Chapter I

MEDIEVAL CITIES

In the Middle Ages, the city was the bearer of a dynamic beginning. The city contributed to the flourishing of the feudal formation, revealing all its potentialities, and it also turned out to be at the origins of its collapse. The established medieval city, its typical image is well studied. In socio-economic terms, the city was the center of commodity crafts and crafts, many types of hired labor, commodity exchange and money transactions, internal and external relations. Its inhabitants for the most part were personally free. The city housed the residences of kings, bishops and other gentlemen, strong points of the road network, administrative, fiscal, military services, diocesan centers, cathedrals and monasteries, schools and universities; it was, therefore, also a political-administrative, sacral and cultural centre.

Historians have long argued about social entity medieval city (feudal or non-feudal?), about the time of its occurrence and public role. Most modern historians believe that this city is, as it were, "two-essential." On the one hand, it was separated from the feudal natural village and in many respects opposed to it. Under the conditions of a medieval society with a dominant subsistence economy, separatism and local isolation, dogmatic thinking, personal lack of freedom of some and the omnipotence of others, the city was the bearer of qualitatively new, progressive elements: commodity-money relations, personal freedom, special types of property, management and law, connections with central authority, secular culture. It became the cradle of the concept of citizenship.

At the same time, the city remained an organic part of the feudal world. Much inferior to the countryside in terms of total population and the mass of products produced, including handicrafts, the city was also inferior to it politically, being in one way or another dependent on the seigneurial regime of the crown and large landowners, serving this regime with its own money and acting as a place for the redistribution of feudal rent. Gradually formed into a special estate or class group of feudal society, the townspeople occupied an important place in its hierarchy and actively influenced the evolution of the state. The municipal system and the legal organization of the city remained within the framework of feudal law and management. Inside the city, corporate-communal forms of organization dominated - in the form of workshops, guilds, brotherhoods, etc. In its social essence, it was thus a feudal city.

FOLDING OF MEDIEVAL CITIES (V-XI centuries)

The developed feudal city had its own history. In the early Middle Ages, there was no established urban system on a continental scale. But there were already cities: from the numerous successors of the ancient municipality to the primitive city-like settlements of the barbarians, which contemporaries also called cities. Therefore, the early Middle Ages was by no means a "pre-urban" period. The origins of medieval urban life date back to this early period. The emergence of cities and the burghers were part of the process of the genesis of the feudal formation, the social division of labor characteristic of it.

In the socio-economic field, the formation of medieval cities was determined by the separation of craft from Agriculture, the development of commodity production and exchange, the concentration of the population employed in them in individual settlements.

The first centuries of the Middle Ages in Europe were characterized by the dominance of subsistence farming. The few artisans and merchants who lived in urban centers served mainly their inhabitants. The peasants, who constituted the predominant mass of the population, provided themselves and their masters not only with agricultural products, but also with handicrafts; combination of rural labor with handicraft - feature natural economy. Even then, there were few artisans in the village (universal blacksmiths, potters, tanners, shoemakers), who served the district with those products, the manufacture of which was difficult for the peasant. Usually village artisans were also engaged in agriculture, they were "peasant artisans". Craftsmen were also part of the household; in large, especially royal possessions, there were dozens of handicraft specialties. Yard and village artisans most often were in the same feudal dependence as the rest of the peasants, they bore the tax, obeyed customary law. At the same time, wandering artisans appeared, already off the ground. Although craftsmen both in the countryside and in the city worked mainly to order, and many products went in the form of rent, the process of commodification of handicraft and its separation from agriculture was already underway.

The same was the case with trade. The exchange of products was insignificant. Monetary means of payment, regular markets and a permanent trading contingent were only partially preserved in the southern regions of Europe, while in others natural means of payment or direct exchange, seasonal markets dominated. In terms of the value of commodity turnover, apparently, long-distance, transit trade relations predominated, designed for the sale of imported goods: luxury items - silks, fine cloth, jewelry, spices, precious church utensils, well-crafted weapons, thoroughbred horses, or various metals, salt, alum, dyes, which were mined in a few places and therefore were relatively rare. Most of the rare and luxurious goods were exported from the East by itinerant intermediary merchants (Byzantines, Arabs, Syrians, Jews, Italians).

Commodity production in most of Europe was not developed. However, by the end of the early Middle Ages, along with the ancient southern (Mediterranean) trade zone and the younger western (along the Rhine, Meuse, Moselle, Loire), the northern (Baltic-North Sea) and eastern (Volga and Caspian) trade zones were drawn into the orbit of pan-European trade. . Exchange was also actively developed within these zones. There were professional merchants and merchant associations such as companies, later guilds, whose traditions also penetrated into Northern Europe. The Carolingian denarius circulated everywhere. Fairs were organized, some of them were widely known (Saint-Denis, Pavia, etc.).

The process of separating the city from the countryside, which began in the early Middle Ages, was generated by the entire course of feudalization, primarily successful development production, especially at the second stage of the genesis of feudalism, when there was a progress in agriculture, crafts and crafts. As a result, crafts and crafts turned into special areas of labor activity, which required the specialization of production, the creation of favorable professional, market, and personal conditions.

The formation of an advanced for its time patrimonial system contributed to the intensification of production, the consolidation of professionalism, including handicraft, and the multiplication of markets. The formation of the ruling class of feudal lords, the state and church organization, with their institutions and institutions, the world of things, military-strategic structures, etc., stimulated the development of professional crafts and crafts, employment practices, minting coins and money circulation, means of communication, trade relations , trade and merchant law, customs service and duty system. No less important was the fact that the cities became the residences of kings, large feudal lords, and bishops. The rise of agriculture made it possible to feed a large number of people engaged in crafts and trade.

In early medieval Europe, the process of feudal town formation proceeded through the gradual merging of two paths. The first is the transformation of ancient cities with their developed traditions of urbanism. The second way is the emergence of new, barbaric in origin settlements that did not have the traditions of urbanism.

In the early Middle Ages, many ancient cities still survived, including Constantinople, Thessalonica and Corinth in Greece; Rome, Ravenna, Milan, Florence, Bologna, Naples, Amalfi in Italy; Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Arles in France; Cologne, Mainz, Strasbourg, Trier, Augsburg, Vienna in the German lands; London, York, Chester, Gloucester in England. Most of the ancient city-states or colonies experienced a decline and were largely agrarianized. Their political functions came to the fore - the administrative center, residences, fortifications (fortresses). However, many of these cities were still relatively crowded, artisans and merchants lived in them, and markets operated.

Individual cities, especially in Italy and Byzantium, along the Rhine were major centers of intermediary trade. Many of them not only later served as the nuclei of the first proper medieval cities, but also had a powerful impact on the development of urbanism throughout Europe.

In the barbarian world, the embryos of urbanism were small trade and craft places - wikis, ports, as well as royal residences and fortified shelters for the surrounding inhabitants. Around the 8th century early cities flourished here - trading emporia, mainly for transit purposes. Rare and small, they formed, however, a whole network that covered a significant part of Europe: from the shores of the English Channel and the Baltic Sea to the Volga. Another type of early barbarian city - tribal "capitals" with a trade and crafts population - became the most important pillar of internal relations.

The path of the genesis of the feudal city was difficult for the old antique, and especially for the barbarian cities. According to the degree and features of the interaction of barbarian and ancient principles in the process of city formation in Europe, three main typological zones can be distinguished - in the presence, of course, of a number of transitional types.

The zone of urbanization with the dominant influence of the late antique beginning included Byzantium, Italy, Southern Gaul, Spain. From the 7th-8th centuries cities in these territories are gradually emerging from the crisis, socially restructuring, and new centers are emerging. The life of the medieval cities proper in this zone develops earlier and faster than in the rest of Europe. The zone where the ancient and barbarian beginnings of urbanism were relatively balanced covered the lands between the Rhine and the Loire (western Germany and Northern France), and to a certain extent also the Northern Balkans. In town formation - VIII-IX centuries. - both the remains of Roman policies and ancient native cult and fair places participated here. The third zone of urban formation, where the barbarian beginning dominated, is the most extensive; it covered the rest of Europe. The genesis of cities there was slower, regional differences were especially noticeable.

First of all, in the 9th century, medieval cities took shape in Italy and grew out of late antique cities in Byzantium, in the 10th century. - in the south of France and along the Rhine. In the X-XI centuries. an urban system is taking shape in northern France, Flanders and Brabant, in England, in the Zarein and Danube regions of Germany, and in the north of the Balkans. In the XI-XIII centuries. feudal cities were formed on the northern outskirts and in the interior regions of East Germany, in Russia, in the Scandinavian countries, in Ireland, Scotland, Hungary, Poland, and the Danubian principalities.

THE CITY IN THE PERIOD OF DEVELOPED FEODALISM (XI-XV centuries)

From the second period of the Middle Ages, the cities of the continent reach, though not simultaneously, the stage of maturity. This qualitative leap was due to the completion of the genesis of feudal relations, which released the potential of the era, but at the same time exposed and aggravated its social contradictions. Thousands of peasants, finding themselves in feudal dependence, went to the cities. This process, which took on a mass character from the end of the 11th to the middle of the 12th centuries, marked the end of the first stage of city formation in the Middle Ages. Fugitive peasants formed the demographic basis of developed medieval cities. Therefore, the feudal city and the class of townspeople matured later than the state, the main classes of feudal society. It is characteristic that in countries where the personal dependence of the peasants remained unfinished, the cities were for a long time sparsely populated, with a weak production basis.

City life of the second period of the Middle Ages passed through two stages. The first is the achievement of maturity of feudal urbanism, when a classical urban system has developed. This system was a set of economic, social, political, legal and cultural relations, designed in the form of specific urban communities (craft shops, merchants' guilds, the civil urban community as a whole), special government (municipal bodies, courts, etc.) and law. At the same time, the urban estate was formed as a special, fairly wide social group, which had rights and obligations enshrined in custom and law and occupied an important place in the hierarchy of feudal society.

Of course, the process of separating crafts from agriculture and, in general, the city from the countryside was not completed either then or throughout the feudal formation in general. But the emergence of the urban system and the urban estate became the most important step in it: it marked the maturation of a simple commodity structure and the development of the domestic market.

The medieval city reached its peak in the 12th-14th centuries, and then the first signs and features of the decomposition of feudal, and then the emergence of early capitalist elements appear in urban life. This is the second stage of the maturity of medieval cities.

In Western and Southern Europe, medieval cities experienced an upsurge in the 14th-15th centuries. In other regions, medieval cities developed during this period in an ascending line, acquiring the features that had developed in the western and southern cities at the previous stage. Therefore, in a number of countries (Rus, Poland, Hungary, the Scandinavian countries, etc.), the second stage in the history of feudal cities until the end of the 15th century. never ended.

As a result, by the end of the period of developed feudalism, the most urbanized were Northern and Central Italy (where the distance between cities often did not exceed 15-20 km), as well as Byzantium, Flanders, Brabant, the Czech Republic, certain regions of France, the Rhine regions of Germany.

Medieval cities were distinguished by considerable diversity. Differences between them, sometimes significant, manifested themselves not only within one region, but also within a separate region, country, region. For example, in Northern and Central Italy, there were neighbors: powerful port city-republics with a craft designed for export, and international trade, considerable cash savings and a fleet (Genoa, Venice); inner cities (Lombardy, both industry and political and administrative functions are highly developed; the cities of the Papal States (Rome, Ravenna, Spoleto, etc.), which were in a special position. In neighboring Byzantium, the mighty "king-city" Constantinople far exceeded the weaker provincial towns.In Sweden, the large commercial, industrial and political center of Stockholm, small centers of mining, fortresses, monasteries and fair towns coexisted.An even greater variety of urban types was observed across the continent.

In those conditions, the life of the city depended on the local environment, primarily on the availability of access to the sea, natural resources, fertile fields and, of course, the protective landscape. Giants like Paris or some of the Muslim cities of Spain and the boundless sea of ​​small towns lived in completely different ways. The composition of the population and the life of a powerful commercial seaport (Marseille, Barcelona) and an agricultural agglomeration, where commodity functions were entirely based on agricultural activities or transhumant cattle breeding, had their own specifics. And the large centers of export handicraft production (Paris, Lyon, York, Nuremberg, the cities of Flanders) were unlike the trade and craft centers of the district to the same extent as the centers of the administration of the fief were the capital of the state or the border fortress.

The forms of municipal-estate organization also varied significantly: there were cities of private seigneurial or royal, and among the former - subordinate to a secular or spiritual seigneur, a monastery or another city; city-states, communes, "free", imperial - and having only separate or single privileges.

The highest level of the feudal municipal system, class consolidation, isolation of the internal organization of the townspeople was achieved in Western Europe. In Central and Eastern Europe, the cities were more closely associated with feudal landownership, their populations remained more amorphous. Russian cities in the initial period approached Western European ones, but their development was tragically interrupted by the Horde yoke and experienced a new rise only from the end of the 14th century.

Historians offer different criteria for a specific typology of developed cities: according to their topography, size and composition of the population, professional and economic profile, municipal organization, political and administrative functions (capital, fortress, center of the diocese, etc.). But a general typology of cities is possible only on the basis of a complex of basic features and characteristics. In accordance with this, three main types of developed feudal cities can be distinguished.

Numerically predominant and least dynamic was a small town with a population of 1-2 thousand, but often 500 people, with weakly expressed social differentiation, a local market, not organized into workshops and a weak handicraft; such a city usually had only limited privileges and was most often seigneurial. These are most of the cities of the Balkans, Russia, Northern Europe, a number of regions of Central Europe.

The most characteristic of feudal urbanism, the average city had approximately 3-5 thousand people, developed and organized crafts and trade, a strong market (of regional or regional significance), a developed municipal organization, and political, administrative and ideological functions of local significance. These cities generally lacked political power and broad economic influence. This type of city was common in England, France, Central Europe, South-Western Russia.

The most striking example of medieval urbanism was large trading, craft and port cities with a population of many thousands, export-oriented and united in tens and hundreds of craft workshops, international intermediary trade, a strong fleet, European significance by merchant companies, huge monetary savings, significant polarization of social groups, strong national influence. Such centers were most widely represented in the Western Mediterranean, the Netherlands, Northwestern Germany (the leading centers of the Hanseatic League), and were less common in Northern France, Catalonia, Central Europe, and Byzantium. The city was considered large already with 9-10 thousand inhabitants, and huge even in the XIV-XV centuries. cities with 20-40 or more thousand inhabitants looked like, there were hardly more than a hundred of them in all of Europe (Cologne, Luebeck, Metz, Nuremberg, London, Prague, Wroclaw, Kyiv, Novgorod, Rome, etc.). Very few cities had a population exceeding 80-100 thousand people (Constantinople, Paris, Milan, Cordoba, Seville, Florence).

A characteristic feature of urban demography, social structure and economic life was the diversity, complexity of the professional, ethnic, property, social composition of the population and its occupations. Most of the townspeople were employed in the production and circulation of goods, they were primarily artisans of various specialties, who themselves sold their products. Merchants constituted a significant group, with the narrowest upper group - merchants-wholesalers - usually occupying a leading position in the city. A significant part of the urban population was employed in the service of production and trade and in the service sector: porters, carters, boatmen, sailors, innkeepers, cooks, barbers and many others. An intelligentsia was formed in the cities: notaries and lawyers, doctors and pharmacists, actors, lawyers (legists). The stratum of officials (tax collectors, scribes, judges, controllers, etc.) expanded more and more, especially in the administrative centers.

In the cities were widely represented and different groups ruling class. Large feudal lords had houses or entire estates there, some were also engaged in farming out income items, trade. The cities and suburbs housed archiepiscopal and episcopal residences, most of the monasteries, especially (from the beginning of the 13th century) mendicant orders, as well as workshops, cathedrals and many churches belonging to them, and consequently, white and black clergy were very widely represented. In university centers (since the 14th century), a significant part of the population was made up of school students and professors, in fortified cities - military contingents. In cities, especially port cities, there lived many foreigners who had their own quarters and constituted, as it were, special colonies.

In most cities, there was a fairly wide layer of small land and household owners. They rented out houses and industrial premises. The main occupation of many of them was agriculture, designed for the market: livestock breeding and production of livestock products, viticulture and winemaking, gardening and horticulture.

But other residents of cities, especially medium and small ones, were somehow connected with agriculture. Letters granted to cities, especially in the 11th-13th centuries, constantly include privileges regarding land, primarily the right to an external almenda - meadows and pastures, fishing, logging for their own needs, grazing pigs. It is also noteworthy that wealthy townspeople often owned entire estates and used the labor of dependent peasants.

The connection with agriculture was the smallest in the cities Western Europe, where the urban possession of an average craftsman included not only a residential building and a workshop, but also a manor with a vegetable garden, a garden, a bee house, etc., as well as a wasteland or a field in the suburbs. At the same time, for the majority of townspeople, agriculture, especially farming, was an auxiliary business. The need for agrarian occupations for the townspeople was explained not only by the insufficient profitability of the city professions proper, but also by the poor marketability of agriculture in the district. In general, the close connection of citizens with the land, a significant place in their midst of various kinds of landowners is a typical feature of a medieval city.

One of the notable features of the socio-demographic structure of cities is the presence of a significantly larger number of people than in the countryside who lived at the expense of wage labor, the stratum of which has increased especially since the beginning of the 14th century. These are all kinds of servants, day laborers, sailors and soldiers, apprentices, loaders, builders, musicians, actors and many others. The prestige and profitability of the named and similar professions, the legal status of wage laborers were very different, therefore, at least until the 14th century. they did not form a single category. But it was the city that provided the greatest opportunity for wage labor, which attracted people who had no other income to it. Numerous beggars, thieves and other declassed elements also found the best opportunity to feed themselves in the city.

The appearance and topography of the medieval city distinguished it not only from the countryside, but also from the ancient cities, as well as from the cities of modern times. The vast majority of cities of that era were protected by jagged stone, sometimes wooden walls in one or two rows, or an earthen rampart with a palisade-palisade along the top. The wall included towers and massive gates, outside it was surrounded by a moat filled with water, with drawbridges. Residents of the cities carried out guard duty, especially at night, made up the city military militia.

The administrative and political center of many European cities was a fortress - "Vyshgorod" (Upper City), "site", "Kremlin" - usually located on a hill, island or river bend. It housed the courts of the sovereign or the lord of the city and the highest feudal lords, as well as the residence of the bishop. The economic centers were located in the city suburbs - posad, lower city, settlement, "podil", where mainly artisans and merchants lived, and people of the same or related professions often settled in the neighborhood. In the lower city there was one or more market squares, a port or pier, a city hall (town hall), Cathedral. New suburbs were created around, which, in turn, were surrounded by fortifications.

The layout of the medieval city was quite regular: radial-circular, from the 13th century. more often rectangular ("Gothic"). The streets in Western European cities were made very narrow: even two carts could hardly pass on the main ones, while the width of ordinary streets should not exceed the length of the spear. The upper floors of the buildings protruded above the lower ones, so that the roofs of the opposing houses almost touched. The windows were closed with shutters, the doors - with metal bolts. The lower floor of a house in the city center usually served as a shop or workshop, and its windows served as a counter or showcase. Cramped on three sides, the houses stretched upwards for 3-4 floors, they went out onto the street only with a narrow facade, with two or three windows. Cities in Eastern Europe were more scattered, including vast estates, the Byzantine ones were distinguished by the spaciousness of their squares, the openness of rich buildings.

The medieval city amazed contemporaries and delights posterity with its magnificent architecture, the perfection of the lines of cathedrals, and the stone lace of their decor. But there was none in the city street lighting, no sewerage. Garbage, garbage and sewage were usually thrown directly into the street, decorated with potholes and deep puddles. The first paved streets in Paris and Novgorod are known from the 12th century, in Augsburg - from the 14th century. Sidewalks are usually not made. Pigs, goats and sheep roamed the streets, a shepherd drove away the city's herd. Owing to tightness and unsanitary conditions, the cities suffered especially hard from epidemics and fires. Many of them burned out more than once.

In its own way public organization the city took shape as part of the feudal system, within its feudal seigneurial and domain regime. The lord of the city was the owner of the land on which he stood. In South, Central, and partly in Western Europe (Spain, Italy, France, West Germany, the Czech Republic), most of the cities were located on private seigneurial land, including many that were ruled by bishops and monasteries. In Northern, Eastern, and partly Western Europe (England and Ireland, the Scandinavian countries), as well as in Russia and Byzantium, the cities were mainly in the domain of the king or on state land, although in fact they often became dependent on local crown captives and simply powerful masters.

The initial population of most cities consisted of feudal dependent people of the lord of the city, often bound by obligations to the former lord in the village. Many townspeople had a servile status.

The court, administration, finances, all the fullness of power were also initially in the hands of the lord, who appropriated a significant part of the city's income. The leading positions in the cities were occupied by its ministerials. Land duties were levied from the inhabitants of cities, up to corvée. The townspeople themselves were organized into a community, gathered at their gathering (veche, dinge, ting, people's assembly), where they resolved matters of lower jurisdiction and local economic issues.

Until a certain time, the lords helped the city, patronizing its market and crafts. But as the cities developed, the seigneurial regime became more and more onerous. The obligations of the townspeople associated with it and non-economic coercion on the part of the lord increasingly interfered with the development of cities, especially since they already formed specific merchant and craft (or mixed craft) organizations that started a common cash desk and elected their officials. professional character they accepted associations around parish churches, along the "ends", streets, quarters of the city. The new communities created by the city allowed its population to rally, organize and jointly oppose the power of the lords.

The struggle between cities and their lords, which unfolded in Europe in the 10th-13th centuries, initially solved economic problems: to get rid of the most serious forms of lordship, to obtain market privileges. But it grew into a political struggle - for city self-government and legal organization. This struggle, or, as historians call it, the communal movement of the cities, of course, was directed not against the feudal system as a whole, but against the seigniorial power in the cities. The outcome of the communal movement determined the degree of independence of the city, in the future - its political system and much economic prosperity.

The methods of struggle were different. It was not uncommon for a city to buy rights from a lord for a one-time or permanent fee: this method was common in royal cities. Cities subject to secular and more often ecclesiastical lords obtained privileges, especially self-government, through sharp struggles, sometimes long civil wars.

Differences in the methods and results of the communal movement depended on specific conditions. The absence of a strong central authority allowed the most developed, richest and most populous cities to achieve the most complete freedom possible then. So, in Northern and Central Italy, in Southern France already in the IX-XII centuries. cities sought the status of a commune. In Italy, communes were formed already in the 11th century, and some of them (Genoa, Florence, Venice, etc.) became in fact city-states and a kind of collective seigneurs: their political and judicial power extended to rural settlements and small towns within a radius of tens of kilometers (distretto area). An independent commune-republic since the 13th century. was Dalmatian Dubrovnik. Boyar-merchant republics with a huge subject territory became by the XIV century. Novgorod and Pskov; the power of the prince was limited to an elected mayor and veche. City-states were usually ruled by councils of privileged citizens; some had elected rulers such as the monarch.

In Italian independent cities in the 11th century, as well as in southern French cities in the 12th century. such bodies of self-government as consuls and the senate (whose names are borrowed from ancient tradition) developed. Somewhat later, some cities of Northern France and Flanders became communes. In the XIII century. city ​​councils were formed in the cities of Germany, the Czech Republic, and Scandinavia. In France and Germany, the communal movement took on a particularly acute character in the episcopal cities; it sometimes lasted for decades (for example, in the city of Lahn), even for centuries (in Cologne). In other European countries, the scale and severity of the communal struggle was much less.

Communal cities had elected councillors, mayors (burgomasters), and other officials; their city law and court, finances, the right of self-taxation and tax assessment, special city holding, military militia; the right to declare war, conclude peace, enter into diplomatic relations. The obligations of the city-commune in relation to its lord were reduced to a small annual contribution. A similar situation in the XII-XIII centuries. occupied in Germany the most significant of the imperial cities (subordinate directly to the emperor), which actually became city republics (Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Magdeburg, Frankfurt am Main, etc.).

An important role was played by the development of urban law, which corresponded not only to the general feudal legal order, but also to the conditions of the then urban life. Usually it included the regulation of trade, navigation, the activities of artisans and their corporations, sections on the rights of burghers, on the conditions of employment, credit and rent, on city government and legal proceedings, the militia, and household routines. At the same time, cities seemed to exchange legal experience, borrowing it from each other, sometimes from other countries. Thus, the Magdeburg Law was valid not only in Rostock, Wismar, Stralsund and other cities of its zone, but was also adopted by the Scandinavian, Baltic, Czech, and partly Polish cities.

In countries with a relatively strong central government, cities, even the most significant and wealthy, could not achieve the right of a commune. Although they had elected bodies, their activities were controlled by officials of the king, less often of another lord. The city paid regular city and often extraordinary state taxes. Many cities of France (Paris, Orleans, Bourges, etc.), England (London, Lincoln, York, Oxford, Cambridge, etc.), Germany, the Czech Republic (Prague, Brno) and Hungary, royal and lord cities of Poland were in this position. , cities of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, as well as Catalonia (Barcelona), Castile and Leon, Ireland, most Russian cities. The most complete freedoms of such cities are the abolition of arbitrary taxes and restrictions on the inheritance of property, their own court and self-government, and economic privileges. The cities of Byzantium were under the control of state and metropolitan officials; they did not achieve broad self-government, although they had their own curia.

Of course, the liberties of the cities retained their characteristic feudal form and were acquired on an individual basis, which was typical of a system of feudal privileges. The scale of the spread of urban freedoms varied greatly. In most European countries there were no city-republics and communes. Many small and medium-sized cities throughout the continent did not receive privileges, did not have self-government. In Eastern Europe, the communal movement did not develop at all, the cities of Russia, with the exception of the Novgorod and Pskov republics, did not know city law. Most European cities received only partial privileges during the advanced Middle Ages. And many cities that did not have the strength and means to fight their lords remained under their complete authority: the princely cities of southern Italy, the episcopal cities of some German lands, etc. And yet, even limited privileges favored the development of cities.

The most important general result of the communal movement in Europe was the liberation of the townspeople from personal dependence. A rule was established that a peasant who fled to the city became free after living there for a year and a day (sometimes even six weeks). “City air makes you free,” said a medieval proverb. However, this beautiful custom was not universal. It did not operate at all in a number of countries - in Byzantium, in Russia. The Italian city-commune willingly freed fugitive peasants from foreign disrettos, but the villans and columns from this city's own distretto were freed only after 5-10 years of city life, and the serfs were not freed at all. In some cities of Castile and León, a runaway serf discovered by the master was handed over to him.

Urban jurisdiction extended throughout the suburbs (suburbia, contado, etc.) 1-3 miles wide; often the right of jurisdiction; in relation to one or even dozens of villages, the city gradually redeemed the city from its feudal neighbor.

In the end, the cities themselves, especially in Italy, become a kind of collective lords.

The most impressive success of the townspeople in the fight against seniors turned out to be in Western Europe, where a special political and legal status of townspeople, the specific nature of their land ownership, certain powers and rights in relation to the rural districts have developed. In the vast majority of Russian cities, these features were absent.

The overall results of the communal movement for European feudalism can hardly be overestimated. In the course of it, the urban system and the foundations of the urban estate of the Middle Ages were finally formed, which became a noticeable frontier in the further urban and entire public life of the continent.

The production basis of the medieval city was crafts and crafts. In the south of Europe, especially in Italy, partly in southern France, the craft developed almost exclusively in cities: their early development, the density of the network, powerful trade ties made handicrafts in the countryside inappropriate. In all other regions, even in the presence of developed urban crafts, rural ones were also preserved - domestic peasant and professional village and domain ones. However, everywhere urban craft occupied a leading position. Dozens and even hundreds of artisans worked in the cities at the same time. Only in the cities was the highest division of handicraft labor achieved for its time: up to 300 (in Paris) and at least 10-15 (in a small town) specialties. Only in the city there were conditions for the improvement of skills, the exchange of production experience.

Unlike the peasant, the urban craftsman was almost exclusively a commodity producer. In his personal and industrial life, he was much more independent than a peasant and even a rural craftsman. In medieval Europe there were many cities and craft settlements where craftsmen worked for a free, for their time wide, often international market. Some were famous for making certain types of cloth (Italy, Flanders, England), silk (Byzantium, Italy, Southern France), blades (Germany, Spain). But the craftsman was socially close to the peasant. An isolated direct producer, he led his individual economy based on personal labor and almost without the use of hired labor. Therefore, its production was small, simple. In addition, in most cities and crafts, the lowest form of marketability still dominated, when labor looks like the sale of services on order or for hire. And only production aimed at the free market, when exchange becomes a necessary moment of labor, was the most accurate and promising expression of the marketability of handicraft production.

Finally, a feature of urban industry, as well as of all medieval life, was its feudal-corporate organization, which corresponded to the feudal structure of land ownership and the social system. With its help non-economic coercion was carried out. It was expressed in the regulation of labor and the whole life of urban workers, which came from the state, city authorities and various local communities; neighbors down the street, residents of the same church parish, persons of similar social status. The most perfect and widespread form of such intracity associations were workshops, guilds, fraternities of artisans and merchants, which performed important economic, social, political and socio-cultural functions.

Craft workshops in Western Europe appeared almost simultaneously with the cities themselves: in Italy already in the 10th century, in France, England and Germany from the 11th - early 12th centuries, although the final formalization of the guild system with the help of charters and charters occurred, as a rule, later. . The guild arose as an organization of independent small craftsmen. In the conditions of the then narrow market and the lack of rights of the lower classes, the associations of artisans helped them protect their interests from the feudal lords, from the competition of rural artisans and craftsmen from other cities. But the shops were not production associations: each of the shop artisans worked in his own separate workshop, with his own tools and raw materials. He worked all his products from beginning to end and at the same time "fused" with his means of production, "like a snail with a shell." The craft was inherited, it was a family secret. The craftsman worked with the help of his family. He was often assisted by one or more apprentices and apprentices. Inside the craft workshop there was almost no division of labor: it was determined there only by the degree of qualification. The main line of the division of labor within the craft was carried out through the allocation of new professions, new workshops.

Only the master himself could be a member of the workshop. One of the important functions of the guild was to regulate the relationship of masters with apprentices and apprentices who stood at different levels of the guild hierarchy. Anyone who wanted to join the workshop had to go through the lower levels, then passing the skill test. High skill was a must for the master. And as long as skill served as the main qualification for joining the guild, disagreements and strife between masters and apprentices did not have a sharp and permanent character.

Each guild established a monopoly or, as it was called in Germany, guild coercion on the corresponding type of craft in its city. This eliminated competition from artisans outside the guild (“strangers”). At the same time, the workshop carried out the regulation of working conditions, products and its marketing, to which all masters were obliged to obey. The charters of the workshops prescribed, and elected officials ensured that each master produced products of only a certain type, quality, size, color; used only certain raw materials. Masters were forbidden to produce more products or make them cheaper, as this threatened the well-being of other craftsmen. All workshops strictly limited the size of the workshop, the number of apprentices and apprentices for each master, the number of his machines, raw materials; work at night and on public holidays was prohibited; prices for handicrafts were strictly regulated.

The regulation of the workshops was also aimed at ensuring the best sales for the craftsmen, maintaining the quality of products and their reputation at a high level. Indeed, the skill of the then city artisans was sometimes virtuoso.

Belonging to the workshop increased the self-esteem of ordinary people in the city. Until the end of the XIV - beginning of the XV century. the guilds played a progressive role, creating the most favorable conditions for the development and division of labor in handicrafts, improving the quality of products, and improving the skills of handicraft work.

The workshop covered many aspects of the life of an urban craftsman. He acted as a separate combat unit in case of war; had its own banner and badge, which were carried out during festive processions and battles; had his patron saint, whose day he celebrated, his churches or chapels, i.e. was also a kind of cult organization. The workshop had a common treasury, where the craftsmen's dues and fines were received; from these funds they helped needy artisans and their families in case of illness or death of the breadwinner. Violations of the shop charter were considered at the general meeting of the shop, which was partly the court. The members of the guild spent all the holidays together, ending them with a feast-meal (and many charters clearly define the rules of conduct at such feasts).

But the guild organization was not universal even for Western Europe, much less spread throughout the continent. In a number of countries it was rare, arose late (in the XIV-XV centuries) and did not reach its final form. The place of the workshop was often occupied by a community of artisans-neighbors, who often had a similar specialty (hence the Pottery, Kolpachny, Carpentry, Smithy, Shoe, etc. streets common in cities throughout Europe). This form of organization of artisans was typical, in particular, for Russian cities. In many cities (in southern France, in most cities in Scandinavia, in Russia, in a number of other countries and regions of Europe), the so-called "free" craft dominated, i.e. not united in special unions. In this case, the functions of guild supervision, regulation, protection of the monopoly of urban artisans and other functions of the guilds were assumed by the city government or the state. The state regulation of the craft, including the urban one, was especially characteristic of Byzantium.

At the second stage of developed feudalism, the role of workshops changed in many ways. Conservatism, the desire to preserve small-scale production, to prevent improvements turned the workshops into an obstacle to technical progress. At the same time, despite all leveling measures, competition within the shop grew. Individual craftsmen managed to expand production, change technology, and increase the number of employees. Property inequality in the workshops gradually developed into social inequality. On the one hand, a wealthy elite appeared in the shop, seizing shop positions and forcing other "brothers" to work for themselves. On the other hand, a stratum of poor craftsmen was formed, forced to work for the owner of large workshops, receiving raw materials from them and giving them the finished work.

Even more obvious is the stratification within the craft, primarily in large cities, expressed in the division of workshops into "senior", "large" - rich and influential, and "junior", "small" - poor. The "senior" guilds (or rich crafts in the zones of "free" crafts) established their dominance over the "junior" guilds, deprived the members of the "junior" guilds or crafts of economic independence, and actually turned them into hired workers.

At the same time, apprentices and apprentices found themselves in the position of an exploited category. In conditions of manual labor, the acquisition of skill was a long and laborious affair. In addition, the masters artificially overestimated the terms of training in order to limit their circle, and even to acquire a free worker. In different crafts and workshops, the training period ranged from 2 to 7 years, for jewelers it reached 10-12 years. Did an apprentice have to serve his master for 1-3 years and get a good reference? The work of apprentices lasted at least 12, sometimes 16-18 hours daily, except, of course, on Sundays and public holidays. Masters controlled life, pastime, spending, acquaintances of apprentices and students, i.e. restricted their personal freedom.

When in different countries(in the West in the XIV-XV centuries) the decomposition of the classical guild system began, access to the title of master turned out to be closed for most apprentices and apprentices. The so-called closure of shops began. Now almost exclusively close relatives of the members of the guild could become masters. For others, this procedure was associated not only with a more serious check of the “masterpiece” made for testing, but also with significant expenses: paying large entrance fees, arranging expensive treats for members of the workshop, etc. Under these conditions, apprentices turned into gift workers, and apprentices became "eternal apprentices." The same situation developed in the "free" craft.

CHAPTER 2 UNDERGROUND CITIES Lunar landscape in Typce - Tall houses made of tuff stone - Protective bunker for 300,000 people - Air attack several thousand years ago - Labyrinth in the cellar for storing potatoes - Drilling in ancient Egypt. The landscape of this area

Chapter 3 Italian Medieval Zodiacs