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Social Control in the Medieval Town

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Sylvia L. Thrupp
Sylvia L. Thrupp
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Extract

The power of the church in the medieval town was ever-present and all-pervasive. It operated through the ritual of the sacraments, the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts, the charitable foundations of the orders, through the pictorial teaching on church walls and windows, open-air sermons, public inflictions of penance, the celebration of saints' festivals, and in many other ways. There can be no reasonable doubt that the social teachings of the church, along with its other doctrines, were by one means or another impressed upon every townsman, in so far as he was capable of understanding them.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 1 , supplement S1: The Tasks of Economic History , December 1941 , pp. 39 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1941

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References

1 Some practical advice on civic affairs is to be found in manuals on government written for princes, but it is not ordinarily sympathetic with the democratic or oligarchic or republican régimes common in the towns.

2 The best account of this type of preaching in England is in Owst, G. R., Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1933), chapter 9Google Scholar. There are some suggestive comments on this level of thought in Mannheim, Karl, Man and Society (1940), 276–77Google Scholar.

3 In 1254 Henry III took over the government of the city of London on the pretext that the assize of bread and ale had not been observed. Riley, H. T., Chronicles of the Mayors and Sheriffs of London (1863), 22Google Scholar. The management of weighing machines was in London actually entrusted in part to merchant companies. See Thrupp, S. L., “The Grocers of London, A Study of Distributive Trade,” in Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Power, Eileen and Postan, M. M. (1933), 257–58Google Scholar.

4 Medieval Cities (translation, 1925), 214–19; Belgian Democracy (translation, 1915), 119, 123.

5 “The Stages in the Social History of Capitalism,” American Historical Review, XIX (1913–14), 505Google Scholar.

6 M. Bloch, reviewing G. Espinas, Une guerre sociale interurbaine dans la Flandre wallonne au xiiie siècle: Douai et Lille 1284–85, notes how even at a time of social revolution, factions in Douai, when there was danger of attack from Lille, immediately reunited, … “se sentent une même âme.” Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, t. 3 (1931), 293.

7 Levasseur, , Histoire des classes ouvrières et de l'industrie en France avant 1789, I, 298–9Google Scholar.

8 Ibid., 42.

9 Ibid., I, 272–73, 275, 281, 283, 468.

10 For some details see Documents nouveaux sur les moeurs populaires et le droit de vengeances dans les pays-bas au XVe siècle, ed. Petit-Dutaillis, Ch. (1908), 39–224Google Scholar.

11 Citations given in O'Brien, G., An Essay on Medieval Economic Teaching (1920) 120–121Google Scholar.

12 Ibid., 122.

13 Owst, 363, n. 3.

14 O'Brien, 122.

15 Ordinances of the year 1467 in Worcester demanded only that employers hire laborers standing in the market-place for “reasonable summes,” Smith, Toulmin (ed.) English Gilds (Early English Text Society, Original Series No. 40), 395Google Scholar.

16 Calendar of Letter Books of the City of London (ed. R. Sharpe) C, 111 (date 1301).

17 See Levasseur's conjecture for the thirteenth century in France, Histoire des classes ouvrières et le l'industrie en France avant 1789 (1900), I, 458Google Scholar, and Sée, H., Histoire économique de la France (1939), 43Google Scholar.

18 “… no one shall take for working in the said trade more than they were wont heretofore …,” ordinances of the whittawyers of London, 1346, Riley, H. T. (ed.), Memorials of London and London Life (1868), 234Google Scholar; “… thei taken now noon other wise thanne hath ben usid amonge theym of tyme oute of mynde …,” statement of bakers' men in 1441, proceedings in the court of aldermen, Letter Book K (ms. archives, city of London), ff. 198b–199; “… that the said servants and workmen should not take more wages than of old time is accustomed and ordained,” ordinances of the fullers of Bristol, 1406, English Gilds, 284. There are also instances of provision for setting the wages of unenfranchised workmen at figures varying with their skill, Lipson, The Economic History of England, I, 301, case of London shearmen, 1352; also among London carpenters, 1487, ordinances in Journals of the proceedings of the court of common council (ms. archives, city of London), 9, ff. 136b–141.

19 The shearmen in 1350 appealed to the mayor and aldermen to order their men to work for customary rates as a matter of charity and for the profit of the people, Riley, Memorials of London and London Life, 251; the fullers in 1363 asked that servants combining “to obtain more than their proper wage, to the hurt of the people,” be imprisoned for a year, Calendar of Letter Books of the City of London, G, 160.

20 Mr. Postan's remarks on the preambles of acts of Parliament are pertinent: “… the object of a preamble was to justify the act by relating it to those moral and political principles which could command a general acceptance; the more hypocritical they were the more conclusive they are as evidence of the spirit of the times.” M. M. Postan, “The Economic and Political Relations of the Hanse” (1400–1477), in Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century (1933), 103.

21 Riley, Memorials, 542–44.

22 Levasseur, 303–09; Thrupp, 255–56.

23 Espinas, G., La vie urbaine de Douai au moyen âge (1913), I, 223–4, 241Google Scholar; II, 1019, 1105–08, 1120–40.

24 M. Bloch, in Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, t. 3 (1931), 293. See above, n. 6.

25 Summa Theologica (literal translation by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 1929), Pt. II, ii, Q. 66, Art. 2, reply, objection 1.

26 “The temporal goods which God grants us are ours as to the ownership but as to the use of them, they belong not to us alone but also to such others as we are able to succour over and above our needs …,” Ibid. Pt. II, ii, Q. 32, Art. 5, reply, objection 2.

27 Pt. II, ii, Q. 66, Art. 7, reply, objection 3.

28 Ibid., Q. 32, Art. 5, reply, objection 4.

29 Ibid., Q. 32, Art. 6, reply to objections.

30 Ibid., Pt. II, ii, Q. 32, Art. 6, reply to objections.

31 Ibid., Pt. II, ii, Q. 63, Art. 3, reply, objection 3: “… The rich ought to be honoured by reason of their occupying a higher position in the community; but if they be honoured merely for their wealth, it will be the sin of respect of persons.”

32 Cited in Jarrett, Bede, Saint Antonino and Medieval Economics (1914), 74Google Scholar.

33 The Book of Margery Kempe (Early English Text Society, Original Series No. 212), 9.

34 Peter Idley's Instructions to His Son, lib. 2, 11. 1112 ff.

35 Dialogues in French and English (Early English Text Society, Extra Series No. 79), 35.

36 Dempsey, Bernard L., S. J., “Medieval Society,” in Planned Society (ed. Findlay Mackenzie, 1937), 65Google Scholar; Mumford, Lewis, The Culture of Cities (1938), 31Google Scholar.

37 The following is a sample of some of the more useful studies: Lambert, E. M., Das Hallische Patriciat (Halle, 1866)Google Scholar; Sigmund Keller, Patriziat und Geschlecterherrschaft in der Reichsstadt Lindou (Deutschrechtliche Beiträge. Forschungen und Quellen zur Geschichte des deutschen Rechts, Herausgegeben von Dr. Konrad Bayerle, Band 1, Heft 5), 1908; Schulte, Aloys, Geschichte der grossen Rovensburger Handelsgesellschaft, (1923)Google Scholar; id., Der hohe Adel im Leben des mittelalterlichen Köln (Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1919); R. Aubenas, “La famille dans l'ancienne Provence,” Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, t. 8, 523–41; A-E. Sayous, Aristocratic et noblesse à Gênes, ibid., t. 9, 366–81; Roberto Lopez, Aux origines du capitalists génois, t. 9, 429–54; Margarete Merores, Der Venezianische Adel, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial-und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (1926), 193–237; Heinrich Kramm, Landschaftlicher Aufbau und Verschiebungen des deutschen Grosshandles am Beginn der Neuseit gemessen an den Familienverbindung des Grossburgertums, ibid. (1936), 1–34.

38 The Ethics of Competition (1935), 49.