RESEARCH carried out over the past few decades no longer allows rural society in the thirteenth century to be described according to the simple supposition that general developments were the same everywhere. Of course, there were fundamental influences that were felt almost everywhere in western Europe by a rural population which represented approximately 90 per cent of the total population at the beginning of the century and 85 per cent towards 1300, figures which emphasise the relative numerical insignificance of city dwellers. One has only to look at the Florentine contado and at Flanders, where the urban population was only about 30 per cent of the total at the end of the thirteenth century, to see that even in heavily urbanised areas a very high proportion of the inhabitants were engaged in rural occupations. In fact, despite consistent features that characterised seigneurial societies at this period, the general factors inducing change sometimes came up against obstacles, and often took on different forms, depending on the region, the level of access to the more important markets, their age-old traditions and the strength of the influence of political institutions.

THE FUNDAMENTAL TRENDS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF RURAL SOCIETY

Population growth

The population continued to grow in the thirteenth century, but more unevenly and less strongly than in the past, measured both in time and in space. The growth rate of the population as a whole dropped from approximately 15 per cent to 10 per cent between 1200 and 1300, but rural depopulation reduced this percentage even more in the countryside, and it appears that there was a levelling off of growth in England, as well as in Picardy and in the Ile-de-France.