed.
References:
Karev V.V., History of the Middle Ages., Vol. 2, Chapter 5. Sedmitza.ru (December 2010).
Kolesnitsky N.D. "Feudal state." M., 1967.
Lyublinskaya A.D. "French absolutism in the first third of the 17th century." M-L., 1965.