CITIES AND TOWN The medieval city.pdf
CITIES AND TOWN The medieval city.pdf
CITIES AND TOWN The medieval city.pdf
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12<br />
THE MEDIEVAL CITY<br />
for much of the Middle Ages by its <strong>city</strong>-states. <strong>The</strong> same tended to happen<br />
in Germany, where urban independence, in the absence of a strong<br />
central authority, came to be emphasized at the expense of feudal control.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re was a tendency, especially in Italy, for the <strong>city</strong>’s control of its<br />
immediate hinterland to be extended until the <strong>city</strong>-state had become a<br />
far more extensive territorial state. In this way the duchies of Florence,<br />
Ferrara, Mantua, and others were formed, as well as the urban republics<br />
of Genoa and Venice, which both displayed a ravenous appetite for<br />
neighboring territory.<br />
PLANTED <strong>TOWN</strong>S<br />
<strong>The</strong> great majority of <strong>medieval</strong> towns originated in none of these ways.<br />
<strong>The</strong>y were the conscious and deliberate creations of territorial lords, always<br />
for their own profit. <strong>The</strong> lords might fear the pretensions of an urban<br />
population, but they nonetheless envied the towns’ wealth and were<br />
eager to acquire the goods they traded or produced. How then to create<br />
a town and to harness its productive capa<strong>city</strong> for their own profit? <strong>The</strong><br />
answer was to create a new wave of urban foundations as territorial lords<br />
strove to profit from urban institutions and from the urban way of life.<br />
<strong>The</strong>ir method was to grant a charter, to proclaim that future citizens were<br />
wanted, and to declare that the conditions under which they would live<br />
would be generous and their privileges extensive. Sufficient land would<br />
be set aside for a town, and in some instances streets were even planned<br />
and “burgage” or building plots delimited for the anticipated settlers.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re were always footloose people. Many had made good their escape<br />
from manorial villages, and others had never known the constraints of<br />
the manorial economy. Such were attracted by the prospect of urban living<br />
and the relative freedom this offered. And so plots were taken up and<br />
an urban community gradually took shape. No incipient town could have<br />
prospered without a market, to which peasants of the neighborhood could<br />
bring their surplus products for sale and where they might obtain the few<br />
goods ranging from salt to cooking pots which they could not make themselves.<br />
A fair might also be allowed, held less frequently than the market<br />
but attracting traders from very much farther afield and dealing in<br />
more unusual goods. <strong>The</strong>se towns are sometimes termed planted towns to<br />
distinguish them from the organic towns, which had grown up spontaneously.