No More Learning

Many communes passed
through this stage of semi-independence (Bayonne in 1173 was a ville de
prévóté) on their way to freedom; only a few towns successfully emerged
with full powers; almost all sank back to this condition after a brief
period of glorious victory. Thus Bordeaux had its mayor nominated by
the English king from 1261 onwards; Marseilles, at about the same date,
was receiving a representative of the Count of Provence and a judge
appointed by him. This was almost always the first step in communal
decline; a commune jurée could very quickly turn into a commune surveillée.
Despite their lack of independence, the villes de bourgeoisie illustrate an
important development of the communal movement, and arise out of that
same spirit of association which under more favourable circumstances led
to the organisation of true communes.
The same may be said of the bastides of the south, and the villes-neuves
of the north-small rural towns actually created by kings or by seigneurs
and endowed from the first with common privileges and common rights,
under the safeguard of a charter granted by the king himself, or by the
immediate lord with the sanction of the sovereign. These small privileged
towns began to spring up as early as the twelfth century under the name of
sauvetés, created by churches and monasteries, either alone or in con-
junction with a lay lord, as new centres of population. In the thirteenth
century a great number were added, known as villes-neuves when they
were more particularly of an economic type, bastides when their military
character predominated. A lord, anxious to increase the number of his
vassals, to attract population, and to win support, was ready to offer in-
ducements to newcomers by promising protection, enfranchisement from
serfdom, and the right of electing their own officials. The bastides of the
south were always strongly fortified and endowed with privileges of a
similar character. In many cases they were little more than walled
villages; but they had distinct communal existence and a measure of
CH. XIX.


## p. 630 (#676) ############################################

630
Rura, communities
self-government, though always under the protection of their suzerain and
dependent upon his will. They became very numerous and very popular.
The kings, both of France and of England, constructed them frequently in
order to win support and strengthen their rival authority. The fixing of
payments and the limitation of dues and labour services which the
inhabitants obtained, readily attracted population and increased their
well-being and industry.
Besides these small rural towns, the result of direct seignorial creation,
there were also rural communities of a somewhat different type. The
peasants from the country, either following town example or impelled by
their own needs, sought to help on their own prosperity by means of
association. Sometimes the inhabitants of a country village would band
together for the maintenance of their rights and would win a charter from
the overlord granting privileges to the whole body. Such were the com-
munities of Rouvres and Talant in Burgundy, Esne in Cambrésis, and
many others. More frequently, however, several villages would combine
to secure communal rights, and the village federations of the north
gained for themselves positions of considerable strength and importance.
One of the best known of these confederations was the commune of
Laonnais, a union of seventeen hamlets formed round Anizi-le-Château,
which bought a charter of privileges from Louis VII in 1177, and tried
to hold its own by force of arms against its ecclesiastical overlord. Round
Soissons also village federations were formed which endeavoured so far as
possible to imitate the organisation of the commune itself; and in Bur-
gundy eighteen villages, with St Seine-l'Abbaye as the centre, purchased
important communal privileges in the fourteenth century. In the moun-
tains natural federations were formed by the character of the country, and
the valley communities of the Pyrenees and the Vosges were often almost
independent bodies, free from all but very nominal subjection to their
feudal overlord.
Many theories have been brought forward to explain this communal
movement and to account for its widespread and apparently spon-
taneous character. Naturally, it is impossible to trace any single line
of development for a movement which itself ran in so many different
channels. Causes are almost as numerous as communes, each of which
was moulded by the circumstances of its history and by the character
of its seigneur. On the other hand, no theory can be completely dis-
regarded. They all illustrate different aspects of the movement.
Nevertheless, in spite of this complexity and variety it may be possible to
find some universal and essential element out of which all the immediate
causes grew, some underlying impulse present in every variety of develop-
ment; and thus to explain why, not only all France, but all Western
Europe was tending to develop in a similar direction at the same time,
to shew how the same spirit of association could affect places of such very


## p. 631 (#677) ############################################

Roman influence
631
different character, spreading as it did through royal boroughs, seignorial
estates, active commercial centres, rural districts, and obscure hamlets.
The earlier writers on communal history advocated the theory of
Roman influence and the continuity of the old municipal organisation.
They urged the importance of the old Roman cities, the respect of the
barbarians for the civic institutions, and the very early existence of com-
munal union long before the grant of charters, which as a rule confirmed
rather than created rights of self-government. St Quentin, Metz, Rouen,
Bourges, Rheims, and in the south of France almost all the important
towns without exception, were cited by these historians as Roman muni-
cipalities, whose liberties either survived or were sufficiently remembered
to be considered an influential factor in the growth of later communal
rule. This theory has, however, been rejected by the majority of later
writers, who have shewn how completely Roman municipal institutions
had decayed at the time of the fall of the Empire, how the inroads of
Saracens and Northmen in the ninth century completed the work of
destruction in the towns, and how the communes of feudal times had to
be constructed anew, on their own lines and to meet their own individual
difficulties. The complete absence of documentary evidence to connect the
Roman towns with the later communes, the weakness of analogy as an
argument, and the certainty in most cases of municipal ruin and recon-
struction, have led to the almost complete abandonment of the Roman
theory. For the northern towns it can now find no serious supporters. In
the south there is much to be said against it. Certain important Roman
centres can be proved to have lost all their old rights and to have built
up a wholly new communal government in later days. Bordeaux, though
it preserved some degree of municipal organisation under Visigoths and
Franks, entirely lost its early civilisation with the attacks of the North-
men; and when after three centuries its history can once more be continued,
all traces of municipal institutions have disappeared. A similar fate seems
to have befallen Bayonne; while Lyons, Toulouse, Perpignan, and many
other old Roman towns, can be shewn to have built up their communal
powers as a new thing and on feudal lines. Even though it is often true
that communal government and elected officials were in existence long
before their formal recognition by charter, and apparently independent
of any seignorial grant, it is unnecessary to connect these self-won liberties
with the long-past Roman organisation. At the same time, there is no
doubt that in the south Rome had more permanent influence than in the
north; not so much by direct survival, as by traces of Roman law and
perhaps some vague remembrance of earlier independence. It has indeed
been pointed out that in south-eastern France the Northmen's invasions
had less influence than elsewhere, that feudal oppression was slight, and
that the Crusades found the communal movement already far advanced.
But at least it can be maintained that no direct survival of Roman
CH. XIX.


## p. 632 (#678) ############################################

632
Germanic influence
institutions need be considered, and that the medieval commune can be
studied quite apart from the Roman town.
Another theory, almost as extreme in the opposite direction, was that
which suggested a direct Germanic origin for the commune, and connected
the urban community with the rural mark. Its supporters pointed to the
development of the rural communes through the possession of common
property and the acquisition of common rights. This was specially
urged for German towns, but French and Italian development was also
ascribed to similar causes. However, the Mark Theory has been aban-
doned for lack of evidence, and it is impossible to maintain that the
communal movement originated in rural communities rather than in
urban centres. A material town—the houses and the population-may
have grown from a thickly populated village, but the village community
in fact constantly copied the town community in its organisation, and
petitioned for urban privileges when it sought for a charter of incor-
poration. Scarcely any rural communes obtained formal recognition
before the thirteenth century, although natural communities existed
in a primitive form long before. But while realising the insufficiency of
this second suggestion as to communal origin, the truth underlying it can
be recognised in the undoubtedly important part played by common
property as a bond of connexion, and in the fact that a great deal of
early advance was along the lines of economic and agricultural develop-
ment.
The échevinage Theory, as it may be called, is almost a corollary to
this Germanic theory, since it suggests a connexion between the town
échevins and the Carolingian scabini, judicial officers of the Frankish
hundred or centena, the subdivision of the county, who were generally
chosen by the count with the consent and sanction of the people. Scholars,
writing of northern Gaul, have pointed out the existence of a body of
judicial échevins in the towns, previous to the formally recognised com-
munal government, and have suggested that this may have been a stepping-
stone between the old organisation of the hundred and the later and more
independent jurisdiction of the commune. At Verdun the échevinat du
palais seems to have been a sort of dependent municipality in the eleventh
century, whereas the town only became an imperial commune in 1195.
Bruges had local magistrates, called échevins, in 1036. Dinant had a
body of échevins, nominated by the Bishops of Liège before the jurés
elected by the community; the Archbishop of Rheims abolished the
échevinage of the town in 1167, but it was restored with elected officials
in 1182. In St Quentin and a few other towns a curious double govern-
ment existed for a time. The early échevinage, instead of merging as
usual into the communal government, continued, and the tribunal of the
échevins represented the justice of the sovereign, distinct from the justice
of the town in the hands of the mayor and jurés, who had a considerable
police jurisdiction and the power to punish offences against their own body.


## p. 633 (#679) ############################################

Royal influence
633
In 1320 the king, after a dispute ending in the suspension of the commune,
allowed the échevinage to continue: "qui noster est, et totaliter a com-
munio separatus. ” But despite evidence of the existence of these early
échevins, it is impossible to prove any certain connexion between them
and the Frankish scabini, and between the town and the centena. An
attempt has been made to prove that early towns were actually small
hundreds; and in England we know that the old burhgemot coincided
very closely in power with the hundred moot, and that for the collection
of geld a borough originally was roughly valued at half a hundred; but
that only proves influence, not direct connexion. Pirenne entirely repudi-
ates the idea, and urges that the centena hardly ever coincided with the town,
and that an urban court was a new creation, necessary when the burgesses
came to claim trial within their own walls. In any case, however, what-
ever may be the exact origin of the early échevinage, it is at least
interesting as a preliminary step to fuller communal rights
. It is one of
many proofs that liberties nearly always existed before charters, and that
the towns were painfully working out their own independence step by step.
We are on firmer ground in a later group of theories concerning com-
munal growth; theories which all contain part of the truth and supple-
ment one another by accounting for different aspects of the development.
In connexion with the royal theory, it has been suggested that the
kings themselves formed the communes, that they were particularly the
work of Louis the Fat, and that his successors continued his policy and
allied themselves with the towns against their over-mighty feudal vassals.
It is easy to refute a claim that the kings were true friends to communal
independence. The monarchy was a determined enemy to local unions,
which would inevitably place obstacles in the path of centralisation, and
organisations pledged by their very character to oppose arbitrary power.
It was the growing power of the Crown which eventually caused the de-
struction of the communal movement, and it was the pretended support
of the king which turned many an independent commune into a royal
prévôté. On the other hand, it is quite true that the kings for many
reasons found it to their interest to grant charters and to confirm customs.
They might be in immediate need of money or support, and the sale of
concessions was their easiest way of obtaining both. The privileges granted
to villes de bourgeoisie, the formation of villes-neuves, even the recognition
of the more limited communes, such as those which the English kings
favoured in all their dominions, were repeatedly the work of the monarchs.
But their friendliness or the reverse depended entirely on the circum-
stances of the moment, and their influence was always fatal in the end.
They did not favour real municipal independence, and that commune was
doomed which sought for royal protection or once admitted royal officials
to interfere in its administration.
There are plenty of examples to shew the real policy of the kings, their
desire to undermine independent power, their grant of charters only when
at
CH. XIX.


## p. 634 (#680) ############################################

634
Ecclesiastical influence
something could be gained thereby, their universal interpretation of pro-
tection as interference. In his French dominions John of England granted
fresh privileges to Rouen (a town, it will be remembered, with the minimum
of political rights), and extended its organisation to other towns, in the
vain hope of increasing his popularity and averting disaster. Edward I,
the most active of the English kings in Gascon government, who made
a vigorous attempt at successful and popular administration, created
numerous bastides, and granted favours to Bordeaux, but he took the ap-
pointment of the mayor into his own hands and exacted a communal
oath of allegiance every year. The customs of Lorris, a privileged town
but not a commune, were granted originally by Louis VI, and confirmed
by his successors, who extended them to neighbouring villages to curb the
power of feudal lords and to remedy the severe depopulation of the country.
Beauvais was also favoured by Louis VI, because it took his side in a
quarrel with the cathedral chapter; Louis VII confirmed a communal
charter in 1144, when he was in great need of money for the Crusade; but
the king retained much authority, and attempts at independence ended in
severe repression and the strengthening of the royal power by Louis IX.
Figeac, which petitioned for the king's support against its feudal superior,
was declared a royal town in 1302 and became more subject than before.
Lyons in similar difficulties called in St Louis to arbitrate in its quarrels.
He took the inhabitants under his protection, and established three royal
officials. Again and again the same thing occured. The king was just as
much an enemy to the communal spirit as he was to feudal independence.
Although he did not actually suppress many communes, as he did that of
Laon, nevertheless he opposed the communal movement all the more
surely and brought about its downfall.
The attitude of the Church was not unlike that of royalty. An eccle-
siastical theory claims the Church as one of the greatest supporters of the
communal movement; but history proves that a spiritual seigneur could be
quite as hostile to town development as a lay lord, for municipal organisa-
tion inevitably meant some loss of Church authority in the town. Direct
help was only given to a commune when some obvious advantage was to
be gained—money in pecuniary necessity, support against some powerful
rival, or the like. At Rheims, Archbishop Samson (1140-61) favoured
the commune because he needed the support of the inhabitants against
his chapter; but his successor attacked the judicial rights of the burgesses,
with the result that he was driven out by the town, and constant struggle
followed. At Beauvais, in 1099, the bishop granted certain privi-
leges and recognised the commune, at a time when he was involved
in difficulties with the king, the chapter, and the châtelain of the town,
and therefore eager for the friendship of the burgesses, who had driven
out his predecessor not so many years earlier. In various southern towns
the bishop allied himself with the commune against the lay lords, but
claimed in return a certain position in the town government. He is


## p. 635 (#681) ############################################

Indirect help from the Church
635
called in several places the “first citizen of the republic. ” Thus, the
commune of Arles in 1080 was established by Archbishop Aicard, who
was trying to increase his temporal authority at the expense of the count;
but evidently the ecclesiastical lord was not always popular with the
citizens, for in 1248 the general assembly of the town proclaimed that
no townsman should speak to the archbishop, set foot in his palace, or
do any service for him. The instances of Church opposition are far more
frequent than these cases of self-interested support. The clergy, as a
rule, distinctly opposed the communal revolution, which was in many
instances in direct opposition to ecclesiastical authority. At Cambrai,
in the eleventh century, the bishop betrayed the commune which the
burgesses had just established. At Corbie, a series of heated disputes
between abbot and town were settled in 1282 by a compromise, which
meant the real supremacy of the ecclesiastical lord. The opposition of
Bishop Albert to the commune of Verdun led to civil war (1208), and
the town secretly obtained a charter from the Emperor in 1220, a step
which was not likely to lead to internal peace. In Laon, the bishop,
who plotted against the commune and obtained its abolition from the
king, lost his life in the struggle which ensued (1112). It is unnecessary
to multiply examples. Clearly the Church was not a friend to communal
development when it meant a diminution of ecclesiastical control.
However, even though the direct action of ecclesiastical lords was not
as a rule favourable, there were indirect ways in which Church influence
helped on the communal movement. Those bistorians who maintain the
survival of Roman influence explain the growth of democratic powers and
ambitions by the share allowed to the people in the election of bishops in
early times. In 533 a Church council at Orleans declared that bishops
should be elected by clergy and people; at Paris in 559 it was proclaimed
that no bishop had valid authority unless the people had shared in his
election. This canonical regulation was particularly enforced in the Reform
Movement of the eleventh century by papal and synodal decrees. But at
the time when the communes were beginning to grow, the ordinary burgess
did not play an important part in episcopal elections. In any case, this
power could only give to the people a very vague idea of combination;
it can have done little actively to develop the communal spirit.
Another theory of Church influence, but one which is practically un-
supported by modern authorites, is to link the medieval commune with the
Peace of God. The arguments for it rest more on verbal resemblances
than on actual facts. Towards the close of the tenth century the Church,
endeavouring to diminish anarchy and deeds of violence, proclaimed the
Peace of God, which was supplemented c. 1050 by the Truce of God.
By the latter, from sunset on Wednesday until Monday morning, all
hostilities were to cease, all private wars were to be suspended. To main-
tain this peace, many dioceses formed what were known as conféderations
de la paix, with mayors at their heads and members known as jurés. These
CH. XIX.


## p. 636 (#682) ############################################

636
The sauvetés. The Crusades
communities, it has been urged, would combine to acquire communal
charters, until the jurés de la paix became the jurats of the town, the
maison de la paix the town hall, and the paix itself the commune. It is
true that town communities were occasionally given the name of paix;
the charter of Laon in 1128 is called institutio pacis. Little but the name,
however, connected the urban organisations with the earlier institutions
for the maintenance of peace. The word paix, when referring to a com-
mune, frequently signified a treaty which ended some communal strife; and
whereas the latter lay associations were generally composed of burgesses
united to oppose feudal oppressions, the original institutions were more
particularly for the nobles, who had to take the oath for the preservation
of the peace, and they secured no actual privileges for the lower classes
and townsmen as such. The special “peace” which a town is often said
to have was simply a body of local bye-laws and regulations which the
inhabitants were bound to respect. No movement, however, which en-
couraged the idea of combination was wholly without influence, and the
burgesses may have learnt a lesson of association and a desire to unite to
limit feudal oppressions from the Peace of God, even though the commune
they formed was something completely distinct from it.
The ecclesiastical sauvetés, privileged districts under Church jurisdic-
tion, did help the growth of the earliest villes-neuves, as has already been
said; and many towns sprang up in the neighbourhood of monasteries
(e. g. La Réole in that of Regula), for the obvious reason that a market was
at hand for their produce; but this does not necessitate the growth of a
commune. In many large towns the sauvetés continued as isolated districts
within the walls, subject to ecclesiastical jurisdiction instead of being
under the rule of the communal officials. In Bordeaux both archbishop
and chapter retained certain portions of the city under their direct control
apart from the authority of mayor and jurats.
The Crusades have also been named by many writers as an indirect
way in which the Church influenced the communal movement, since this
great ecclesiastical war did so much to awaken commercial enterprise and
to encourage the sale of town privileges by needy kings and crusaders. This
is doubtless true; but many towns had acquired self-government before
the Crusades could have had much effect on social conditions, and charters
were the result rather than the cause of communal rights. Every influence,
however, which tended to economic advance and social progress must be
reckoned among the many causes of communal development, and the
Crusades undoubtedly helped in this direction. Parish organisation also
may have given another indirect impulse towards the spirit of association
and thus lends support to the ecclesiastical theory. The Church, in so
far as it encouraged progress, union, and the education of the people,
helped to create a condition favourable to the development of the com-
mune, even though ecclesiastical lords themselves were in frequent opposi-
tion to the growth of municipal independence.


## p. 637 (#683) ############################################

Commercial influence: part played by the gilds
637
One theory which has been advanced by some of the chief authorities
on medieval towns is that which connects the growth of the commune
with the merchant gild. But it has been proved that, in the case of the
English boroughs, gild and commune were not necessarily identical; and
for the French towns also it may be said that the gild was only one of
many ways in which towns developed, and that, as a general rule, its
organisation was distinct from that of the commune. But there is no
doubt that the extension of trade was one of the principal reasons for
the progress made by the towns, and that in their associations for trading
purposes the burgesses learnt to unite for judicial and administrative
business also, and to acquire self-government in addition to commercial
privileges.
The most important towns, in all countries, sprang up on the great
trading routes, and gilds both lay and ecclesiastical were generally formed
for the organisation of this trade. It was in the north especially that
these mercantile associations were very prominent, and they played a great
part in the town life of Flanders and Belgium. It has been considered
that it was round these societies of merchants that population clustered
and organised itself, first for trade, then for town government. Valen-
ciennes, in 1070, had a gild or charité, with a house for common councils.
The churité at Arras was in part religious, in part commercial, in part
connected with the municipality. It has been claimed for St Omer that
here at least the gild was actually transformed into the commune. In
several towns of France the gilds likewise played an important part in
town growth. At Amiens the gild was “the cradle of the commune";
the Confrèrie de St Esprit at Marseilles took over the administration and
claimed rights of jurisdiction and finance. But it can be asserted with
confidence that gild and commune were not generally identical, and that
a society of merchants was no necessary and universal preliminary to
municipal self-government. At Montreuil-sur-Mer a quarrel between the
town and the gild-merchant, ending in the victory of the mayor and
échevins, proves conclusively that here at least they were two separate
bodies. There were many towns which advanced to communal rank with-
out ever having possessed a trading association; others had numerous
craft gilds but not one organised group of merchants to encourage the
idea of complete incorporation; a rural commune might have little but
agricultural interests. The merchant gild in France, as Maitland says
of that in England, was one of many elements which went to the
building up of a free borough, but not the essential and universal
element.
There still remains one other problem in the history of town develop-
ment to be considered. Were the communes the result of a fierce struggle
against feudalism? Is the term "revolution" the best word with which
to describe this communal movement? Or were they the result of peaceful
and gradual advance, winning their privileges by purchase, by mutual
CH. XIX.


## p. 638 (#684) ############################################

638
Growth through struggle
agreements with their lords, or even by voluntary concessions on the part
of their feudal superiors? Here again generalisation is impossible. The
position which some towns gained at the cost of war and bloodshed, others
obtained in the natural course of events. In some cases a town charter
took the form of a treaty between hostile factions; in others a written
title was scarcely necessary to confirm privileges which had grown up so
gradually and naturally that they hardly excited notice, far less opposi-
tion. There are examples in plenty of both lines of development. The
struggle against feudal oppression may have stirred up the burgesses in
some instances, but was not a universal cause of the communal movement.
The struggles at Laon, in the early twelfth century, are a typical example
of the turbulent acts which sometimes marred the development of com-
munal powers. The town was in a state bordering on anarchy; the bishop
at that time was a man of brutal and violent temper; feudal oppressions,
heavy dues, and servile disabilities were still prevalent. A charter, pur-
chased by the townsmen from the king during the temporary
absence of
their ecclesiastical lord, was annulled on his return, in spite of promises
to the contrary, and a revolt was the result. The bishop himself was
murdered by the rioters and excesses of every kind were committed. The
Charte de Paix, which eventually ended this struggle, was far from
establishing permanent peace; and for a little over a century the com-
mune of Laon had a stormy and precarious existence, and its charter was
finally annulled. Rheims, which tried to imitate Laon in its privileges,
succeeded in imitating, to some extent, its violence also. It engaged in
a fierce struggle with the archbishop over communal rights, and in 1167
drove him from the town. John of Salisbury writes at that date: “A
sedition having again broken out at Rheims has plunged the whole
country into such disorder that no one can go in or out of the town. ”
Louviers, which was striving to form a commune as late as the four-
teenth century and insisted on holding general assemblies, was the scene
of such disorder that the affair was laid before the Parlement of Paris
and decision given against the town. “Les diz commun et habitans con-
fessent que ilz n'ont corps, ne commune, ne puissance d'eulx assembler
sans license du dit arcevesque ou de ses officiers. . . lequel congié l’en leur
doit donner quant besoing est. ”
In the south, Montpellier passed through various periods of violence.
In 1141' the townsmen rose against their seigneur William VI, although
no record is preserved of any specially oppressive actions on his part, and
finally drove out the ruling family altogether. The revolution ended in
the commune choosing the King of Aragon as their lord and forcing him
to promise obedience to their customs. Lyons “gained its rights by a
century of struggle. " In 1193 the inhabitants revolted on account of
heavy taxation. In 1208 the citizens, after a struggle against archbishop
and chapter, had to promise not to make any “conjuration de commune
ou de consulat. " In 1228, 1245, and 1269 the burgesses were again in


## p. 639 (#685) ############################################

Peaceful development
639
arms, and refused to come to terms unless they received official sanction
for their commune, which they gained by charter in 1320. At Béziers a
riot was caused in 1167 because a burgess ventured to insult a noble, and
in the struggle which followed the viscount himself was murdered by the
townsmen. Cahors, Nîmes, Manosque, all had struggles, but in each case
they arose after the formation of the commune, not as part of its develop-
ment. Thus, though some towns won their freedom by force and others
were involved in struggles for the maintenance of their rights, this was
due to special circumstances. The communal movement was not in neces-
sary opposition to feudalism as such. On the contrary, it was very dis-
tinctly in harmony with feudal tendencies and a true commune was in
the position of a feudal seigneur. In some cases, no doubt, the members
of the old nobility objected to the rise into their ranks of this upstart
community; but in others they held out to their new comrade the right
hand of fellowship.
Frequent examples of peaceful communal progress are found in Cham-
pagne, Burgundy, Flanders, the Angevin dominions, and throughout
much of southern France. Naturally the least advanced type of commune
excited the least opposition; villes de bourgeoisie had very little difficulty
in securing privileges; rural communes often developed with little or no
struggle. A community which would be content with moderate liberty
could hold its own and possibly gain all but nominal independence, when
a commune which aimed at complete emancipation and self-government
might lose all in the effort to gain too much.
As time went on, the lords
found it to their interest to favour the towns, and began to create villes-
neuves and bastides on their own account. Sometimes the burgesses were
useful allies in struggles between rival seigneurs and had to be conciliated;
at other times they could quietly build up their power undisturbed while
their overlords were occupied in their own private quarrels. Moreover,
the grant of a charter meant a considerable sum of money in the pocket
of the grantor, and in France, as in England, many towns bought their
privileges little by little, until they were able to take the rank of free
boroughs. In Champagne, very little revolutionary sentiment existed.
The counts were kind, the population was peaceful and well-to-do, and
the example of Flanders encouraged the communal tendency. Meaux
received a charter from Count Henry the Liberal (1179), who took, how-
ever, an annual tribute of £140 from the town. The charter prescribed
that all the inhabitants were to swear to help and support one another,
to take an oath of allegiance to their lord, and to attend the general
meeting on pain of a money fine. Theobald IV did the same for Troyes
and Provins. He was at war with his baronial vassals, and as a chronicler
of the time expressed it, “trusted more to his towns than to his knights. ”
In these cases, though considerable powers were given to the town officials,
it was the count who chose them, and he retained the right of hearing
appeals from their judgments. In Burgundy very similar conditions
CH, XIX.


## p. 640 (#686) ############################################

640
Economic development
prevailed; the dukes granted communal charters readily in return for
money. There were a good many rural communities and communes in
this part of the country, and all seem to have risen peacefully to varying
degrees of independence.
In southern France, though various cases of individual violence and
civil war have been already noticed, the general tendency was towards
the formation of consulates without a struggle. The nobles were often
members of the town and favoured the independent government, in which
they took part. Feudal tyranny was less extensive here than in the north.
There were many private wars, but more frequently between lord and
lord than between lord and town; the citizens combined for common de-
fence in times of such constant turbulence and to consider difficulties
arising from their two great enemies in the Middle Ages-plague and
famine. Consular government was so usual that its existence was scarcely
questioned. Local life and local union were very strong in a country
where each district, sometimes each town, had its own fors or customs
which the inhabitants combined to carry out and defend. Many rural
towns were created to improve the condition of the country and to attract
population. In Roussillon, places such as Perpignan obtained communal
government without a struggle, for they added considerably to military
defences which were greatly needed; and lords as well as burgesses were
glad to encourage the growth of these fortified strongholds. On the whole
the communal movement in the south was favoured by the feudal lords,
who realised the value of having the towns as their friends and allies.
The consulates fell eventually before the growth of royal power and ad-
ministrative centralisation, not in consequence of seignorial opposition.
The more this communal movement is studied, the clearer it becomes
that it was simply a natural stage in economic development. Economic
progress is the only one universal cause which can be found underlying all
the variety of immediate reasons, all the complex forms of individual de-
velopment. Society in feudal times was, as it were, in the stage of child-
hood. Defence from above in return for service from below; the one class
to fight and the other to labour; protection rather than competition-
such were the ideals of feudalism, which based all these relations and ser-
vices on land-holding. But even in its most ideal form the feudal system
was not progressive; in its least ideal form it was capable of great abuse;
protection was apt to turn into oppression, service into servitude. The
communal movement was not an attempt to oppose the whole system of
feudalism, but it was an effort to guard against its abuses and to advance
materially and politically, not only in spite of it, but actually on feudal
lines; a town aimed at becoming a landlord. The chief needs in the
Middle Ages were defence and progress, and association was one of the most
natural means of striving for them. An individual was too weak to strike
out for himself or to change existing circumstances, and thus the idea of


## p. 641 (#687) ############################################

Serfdom and the towns
641
union and combination arose. As population increased, as wealth was
more diffused, and as society advanced, this craving for progress, this
tendency towards association, became stronger and stronger. Throughout
the whole of Western Europe people lived under very similar conditions;
they had common troubles, common needs, common methods of cultiva-
tion, and common rights. Feudalism itself had a communal element;
every seigneurie was a group of vassals, every manor an agricultural com-
munity. The whole tendency of the time pointed to common action as a
solution of difficulties and as the best line of advance. Every institution,
therefore, which was based on common action, every step which involved
common effort, was indirectly an incentive to this spirit of association;
every event which encouraged social and economic progress was indirectly
a cause of the communal movement. It was not a revolution but a
natural development, a sign that society was struggling upward to freedom
and civilisation.
Granting that communal growth is an economic question, it follows
that certain points must especially be considered in accounting for the
development of the medieval communes. First, what were the chief evils
which needed reform, if advance were to be made? Secondly, why was
the idea of combination, to achieve this reform and assist this advance,
so widely diffused? Thirdly, what were the main causes of economic pro-
gress, and what direction did it most commonly take? Fourthly, what
were the chief aims that burgesses and peasants set before themselves as
likely to assist them in this progress? And finally, what circumstances,
if any, aided them in their efforts and led to the various forms of com-
munal organisation which have been already briefly described ?
The first great necessity for any forward movement in the Middle
Ages was to shake off the disabilities of serfdom. In the country, the
greater part of the cultivating class was made up of serfs or hommes
questaux, as they were called in the south; and as the towns, in their early
stages, were little more than populous villages, a great many of their in-
habitants also were serfs. It was possible for members of the upper class
among them to combine in order to improve their condition, to fix their
services, and even to get them commuted for money payments, without
necessarily rising out of the rank of villeinage; but in urban centres it
was more usual for inhabitants to unite to shake off the servile status alto-
gether and for all burgesses to become free men. Examples of serfdom
in early towns are numerous, and enfranchisement was one of the first )
privileges to be gained in any communal charter.
In Champagne and Burgundy, where towns were almost wholly rural
in character, serfdom was very prevalent in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, and local customs went to support the rights of the lords;
“coustumes en Champagne que homs de pôté (villeins) ne peut avoir
franchise, ne ne doit, ne ne se peut appeler francs, se il n'a de son seigneur
lettres ou privilèges. ” But it was not only in strictly rural districts that
C. MED. H. VOL. V. CH. XIX.
41


## p. 642 (#688) ############################################

642
The lords and the towns
serfdom was an obstacle to progress and therefore had to be opposed by
the communes. The inhabitants of Laon were not free from main-morte
and formariage till 1178. At Béziers, as late as the twelfth century, the
viscount was giving away burgesses as though they were actually his
chattels. At Soissons, the desire of the servile population to gain freedom
was one of the chief incentives to union, and the same is found in many
other places. Town charters aimed, whenever possible, at securing freedom
for the inhabitants. Blois was enfranchising serfs in 1196, though they did
not disappear in the town until the following century. At Limoges, in
customs probablydating from the thirteenth century, freedom from serfdom
after residence for a year and a day was decreed-a very usual condition.
In Bordeaux, only a month in the town was required to gain liberty. At
Oloron, all inhabitants were declared to be “hommes francs sans tâche
d'aucune servitude. ” So much did residence in a chartered town or bastide
come to imply freedom, that occasionally lords, when founding a ville-
neuve, would especially stipulate that their own serfs should not be ad-
mitted.
In many places not only serfs but free burgesses also suffered from
oppressions on the part of their feudal lords, and were encouraged to
common action on account of common misery. At Amiens, at the close of
the eleventh century, clergy and people united to complain of seignorial
abuses, and obtained from the count a promise of fairer justice and lighter
payments. At Vézelay, it was pecuniary exactions to which the inhabitants
chiefly objected, and in 1137 they claimed to have a voice in taxation, in
order that the burden of it might be more fairly distributed: “ tam
burgensium quam rusticorum, secundum facultatem suam, unus scilicet
plus et alius minus talliaretur. ” At St Quentin, military service and castle-
guard had presumably been excessive, since it was conceded in Count
Hébert's charter (1045-80) that there should be no castle erected within
three leagues of the town and no military service beyond a day's travel.
The limitation of military duties was a very usual condition in the south,
where feudal quarrels were constant. Only nine days at a time was a fairly
common term; but it was also possible to stipulate that a burgess should
not be forced to fight so far away that he could not come home to sleep.
Actual oppression on the part of the seigneur was an accidental circum-
stance; but the desire of the towns to break down servile disabilities, to
win greater freedom even from a friendly yoke, to manage their own
affairs and to settle their own quarrels, was a natural result of pro-
gress and became all the more active wherever society was the more
advanced.
1
Special servile characteristics. Main-morte implied that serfs could never
inherit property. The lord was always the heir, and children of a dead villein had
no rights of succession except by his will. Formariage was a due paid by serts
marrying outside the estate, which they were not allowed to do without license of
their lord.


## p. 643 (#689) ############################################

The influence of geography
643
That this desire to accelerate progress and to defend privileges should
take the form of communal association was, as we have seen, almost inevit-
able. Men acting together could do what each singly could not. Further,
communities were often bound together by the possession of common
property, common rights, and common customs. When the community
desired political as well as civil rights, the organised commune might be
evolved. Possibly the rural communes may be considered to have advanced
more directly on these lines. The urban communes had other inducements
to combine, and were less actuated by the possession of such things as
common pasture and common woods; but these influences cannot be wholly
disregarded. At Lézat, a rural town, free use of wood and water was
demanded for the whole body of inhabitants in their communal charter.
In the cartulary of Arbois, certain things are declared to be town property,
with which the lord cannot interfere: “costes pendentes, aqua, et li
chamois. . . libere sunt et communes,” and the community united to use
their own ovens as well as their own woods. The inhabitants of Marseilles
were in common possession of certain pasture rights.
The fact that so many southern towns and villages had their own local
customs has already been mentioned as a possible bond of connexion for
the inhabitants. The fors, e. g. of Bordeaux, of Bazas, of Daz, of Bayonne,
of Morlas, were all slightly different, and were eagerly defended by the
places which possessed them. They represented very early rights and
customs, though often not reduced to writing till a comparatively later
date. When new privileged towns and bastides were constructed, their
charters of liberties resembled to some extent the old customary rights of
the more ancient centres of population.
Thus the need for combination and the tendency towards it were early
in existence, and it was the natural progress of society, both material and
moral, which awoke the desire for union into real activity and converted
a vague connexion into a living organisation.
The progress of the towns was determined first and foremost by their
geographical position. The actual origin of the town itself was due to
accumulation of population in a place which was suitable for military
defence or for commercial activity; where either fortification and pro-
tection was especially needed, or a good market could be established for
the produce of the neighbourhood. The more suitable the situation, the
more rapidly would the town advance, and the more urgent would become
the need for communal action. Bordeaux clearly owed its progress to its
superb position. In the heart of the vine country and on a fine navigable
river, it early became renowned as a commercial centre of the greatest
importance. Soissons, on the high road from Flanders and at the
junction of various other routes, soon developed into an important
market town, with active trade in all directions. Cambrai had an im-
portant position on the frontier of Lorraine ; Perpignan was needed for
the military defence of Roussillon; Oloron has been called the king of
CH. XIX.
41-2


## p. 644 (#690) ############################################

644
The influence of wealth and prosperity
the Pyrenees. In such towns, all of which became communes, their
success was doubtless due in great measure to their situation.
Progress could take various directions. Some places long remained
almost entirely agricultural, and their markets were only used for the
sale of rural produce. Toulon is supposed to have made a very humble
beginning in this way, and its commune to have originated out of the
assembly which met to discuss pasture rights and rural matters. Others
owed their advance to their military importance. Talant was favoured
on this account by the Duke of Burgundy (1216), and so were many of
the southern bastides. But it was through their trade and commerce that
most of the leading towns progressed; wealth was a great help in the
struggle for independence, and the intercourse with other places which
commercial dealings involved brought not only direct ideas from abroad
but also a great increase of vigour and civilisation. The commune of
Narbonne, though later events robbed it of its greatness, was early rich
and powerful, owing to its trade with Spain, Italy, Sicily, and the Levant;
Rouen owed its prosperity and doubtless its privileges to the fact that it
was a wealthy trading centre; the Flemish towns certainly gained their
importance and independence through their commercial development.
But whatever line progress and prosperity took, they were the determining
causes of the communal movement. The more advance was made in
material well-being, the more galling did any social disabilities become,
and the more indignation was felt at seignorial interference or tutelage.
The result, therefore, of town progress was to awaken ambitions in
the hearts of the burgesses. They desired to secure their property, to gain
the full benefit of their wealth for their descendants and their town, to
throw off seignorial control, and to work for themselves. The first step
was to obtain increased privileges and civil powers, to shake off any idea
of servitude and to gain trading rights. The next was to unite for political
independence and to win self-government. They desired above all to be
free from the abuses of feudal justice, to have courts for their own
members, where townsmen could be tried by town judges and according
to town procedure. They needed also to secure financial authority and the
management of their own taxation, doubtless to avoid excessive pecuniary
burdens and the disappearance of town money into the coffers of the
seigneurs.
There were various circumstances which aided the towns in their
struggle for independence. Both kings and lords were in constant need of
money and support. Growth of luxury and expenses for war increased
this need, and it was in the towns that the greatest accumulation of wealth
was to be found, an important weapon in the hands of the burgesses. The
frequent feudal rivalries could be turned by the towns to their own ad-
vantage. They might offer support to the highest bidder, or take the
opportunity of quiet advance while their lords were too busy to attend to
them. Avignon gained its privileges at the end of the war between the


## p. 645 (#691) ############################################

International character of the movement
645
Counts of Provence and Toulouse, who shared the town between them
(1085-94). While they were fighting, the citizens were banding themselves
together in trade fraternities, and learning the value of union and inde-
pendence; eventually a municipal revolt ended in the expulsion of both
combatants. The fact that so often towns were under mixed jurisdictions
helped their cause. When, as in Amiens in the eleventh century, justice
was shared between the count, the bishop, and the chapter, it was probably
easier to shake off this divided control than the supreme authority of one
strong man. Even the long struggle between England and France, together
with much misery, brought some benefit to the communes, for the rival
kings needed urban support, and both strove to gain it by concessions.
Each town that formed itself into a commune actively helped on the
movement, for much was the result of example. Perhaps communal growth
was similar in Germany, Italy, England, and France, less because of inter-
national connexion than because the root cause, economic progress, was
the same in each case; but the action of no country could be wholly without
effect on the others. The example of Flanders was influential in northern
France, where Calais, Boulogne, and St Dizier all framed their organisations
on Flemish lines; and the consulates of the south may have owed some-
thing to the great republics of Italy. On the whole, however, outside in-
Auence seems to have been slight, and development was largely indepen-
dent; there was very little intercommunal and still less international
solidarity.
The twelfth century was a great period of communal growth, simply
because it was a period of active economic development. Material pros-
perity, moreover, had outstripped social progress; and it was the existence
of considerable wealth and an improved standard of living, side by side
with dependence and seignorial depression, which, in some cases at least,
gave the impulse to the movement. The twelfth century, again, was a
fortunate period for the communes, because political conditions helped on
this economic progress. The dispersion and division of authority had
weakened control, just when the desire for liberty was at its height. The
relations between the king and the great lords, between the lay and the
ecclesiastical seigneurs, were favourable to the towns. The crusading move-
ment and the consequent need for money amongst the ruling classes
coincided with the growing wealth of the boroughs and the growing im-
portance of the burgess class. It was a vital moment, and the communes
took advantage of it. The result was a universal spread of communal
associations; as Viollet says, “un phénomène social indépendent quant à
son essence des races, des langues et des frontières. ”
In England, although the boroughs did not rise to the independence of
the continental communes, there was a steady stream of town charters
from the reign of Henry I onwards. The towns purchased their privileges
one by one, starting with freedom from serfdom and judicial rights, until
little by little self-government was obtained.
CH, XIX.


## p. 646 (#692) ############################################

646
German and Italian towns
In Germany communal development was very similar to that in France.
The towns were either re-settlements of the old Roman sites, more or less
rural in origin, where the bond of common property united the new in-
habitants; or newer towns intended as centres of trade from the first.
They gradually advanced through the growth of a market and market-
place, through trade associations, through the special privileges and
judicial rights of the burgesses, until the possession of their own officials
and their own Rat marked the establishment of communal government.
Some of the more important towns, shaking off all intermediate control,
retained almost complete independence as Imperial cities. The special
characteristics of German towns were chiefly due to the weakness of the
central authority. They did not have to reckon with the king from the first,
as did the English boroughs; nor did they have to succumb to it in the
end, as did the communes of France. The leading towns, therefore, had
far more power; affiliation was so strong that the whole country was “a
network of inter-dependent municipal courts”; and inter-urban leagues
were more possible.
In Italy, the lack of any central authority was even more obvious than
in Germany, and the towns were able to profit by the constant struggles
between Pope and Emperor. This seems to give the movement a more
political character; but, as elsewhere, it was wealth and commercial im-
portance which enabled them to take advantage of the political situation.
The Lombard communes began to gain self-government as early as the
eleventh century. They resembled the towns of southern France in the
character of their government and in the important part played by the
upper classes in municipal development. But, while the French communes
declined with the decline of feudalism and were gradually subjugated by
the monarch, the Italian towns, as the Empire decayed, fell more and
more into the hands of great tyrant-dynasties, and maintained political
independence at the expense of internal liberty.
In France the movement was particularly marked by its independent
character. Though there were local exceptions, the leading communes,
especially in the older towns, were the work of the people themselves,
formed to protect their own interests, and recognised by charter eventually
when the lords were unable to withstand and put down the development
which had already taken place. As a rule, the inhabitants began by forming
themselves into communal groups, and then little by little these com-
munities acquired self-government. Documents shew this early grouping
of town population for common actions. In 962 the men of Arles as a
body figure in a treaty; in 1055 vineyards were given “in communitate
Arelatensi"; but consular government was not recognised till 1131. In
Bayonne, the prudhommes were early responsible for the maintenance of old
customs, and in 1190 a charter was confirmed by “toute la communauté. "
The town was already a commune jurée when a charter finally recognised
its rights in 1215. At Beauvais, where the commune was not formally con-


## p. 647 (#693) ############################################

Independent growth of the communes
647
firmed till 1122, a trial was held between the chapter and the “universalité
des bourgeois” in 1099. Sometimes these communities exercised some
form of municipal government, though they had not yet become actual
communes. At Dax moderate governmental powers were granted to the
capdel and prudhommes before any sign had appeared of the mayor, jurés,
and commune of later documents. Probably the Cinquantine of Lyons
was a communal council leading up to the consulate, though the exact con-
nexion between them is uncertain.
A proof that not only these preliminary communities, but also the
communes into which they developed, were the result of a popular move-
ment and the actual work of the townsmen, is to be found in the fact that
charters to old towns almost always confirmed rather than granted com-
munal powers. New towns might be privileged from the first and have a
certain share in their own government bestowed upon them; but towns
older than the communal movement won this for themselves. Occasionally
a charter confirms a previous grant, but more frequently still a previous
acquisition. In Bordeaux we have a very good example of the independent
development of communal government, culminating in a charter which
confirmed the popular advance. Although the town had long been an
important one, it was not really a commune before the thirteenth century;
there was no abrupt change from the government by count and bishop to
free municipal organisation. In 1200 a charter was issued "juratis et
burgensibus," but no allusion was made to a mayor; in 1205 the remission
of a maltolte was granted “dilectis et fidelibus probis hominibus nostris
manentibus apud Burdigalensem. ” In 1206 for the first time a mention
of the mayor of Bordeaux appears in the Patent Rolls, when the king
actually asks his “maire, jurats, et fidèles de Bordeaux” if they will accept
the seneschal he has appointed. There is absolutely no sign that the king
grants the mayor and commune, he simply accepts them? At Montreuil-
sur-Mer every step in the communal advance was fought for by the towns-
men. They proclaimed their own commune in 1137, but not till 1188 was
its existence formally recognised by Philip Augustus, who pardoned them
for the violence with which they had established it. The charter granted
to Rouen in 1145 confirmed the old rights of the burgesses and sanctioned
the commune which they had formed. Instances are too numerous to be
quoted exhaustively.
Similarly, when once a commune was established, its powers and
functions were little by little developed by the town. Communal govern-
ments generally exercised some legislative power and constantly published
statutes increasing their own authority, or, if this were impossible, further
privileges were bought. This, however, is rather a feature of town history
than an actual part of the communal movement. All evidence of this
1 A great deal of information concerning Bordeaux has been gathered from
some valuable lectures given by Monsieur Bémont in Paris, since published as Les
institutions municipales de Bordeaux au moyen âge, RH, 1916.
CH. XIX.


## p. 648 (#694) ############################################

648
Affiliation of communes
nature, however, helps to strengthen the theory that communal growth
was in its origin independent and popular; that its causes are to be found
in the progress of the townsmen themselves; that it was only by degrees
that the lords realised the possible value of favouring such a development
and themselves created new and privileged towns. Probably they also
realised that it was wise to gain control of so important a movement and
to lead it into channels which would not threaten their own authority too
much. Seignorial towns were never dangerous communes; they were rather
privileged communities, a source of strength not of weakness to their
founders.
Since the communal movement was a natural and economic develop-
ment, its extent and its results depended upon economic conditions. The
powers of a commune, whether urban or rural, varied according to the stage
of advance which the town or village had reached when it was struggling
for its incorporation and self-government. The more backward a place,
the more easily, as a rule, its ambitions would be satisfied; the richer and
more prosperous the town, the higher was the ideal at which the burgesses
aimed.