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Jews and the Canons of St. Kilian in Twelfth-century W.rzburg
Jews and the Canons of St. Kilian in Twelfth-century W.rzburg
by
JOHN D. YOUNG, St. Augustine,
FL, USA
Over the course of about a
century, from around 1120 to around 1220, the canons of St. Kilian, caretakers
of the Neum.nster church in W.rzburg (with its sacred grave and relics of the
Franconian apostle St. Kilian) had frequent – one might even say constant –
business dealings with the Jews of that same city.1 Most of these economic
interactions involved land: the transfer of property, mostly in the city, from
one party to another, either from the Jews to the canons, from the canons to
the Jews, or from a third party to either the canons or the Jews with the other
acting as another agent in the transaction. Put together, the sources detailing
these land transactions approach the richness of, for instance, the
Schreinskarten of the parish of St. Lawrence in Cologne, one of the key sources
for Matthias Schmandt’s excellent study of the Cologne Jews.2
Despite thorough explorations
by mostly German scholars on the spread of Jewish settlements throughout the
Reich and on specific Jewish communities, most scholars have not looked at the
economic interactions that accompanied settlement and development from the
perspective of the Christian institutions
1 On the cult of St. Kilian, see Kilian: M.nch aus Irland – aller
Franken Patron 689–1989: Katalog der Sonderausstellung zur 1300-Jahr-Feier des
Kiliansmartyriums, 1989, and JOACHIM DIENEMANN, Der Kult des heiligen Kilian im
8. und 9. Jahrhundert. Beitr.ge zur geistigen und politischen Entwicklung der
Karolingerzeit, 1955. On the Kilian cult in W.rzburg, see KNUT SCH.FERDIEK,
Kilian von W.rzburg: Gestalt und Gestaltung eines Heiligen, in: Iconologia
Sacra: Mythos, Bildkunst und Dichtung in der Religions- und Sozialgeschichte
Alteuropas. Festschrift f.r Karl Hauck zum 75. Geburtstag, ed. HAGEN KELLER,
NIKOLAUS STAUBACH (Arbeiten zur Fr.hmittelalterforschung 23), 1994, p. 313–340;
ROLF SPRANDEL, Kilian und die Anf.nge des Bistums W.rzburg, in: W.rzburger
Di.zesangeschichtsbl.tter 54 (1992), p. 5–17. 2 MATTHIAS SCHMANDT, Judei,
cives et incole: Studien zur j.dischen Geschichte K.lns im Mittelalter
(Forschungen zur Geschichte der Juden A 11), 2002.
Concilium medii aevi 21 (2018)
S. 79–90
involved in these
interactions.3 The focus has been almost entirely (and understandably) on
Jewish agency and Jewish motives, it seems with the assumption that Christian
institutions simply intended to exploit a vulnerable yet wealthy minority and
that most Christian townsmen resented the very presence of Jews in their
cities.4 Instead of a vertical, hierarchical relationship, this article
presents some of these interactions and the sometimeslongstanding relations or
partnerships that developed out of them, as horizontal, as business between
simultaneously privileged and vulnerable peers. Indeed, the economic
interactions between the St. Kilian canons and the W.rzburg Jews – like the
interactions between urban Jews and religious houses in other German
communities – display the development of normativity, of the growth of rules
and standards that governed Jewish-Christian relations and solidified the
social, legal, and economic standing of both Jews and religious communities.
Regional history thus serves both as a barometer for broader historical trends
and as a check on the tendency to flatten complex, nuanced historical
circumstances with convenient rubrics like “exploitation” or “persecution.”5
The normativity sought after
and achieved by Jews and their Christian interlocutors during the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries in W.rzburg and other riverine towns of the Reich had
three facets: physical proximity, shared legal privilege, and lucrative
business partnerships. This article will discuss each of these facets but will
reserve its most substantial discussion for the
3 On the history of Jewish settlements in the Middle Ages, see especially
MICHAEL TOCH, Jewish Migrations to, within and from Medieval Germany, in: Le
Migrazioni in Europa secc. XIII–XVIII: della “Wventicinquesima settimana di
studi”, 3–8 maggio 1993, ed. SIMONETTA CAVACIOCCHI (Pubblicazioni. Istituto
Internazionale di Storia Economica F. Datini, Prato 2/25), 1994, p. 639–652;
MICHAEL TOCH, Die Juden im Mittelalterlichen Reich (Enzyklop.die deutscher
Geschichte 44), 22003, p. 5–13. On the Jews of W.rzburg, see especially
KARLHEINZ M.LLER, Die W.rzburger Judengemeinde im Mittelalter: von den Anf.ngen
um 1100 bis zum Tod Julius Echters (1617) (Mainfr.nkische Studien 70), 2004.
Other community studies include SIEGFRIED WITTMER, J.disches Leben in
Regensburg: vom fr.hen Mittelalter bis 1519, 2001, and ALFRED HAVERKAMP, Die Juden
im mittelalterlichen Trier, in: Kurtrierisches Jahrbuch 19 (1979), p. 5–57.
RAINER LENG provides a brief summary of some of the transactions between
W.rzburg Jews and clerical institutions in W.rzburg im 12. Jahrhundert (Das
Bayerische Jahrtausend 2), 2012, p. 69–72. 4 For an example of this tendency
to assume exploitation and resentment, see the summary of eleventh-century
Jewish privileges in ROBERT CHAZAN, The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom,
1000–1500 (Cambridge medieval textbooks), 2006, p. 171–174. 5 The “persecution” label has been especially
durable since the publication of ROBERT IAN MOORE’s seminal The Formation of a
Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250, 1987.
Beholden to this same approach is the influential work by DOMINIQUE IOGNA-PRAT,
Ordonner et exclure: Cluny et la soci.t. chr.tienne face . l’h.r.sie, au
juda.sme et . l’islam, 1000–1150, 1998.
As in other German cities
along the Rhine, Main, and Danube rivers in the high Middle Ages, the Jews of
W.rzburg lived in the town center, merely a hundred meters or so from the
cathedral, next to which sat the Neum.nster. The origins of the Jewish
community in W.rzburg date to around 1100 and probably consisted in the early
years of migrants who fled the Rhineland cities in aftermath of the First
Crusade massacres.6 In the first decades of the twelfth century, Jewish
townsmen began to buy up urban real estate between the present-day main market
and the Juliusspital, a neighborhood that abutted a marsh (presumably along
the Main) called “Rigol.” The synagogue occupied the site of the present
Marienkapelle, the church built in the fourteenth century after the Jews were
expelled from the city in the midst of plague outbreaks.7 It seems no
coincidence that the modern-day market square occupies the same part of the
city as the medieval Jewish community, since the Jews contributed much to the
growth of trade in W.rzburg. Evidence indicates that, among other things, Jews
owned or obtained usufruct of some of the vineyards that dominate the hills of
the city, the vineyards that should have led to the city being named Weinburg
instead of W.rzburg, especially as there is no concrete evidence of major spice
trade in the city.
At least until recent years,
the general tendency for many scholars looking at medieval Jews has been to
assume they lived on the margins of towns in unhealthy, unwanted locations.
The editors of the first volume of the Germania Judaica, for instance, in
writing about the Jews of twelfth-century W.rzburg, speculated with no real
evidence that the area around the Rigol marsh, the
6 Though this explanation of the origins of the W.rzburg Jews is
conjecture, it is supported somewhat by information from the gravestones of the
medieval Jewish cemetery. The earliest gravestone documents the 1154 death of a
daughter of the renowned Rabbi Eliezer b. Nathan (the “Raavan”), thought to
have moved from Mainz after the 1096 massacres. See M.LLER, Die W.rzburger
Judengemeinde (like note 3), p. 31, and KARLHEINZ M.LLER, W.rzburg: The World’s
Largest Find from a Medieval Jewish Cemetery, in: The Jews of Europe in the
Middle Ages (Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries): Proceedings of the International
Symposium held at Speyer, 20–25 October 2002, ed. CHRISTOPH CLUSE, 2004, p. 379–387,
here p. 383–384. 7 On the plague in W.rzburg, see STUART JENKS, The Black Death
and W.rzburg: Michael de Leone’s Reaction in Context (PhD Dissertation, Yale
University), 1976.
locus in many documents for
Jewish settlement, “may have been unhealthy”.8 In truth, Jews settled in
prominent areas of many German towns, in locations next to the major markets
and close to the cathedrals, urban monasteries, and other important
institutions. They were allowed and even encouraged to do so by city
authorities. The most prominent example of such encouragement comes from the
city of Speyer in the second half of the eleventh century, when Bishop R.diger
Huozmann of Speyer issued privilege charter to Jews along with the explanation,
“When I made a town out of the village of Speyer, I estimated that I would
increase the honor of the place a thousand-fold if I should also gather the
Jews there.”9 Speyer Jews were required to pay an annual tax, in exchange for
which they were given special economic privileges that would, as Bishop R.diger
saw it, allow them to bolster the economy of the town. While there are no
surviving documents that indicate the bishop of W.rzburg or other prominent
institutions or individuals actively recruited or incentivized the Jews to
settle and trade in W.rzburg, their frequent involvement in business dealings
with Jews suggests that their opinions paralleled those of R.diger of Speyer.
The presence in twelfth- and thirteenth-century W.rzburg of Jews from many
other German towns likewise suggests that the economic and social climate of
the city was welcoming and productive for the Jews.10
Proximity – Jews living and
trading a short walk from the Neum.nster – enabled the canons of St. Kilian to
interact with them, even to come to trust them to manage the business affairs
of the monastery. As was the case for urban monks or canons and Jewish
neighborhoods in several other cities in the Reich, the canons of St. Kilian
and the residents of other clerical houses (the canons of the cathedral
chapter, the monks of the Abbey of St. Stephan, even perhaps the Cistercian
nuns of Himmelspforten,11 and so forth) would
8 ISMAR ELBOGEN, ARON FREIMANN, CHAIM TYKOCINSKI (eds.), Germania
Judaica 1: Von den .ltesten Zeiten bis 1238, 1934 (reprint 1963), p. 475. 9 Urkunden
zur Geschichte der Stadt Speyer, ed. ALFRED HILGARD, 1885, p. 11, no. 11: cum
ex Spirensi villa urbem facerem, putavi milies amplificare honorem loci nostri,
si et iudeos colligerem. 10 Germania Judaica 1 (like note 8), p. 477,
identifies Jews from Augsburg, Gr.nsfeld, Mainz, Nuremberg, Pleichfeld,
Randesacker, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Rothenfels, Schwarzach, Schweinfurt, and
Wertheim. Much of this evidence comes from the names of witnesses on documents
from the period. 11 Several documents from the early fourteenth century
describe agreements between the Jews of W.rzburg and the nuns of
Himmelspforten. See HERMANN HOFFMAN (ed.), Urkundenregesten zur Geschichte
Zisterzienserinnenklosters Himmelspforten, 1231–1400 (Quellen und Forschungen
zur Geschichte des Bistums und Hochstifts W.rzburg 14, Regesta Herbipolensia
4), 1962, p. 166–167, 174–175, 186–187, nos. 143, 154, and 165.
While proximity provided the
skeletal framework for the normativity of relations, the emerging legal
structures of the high Middle Ages contributed much to the interior substance
of that normativity. Both Jewish communities and religious institutions like
monasteries (as well as towns themselves) came to enjoy and rely upon the
privileges granted them by higher authorities – kings, emperors, and other
nobles as well as popes, bishops, and other ecclesiastical officials. Ensconced
in charters with dangling seals that often were kept safe in cartularies stored
in community chests, privileges defined an individual’s or a community’s legal
existence – and to a large extent its social and economic existence – in this
period. Privileges included such components as guarantees of protection,
entitlements to trade in certain goods, and immunities from taxation. Though
sometimes equipped with an expiration date, they were usually reconfirmed with
the passage of power from one ruler or official to the next over the
generations.13
Although no specific privilege
charter for the Jews of W.rzburg survives from the twelfth or thirteenth century,
examples from the Rhineland cities and from the nearby city of Regensburg give
us a sense of the kinds of privileges Jews of other communities would have
brokered with their lords, whether the emperor, the bishop, or other secular or
ecclesiastical authorities.14 Emperor
12 Regensburg is another very good example of this proximity. The
Jewish quarter there lay on the ground occupied by the present-day
Neupfarrplatz, the large square between the cathedral precinct to the north and
the prominent monasteries on the southern side of the city, including St.
Emmeram and the Schottenkloster St. Jacob. See Germania Judaica 1 (like note
8), p. 287. 13 On privilege in the high Middle Ages, see especially ALAIN
BOUREAU, Privilege in Medieval Societies from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth
Centuries, or: How the Exception Proves the Rule, in: The Medieval World, ed.
PETER LINEHAN, JANET L. NELSON, MARIOS COSTAMBEYS, 2nd ed., 2018, p. 720–733.
14 For privileges extended to Rhineland Jews, see, for example, the 1074 charter
of Emperor Henry IV to the Jews of Worms in Die Urkunden Heinrichs IV.
1056–1076 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica Diplomata Regum et Imperatorum
Germaniae 6,1), ed. DIETRICH VON GLADISS and ALFRED GAWLIK, 1941, p. 341–343,
no. 267; the 1090 charters of Henry IV to the Jews of Worms and Speyer in Die
Urkunden Heinrichs IV. 1077–1106 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica Diplomata Regum
et Imperatorum Germaniae 6,2), ed. DIETRICH VON GLADISS, 1952, p. 546–549, nos.
411 and 412. For a summary of imperial charters to Jews, see FRIEDRICH LOTTER,
The Scope and Effectiveness of Imperial Jewry Law in the High Middle Ages, in:
Jewish History 4/1 (1989), p. 31–58.
Frederick II issued a general
privilege to all the Jews of his realm in 1236, but Jews in the important cities
of the Reich had already enjoyed a privileged legal, social, and economic
existence for a century and half – perhaps longer – by that point.15
The privileges extended to
Jews by various authorities were similar, at times almost identical, to those
offered to monasteries and other religious institutions. Like the Jews, monks
and other clerics lacked the means of protecting themselves and thus required
protection from privilege-granting authorities. Like Jews, monasteries and
other religious institutions needed to manage and extend their wealth in order
to carry out their desired activities, so both communities sought economic
privileges like market rights and taxation immunities. Jewish communities and
monastic houses also obtained privileges from multiple authorities
simultaneously, in order to ensure their social and economic positions in the
most comprehensive way.16 Of course, authorities granted privileges to monks
and other clergy for different reasons than they offered privileges to Jews –
to monasteries in exchange for prayers and other spiritual benefits, as well as
for assistance in reform projects and church administration, and to Jews for
sure taxation income and other economic benefits – but both communities enjoyed
similar privileged status even if their obligations as privileged entities
differed. Put simply, Jews and monks were privileged peers with little
incentive to compete with one another legally (authorities did not necessarily
have a limited number of privileges to hand out, after all) and lots of
incentive to work together in order to press the mutual advantages of their
privileged status. Indeed, monks, canons, and
15 The 1236 imperial charter for the Jews: Privilegium et sententia
in favorem iudaeorum, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica Constitutiones et Acta
Publica Imperatorum et Regum 2, ed. LUDWIG WEILAND, 1896, p. 274, no. 204. See
the insightful interpretation of this charter and its context in DAVID
ABULAFIA, The King and the Jews – the Jews in the Ruler’s Service, in: The Jews
of Europe in the Middle Ages, ed. CLUSE (like note 6), p. 43–53. 16 For one
example, the Benedictine monastery of Reinhausen, near G.ttingen, obtained
privileges from the Archbishop of Mainz, the German emperor, the duke of
Bavaria, and the pope between the early twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.
See Urkundenbuch des Klosters Reinhausen, ed. MANFRED HAMANN
(Ver.ffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission f.r Niedersachsen und Bremen
37, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte Niedersachsens im Mittelalter
14, G.ttingen-Grubenhagener Urkundenbuch 3), 1991, p. 28–43, nos. 3, 6, 12, and
18. Monastic charters like these may be used as a means to track shifting
loyalties and hedging political calculations among the various communities of
Germany in this era of competition between the emperors and popes. It is
notable that the 1207 papal charter to Reinhausen, for instance, was issued
during a time of imperial weakness, when the Welf and the Staufen families were
competing for the imperial throne. Pope Innocent III and his thirteenth-century
successors often issued privilege charters in an attempt to lay claim to
institutions or entities that were formerly tied closely to the emperors.
Mutual interest in using their
privileges to enrich themselves and enhance their well-being led monks and Jews
to form business partnerships in many of the cities of the Reich during the
high Middle Ages. Such partnerships focused on two overlapping concerns: land
and money. Monasteries, bishoprics, cathedral chapters, and other religious
communities often controlled large landholdings, most often by receiving them
as gifts (either accompanying the entrance of the children of the nobility or
given shortly before a noble’s death as grants ad succurendum).17 While some
clergy probably proved to be effective managers and exploiters of their
communities’ possessions, many clergy had neither the time nor the inclination
to do what was necessary to secure an income from landholdings. Just as Jews
were becoming the go-to figures for finance and long-distance trade in the
emerging European economy, Jews also achieved a reputation for effective
property management in this period. Both clerical institutions and townspeople
came to rely on the Jews for their real estate concerns. This is the economic
activity most in evidence in the W.rzburg documents.
The earliest source detailing
property transactions between the W.rzburg Jews and the canons of St. Kilian
comes from 1119.18 In that year, the widow of a Christian burgher named Wicmann
returned to the canons a property in W.rzburg that she (and presumably her
husband) had managed. Upon handing over the property, she advised the canons to
give its management over to a Jew named Jacob and his wife Gute, as she had
done.19 Though the
17 The staggering scope of some monastic landholdings can be seen in
the detailed Schenkungsb.cher kept by prominent houses in this period. See,
for instance, Schenkungsbuch des Klosters St. Emmeramm zu Regensburg, ed. FRANZ
MICHAEL WITTMANN (Quellen und Er.rterungen zur bayerischen und deutschen
Geschichte 1), 1856, p. 1–146. 18 JULIUS ARONIUS (ed.), Regesten zur Geschichte
der Juden im fr.nkischen und deutschen Reiche bis zum Jahre 1273, 1902 (reprint
1970), p. 100, no. 217; Regesta sive
rerum Boicarum autographa ad annum usque 1300 1, ed. KARL HEINRICH DE LANG,
1822, p. 117. 19 The record does not say
specifically that Jacob and Gute resided in W.rzburg, but the association with
the town may provide the earliest documented evidence of a Jewish community in
the city. The earliest accepted account of Jewish settlement in W.rzburg is the
record of the 1147 massacre of 22 Jews – probably a result of the fervor
created by the Second Crusade but also the earliest documented murder
accusation against Jews on the continent. See the Annales Herbipolenses, in:
Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores 16, ed. GEORG HEINRICH PERTZ, 1859, p.
1–14, here p. 3–4. See also the Hebrew account of Ephraim of Bonn,
document does not stipulate
the exact terms of the sub-contract, one may assume the profit she received due
to the effective oversight of her Jewish managers was significantly higher than
the value of the half vessel of wine that she was required to pay the canons
annually in exchange for holding the land in the first place. It seems that she
had promised Jacob and Gute that they would hold and manage the property “by
hereditary right,” so her insistence that the canons maintain the arrangement
may have arisen from her effort to follow through on her promises.20 The deacon
of Neum.nster appears to have met with the Jewish couple and determined to
follow the widow’s recommendation, for he gladly agreed to grant the property
to the Jews “by the same [hereditary] right.” The Jews were required to make an
annual payment to the monastery each autumn, based on the annually-assessed
value of the property.21 In other words, if the Jews improved the value of the
property, as they were expected to do, the monastery would receive a higher
payment. It is thus not hard to understand why the canons were delighted with
the arrangement. It freed them from the obligation of managing the property
directly and promised a growth in the income they would receive from the land.
It is uncertain if the
property management relationship between the St. Kilian canons and the Jews of
W.rzburg was the original idea of the widow Wicmann, but it is certain that
the canons quickly embraced the beneficial partnership achieved by her
suggestion. By the late twelfth century, this type of arrangement had become
the norm, the solution to the canons’ need for effective property management.
Indeed, between 1180 and 1212, there were at least ten separate property
transactions between the canons and the Jews, the volume alone of which
suggests that the two parties trusted and respected each other to an
extraordinary degree.22 None of the records of these transactions are entirely
straightforward; that is, they do more than simply indicate
“Sefer Zekirah, or the Book of Remembrance,” in: The Jews and the
Crusaders: The Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second Crusades, ed. and
trans. SHLOMO EIDELBERG, 1977, p. 121–
133. The Hebrew edition of this text is A.M. HABERMAN, Sefer Zekirah:
Selihot ve-Kinot le-Rabbi Efraim b’’r Ya’akov, 1970. 20 ARONIUS, Regesten (like
note 18), p. 100, no. 217: resignaverunt et cuidam Iudeo nomine Iacobo, fratri
Samsonis et Natan, et illius uxori hereditario iure. 21 ARONIUS, Regesten (like
note 18), p. 100, no. 217: Nos itaque piis eorum peticionibus annuentes
prememorato Iudeo Iacobo et eius uxori nomine Gute et eorum heredibus, quos
ipsi insimul genuerint, pro oblatione pretaxata annuatim in autumno solvenda,
prescriptas duas areas et domum per manus decani nostri domini Hermanni ipso
iure, quomodo ipsi possederunt, concessimus. 22 ARONIUS, Regesten (like note
18), p. 133–136, 142–144, 146–148, and 170, nos. 312–313, 315, 317–318, 320,
324, 326, 329, and 383.
that Jew X sold Property Y to
the Neum.nster, or vice-versa. On the contrary, these valuable sources seem to
depict a well-established and mutually beneficial business partnership between
the city’s Jews, the house of canons, and often other townspeople.
The complexity and depth of
this business relationship can be seen, for example, in the record of an 1180
transaction. Samuel, a Jew from Rothenburg with ties to W.rzburg, purchased a
piece of real estate from Count Ekehard, the son of Billung the Schultheiss.
The plot in question was located next to the residence of Billung himself and
was thus in a very prominent place in W.rzburg. The major stipulation of this
land deal was that Samuel, the Jew, would “deliver the property, together with
the buildings, to the altar of the precious martyr Kilian and the appointed
delegate of his order.”23 This meant, essentially, that Samuel was required to
become a vassal of the monastery, in exchange for being granted full control
of the property in question. As a mark of his commitment to the abbey (and
probably to give Ekehard and Billung the satisfaction of having made an
indirect grant to the monastery, thus qualifying him for the salvation that
came with such), Samuel was to furnish “eight pounds of wax annually on the
feast of Saint Kilian.”24 Otherwise, Samuel exercised usufruct over the
property, to live in it or pass it on to someone else, to erect new buildings
or tear down old ones, as he pleased. The canons, of course, received a
substance essential to the pursuit of their vocation: wax for the liturgical
candles used during the feast day services for their patron saint.
Samuel was not the only Jew to
have such a close relationship with the brothers of St. Kilian. In fact, the
Neum.nster seems to have purposely sought out such relationships with Jews, and
the obligations sometimes ran the opposite direction. In 1184, for instance,
the canons participated in multiple property deals with the Jewish couple Vivis
and Sarah; these were accomplished through a third-party agent
(fideicommissarius), perhaps the twelfth-century equivalent of a realtor.
First, the couple entrusted (delegasse) a six-acre vineyard to the monastery
(again not surprising, given the prominence of the city’s vineyards). In
return, the abbey promised to pay them a measure of wheat annually on the feast
day of Saint Michael. The source proclaims that the Jews sought this
transaction with the monastery “in the hope of protection
23 Monumenta Boica 37, 1864, p. 111, no. 126: eandem aream simul cum
aedificiis … ad altare
preciosi martiris Kyliani et
sociorum eius legitime delegatam contradidit.
24 Monumenta Boica 37 (like note 23), p. 11, no. 126: in festo sancti
Kyliani VIII nummatas
cerae annis singulis persolvat.
and favor.”25 In other words,
they sought a privilege from the monks, the terms of which included the common
guarantee of physical protection. The canons, it appears, were willing to take
on the direct management of this property because, again, it supplied a
substance vital to their vocation: wine for the sacraments and perhaps also to
sell for profit.
Later the same year, the same
couple, working through their agent as before, bestowed their personal
residence on the abbey, again “in the hope of protection and favor”, then received
it back as a kind of fief or benefice, in exchange for an annual payment of two
pounds of wax and the promise that they could sell the property in case of
hardship.26 It seems important to point out that it was preferable for the Jews
to manage their own residence as a benefice from the canons, rather than to own
it outright. This agreement illustrates the level to which the Jews and the
canons were integrated into the all-important social networks of the day, with
the land grants, ritual gestures, and promises of protection that solidified
such relationships. Property became an important way to establish social ties
with powerful entities who could protect and sponsor them, just as it was for
many others throughout the social and political landscape. Both communities
were thus remarkably integrated into the larger polity: economically,
politically, and socially.
The canons of St. Kilian were
not the only ecclesiastical entity in W.rzburg who carried on a longstanding
business partnership with the Jews. The bishop and cathedral chapter, as well
as several monasteries in the city and surrounding region, turned repeatedly to
the Jews for help with trade and property management.27 Bishop Otto in the
early thirteenth century, for instance, appointed a Jew to serve as the master
of his mint, an important position to be sure in this era of growing currency
exchange and standardization.28 Nor was W.rzburg the only city that featured
such business partnerships; they can also be found in evidence from Cologne, Regensburg,
Nuremberg, and other German cities.29 Indeed, partnerships between clerical
institutions and Jews, particularly in the realms of real estate speculation
and property management, were one of the defining features of Jewish life – and
25 Monumenta Boica 37 (like note 23), p. 124–125, no. 135: spe
defensionis et gratiae. The
monastery received other
properties from Jews for the same stated reason. See, for instance,
Regesta sive rerum Boicarum 1
(like note 18), p. 355.
26 Monumenta Boica 37 (like note 23), p. 125–126, no. 136.
27 See Monumenta Boica 37 (like note 23), p. 96, 153, 171, nos. 113,
156, 170; ARONIUS,
Regesten (like note 18), p.
161, 172–173, nos. 362, 388.
28 ARONIUS, Regesten (like note 18), p. 188–189, no. 425.
29 See, for example, ARONIUS, Regesten (like note 18), p. 98,
131–132, 168–170, nos. 213, 308,
381.
I realize that one might
counter my argument by pointing out that monastic and other clerical writers of
this period had little that was positive to say about Jews, that they both
repeated and extended the anti-Jewish tropes that were formulated by Saint Paul
and the church fathers. Rupert of Deutz, Honorius Augustodunensis, and others
wrote fairly extensively on the Jews and, with a few exceptions, little of it
is commendatory or suggestive of the amicable relations that appear to be the
norm in charters and trade documents. One might also counter my depiction of
peaceful, normative relations in W.rzburg by drawing reference to the massacre
of Jews in in that city in 1147 (the first documented murder charge against
Jews on the continent) and the much larger and more destructive pogroms in
Franconia at the end of the thirteenth century. I would respond to that charge
by pointing out that theological conversations existed largely in a closed
space, that these authors were “thinking with” Jews as a way of understanding
their own lives and vocations rather than thinking about actual Jews with whom
they might have had actual relationships.30 But that response, I think, does not
go far enough to account for all phenomena, nor does it explain why tensions
boiled over so violently in 1147 and 1298. So, I suggest a fourth pillar of
normativity: that the Jews had a symbolic function in the high medieval Reich,
similar to the function attributed to the Jews in fourteenth century Spain by
David Nirenberg.31 Augustine’s doctrine of Jewish witness was certainly part of
this, as evidenced by Bernard of Clairvaux preaching against Radulf just before
the Second Crusade, but it was not the whole of it.32 Jews were symbols of the
fallen world, a world where such things as property management and monetary
loans were necessary if undesirable, a world that would be replaced when the
Jews converted to Christianity and the second coming of Christ offered a return
to paradise. This symbolic function was ritualized and
30 On this line of argument, see especially the seminal work by DAVID
NIRENBERG, Anti-
Judaism: The Western
Tradition, 2013.
31 See DAVID NIRENBERG, Communities of Violence, Persecution of
Minorities in the Middle
Ages, 1996.
32 See Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistolae nos. 363 and 365, in: Sancti
Bernardi Opera 1, ed.
JACQUES MABILLION, 1719, p.
329–330, 332. On Bernard and the Jews, see DAVID BERGER, The
Attitude of St. Bernard of
Clairvaux toward the Jews, in: Proceedings of the American
Academy for Jewish Research 40
(1972), p. 89–108.
normative, yet it could also
contribute to the breakdown of relations and even to atrocity when combined
with growing indebtedness and the resentment of the Jews’ special relationship
with unpopular emperors: the combination that seems to account for the
Rintfleisch massacres of 1298. Still, I also think the breakdown of normativity
demonstrates its very existence; the exception proves the rule.
Prof. Dr. John D. Young,
Flagler Collage Department Humanities, School of Humanities and Sciences 74
King Street St. Augustine, FL 32084 jyoung1@flagler.edu
222222222
ps
Historical Urban Studies Series
Series editors: Jean-Luc Pinol and
Richard Rodger
Titles in the series include:
Urban Societies in East-Central
Europe, 1500-1700
Jaroslav Miller
Marriage, Manners and Mobility in
Early Modern Venice
Alexander Cowan
Who Ran the Cities?
City Elites and Urban Power Structures
in Europe and North America,
1750-1940
Edited by RalfRoth and Robert Beachy
Heads ofthe Local State Mayors,
Provosts and Burgomasters since 1800
Edited by John Garrard
The Making ofan Indian Metropolis
Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890-1920
Prashant Kidambi
Corruption in Urban Politics and
Society, Britain 1780-1950
Edited by James Moore and John Smith
Testimonies ofthe City Identity,
Community and Change in a Contemporary Urban World
Edited by Richard Rodger and Joanna
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Public Health and Municipal Policy
Making Britain and Sweden, 1900-1940
Marjaana Niemi
Medicine, Charity and Mutual Aid
The Consumption ofHealth and Welfare
in Britain, c.155 0-1950
Edited by Anne Borsay and Peter
Shapely
The City and the Senses Urban Culture
Since 1500
Edited by Alexander Cowan and Jill
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D
Segregation -Integration
-Assimilation
Religious and Ethnic Groups in the
Medieval Towns of
Central and Eastern Europe
Edited by
DEREKKEENE
Institute ofHistorical Research,
London, UK
BALAZSNAGY
Central European University and Eolvos
Lorimd University,
Budapest, Hungary
KATALIN SZENDE
Central European University, Budapest,
Hungary
ASHGATE
]
1
I
vi 9
10
11
12
r-J 13
Index
SEGREGATION -INTEGRATION -ASSIMILATION
Minorities and Foreigners in Bulgarian
Medieval Towns in the Twelfth to Fourteenth Centuries: Literary and
Archaeological Fragments Kazimir Popkonstantinov and Rossina Kostova 135
Nobiles, Cives et Popolari: Four Towns
under the Rule of Carlo I Tocco (c. 1375-1429) Nada Zecevic 153
The Towns of Medieval Hungary in the
Reports of Contemporary Travellers Balazs Nagy
169
Crown, Gown and Town: Zones of Royal,
Ecclesiastical and Civic Interaction in Medieval Buda and Visegrad
J6zsefLaszlovszky 179
Integration through Language: The
Multilingual Character of Late Medieval Hungarian Towns Katalin Szende 205
The Visual I~e of the 'Other' in Late
Medieval Urban Space: Patterns andConstructions Gerhard Jaritz 235
251
3.l
3.2
3.3
5.1
6.l
6.2
7.l
7.2
7.3
9.l
9.2 9.3(a)
9.3(b)
12.1
12.2
List of Figures
Riga in c.1300 (map prepared by the
author) 39
Late medieval Tallinn (map prepared by
the author) 43
Late medieval Tartu (map prepared by
the author) 45
Major settlements and routes in late
medieval Hungary (after:
The Role of Magic in the Past: Learned
and popular magic,
popular beliefs and diversity
ofattitudes, ed. Blanka Szeghyova.
Bratislava: Pro Historia, 2005,
109) 88
Buda, parish boundaries and house
ownership in the castrum in
the fourteenth century (map prepared
by the author) 95
Buda, parish boundaries and house
ownership in the castrum in
the sixteenth century (map prepared by
the author) 96
Late Medieval inland towns in
present-day Slovenia (Anton
Melik Geographical Institute) 102
Percentage ofsurnames in selected
towns ofpresent-day Slovenia
(graph prepared by the author) 108
Percentage of Slovene first names in
selected towns of present
day Slovenia (graph prepared by the
author) 109
Town plan of medieval Turnovo (after
Mirko Robov,
'DopUlnitelnata
ukrepitelna sistema na srednovekovnija grad
Tiirnov', Arheologija 4 (1988), obr.
1) 138
Town plan of PIovdi v (drawn by
Svetozar Bojadzhiev) 143
Cyrillic inscription from Preslav,
twelfth century (after Kazimir
Popkonstantinov, Otto Kronsteiner,
Altbulgarische Inschriften,
vol. 2,104-5 and 130-31) 151
Cyrillic inscription from Shumen,
thirteenth century (after
Kazimir Popkonstantinov, Otto
Kronsteiner, Altbulgarische
Inschriften, vol. 2, 104-5 and
130-31) 151
Visegrad. Settlement structure in the
Angevin period (map
prepared by Orsolya Meszaros, Visegrad
keso kozepkori varos
tortenete es helyrajza. [The history
and topography of late
medieval Visegrad]. PhD dissertation,
University of Debrecen,
2008, Figure 32) 182
Visegrad. Buildings in the area of the
royal palace during
the Angevin period (map prepared by
Orsolya Meszaros).
'Topography
of 14th Century Visegrad, the Royal Residential
Town of Hungary', Archeologia
Medievale (Cultura materiale,
Insediamenti, Territorio) 34 (2007),
p. 189) 184
SEGREGATION -INTEGRATION
-ASSIMILATIONviii
12.3 Excavated remains of the royal palace and the Franciscan friary at
Visegrad. The superimposing features represent building phases from the early
fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century (Gergely Buzas) 186
12.4(a-d) Visegrad. Buildings in the royal palace area, a: first
half of the
fourteenth century; b: middle ofthe
fourteenth century; c: second
half of the fourteenth century; d: end
of the fourteenth century
(Gergely Buzas) 188
12.5 Visegrad. The royal
palace complex and the Franciscan friary in
the first half ofthe fifteenth century
(Gergely Buzas) 191
12.6 Buda. Houses and wells
from the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries unearthed in the western row
ofhouses ofthe medieval
Jewish Street (to date Szt. Gy6rgy
utca) (Zsuzsanna Kuczogi's
drawing, in Vegh 2006, Fig. 11, p.
146). 196
12.7 Buda castle district in
the late Middle Ages. (Zsuzsanna
Kuczogi's drawing, in Vegh 2003, p.
28) 198
14.1 Beggars as
representatives of urban 'otherness'. Works of
Charity: Feeding the Poor (detail);
wall painting, 1420/30,
Brixen (Bressanone, South Tyrol),
cathedral, cloister arcade.
(Photo: Institut fur Realienkunde,
Krems) 237
14.2 Christ as the pauper to
be fed. Works of Charity: Feeding the
Poor, represented by Christ; wall
painting, end of the fourteenth
century, Levoca (Locse, Slovakia),
parish church. (Photo: Institut
flir Realienkunde, Krems) 238
14.3 Representatives of
worldly and vain joys. St Vitus Abdicates
Vain, Worldly Joys (detail); panel
painting, 1510120, K6lderer
workshop, Innsbruck (Tyrol),
Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum.
(Photo: Institut fur Realienkunde,
Krems) 239
14.4 Burning the vanities.
Bonfire of the Vanities at the occasion
of St John Capistrano's sermon at
Bamberg's cathedral square
(detail); panel painting, c.1470,
Bamberg, Staatsgalerie. (Photo:
Institut fur Realienkunde, Krems) 240
14.5 Worldly joys leading to
forgetfulness of gratitude towards God.
Hartmann Schedel, Weltchronik, German
edition (Nuremberg,
1493; reprint Griinwald bei Munchen: Konrad K6lbl, 1975), fo1.
CCXVII. (Photo: Institut flir
Realienkunde, Krems) 241
14.6 The conjoined twins from
Esslingen. Hartmann Schedel,
Weltchronik, German edition
(Nuremberg, 1493; reprint
Griinwald bei Miinchen: Konrad K6lbl,
1975), fo1. CCXVII.
(Photo: Institut fur Realienkunde,
Krems) 242
14.7 Heretics as
representatives of 'otherness'. Disputation
of St Dominic with the Heretics; panel
painting, c.1490,
Klosterneuburg (Lower Austria),
Stiftsgalerie. (Photo: Institut
flir Realienkunde, Krems) 243
]
s
LIST OF FIGURES ix
14.8 The murderers
of St Thiemo. Decapitation
of St Thiemo
(detail); panel painting, 'Meister der
Heiligenmartyrien', end of
the fifteenth century, Vienna,
Osterreichische Galerie. (Photo:
Institut flir Realienkunde,
Krems) 244
14.9 The'oriental' murderers
ofSt Thomas Becket. Decapitation ofSt
Thomas Becket (detail: the oriental
murderers); panel painting,
Michael Pacher,
1460/65, Graz (Styria),
Landesmuseum
Joanneum. (Photo: Institut flir
Realienkunde, Krems) 246
14.10 Landsknechts as
murderers of St John the Baptist. Torturer of
St John the Baptist as Landsknecht:
Decapitation of St John the
Baptist (detail); panel painting,
1520, Levoca (Locse, Slovakia),
parish church. (Photo: Institut flir
Realienkunde, Krems) 248
editors to acknowledge financial
sponsorship for the workshop from the Conference and Research Fund ofCentral
European University, as well as from the leadership and the Medieval Department
of the Budapest History Museum and the Cultural Committee of the Budapest City
Council. We are also grateful to the Publication Fund of the University of
London, for its support towards the publication costs, which enabled us to
engage Frank Schaer, a dedicated medievalist, to improve the clarity and
fluency of the contributions. We would also like to express our gratitude to
Richard Rodger (University of Edinburgh), who was helpful both in disseminating
news concerning the workshop and in accepting the volume in the Historical
Urban Studies series. Finally, we thank the editors ofAshgate Publishing for
turning our manuscript into a handsome publication.
The Editors
Appendix
List ofPapers Presented at the
Workshop Published in Other Volumes or Journals
lan Blanchard, 'Foreign Merchants in
Early Modem Towns and International Market Intelligence Systems', Annual
ofMedieval Studies at CEU 10 (2004): pp. 175-80.
Emily Gottreich, 'On the Origins of
the Mellah of Marrakesh', International Journal ofMiddle East Studies 35
(2003): pp. 287-305. Judit Majorossy, "'unsere arme lewte" ...
Hospitals and the Poor in Late Medieval Bratislava', Chronica [Szeged] 4
(2004): pp. 41-56. M6nika Mezei, 'Jews in Early Medieval Towns as Described by
Gregory ofTours ' , Chronica [Szeged] 5 (2005): pp. 15-25.
Maria Pakucs Willcocks, 'The
"Greek" Merchants in the Saxon Transylvanian Towns in the Later
Middle Ages and Early Modem Times,' Historical Yearbook ofthe "Nicolae
Iorga" History Institute ofthe Romanian Academy 2 (2005), 107-116.
Edna Ruth Yahil, 'Urban Identity,
Guilds and Justice in Late Medieval Saint Germain des Pres', Annual ofMedieval
Studies at CEU 10 (2004): pp. 163
74.
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction: 'r"!'
) ~. 0>0 fr:>J /" If ....rfJ 11'1'::-'
Segregation, Zoning and Assimilation
in
c <' \'i",n ',f I r>
Medieval Towns
DerekKeene
Of all types of settlement, it is the
town or city where one is most likely to encounter a stranger or foreigner,
Such a person will often have originated from afar and be distinguished by
language, physical appearance, dress, beliefs or practices, characteristics
covered by the slippery modem terms 'ethnicity' or 'cultural identity'. The
largest, wealthiest, and most powerful or attractive towns tend to contain the
greatest number, variety and proportion of strangers in their populations,
Among the global metropolises of the modem world a mark of distinction is the
number of languages in everyday use -well over one hundred in the cases of
London or New York. Much the same was true of the towns and cities 0S:Flfl~.val
Europe, though on a lesser scale and within di~erent s~cial,a~d political
cC1h~rfB.nts, In western Europe notable examples of ethnIC and lmgmstIc
diversity, accompanied by a striking degree of openness towards strangers, were
Venice, Bruges and Antwerp, cases which indicate that port cities, or inland
centres likewise engaged in facilitating commercial exchange over long
distances, were especially likely to attract varied populations, ifonly of
short-term residents, Among the towns ofcentral and eastern Europe covered in
this volume, Prague was such a place in the tenth century, while at a later
date Dubrovnik resembled Venice and Lviv came to be compared with that
commercial metropolis on account of the diversity of its population and the
many languages spoken there (Chapters 4, 11), The attractions of such places
are clear: they offered opportunities for business in which it seemed to be possible
to make substantial profit, as well as employment in more secure or routine
occupations such as those of labourer, craftsman or notary. Towns that were
sites of rule offer similar though less varied opportunities by providing for
the needs ofthe elite, as well as ofthose attracted to the place by the desire
to seek political advantage, justice or protection. In the west, London and
Paris, and towards the east Prague, Esztergom and Buda (Chapters 6, 11, 12, 13)
occupied such positions, in addition to important roles as centres ofcommerce
and exchange. For Christians in western and central Europe, and for many
elsewhere, Rome was the key. site of authority and devotion and attracted many
different cultural groups, some of which maintained a more or less continuous
presence in the city. Pilgrimage to Rome and other cult centres (Chapter 2),
and the commerce
SEGREGATION -INTEGRATION -ASSIMILATION
which often accompanied it, was an
important stimulus to the movement ofpeople and to the visible presence of strangers
in many towns. I An ancestor of one of the German commercial families in
thirteenth-century London was said first to have come to England with his wife
to visit the shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury and then to have established
himself in London, where Thomas had been born and where the couple themselves
finally managed to conceive a child.2 In central Europe itinerant Irish monks
were a stimulus to many urban monastic foundations (Chapter 2), while
university cities such as Prague and Krak6w attracted students and scholars
from far away.
As sites to which people migrated,
medieval towns operated within distinctive demographic and economic structures.
On account oftheir sanitary conditions they generally relied on immigration to
increase or even to maintain their populations. A well-populated countryside
could support substantial towns, but at the same time urban demand could
promote rural productivity, specialization and demographic growth. A rapidly
growing town absorbed the 'natural increase' of population in its immediate
territory and so drew in immigrants from further afield. Famines enlarged the
popUlation ofestablished towns, as people from the countryside moved in to seek
the marginal opportunities and charitable assistance available there. When food
and other materials became scarce, towns used their wealth to draw in supplies
from farther afield and in that way inflicted shortages on the surrounding
territory. Demographic pressure on landed resources and falling prices of
labour could encourage migration to towns, especially when those who controlled
the land spent their rising incomes there. The relationship between medieval
towns and their hinterlands was complex, involving multiple sets of reciprocal
relationships of regional and trans-regional character. Within the immediate
hinterland people moved in and out on an almost daily basis in the course of
marketing and craft production. Immigrants flowed in over greater distances.
Many did not stay long. Others settled, but maintained regular contacts with
relatives and others in the regions from which they originated, sometimes over
several generations. This was a particular characteristic of mercantile
families. Merchants from the town visited lesser towns and markets in the
hinterland and sometimes set up residence there so as more easily to tap into
local resources. Conversely, monarchs ,d other lords encouraged people from
abroad, particularly those with skills and pita, 0 settle on their land and in
their towns, especially in remote or marginal distlic s, so as to increase the
economic value and strategic resources of their territory. All of these forces
promoted the cultural and linguistic diversity of towns, not least in central
I Michae1 McCormick, Origins of the
European Economy: Communications and Commerce, A.D. 300-900 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 20001), pp. 621, 678-81 and passim; Margaret
Harvey, The English in Rome, 1362-1420: portrait of an expatriate community
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
2
Joseph P. Huffman, Family, Commerce,
and Religion in London and Cologne:
Anglo-German emigrants, c.1 000-c.1300
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998),
pp. 189-95.
]
c: .
.... '
INTRODUCTION
and eastern Europe. Surnames derived
from place-names in some contexts can denote the extent of the economic,
migratory and cultural hinterland of a town although on their own they cannot
reveal the nature of the contacts involved. Measured in this way, the
hinterland of London about 1300 extended across the whole of England,
overlapping those of major provincial towns, and included many places
overseas.3 Likewise, those who took up the citizenship of Venice during the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries tended to come from a distance: more
originated from Tuscany than the Veneto, with Lombardy in third place, while
with the acquisition of the terra firma, those who were citizens of the subject
towns were also admitted.4 Here, as elsewhere in Europe, especially in Italy,
it was not uncommon for wealthy individuals to be citizens of more than one
town.
Cultural exchange, cultural levelling,
assimilation and integration are often features of the urban environmentS Thus
it is likely that London was a key force in driving the inter-regional
exchanges that promoted levelling in late medieval English, while in a similar
fashion the city's administrative and commercial practices came to be widely
adopted by other towns. This process, working through a dense network of
contacts and exchange, resembled that of market integration, but political and
institutional structures were also important. London's widespread influence,
for example, was facilitated by its situation within an extensive territory
over which the authority of the monarch was relatively strong. Moreover, the
king could override the interests of towns as communal bodies in favour of
minority groups, such as Jews and foreign merchants, whose services he
required. In modelling processes of linguistic change and assimilation, in ways
which are helpful for understanding urban societies more generally, historical
sociolinguists have made effective use of the sociological distinction between
groups characterized by strong or by weak ties.6 This is particularly
applicable to towns, both to their communal governance and to societies and
groups within
3 Derek
Keene, 'Metropolitan values: migration, mobility and cultural norms, London
1100-l700' in Laura Wright (ed.), The Development of Standard English
1300-1800: Theories, Descriptions, Coriflicts (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), pp. 93-114, esp. Figure 6.7; Peter McClure, 'Patterns of
migration in the late Middle Ages: the evidence of English place-name surnames'
, Economic History Review, 2nd series 32 (1979): pp. 167-82.
4 Reinhold
C. Mueller, 'Venetia facti privi/egio: les etrangers naturalises aVenise entre
XIV et XVI" siecle' in: Jacques Bottin and Donatella Calabi (eds), Les
Etrangers dans la Ville: minorites et espace urbain du bas Moyen Age /'epoque
moderen (Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 1999), pp.
171-81.
S For topics addressed in this
paragraph, see Derek Keene, 'Cities and cultural exchange', in Donatella Calabi
and Stephen Turk Christensen (eds), Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe,
volume JI, Cities and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400-1700 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 3-27.
6 Mark
Granovetter, 'The strength of weak ties', American Journal ofSociology 78
(1973), pp. 1360-80; Mark Granovetter, 'The strength of weak ties revisited',
Sociological Theory, (1983), pp. 201-33; Leslie Milroy, Language and Social
Networks (Oxford: Basil
them. Groups with strong internal
ties, arising from strong collective interest (sometimes in response to
external threats) and highly institutionalized systems of control, would tend
to resist external influences and maintain barriers between groups. Those with
weak ties might combine a sufficient degree of cohesion with an openness to
outsiders that would facilitate bridge-building between networks, innovation and
assimilation. In practice, the balance could be very fine and local
circumstances important for determining the outcome. In the Middle Ages it
seems that poor immigrants and those with a cultural and linguistic identity
which contrasted least with that of the host city, 'Flemings' or 'Dutch' in
medieval and early modem London for example, were absorbed most rapidly into
the general population, while wealthier, often mercantile, groups, whether
Jewish, German, French, Gascon or Italian, who had their own institutions and
often a strong collective interest in the right to trade, maintained a distinct
identity, expressed in language, dress and domestic customs, over the entire
period of their residence in London, sometimes over many generations. Such people
could also serve as cultural models for indigenous citizens, especially if they
were not separated by religion. Some ofthem clearly served as 'cultural
brokers' between minorities and the host society. Modem studies reveal some of
the complexities of assimilation, even among poorer groups. In immigrant
families first-generation males might conform to indigenous dress and
practices, at least in public, while their wives are more conservative and
separate from the host society. The second generation may more publicly express
their ethnic identity, while at the same time unconsciously adopting indigenous
practices or even those of other immigrant groupS.7 It is only rarely that the
evidence for medieval towns enables us to capture such subtleties.
There was a widespread feeling among
townspeople that they differed fundamentally from their rural neighbours, even
when they were ethnically and linguistically similar to them and above all in
their customs and laws. Those customs reflected the sanitary and social problems
that arose from the density of urban habitation and the need to develop rules
and protective frameworks to foster commerce. Particular points at issue here
concerned the desire oftownsmen to preserve their interests in distributive
trade against infringement by outsiders, whether local rustics or merchants
from afar. Protecting the market and the profit, both private and public, to be
derived from it, was an essential concern. Likewise, and especially in the
absence ofstrong external authority, towns often felt compelled to tighten and
extend their control over the territory outside, to protect trade, to secure
supplies and to establish defensible frontiers. Dante, who had clear ideas
concerning authority and governance, attributed the moral decline of Florence
to immigration from the contado -the surrounding dependent territory -arguing
that this would have been avoided had the boundary remained closer to the city
and
Blackwell, 2nd edn, 1987), pp.
199-204. Granovetter's work is widely cited in network and management theory. 7
See Gerd Baumann, Contesting Culture: discourses of identity in multi-ethnic
London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
INTRODUCTION
naming places no more than 30 km
distant from the city as sources of corruption.8 Similar ideas underlay the
notion that citizenship be restricted not just to the 'best' or most
'law-worthy' individuals or to the merchants of a town, but to those of
standing by virtue of property ownership, long residence and ancestry, thereby
excluding labourers, artisans, recent immigrants, and foreigners. Citizenship,
or degrees of it, was often a bone of contention. With regard to admitting
foreigners from overseas as citizens of London, for example, successive civic
regimes adopted different policies and at times the monarch favoured admitting
foreigners against the views of the citizens.9
In many parts of Europe and Asia
newcomers and strangers, whatever their origins and status, adopted similar
strategies of arrival and survival in towns and were often treated in similar
ways by state or civic authorities. For many, some form of chain migration was
doubtless the rule, involving advance knowledge of the journey and of where to
find lodging on arrival, very often with compatriots or other groups likely to
facilitate socialization. Long-range family and business networks could be
important here, especially for merchants, a group characterized by strong ties.
For artisans and labourers informal arrangements of this sort in social
environment predominantly characterized by weak ties were significant, and
economies of providing cheap lodging and other services for new arrivals became
embedded in certain parts of town. An example is the eastern suburb of the City
of London, which, like Manhattan's Lower East Side, accommodated successive
waves of poor immigrants from different parts of the world over a long period
and at the same time acquired a distinctive cluster of occupations that either
provided for their needs or could easily be entered by newcomers, a
characteristic that persisted through continual changes in the population.lo In
this case the city wall had no significance as a defining or excluding feature
and the pattern of settlement was determined essentially by the low value of
land in this peripheral zone.
Foreign merchants, by contrast,
usually gravitated to more central high-value sites, where their local
counterparts and the principal markets were to be found. Nevertheless, like the
poorer immigrants, they too probably depended on local networks of contacts
that would facilitate their arrival and accommodation. The
Paradiso, cantos 15-16; cf. Daniel
Waley, The Italian City-Republics (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), pp.
54-5.
9 For
partial and not entirely accurate accounts, see Gwyn A. Williams, Medieval
London: from Commune to Capital (London: The Athlone Press, 1963), pp. 253-4
and Caroline M. Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People,
12001500 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 39.
10 James
L. Bolton, 'The alien population of London in the fifteenth century: a
reappraisal', in James L. Bolton (ed.), The Alien Communities ofLondon in the
Fifteenth Century: the Subsidy Rolls of1440 & 1483-4 (Stamford: Paul
Watkins, 1998), pp. 1-46; Lien Bich Luu, Immigrants and the Industries
ofLondon, 1500-1700 (Aldershot: Ashgate: 2005), pp. 87-140.
streets known as Wahlgasse and
Wahlengasse in Cologne and Regensburg (Chapter 2), respectively, denoted
clusters of foreign merchants close to the principal markets and the river
frontages of those cities, while in Cologne another street of the same name in
the sparsely settled periphery of the city suggests the presence of a poorer
group of foreigners. 11 There was a similar district on London's river frontage,
on either side of the Walbrook, a stream whose name, first recorded by about
1100, probably denoted the presence of foreigners. 12 Merchants of Rouen, had
special rights there on the waterfront, perhaps by the mid eleventh century,
while in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries monarchs confirmed the merchants
of Cologne in possession of their guildhall nearby, where other Germans joined
them as neighbours, the group eventually establishing the enclosed cluster of
houses known as London's Steelyard. In the same neighbourhood during the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries foreigners, including those from southern
Europe, provided lodgings for their countrymen. In both London and Regensburg,
high-status officials supervised the foreign traders.13 By extending privileges
to foreigners, including exclusive rights over territory within the town,
monarchs promoted and regulated trade and served their own interests in the
acquisition of imported high-status goods and financial services, sometimes
contrary to the interests of local traders. In this they followed practices
derived from the ancient world, which in the Middle Ages were expressed in the
privileged sites known as fondaci, prevalent in the Mediterranean region,
Constantinople and the Black Sea. Germans extended the practice in northern
regions, by founding kontoren and acquiring comparable privileges from local
rulers at Bergen, Baltic ports, Novgorod and inland trading sites in central
Europe. 14 At various times Chinese, Japanese and other oriental rulers
followed similar policies, which for them, as
11 For
the location of these streets, see Deutscher Stiidtatlas, Regensburg (Lieferung
I nr. 8,1973) and Koln (Lieferung II, 1979), ed. H. Stoob. Hermann Keussen,
Topographie der Stadt Koln im Mittelalter, 2 vols plus folder of plans (Bonn:
P. Hausteins Verlag, 1910), i, pp. 58-9, ii, pp. 229-30.
12 Eilert
Ekwall, Street-Names 0/the City o/London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), pp.
193-4. The suggestion that the wal-element in the name Walbrook denotes 'foreigners'
rather than 'Britons' is my own.
13 Derek
Keene, 'Du seuil de la Cite a la formation d'une economie morale:
I'environnement hanseatique aLondres, entre XIIe et XVIIe siecle' in: Bottin
and Calabi (eds), Les Ittrangers, pp. 409-24; for the Regensburg official, see
J. Widemann (ed.), Regensburger Urkundenbuch I (Munich: Konigliche Akademie der
Wissenschaften, Monumenta Boica, 53,1910), nos. 63, 69,81,86.
14 Donatella
Calabi and Derek Keene, 'Merchants' lodgings and cultural exchange' in Calabi and
Christensen (eds), Cities and Cultural Exchange, pp. 315-48. See also: Jorgen
Bracker (ed.), Die Hanse: Lebenswirklichkeit und Mythos. Eine Austellung des
Museums fUr Hamburgische Geschichte in Verbindung mit der Vereins-und Westbank,
2 vols. (Hamburg: Museum/ar Hamburgische Geschichte, 1989), with revised texts
reprinted in JOrgen Bracker, Volker Henn and Rainer Postel (eds), Die Hanse:
Lebenswirklichkeit und Mythos (Liibeck: Schmidt-Romhild, 1998); Olivia Remie
Constable, Housing the Stranger
INTRODUCTION
ometimes for their European
counterparts, were also a means of containing the ~oreigners and emphasizing
their subordinate status.15
Only a minority of foreign merchants
occupied such communally owned establishments. Across Europe Italians, the richest
ofmercantile groups, generally inhabited private houses, often held on behalf
of family enterprises or business consortia. The way of life associated with
these establishments was not much different from that ofthe formal enclaves and
involved a degree ofsocial segregation from the host city. Most ofthe merchants
living there were young unmarried men, subject to a degree of regulation by
their elders which, however, failed to prevent them forming liaisons with and
fathering children on local women. Sometimes these households were perceived as
a more general threat to the women ofthe city, both married and unmarried. The
career cycle of many of these young merchants involved returning after a few
years to their home cities, where they made strategic marriages and pursued
politics. Some older merchants resided with their families for much longer
periods away from home, serving as intermediaries with the local authorities
and providing continuity in business. Such groups developed forms of
adjudication independent of the local courts, as at the Steelyard in London and
in the Italian consular houses that became part of the landscape of Bruges.
Despite not having consuls of their own, the London Italians (ruled by consuls
in Bruges), nevertheless made their mark on London's cultural landscape. The
early name for Lombard Street evolved so that it came to reflect the clustering
of Italian houses there. Their practice of socialization in the street and in
suburban gardens became a feature of the neighbourhood, where they assembled
and worshipped at a local friary (as they did in Bruges), chapel and parish
church. Several of their religious cults and practices of socialization, as
well as tastes in literature, philosophy and dress became established among
Londoners. Despite their more enduring presence, the Germans, who followed
similar practices, were less obviously influential. This perhaps reflected
their linguistic and other similarities to the English, as well as their lack
of resources by comparison with the Italians.
Across Europe as a whole foreign
groups in towns followed similar strategies, living in close proximity,
imposing their identity on public spaces such as streets or squares, assembling
and worshipping in churches which they adopted as their own, forming
fraternities and craft guilds for mutual protection and support and sometimes
developing formal judicial and regulatory institutions. This was especially the
case with merchants and scholars, but much less so with craftsmen and
labourers. Non-Christian and to a lesser extent non£,atholic groups were often
treat~d diff~renify:-aes~~~lth. !his is mo~t aW~iint ~lk~~ase of Jews, whose
speCIal status was often emphaSIzed by theIr dIrect subjection to regal or
quasi-regal authority rather than to that ofthe community oftownsmen. Occasions
in the Mediterranean World: Lodging,
Trade and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003). 15 Derek Keene, 'Cities and Empires', Journal 0/ Urban
History 32.1 (2005): pp. 8-21.
"'--'rk tJi ,
when Jews were admitted to local
guilds of merchants were rare, if not unique.16 Yet in many respects Jews
resembled other ethnic or mercantile minorities, at least until the
establishment of ghettoes in the sixteenth century.17 They lived together in
certain districts close to their places of worship and other facilities,
sometimes distinguished by place-names such as 'Jewry' or vicus Judeorum, but
not to the exclusion of Christian residents, despite periodic attempts by the
church to segregate the two. Often these neighbourhoods were close to the
principal areas of commerce, as in London, Winchester, Paris, Rouen or Cologne,
or to a royal castle that could offer protection from popular suspicion or
attack (cf. Chapter 12). The presence ofJews could also be a source ofwealth
and prestige for a town. In 1084 the bishop of Speyer, desiring to add to the
honour of his villa of Speyer and to make it an urbs, gathered Jews there and
settled them outside the area inhabited by the other citizens. He gave them
economic privileges and jurisdiction over their own affairs, while to protect
them from the common herd he surrounded them with a wall. 18 This did not
preserve them from attack at the time of the First Crusade and they quickly
moved the focus of their community to within the defended area of the city,
close to the centre of trade, where despite continuing persecution they
remained until the fifteenth century. In establishing the ghetto, the Venetians
devised an institution that appears to have been welcomed by Jews, enabling
them to pursue their way of life in a protected environment. Some decades later
Venice displayed a similar attitude towards the resident Turks, whom they had
good reason to treat well, recognizing that their fondaco should meet the
Turks' high standards of cleanliness and protect them from the moral risks of
the everyday Venetian environment.19 In their colonies, however, the Venetians
adopted contrary policies. Thus in Crete, following their acquisition of the
island in 1204, they reordered the spaces ofthe principal towns, imposing
characteristically Venetian and LatinChristian monuments on the centres and
marginalizing Orthodox Christians and their churches to the peripheries.20
Similarly, following the Norman conquest of
16 Michael
Adler, 'Benedict the Gildsman of Winchester', The Jewish Historical Society
ofEngland: Miscellanies 4 (1941): pp. 1-8. 17 Donatella Calabi, 'La cite
desjuifs en Italie entre XVe et XVIe siecle' in Bottin and Calabi (eds), Les
Etrangers, pp. 25--40. 18 Alfred Hildgard, Urkunden zur Geschichte der Stadt
Speyer (Strassburg: Karl J. Triibner, 1885), no. 1l.
19 Donatella
Calabi, Dorothea Nolde and Roni Weinstein, 'The "city of Jews" in
Europe: conservation and transmission of Jewish culture' in Calabi and
Christensen (eds), Cities and Cultural Exchange, pp. 87-113; Calabi and Derek
Keene, 'Merchants' lodgings and cultural exchange'.
20 Maria
Georgopoulou, Venice sMediterranean Colonies: Architecture and Urbanism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
INTRODUCTION
"1 the centres ofthe major towns were Christianized, while Muslims and
their
SICI y, ., f h b b 21
ues became charactenstIc 0 t e su ur s.
mosq ., h 1 1" 1 1" d
AcrosS Europe and the MedIterranean
regIOn as a woe po ItIca , re IgIOUS an ethnic distinctions, in association
with economic and demographic factors such.as land values, commercial
opportunities and the structure o~labour and.co.mn:odI~
had a major influence on patterns of
segregatIon and aSSImIlatIon III
markets , t ns in which it is possible
to identify features common to the whole area. In c~:trai and eastern Europe,
however, the historical characteristics of the region accounted for some
distinctive features. Among those characteristics, were the relative sparsity
of population and the limited degree of commercialization and monetization. One
expression of this was the relative absence of the offices of Italian
financiers, active in north western Europe since the twelfth century (cf.
Chapter2), from the eastern parts ofGermany and further east (other than in
Prague under the Luxemburg dynasty), even after the large-scale exploitation of
precious metals there during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. That
exploitation, however, did tie the region more closely to commercialized
territories lying to the south and west and stimulated urban growth, not least
to meet the needs ,of newly wealthy rulers. Moreover, even if Italians were
reluctant to set up banking houses in Central and Eastern Europe, as individuals
or as representatives of enterprises based in Italy they offered
administrative, financial, military and artistic skills, notably in Hungary
(Chapters 5, 12, 13) and Krak6w.22 In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the
eastern areas also attracted settlers and craftsmen from more densely populated
areas of Europe. They included Romance speakers (Gallici, Latini, ItaUci)
apparently from Lombardy, Lorraine and Flanders, who were welcomed by local
rulers and contributed to urban growth, often as elements that played an
important role in the formation of'a town from its very beginning. The Latini
probably included Italian merchants, at least in Regensburg, which in the
twelfth century was an important centre for trade via Venice. From the later
twelfth century onwards Germans and Saxons succeeded the Romance speakers as
settlers, certainly in eastern areas, and they became increasingly prominent
after the Mongol invasions (Chapters 2, 5, 6, 7). The intermixture of incoming
and indigenous populations in towns was complex and varied locally, but was
marked by a greater degree of internal difference than was generally the case
in western Europe, and by a stronger contrast on ethnic lines between
commercial town centres, which tended to be dominated by Germans, and the
21 Ronald
J. C. Broadhurst (trans!.), The Travels ofIbn Jubayr (London: Jonathan Cape,
1952), pp. 340-50.
22 Peter
Spufford, Money and its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988), pp. 252-5,267-73,282,342,394; see also Derek Keene, 'England and
Poland: medieval metropolises compared', in Richard Unger and Jakub Basista
(eds), Britain and Poland-Lithuania: Contact and Comparison from the Middle
Ages to 1795 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), pp. 147-63. See also David Gaimster,
German Stoneware 1200-1900: Archaeology and Cultural History (London: British
Museum Press, 1997).
SEGREGATION -INTEGRATION -ASSIMILATION
indigenous Slavic or Hungarian
populations ofthe suburbs and countryside. Such arrangements bear comparison with
those of English towns in Ireland or parts of Wales, regions that were likewise
peripheral in relation to the main European centres of commerce and power.
While the names of streets and districts indicate neighbourhoods associated
with ethnic groups (Chapters 3, 4, 5), they do not necessarily indicate
segregation, for personal names, linguistic borrowing and the need to be
familiar with several languages for the purposes of administration, commerce
and preaching indicate significant degrees of convergence between populations
and cultures, if not assimilation (Chapters 3, 7, 13). Material culture
reflected these developments. Thus in the 'Russian' district of Tartu German
artefacts superseded those of Russian type, although the latter continued in
use for some everyday purposes (Chapter 3). The general acceptance of
Hanseaticstyle artefacts by the Slavic populations of the southern Baltic area
is striking, but even more so is the resistance to them in Novgorod, where
their use appears to have been confined to the Peterhof, the German trading
enclave established in the twelfth century, a firm statement ofRussian identity
and control in this seat of
Russian princely authority.23
Lying between developing consumer
markets in western Europe and networks ofexchange in the Levant and the Black
Sea which handled products from Africa India and Asia, central and eastern
Europe was traversed by land and river tradin~
routes which connected the two zones,
via intermediate centres such as Lviv (probably preceded by Halych), Krak6w,24
Prague, Regensburg, Nuremberg, Mainz and Cologne. In the earlier medieval
period Jewish and Muslim merchants ~ndc?ntacts with Kiev were important in this
trade, a pattern altered by the Mongol mvaSIOns. Subsequently, Jews continued
to play a significant role, now also being welcomed after their expUlsion from
western Europe; they were joined by Armenians, who though established in
Plovdiv by the twelfth century later spread more widely (Chapters 4, 5, 7, 9,
11). German groups in eastern Europe became active participants in this
trans-European trade, while at the same maintaining their distinctive identity
and close contacts with the core German areas to the west and north (Chapters
6, 7). In 1224, for example, the Cologne pfennig was used as a monetary
standard in Transylvania, while later Nuremberg merchants and capital
23 David
Gaimster, 'The Baltic ceramic market 1200-1600: measuring Hanseatic cultural
transfer and resistance', in Hennan Roodenburg (ed.), Cultural Exchange in
Early Modern Europe, volume TV, Forging European Identities, 1400-1700
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 30-58.
24 Paul W.
Knoll. 'The urban development of medieval Poland, with particular reference to
Krak6w' in Barilla Krekic (ed.), Urban Society ofEastern Europe in Premodern
Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 63-136; Francis W.
Carter. Trade and Urban Development in Poland: an Economic Geography of Cracow,
from its Origins to 1795 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
INTRODUCTION
and the route down the Vistula to the
Baltic became ever more significant.25 The importance of this oriental trade
for the self-identity of the Germans is apparent from the numbers ofAnatolian
carpets preserved not only in major centres such as Bra~ov but also in the
churches ofmany lesser fortified towns in Transylvania.26
Most of the towns discussed in this
volume had mixed populations arising from migration and trade. The presence of
ethnic groups was often expressed in the names of streets, indicating the
formation of networks of mutual support, although as elsewhere in Europe this
tendency to cluster seems rarely to have lead to the exclusive occupation of
neighbourhoods or quarters by single groups and often may have been determined
as much by economic as ethnic interests. Patterns of intermixture varied
greatly from town to town, even within a single region, and also changed over
time. Nevertheless, north ofBulgaria and away from the Adriatic there was a
tendency for the German mercantile influence to increase, so that towns
acquired a predominantly German character, by contrast with the overwhelmingly
Slavic or Hungarian populations of the countryside or the suburbs.
Nevertheless, the latter groups were also to be found in the centre oftowns, in
some regions along with Romanians and Cumans, while German settlers were by no
means confined to the towns. Ethnic differences were sometimes associated w ith
occupational ones and the names of guilds names often included an ethnic element,
which in Buda could refer to the majority of their members, as with the German
butchers, or to the distinctive character ofthe production process, as with the
Hungarian tailors or the German tanners. In southern Hungary Romanians and
Cumans, still far from sedentary in the thirteenth century, subsequently
remained excluded from urban privileges and were often associated with the
rearing of livestock. Inevitably, such towns were characterized by the use of
several languages and probably by the widespread employment of mixed language
for commercial purposes. Elites sometimes crossed linguistic divides, using
languages other than their own for admi~~nor preaching (Chapters 2-7,13).
~el~i,9n'often
a~:mted for th5;..grsatest degree of segregation. Most clearly r outside-the
Christian community were the Jews. Protected and encouraged by tJf
25 Maria
Pakucs-Willcocks, Sibiu-Hermannstadt: Oriental trade in sixteenth-century
Transylvania (Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: B6hlau, 2007), passim; for the pfennig
standard at Sibiu, see Franz Zimmermann and Carl Wemer (eds), Urkundenbuch zur
Geschichte der Deutschen in Siebenbiirgen, 3 vols (Hildesheim: Georg Olms,
2007; reprint of Hermannstadt edition of 1892-1902), I, no. 43; for the
influence of the Cologne pfennig, see Spufford, Money, p. 192, and for
Nuremberg, Carter, Trade and Urban Development and Peter Spufford, Power and
Profit: the Merchant in Medieval Europe (London: Thames & Hudson, 2002),
pp. 390-95.
26 The
surviving examples are usually dated to the seventeenth century, but this type
of carpet was widespread in Europe by 1500 and produced over a long period:
Gordon Campbell (ed.), The Grove Encyclopaedia ofDecorative Arts, 2 vols (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2006), i, pp. 189-90; cf. Pakucs-Willcocks, Sibiu-Hermannstadt,
pp. 96-7, lOS-IS.
SEGREGATION -INTEGRATION -ASSIMILATION
kings, they were often
independent~~the urban jurisdiction and excluded from participation in retail
trade, as a(~viv, . hi le the district in which they settled was often close to
the seat of royal au onty, as at first in Buda (Chapters 4, 12). Armenians,
though Christian, occupied a similar positiont;Je-ws: they had their )
h· d'" I rt;.
.....;:;. :)
own pacesI 0 f wors lp, a lstmctlve
angllage -aJ:\d were regarded as heretics. In Ohrid and elsewhere in Bulgaria
the "Armenians) were spatially segregated "~ and attempts were made
to convert and assimilate them (Chapter 9). In Lviv \ \,'f\\'l ~e~ians
encountered con~iderable hostility from the urban elite which limited , T'!'\
theIr nghts to trade, but theIr customs, freedom to worship and autonomy were
::;""'"_'fi) guar<;Rt..e~A .by the crown. The Lviv
authorities likewise attempted to marginalize '"
the'9rth.£.dox,"lindigenous Ruthenians (Chapter 4). The short-lived Tocco
regime in Epirus f6ilowed a colonizing policy which resembled that of the
Venetians in Crete, drawing legitimacy from a Byzantine title, but shifting the
capital and
it' maintaining a distance from its
Orthodox subjects by following the court customs ..JrL~dreligion ofNaples
(Chapter 10).
In much of Central Europe ideas of
citizenship derived from those extended to foreign 'guests' (hospites),
immigrants or merchants from western and southern Europe. The rights granted to
the'Latins' of Szekesfehervar in the early thirteenth century became a model
for Hungarian royal charters to other towns, and the tenn 'guest', which could
also denote internal migrants, was extended to cover others who shared the same
privileges, although eventually the tenn 'citizen' (civis) came to be preferred
to that of 'guest' (hospes). The increasing presence of Gennans and their
engagement in commerce made the customs of Gennan towns increasingly
influential in the regulations of urban affairs (Chapter 5). Nevertheless,
Gennan town law could co-exist with other laws. At Lviv, for example, four
ethnic groups were allowed to use their own laws, but the Magdeburg law granted
to the'citizens' (largely Gennans and Poles) had a superior status (Chapter 4).
At Krak6w for more than half a century after the general adoption of Gennan
customs, non-Gennans were excluded from citizenship. During the fourteenth
century in Krak6w itself the popUlation was mixed, including Jews and
Hungarians as well as Gennans, while in the adjoining, and in effect suburban,
towns of Kazimierz and Kleparz only Poles dwelled. Krak6w's trade guilds came
increasingly to admit Poles and in the fifteenth century many of the town's
Jews moved to Kazimierz.27 Similar patterns prevailed in some Hungarian towns,
but overall the degree to which town governments admitted all corners or
attempted to keep non-Gennans out varied widely and seems not strictly to have
correlated either with the prevalence of Gennans among the population of the
region or with the isolation of a Gennan
town within a non-Gennan territory,
while in some towns, including Buda and Zagreb, principles of parity came to be
followed in the make up of town councils (Chapters 2, 4-6, 13).
27 Carter,
Trade and Urban Development; Philippe Dollinger, La Hanse (XIIe-XVIIe siixles)
(Paris: Aubier, 1964), p. 158.
INTRODUCTION
The case of Dubrovnik (Chapter 8)
illustrates the complex issues that had
bearing on citizenship in a commercial
city isolated within an ethnically and a lturally different hinterland with
which it had close trading relations. In this c~d other respects it resembled
Venice, despite the enmity between the two cities. ~ubrovnik provides a good
example of the degrees of 'liberty', citizenship or
rotection which might be enjoyed by
the residents of a town, a feature common fhroughout Europe but especially
notable in central and eastern areas marked by the intennixture of ethnically
~istinct populations. It also e~~mpl.ified the common characteristic of a
progreSSIve closure, or at least of defimtIOn, m access to citizenship and
office holding.28 As a commercial city its inhabitants used several languages,
and it welcomed and protected foreigners who quickly adapted to its way of
life. At the same time it erected barriers against outsiders from the
hinterland, as Slavs, as members of the Orthodox Church or as heretics, yet it
did not cease to trade with them. Even more acutely than in Venice, political
and strategic interests nevertheless dictated that the Turks, who came to
control the surrounding territory, be treated as special guests.
These essays deal with a number of
themes concerning social and political inclusion and exclusion that were common
to towns throughout medieval T Europe. The themes themselves reflect the
contrasts, and at the same time the interdependence, between urban and nrral
ways of life; the significance for status and privilege of engagement in
different types of commercial activity, !from local and retail to long-distance
and wholesale; the role ofreligion, and to a lesser extent of language, as
cultural and political marker~erewlonshipbetween towns and states or other
fonns of territorial rule. Everywhere, there was considerable local variation
in how these general principles worked out in practice. By addressing the
subject in regions where patterns of settlement, commerce, and engagement with
peoples outside Europe were over a long period often in sharp contrast to those
of western regions, and thereby prompting comparison and contrast, these essays
contribute to a wider understanding of the ever-continuing phenomenon of the
reception of strangers in towns .
. ~!
}
28 For a
discussion of these issues in England, set within a wider field of reference,
see Susan Reynolds, An Introduction to the History ofEnglish Medieval Towns
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), pp. 119-26, 171-7.
3333
Cities, Texts and Social Networks,
400-1500
Experiences and Perceptions of
Medieval Urban Space
Edited by
CAROLINE GOODSON
Birkbeck College, University of
London, UK
' .
ANNE E. LESTER
University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
CAROL SYMES
University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign, USA
ASHGATE
I
l/
© Caroline
Goodson, Anne£. Lester and Carol Symes and the contributors 2010
AH rights reserved, No part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Caroline Goodson, Anne E. lester and
Carol Symes have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act,1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
Published by
AshgatePublishingLimited0'-{Q J\ Ashgate Publishing Company
Wey Court East ' Suite 420 Union Road
101 CherryStreet Farnham Burlington
Surrey, GU9 7PT VT 05401-4405 England
USA
www.ashgate.com
8R1TJSH
LiBRARY CATALOGUlNG rN P'JB!JCATION DATA
Cities, Texts, and Social Networks,
400~ 1500: Experiences and Perceptions of Medieval Urban Space.
1. Cities
and towns, Medieval 2.Urbanecology (Sociology) -History--To 1500,
3. Cityandtownlife
-History-To 1500.
I. Goodson. Caroline. JI, Lester. Anne
Elisabeth. 1974-,m,Symes. Carol.
307.7'6'o902-dc22
LIBRAJ'fi Of CcNGR£SS
CATA!.c<;-JNG-!N-Pm1.ucATJON
DATA
Goodson, Caroline. Cities, Texts, and
Social Networks, 400-1500: Experiences and Perceptions of Medieval Urban Space/
Caroline Goodson, Anne E, Lester, and Carol Symes.
p. cm, L Cities and towns, Medieval.
2, City and town life History To 1500. 3, Cities and towns, ~edieval
-History--Sources, 4, City and town life HlstOry -To 1500 -Sources.5, Social
networks -History -To 1500. 6. Space perception -History To 1500, 7. Religion
and sociology -History -To 1500, 8. Charities -History To 1500. 9. Public
institutions -History-To 1500. 10, Human ecology-HistoryTo 1500, I.
Lester,AnneElisabeth, 1974-. II. Symes, Carol. Ill. Title. HT115,G6665 2op9
307.76--dc22 ' 2009043769
ISBN 9780754667230 (hbk) Printed and
bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, ComwaII
Contents
vfi
List of Illustrations
xi ListofContribators XV.-Preface
1 Introduction
1 Ca1olineGoodson,Anne£.
Lester and Carol Symes
PART I: CONSTRUCTING AND RESTRUCTURlNG
Writing and Restoration in Rorr_ie:
Inscriptions, Statues
2 21
and the Late Antique Preservation
ofBuddmgs
GregorKalas
3 How tofound an
Islamic City 45 HughKennedy
Metropolitan Architecture, Demographics
and the
4 65
Urban Identity of Paris in the
Thirteenth Century
Meredith Cohen
PART 2:TOPOGRAPHIES ASTEXTS
103The
Meaning of Topography in umayyad Cordoba
5
Ann Christys
crafting a Charitable Landscape: Urban
Topographies in charters
6 125
and Testaments from Medieval Champagne
Anne£. Lester
Anger andSpectacle in Late Medieval
Rome: Gauging Emotion in Urba;:9
7
Topography .
Joiille Rollo-Koster and Alizah
Ho/stem
PART 3: cmZENS AND SAINTS
Local Sanctity and Civic Typology in
Early Medieval Pavia:
s 177
TheExample of the cult of AbbotMaiolus
of Cluny
Scott G. Bruce
vi Cities,TextsandSocial
Networks, 400-1500
9 Cities and Their
Saints in England, circa 1150· 1300: The De~el~pment of BourgeoL, Values in the
cults of Samt Wilham of York and Saint Kenelm of Winchcombe
Sarah Rees Jones
10 The Myth of Urban
Unity: Religion and Social Performance m Late Medieval Braunschweig
Fram-JosefArlinghaus
PART 4: AGENCY AND AUTHORITY
11 City as Charter:
Charily and the Lordship of English Towns
1170-1250 Sethina Watson '
12 'The Best.Place in the
World': Imaging Urban Prisons in Late Medieval Italy G. Geitner
13 Out in the Open, in
Arras: Sightlines, Soundscapes and the Shaping of a Medieval Public Sphere
CarolSymes
Bibliography Index
193
215
235
263
279
303 347
List of Illustrations
Map of Sites Discussed (based on A.
Jarvis, H.I. Reuter,
O.l
A, Nelson, E. Guevara, 2008,
Hole-filled seamless SRTM data V 4, International Centre for Tropical
Agriculture
ii
(CIAT),available from
http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org)
Rome, Plan of the Roman Forum in circa
405 CE
2.1
25
(drawing by
Andrew Ruff),
Rome, Statue Base of Constantius II in
the Roman Forum
2.2
27
(photo: author)
Rome, Statue Base of Stilicho in the
Roman forum
2.3 28
(photo: Fototeca Unione,
American Academy in Rome) Rome, Portico of the Harmonized Gods in the Roman
Forum
2.4
(photo: Fototeca Unione,
American Academy in Rome) 33
38
Rome, Temple of Saturn in the Roman
Forum (photo: author)
2.5
Rome, Temple of Saturn, detail of
inverted frieze
2.6
39(photo:
Fototeca Unione, American Academy in Rome)
69
Plan of the Walls of Philip Augustus
(Map:© Parigramme, Paris)
4.1 Paris, Notre-Dame,
south tower, circa 1230-40 (photo: author) 76
4,2 Ste-Chapelle, exterior elevation from South, circa 1239-48
4.3 (photo: David Bordes © CMN, Paris) 77
4.4. Capital from the
archaeological site at St-Symphorien, first half of the thirteenth century
(photo:© Musee Carnavalet) 79 Capital from archaeological site of the Hc\tel
Dieu, second
4.5
half of the thirteenth century
(photo:© Musee Carnavalet) 79 Ste-Chapelle, exterior upper chapel capital,
circa 1239-48 4.6
80
(photo: author)
4.7 St-Pierre-aux-Boeufs,
engraving, end of the eighteenth century 81(photo: Musee de Notre-Dame, © C.
Delpancq)
4.8 St-Pierre-aux-Boeufs, portal embrasure, circa 1230 (in situ at
82St-Severin) (photo: author)
4.9 Lady Chapel, St-Germain-des-Pres, portal embrasure, circa 1240
(located
at the Musee national du Moyen-Age, Thermes
83de Cluny)
(photo: author)
4.10 Cloister of the College
of Cluny, engraving, nineteenth century
(photo:
© Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, Estampes
87
Va 260 j fol)
88St-Severin,
thirteenth-century bays (photo: author) 4.11
Chapel of the college of cluny,
drawing by A.F.Pernot, 1824
4.12
89(photo:© Musee
carnavalet)
1,1
Chapter 6
Crafting a Charitable Landscape: Urban
Topographies in Charters and Testaments from Medieval Champagne
Anne E. Lester
The places we have known do not belong
only to the world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. They
were only a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed
our life at the time; the memory of a particular image is but regret for a
particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the
years.
Marcel Proust, 'Place-Names, The Name'1
In January 1255 Peter 'called the Jew
of Bar-sur-Aube, sound of mind, drew up his will.'' As Peter enumerated his
goods and properties and had a scribe commit them to the parchment page, he
recreated a long familiar landscape of personal possession and charity, which
he inhabited in his memory and which he crystallized into a descriptive text.
Although Peter mentioned numerous friends and relatives on whom he bestowed
property, rents, cash and objects, all of these references were situated within
the local topography of his experience ofBar-surAube and the region of
Champagne. His testament provides a verbal description of the urban space of
one of Champagne's fair towns and the charitable landscape that Peter and his
contemporaries had conceptualized and knew well. In this way, places, inside
and outside the town, and spaces, charitable or profitable, function as the
organizing framework in which both people and property take on meaning. As he
composed, Peter walked his landed possessions, from those places where he
collected rents and held vineyards, to the hospices of the poor and the house
of lepers. Through his will, we are privy to his construction and experience of
space as we walk with him, through his memory and perception
1
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time,
trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised D.J. Enright (New
York, 1998), vol. 1 Swann's Way, p. 606.
2
'Petrus,dictusJudeusde
Barro super Albam, ...compos men tis mee,condidi testamentum meum'. Peter's
will is one of several testaments found within the archives of Clairvaux, now
housed in the Archives departementales de l'Aube [hereafter AD Aube], 3 H 336
Oanuary 1255). For an edition of the text, see Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville,
'Etudes Historique', Revue des sociitis savants, 2nd series, 1 (1859): 33-48,
at 45-8.
[Cl'
! ·",
''1
l
I,;
126 Cities, Texts and
Social Networks, 400-1500
i
'
1
I',,1
i.1 1·.1'·,,··
i';1·1 ·.Ii:
,,
+ '
W ..." _,,"W ..,_ .. ,_ .. W,,_
..,_ ..
river and canals 100 200 300 metres
fortifications
i11t.11!
1
11i1..
1
1,·, ,1
1-,I '!, ! II
Fig. 6.1 Map ofBar-sur-Aube (based on Elizabeth Chapin, Lesvillesde foires
de Champagne: Des origines au debut du
XIVe siecle (Paris, 1937), pl.
i:,1·,,
'·
l'I
III). Scale 1: 10,000.
Iii ,
':;
of his neighbourhood (vico)and its
familiar streets and surroundings.' Likewise,
as he dispenses alms in the second
half of his testament, the reader progresses
with Peter through a landscape of
charity that rings the town of Bar-sur-Aube
•llli
!ii
and then radiates outward to the North and South.'
+ 3 I have taken
vicus to mean 'neighbourhood' in documents from Champagne, although many
scholars translate it as 'street'. Either would be acceptable, but there are a
'Ii
!I number of descriptive and relational markers in these texts that
reflect more clearly the idea of a neighbourhood or area within a town.
4 Peter
was part of a circle of burghers in Bar-sur-Aube who routinely served as
witnesses for donations charters. In these texts he is referred to under a
several different appellations: 'petrus cognom[en]tus iudei' (AD Aube, 3 H 10,
1216); 'petrus clericus Barri cognom[en]tusjudeus'(ADAube,3 H 9, 1218; also3 H
10, 1219, 1221, and 1222); and 'Petrus cognom[en]tusiudeus de Barro sup[er]
Alba[m] et]aq[ue]ta uxorsua; when he and his wife gave two pieces of vineyards
to the portaor gate of clairvaux to provide for the poor (AD Aube, 3 H 10,
1239). My assumption is that Peter was a Jewish convert to Christianity. In his
will, he mentions his father, Abraham, but mentions no children and bequeaths
most of his goods, rents and properties to members of his wife's family, (whom
he refers to as his nepos and neptis).Concerning Jewish converts to
Christianity from Champagne, see Emily Taitz, The Jews of Medieval France: The
Community of Champagne (Westport, Conn., 1994); William
AnneE.Lester
Peter begins his geographical progress
from inside the town walls of Barsur-Aube (fig. 6.1), giving to his nephews
vineyards and part of his house in the neighbourhood of the parish of
Ste-Magdalene near the gate that led to the town of Brienne. To his female
relatives, he bestows properties closer to the centre of town: gardens near the
hostel owed by the monks of Clairvaux, and rents from nearby properties. From
here, Peter moves to the southern limit of Bar, where the town is bound by the
river Aube. From the lands he holds here, he gives fields and newly-planted
vineyards to the domus Dei,or hospital, of St-Esprit and to the Cistercian nuns
ofVal-des-Vignes. 5 To the lepers ofBar-sur-Aube, he gives lands along the same
road, leading west from the town; to the canons of Belroy and the monks of
Clairvaux more vineyards in the same area are given for making wine to
celebrate the mass.6 Peter then bestows money in cash from the rents he
possesses beyond the bridge, which he gives to relatives, and to the lepers and
the deans of Bar and Chaumont. At this point, Peter starts his perambulation
again, this time giving alms to the religious and charitable foundations in the
town. He walks a circuit roughly from west to east, giving annual rents to the
canons of St-Maclou for the celebration of an anniversary mass in his name; 40
solidifor the construction of his parish church of Ste-Magdalene, 40 solidifor
the priest there, 10 solidifor his chaplain, 5 solidifor his clerk; 20 solidito
the monks of St-Pierre as a pittance, 10 solidifor the dean; 5 solidi for the
chaplain; 3 solidi
Chester Jordan, 'Adolescence and
Conversion in the Middle Ages: A Research Agenda; in Michael A. Singer and John
Van Engen (eds),Jews and Christians in Twelfth-Century Europe, (Notre Dame,
2001), pp. 77-93; Joseph Shatzmiller, 'Jewish Converts to Christianity in Medieval
Europe: 1200-1500,' in Michael Goodich, Sophia Menache and Sylvia Schein (eds),
Cross Cultural Convergences in the Crusader Period: Essays Presented to Aryeh
Grabois on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (New York, 1995), pp. 297-318; and Chaviva
Levin,Jewish Conversion to Christianity in Medieval Northern Europe Encountered
and Imagined, 1100-1300 (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, New York University,
2006).
5 On
the emergence of hospitals dedicated to the Holy Spirit or St-Esprit in
Champagne, see Herni d'Arbois de Jubainville, 'Etudes sur les documents
anterieurs a l'annee 1285, conserves dans les archives des quatres petits
hOpitaux de la ville de Troyes',
Memoires de la Sociite acadimique
d'agriculture, des sciences, arts et belles-lettres du dipartement de!'Aube
[hereafter MSA],21 (1857): 49-116, at 65-6. The hospital of the Holy Spirit is
first mentioned in Troyes in 1203. In his study ofBar-sur-Aube, Arbois de
Jubainville notes that a hospital of the Holy Spirit is first mentioned in
1264, 'in vico Brene, ante domum hospitalis Sancti Spiritus.' Peter's mention
of the hospital in 1225, in the same neighboU:rhood, suggests that the hospital
had been in place even earlier. See Henri d' Arbo is de Jubainville, Histoire
de Bar-sur-Aube sous les comtes de Champagne, 1077-1284(Paris, 1859), pp. 84-5.
6 Belroy
(Bello Regis) was a priory of canons of the order ofVal-des-Ecoliers, founded
in 1217 near the castle of Bligny in the lordship of Chacenay, not far from
Bar-sur-Aube. On Belroy, see Charles Lalore, 'Notice sur le prieure de Belroy
(Aube)', MSA,24 (1887): 169-96; Arthur Daguin, 'Charles du prieure de Belroy
(Aube)', MSA,24 (1887): 163-8. Peter and his wife Jaquette gave the canons of
Belroy several vines in various locations in a donation of February 1237.
:1,'
"'
!i
'!
Cities, Texts and Social Networks,
400-1500
128
for the clerk; 20 solidifor the church
of St-Maclou; likewise, 40 solidifor work on the hospital of St-Nicholas of
Bar, 20 solidifor the nuns there; 10 solidifor the converted women in the same
hospital; 20 solidito the poor of the Holy Spirit.'
eplscop;,I
estate
Fig.6.2 Map of Troyes (based on
Elizabeth Chapin, Les villes de foires de Champagne: Desoriginesau debut du
XIVe siecle (Paris, 1937), pl. II. Scale 1 : 25,000.
Peter then leaves the walls of
Bar-sur-Aube and gives the traditional sum of 20 solidi to a host of
foundations that open out from his home town in concentric circles: to the
monks of parish of St-Germaine just beyond the southern gate of Bar-sur-Aube; to
the nuns of Ormont;" to the Franciscan and Dominican friars living at the
farthest reach of his topographical imaginary in Langres, Dijon, Chateauvillain
and Troyes; as well as 20 solidifor work on the church of St-Martin in Paris
(fig. 6.3). Not surprisingly, the town most familiar to Peter beyond
Barsur-Aube was the neighbouring fair town and comital capital of Troyes {fig.
6.2) Here, in the conceptual landscape of his testament, he walks again through
the well-known urban space, from periphery to centre, giving in turn to the
Cistercian nuns ofNotre-Dame-des-Pr€s
outside Troyes and the Cistercian nuns
7
For the locations of these hospitals
and churches within and outside Bar-sur-Aube, see Arbo is de Jubainville,
Histoire de Bar-sur-Aube.
8
Forthe foundation histories of the
Cistercian nunneries mentioned in Peter's will (Val-des-Vignes, Ormont,
Notre-Dame-des-Pres and La-Pi€t€ of Ramerupt), see the detailed inventory
compiled byAnne Bondeelle-Souchier, 'Les moniales cisterciennes et leur livres
manuscrits dans la France d'ancien regime', Cfteaux,45 (1994): 193-337.
Anne E. Lester
of La Piete, and to each of the
hospitals and domus Dei inside the wall of Troyes, at St-Esprit, St-Abraham,
St-Nicholas and the H6tel-Dieu in the count's palace.'
Peter's will is exemplary of the kinds
of texts that were drawn up beginning in the early decades of the thirteenth
century, texts that articulated and shaped the urban spaces of the towns of
Champagne. Peter's landed possessions, his house in Bar and his urban gardens
fill out the landscape of the once-thriving fair town just as his charitable
bequests allow us to populate the urban and suburban space with its hospitals,
poor women and lepers. These charitable locations, as Peter's will makes clear,
were a vivid part of the experience of urban life and death. Through his
bequests, Peter, like many of his contemporaries, supported these charities and
cared for the poor and sick, but also paid for the construction of the houses
and hospitals that formed the fabric of the town. His donations for the
construction of his parish church, of St-Maclou, and the hospital of
St-Nicholas literally built his urban world. Unlike foundation documents that
record the creation of hospitals, nunneries and leper houses on the part of
secular lords and bishops, charters and testaments drawn up by laymen make
clear that urban residents were active participants in the production of their
urban landscapes, not mere consumers or beneficiaries, and that they considered
carefully where and how to build and augment a hospital or hospice, townhouse,
or market place." It was important to men and women alike -particularly as
they considered their final ends -to support spaces that sanctified their
cities and towns, that offered care for people within their midst, and that
articulated the communal experience of the town as a social body, for such
spaces symbolized and provided for, and in effect generated, the urban
community. u
The charters and testaments that men
and women in Champagne drew up over the course of the thirteenth century, when
read as descriptive texts, reveal the production and experience of urban space
in evocative and telling ways. Typically scholars have analysed these documents
of practice for the relationships they encode and for the social networks and
bonds such interactions produced. Yet as men and women used texts for
transactions involving urban
9 For
the hospitals of Troyes, see Arbois deJubainville, 'Etudes sur les documents
anterieurs al'annee 1285'.
10 For
acts of foundations, see Sethina Watson, 'City as Charter,' in this volume. See
also Miri Rubin, 'Imagining Medieval Hospitals: Consideration on the Cultural
Meaning of Institutional Change,' in Jonathan Barry and Colin Jones (eds),
Medicine and Chcirity before the Welfare State(London,1991), pp. 14-25.
11 For
communities functioning as part of a larger social body, see Marcia Kupfer,
'Symbolic Cartography in a Medieval Parish: From Spatialized Body to Painted
Church at Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher', Speculum,75 (2000): 615-67; and more
generally Marcia Kupfer, The Art of Healing: Painting for the Sick and the
Sinner in a Medieval Town (University Park, PA, 2003). For a similar idea of
how urban communities functioned as a social whole within the city, see
Augustine Thompson, Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes,
11251325 (University Park.PA, 2005), particularly pp. 141-77.
; ! I
: I
Cities,TextsandSocial Networks,
400-1500
130
space, they developed a language that
both conjured and produced their urban worlds. The practice of describing
property and its place began in earnest with the creation of feudal registers
for the benefit of the counts, but the inhabitants of Champagne used and
elaborated on the same language to give verbal and written form to their own
spaces in their personal transactions. The clear and increasingly precise
articulation of space also coincided with the production of new neighbourhoods
and charitable institutions. These areas just beyond a town's walls and along
its margins became spaces of charity and salvation where the poor and sick
received alms and care. While charters are evocative of an urban and suburban
topography, the movement within and through the urban and suburban landscape is
suggested in the descriptive clauses of final testaments, like Peter's, that
bequeath goods and properties to individuals and institutions in a relational
cartography. Champagne's mundane texts of sales, donations and wills thus offer
a window into the narrative strategies men and
women used to frame their experience
of urban space and its margins.12
DESCRIPTIVEPRACTICESIN CHAMPAGNE
In champagne, as in other parts of
Europe, the decades on either side of 1200 were
a turning point in the use and
proliferation of written records." Traditionally
the preserve of ecclesiastical
institutions and the land-holding elite, charters,
cartularies, registers and sealed
letters patent came to be employed in new
ways and with greater frequency by the
lesser aristocracy and the growing
urban bourgeoisie in the fair towns.
The principality of Champagne was at the
forefront of the bureaucratic
revolution that allowed counts and kings from
Flanders to Barcelona to control and
administer their territories with ever
increasing efficiency and
detail." In 1178, the counts of Champagne began lo
12 On
the production and use of space, see Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space,
11': ''
trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford,
1991); and Michel de Certeau, The Practice of
,ii[!! Everyday
Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley, 1984).
,,' I,
13 See,
of course, Michael T. Clanchy, from Memory to Written Record, England 1~66
1307,2nd Edition (London, 1993); and Robert F. Berkhofer, Day of Reckoning:
Powerand Accountability in Medieval France (Philadelphia, 2004).
14 See
Robert-Henri Bautier, 'Cartulaires de chancellerie et recueils d'actes des
autorite la'iques et ecclesiastiques', in Olivier Guyotjeannin, Laurent Morelle
and Michel Parisse (eds), Les cartulaires: Actes de la table ronde organisie
par /'Ecole nationale des chartes et le G.D.R.121 du C.N.R.S. (Paris, 5-7
decembre 1991) (Memoires et documents de l'Ecole des
chartes, 39) (Paris, 1993), pp.
363-77; and Theodore Evergates, 'The Earliest Comital
Cartulary from Champagne', in Adam J.
Kosto and Anders Winroth (eds), Charters, Cartularies, and Archives: The
Preservation of Transmission of Documents in the Medieval West,
(Papers in Medieval Studies, 17)
(Toronto, 2002),pp. 128-36.
Anne E. Lester
131
maintain feudal records that initially
consisted of lists of their fiefholders." These lists were elaborated and
expanded over the course of the thirteenth century as the comital
administration began to make use ofletters patent, that is open documents to
which aristocratic seals were affixed authenticating the contents, which
described the feudal obligations the aristocracy owed the count, and which were
systematically copied into registers.'' To promote the use and organization of
written records within the principality, the counts founded several new houses
of secular canons, notably St-Etienne in Troyes, St-Quiriace in Provins and
St-Maclou in Bar-sur-Aube, which supported canons who were employed in the
comital administration." By the late twelfth century, the three
most prominent fair towns in Champagne
housed permanent comital residences
and chancelleries. St-Etienne in
Troyes, the largest of the three foundations, became the permanent archive and
treasury for the counts and it was here that the multi-volume administrative
registers were copied and augmented throughout the thirteenth century."
The creation and maintenance of feudal
records relied upon gathering and ordering information about the county. Over
the course of the thirteenth century, fiefholders of the count were repeatedly
asked to describe and value their properties either orally before the count's
officials or occasionally in written form, when they could not personally be
present to account for their holdings and obligations.19 As a consequence,
fiefholders (who constituted an ever-widening social group increasingly
composed of non-noble landholders), those who held rents rather than property,
and women all acquired a proficiency
15 See
Theodore Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 1100-1300
(Philadelphia, 2007), pp. 15-21.
16 Evergates,
Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, pp. 28-31, 36-50; Theodore Evergates,
'The Chancery Archives of the Counts of Champagne: Codicology and History of
the Cartulary-Registers', Viator, 16 (1985): 159-79; and Littere Baronum: The
Earliest
Cartulary.ofthe Counts of Champagne,
(ed.) Theodore Evergates (Medieval Academy Books, 107) (Toronto, 2003).
17 In all, the
counts (principally Henry I and Thibaut III) founded six houses of secular
canons in their comital residences throughout the county. Their greater barons,
no doubt seeing the utility of such foundations that doubled as personal
chanceries, folloW.ed suit on a more modest scale. See Patrick Corbet, 'Les
collegiales comtales de Chani.pagne (v.
, 1150-v.1230)',Annales de l'Est, 29 (1971): 195-241.
'
18 for a
description of the codicology and chronologies of these registers, see
Evergates, 'The Chancery Archives'.
19 Thus,
for example, Guy of Arcis-sur-Aube sent a letter from his deathbed describing
his holdings rather than appearing personally before the commissioners.
Likewise, the Lady of Tralnel sent a letter because she was too ill to come in
person. All letters when in the vernacular, like the testimonies, were
translated into Latin when enrolled; see Evergates, The Aristocracy of the
County of Champagne, p. 48.
J
132 Cities, Texts and Social Networks, 400-1500
1····
,I,'
in describing and defining the lands and
incomes they held." This process reached its fullest elaboration between
1249 and 1252, when Count Thibaut IV 'firmly ordered' all of his fiefholders
'to name truthfully, on oath, all the fiefs
11 and rearfiefs
that you hold from me'." The commissioners began the long task of drawing
up a new and considerably more detailed record known as the Roles des fiefs,
which served as a model for all subsequent surveys. What the 1249-52 inquest
captures, in addition to the details of feudal tenure and castle guard, is the
descriptive language that the individuals, commissioners and scribes used to
articulate not only their holdings but their personal experience of the county,
its castles and its towns. The Roles des fiefs offers numerous examples of how
individuals described and differentiated their experiences of urban spaces.
Orienting around fixed points in the townscape, like religious institutions and
stalls used by foreign merchants during the fairs, fiefholders found ways to
articulate as precisely as possible the locations of their holdings and the
values of these properties. When asked, William ofRosieres stated that he 'held
his house at Rosieres, lands, fields, men and rights of justice in the same
locale; and in Troyes [he held] part of the houses next the Temple in which the
merchants of Douai sell their goods:" When describing his rural fief
William as the major landholder of Rosieres did not need to be specific, yet
when enumerating his urban holdings he had to stipulate very carefully the exact
location of his property. Likewise, Erard of Jaucourt, an armiger (a
lesser-knight or a man-at-arms), 'held his own fortified house atJaucourt just
outside Bar-sur-Aube, as well as rights to the stalls which the merchants from
Paris used during the fairs in Bar. In the same fief in Bar he held the mill of
Moote and a part of a great house situated in front of the church
ofBar-sur-Aube'. 23 Emelina de Mallet must have known Peter 'the Jew', as they
would have been neighbours, for in 1252 she held, by right of inheritance, 'two
houses next to [the parish church of] St-Magdalene and a grange next to the
house of the St-Esprit:" When describing urban houses, fiefholders often
talked about neighbourhoods (vici). Thus Jean of La-Croix, 'held a house in the
vico of St-Jean in Provins; as well as part of the baths and part of the oven
of the baths'
20 On
the changing make-up of the count's fiefholders over the course of the
thirteenth century, see Theodore Evergates, 'The Aristocracy of Champagne in
the MidThirteenth Century: A Quantitative Description' ,Journal of
Interdisciplinary History,5 (197 4): 1-18; andEvergates, Aristocracy of the
County of Champagne, pp. 52-3, 58-61, and 63-81.
21 Evergates,The
Aristocracy of the County of Champagne, pp. 46-50. The count's charter is
translated in Feudal Society in Medieval France: Documents from the County of
Champagne,
trans. and (ed.) Theodore Evergates
(Philadelphia, 1993), p. 10, doc. l0A.
22 ROies
des fiefs ducomte de Champagne sous le regne de Thibaud le Chansonnier (1249
1252),(ed.) Auguste Longnon (Paris, 1877), pp. 242-3, no. 104.
23 ROiesd.es
fiefs, 5, no. 17.
24 Rolesdes
fiefs, 1, no. 1.
Anne E. Lester
in the lower town of Provins."
Not infrequently, women were asked to describe the fiefs held by their husbands
if they were abroad on business or crusade, 'beyond the sea' (ultra mare) or
'in foreign parts' like Constantinople (in partibus Constantinopolitanis).
In such cases, the history of a
property's possession helped define its location and value. So Guerricus
ofBoussy's wife described the houses he held in fief in the area known as Le
Val, or the lower town of Provins, 'near St-Ayoul which had belonged to the
deceased Peter ofBoussy'." By the middle of the thirteenth century the
language of fief-holding became fundamentally akin to a language of taxation,
more concerned with values than with topographic or cartographic precision.
Yet during the same decades that the
records of fief-holding became routine administrative documents, members of the
lesser aristocracy and citizens of the towns of Champagne began to make use of
other texts, like bills of sale, deeds of gifts and rental agreements, which
demanded that they represent their spaces in more exacting terms, As
Robert-Henri Bautier showed, a series of institutions emerged in the late
twelfth century 'divergent in their function but concurrent in their same ends:
to attest the authenticity of a juridical act', that is, to create legally
binding lay documents of practice." In southern France and Italy local
notaries, who were versed in the legal language of Roman law, drew up private
lay juridical transactions and retained copies in their notarial registers. The
situation in northern France was less systematic and therefore more diverse. 28
Most of the towns in the area of Flanders maintained urban archives and scribes
in the employ of the town to draw up and retain such records. In the towns and
cities South of the Somme and Meuse rivers, however, this task fell to
officials connected to the episcopal court or parish hierarchy, either the
bishops' officials or local rural deans, commonly called deans of Christianity
in Champagne."
By the middle decades of the
thirteenth century, hundreds of men and women in the towns of Champagne had
appeared countless times before local officials to draw up documents of
everyday use: charters for gifting properties or for buying and selling urban and
suburban houses or domestic gardens; rental agreements; and deeds of loans and
debts, most of which came to employ an increasingly precise description of the
spaces involved. 30 Moreover, because of
" Roles des fiefs, 196,
no. 889.
26 Roles des fiefs, 187-8,
no. 855.
27 Robert-Herni Bautier,
'L'authentification des actes priv€s clans la \France
m€di€vale: notoriat public et
juridication gracieuse', reprinted in Robert-Henri Bautier, Chartes, sceaux et
chancelleries: Etudes de diplomatique et de sigillographie me.die.vales, 2 vols
(Memoires et documents de 1'€cole des chartes, 34) (Paris,1990), vol. 1, pp.
269-340.
28 For
this contrast, see Bauder, 'L'authentification des actes priv€s', pp. 281-304.
29 On documents from Flanders, see Bautier, 'L'authentifications des actes
priv€s',
pp. 305-18.
30 There
can be no doubt that the Champenois officials were influenced by the presence
of Italian merchants and creditors at the fairs. See for example John F.Benton,
134 Cities,
Texts and Social Networks, 400-1500
:1
I.
the regional complexities of local
customary law (which obtained in the North, in contrast to Roman law in
Occitania), there was a great variety of officials involved in authenticating
such private acts. In Champagne, diocesan officials
;j,.
·, and rural deans
typically authenticated documents with one other lay official,
I
often a town mayor elected by the
community or the local provost, who was a representative of the count, to
ensure that the document held validity in both lay and ecclesiastical
courts." Yet no registers kept by these officials survive from Champagne
until the end of the fourteenth century. Thus, when lay private acts survive,
they do so almost exclusively in episcopal, monastic or hospital archival collections.
By the second decade of the thirteenth
century, for those men and women who did not possess their own seals to
authenticate acts, the main way to create a charter of sale or donation was to
appear personally before the local officiales or dean of Christianity. By this
time, the bishop's officialeshad moved out of the episcopal household and
worked independent of the person of the bishop and his court. Indeed, by 1231
the officialesof Troyes had their own seals and their own
courts.32 In episcopal centers like
Troyes, Langres and Reims, men and women
came before the officials and spoke
their transactions orally in public, in acts of
performance, in which they defined and
described transactions and elaborated
ii'
I
i.l
I11
,,., 'The Accounts of
Cepperello da Prato for the Tax on nouveaux acquits in the Bailliage of
I, I Troyes', reprinted
in John F.Benton,Culture, Power and Personality in Medieval France, (ed.)
Thomas N. Bisson (London, 1991), pp. 255-74. For the role of these officials in
drawing up contracts of loans, see the register of the Sienese creditors at the
Champagne fairs kept between 1255-62: Mario Chiaudano, 'Il libro delle fiere di
Champagne della cornpagnia degli Ugolini rnercati senesi nella seconda meta del
secolo XIII', Studi e documenti per la storia del diritto commerciale italiano
nel sec, XIII (Memorie dell'Instituto giuridico, Univ. di Torino,2), 8 (1930):
143-208, on the role of the officiality, 157-9.
31 Bautier,
'L'authentification des actes priv€s', 322-3; and Robert-Henri Bautier,
'L'exercice de lajuridiction gracieuse en Champagne du milieu du xmesi€cle a la
fin du XV"', reprinted in Bautier, Chartes,sceaux et chancelleries, vol.
1, pp. 359-436, at 362-5.
32 On the role
and evol11;tion of the officialesin northern France during the thirteenth
century, see Paul Fournier, Les officialitis au moyen &ge (Paris,1880);
Bautier, 'L'exercice de la juridiction gracieuse'; Joseph Avril, Le govemement
des iv€ques et la vie religieuse dans
le diocese d'Angers (1148-1240) 2 vols
(Lille, 1984), vol. 1, pp. 623-7; Olivier Guyotjeannin,
'Juridiction
gracieuse eccl€siastique et naissance de l'officialit€ aBeauvais(1175-1220)',
in Michel Parisse (ed.), Apropos des actes d'ivtques: homage aLucie Fossier
(Nancy,1991), pp. 295-310; and Adam Davis, The Holy Bureaucrat: Eudes Rigaud
and Religious Reform in
Thirteenth-CenturyNormandy(Ithaca,
2006), pp. 30-48. By the end of the middle ages
this form of document production and
authentication became indispensible for urban
and royal transactions alike. See
Louis Carolus-Barr€, 'L'organisation de la juridiction
gracieuse a Paris, clans le dernier
tiers du Xmesiecle: L'officialite et le chatelet', Le moyen
age,69 (1963): 417-35.
Anne E. Lester
135
on the details of their urban and
suburban properties. 33 These texts are therefore collective endeavours,
representative of the language and vocabulary of the official scribe as well as
that of the donor or seller. Hence, formulaic clauses appear in the documents
framing each transaction: the officials involved had to be named, the type of
transaction (whether a gift, sale or lease) had to be specified, sometimes long
guarantee clauses would close the text or stipulations about the future role of
heirs and spouses would be elaborated, and finally the date would be stated and
the seals of those officiating would ratify and bind the transaction which
unfolded above.
Yet it is in the interstices of the
legal text that we can capture the perception and experience of the urban spaces
of Champagne, because descriptive clauses conjure -through a reliance on
intimate personal details -the space in question, be it a house, an apartment,
a stall, or suburban garden. These were the clauses that could not be scripted
in legal jargon, but which articulated a space that was visible, vivid and
agreed upon by the individuals present; these clauses had to map onto the
experience of the known urban world in all its complexity and mutability. In
this sense, scribe and donor or seller created 'their own language of space'
that made them cartographers of a sort. They were, like the notaries and
clients Daniel Lord Smail described at work in Marseille, mastering verbal
techniques [that conveyed] abstract representations of space' which in turn 'identif
[ied] the locations of people and property in the city',34
Through the creation of routine
official documents, men and women in the i I Champagne towns honed an ever-more
precise language of description and ' association. In doing so, people were not
simply stating what they saw; they were producing the space of their urban
landscapes. The evocative clauses within the texts allowed them to consider,
plan, and shape their towns. By naming spaces they came to know and to
understand the urban world they inhabited. But to name was also to construct
and produce urban space, the defined and agreedupon space of markets and
rental property, specific vici or neighbourhoods, as well as charitable and
marginal spaces. Thus in one of the first donations of urban property to Les
Deux-Eaux, the leprosariumto the south of Troyes, a certain Pascha, citizen of
Troyes, came before Master Stephan, the official of Troyes in 1235, and gave
the brothers 'half of her house situated at the gate called Comport<!', wall
of the town, 'next to the
which lay along the northern
33 Guyotjeannin,
'Juridiction gracieuse eccl€siastique', remarks on this process. On this change
more generally during the high middle ages, see Brian Stock, 'Medieval
Literacy, Linguistic Theory, and Social Organization', New Literary History, 16
(1984): 13-29; and the articles in Walter Prevenier and Therese de Hemptinne
(eds), La diplomatique urbaine en Europe auMoyenAge: Actes du congres de la
commission intemationale de diplomatique,
Gand, 25-29 aout 1998(Leuven,2000).
34 Daniel
Lord Smail, Imaginary Cartographies: Possession and Identity in Late Medieval
Marseille(Ithaca,1999), p. 67.
I
I
Cities, Tex.ts and Social Networks,
400-1500
house of the deceased master
Hubertus'. (fig. 6.2)" Descriptions grow more precise in the next two
decades. In 1255, Mahaude, the widow of Guillot Noblet, a citizen of Troyes,
recorded her sale to the lepers of Les Deux-Eaux of all her rights to 'a certain
stall in the market of Troyes' which lay precisely 'between the stalls where
bread is sold, next to the stall by the domusDei of the Count of Troyes on one
side and the grain stall of Notre-Dame-aux-Nonnains on the other.'"
Through her careful delineation, a local domestic marketplace takes shape, a
space that may have been particularly familiar to a female citizen of Troyes,
and in turn, her description reflects her own frame of reference, her
experience of the urban environment. Such precise and relational spatial
details are common in the charters. In 1260,Jacques le Lorgnes, with his wife
Maria and their daughter Agnes, sold to the lepers a certain house free from
all rents and obligations 'situated as it is called in the neighbourhood
(vicus)of the nunnery
l
\
t calhedraloit)' 10 lU lU 4U >Okm
i "'"'"''"''l'
TRO'l'\J; fall"""~
II
''""".olc.1111,t<•Y<> • l('JYM1num
"'"'I"'''"""'
Fig. 6.3 Map of Champagne (based on
Theodore Evergates, The Aristocracy in the Countyof Champagne, 1100-1300 (Philadelphia,
2007), p. 31).
35 M.
Harmand, 'Notice historique sur la leproseriede la ville de Troyes', MSA,7-8
(1848): 429-680, at 557-8. The piece of property is described again in a
document drawn up byPascha's heirs in 1252, pp. 574-5.
36 'quodam stallo sito in fora Trecensi, inter ceteras stallos ubi panes
venduntur;juxta stallum domus Dei Comitis Trecensis, exunaparte, et stallum
granetarie Beate Marie Trecensis, ex altera', Harmand, 'Notice historique sur
la Ieproserie de Troyes,' pp. 581-2.
Anne E. Le:Ster
of Notre-Dame-aux-Nonnians in Troyes,
next to the wine press of the deceased Hugh Concereius on one side and the
nunnery on the other, so the said house is located, namely in the neighbourhood
of the nunnery, halfway down the street.'" This was a well-known
neighbourhood that had its own orientation, with a mid-point and many potential
fringes that would take their orientations from landmarks other than the
nunnery.
Neighbourhoods like these existed
throughout the towns of Champagne. They were the areas where people lived,
died, had families, held rental property, went to market, and bought and sold
goods. Neighbours and acquaintances who made up each vicus were familiar with
the houses and domestic spaces of this close-knit world and knew the inhabitants
of their landscape and their familial genealogies. In turn, houses and plots
were often described with reference to
their previous owners as a means of
orientation in space andtime. When a small
group of citizens in Reims donated to
the new Cistercian nunnery of Clairmarais just beyond the city walls, their
gifts of annual rents came from clusters of houses in the vicinities of
Notre-Dame, St-Nicholas and Oignons, houses whose precise locations were
delineated with reference to their previous inhabitants." These texts
reflect the experience of the local worlds that existed within every great town
or city in medieval Europe: the space of the parish and its warren of familiar
streets and edifices alive with the men, women, widows and heirs who
multiplied within them.
In the second half of the thirteenth
century, many men and women began to describe their sales and donations
employing a language of relative measurement intended to convey the exact
contours of a particular urban or suburban plot. The cartulary of St-Maclou,
the count's foundation of canons in Bar-sur-Aube, contains copies of hundreds
of charters involving the community and its properties within the town. In
March of 1260, Ogerus, a canon of StMaclou, purchased a certain vineyard, which
'extended in length and width and was free from all rents and customs except
three half-pennies of annual rent, situated in the area of Barrvillain the
place which is called Roicheforet,next to the vines of the brothers of
Clairvaux on one side and next to the vines of the chapter of St-Maclou on the
other'." Six years later the priest Laurent gave St
37 'sitam,ut dicitur, in vico Beate Marie ad Moniales trecenses, juxta
pressorium defuncti Hugonis Concerei, ex una parte, et juxta domum Beate Marie
ad Moniales trecenses, ex d.ltera, sicut dicta domus se comportat: videlicet a
vico Be ate Marie usque ad vicum medium', Harmi:lnd, 'Notice historique sur la
teproserie de Troyes,' pp. 585-6.
38 AD
Aube, 3 H 3785 (1234). Three charters drawn-up between March and May of the
saine year detail the location of these houses whose rents were donated to the
nuns. These viciare in many ways analogous to the urban 'islands' described by
Smail, Imaginary Cartographies,pp. 88-92.
39
Cartulary St-.Maclou, Paris, BNF Lat.
Nouv. Acq. 110, fol.67r-68v. The earliest use of this formula, 'in longitudine
et latitudine' in the Cartulary of St-Maclou is from September
1237, fol.103v-r.
Cities, Texts and Social Networks,
400-1500
Maclou the house and lands he held
during his lifetime 'situated in Bar in the vico called puteum vairote which
extends in length from the street of the said neighbourhood up to the walls of
the town of Bar and beyond the walls to the canal of the same town and in width
extending from the house of the brothers of Clairvaux to the stables of the
great court behind the church of St-Maclou'.'° Typically used to denote urban
property free from taxes and tithes, the length and width descriptor conveyed
that urban properties functioned like all other moveable assets and could be
bought, sold and gifted in their entirety. In 1280, the Parisian couple Adam
and Agnes Bourdon and their scribe used this formula to define the house they
possessed in the Drapery of Troyes." Likewise, when
the Franciscans first came to Rouen in
124 7, they were given an estate in the
city called Le Donjon and all that
pertained to it 'in length and width, in wood and stone'. 42 And the public
space of the market of Arras in nearby Picardy was similarly defined and bound
as a designated space intended for market commerce and public discourse."
Most towns and cities in Champagne
generated new neighbourhoods as they expanded beyond the confines of their
original walls. Charters record the production of these new vici, typically in
suburban areas near new convents, hospitals and poor houses. These foundations,
which date to the 1220s and 1230s, were frequently established in extant grange
buildings or suburban dwellings given over to the support of small communities,
who used the buildings as hospices or chapels before they were incorporated
into an existing religious order or recognized in some other official capacity.
The initial gift of a house or territory to religious men or women may have
been an act of seigneiural benefaction, but the creation of a neighbourhood was
the hard work of accumulated gifts and sales on the part of many townsmen and
women. Thus
:{
the nunnery of Clairmarais was
initially founded in a house outside the walls of Reims and over time received
donations of suburban plots from townsmen
..i
'111 and local knights, often small gardens and pieces of vineyard that
allowed the
' '
,l'i nuns to
construct a veritable neighbourhood around their new community that
4° Cartulary
St-Maclou, fol. 108v-109r. There are several documents ranging from 1257
through 1266 that mention this house and its delineated plot of land. The
stables mentioned here were probably part of the comital court as the church of
St-Maclou was connected architecturally to the comital palace, In earlier
documents, this stable is described as belonging to the deceased lord Peter,
once Lord of Jaucourt. Within seven years, this genealogy dropped out of the
description of the place. See Cartulary St-Maclou,
fol.lllr.
41 Adam
and Agnes are described as citizens of Paris, and it was an official from the
court of the bishop of Paris who drew
up the charter. See AD Aube, 23 H313 (1280).
42 Hugolinus
Lippens, 'Documenta: Provinciae franciae Chartularium Aliaque Documenta saec.
XIII', Archivum franciscanum historicum, 30 (1937): 282-308, at 292-3, no.
8.
43 Carol Symes,
'Out in the Open', in this volume
Anne E. Lester
connected the nunnery with the
town." A similar pattern of suburban purchase and donation involved the
Cistercian nuns ofVal-des-Vignes, whose convent was initially founded in a
house beside the leprosariumof Bar-sur-Aube in the small hamlet of Ailleville,
less than two kilometres outside the town. From 1232, when the nunnery first
took shape, through the mid-1260s, the women of Val-desVignes steadily amassed
plots of suburban land and vineyards that connected their house to that of the
lepers nearby and to the roadway between Bar-surAube and the nunnery. Here too
donors and townspeople created a zone outside the town that was given over to
charity and to the women providing care of the lepers and prayers for their
benefactors."
Often these new vici were spaces where
poor men and women sought alms from those travelling through the towns and
where others came to serve and aid the poor, transgressing the boundaries and
prejudices associated with the urban margins." These spaces call to mind
the area of Bar-sur-Aube that Peter described in his testament, where poor and
aged women lived in the same space just beyond the town walls.joining the women
serving the hospital of St-Nicholas. Medieval people created these spaces
consciously, and continued to produce them through their everyday transactions
and cartographic conversations. Indeed, the towns of Champagne, like the
tangled tracery of Marseille's streets, 'were made of people and the landmarks
that impinged on their consciousness'." The descriptions of charitable
locales in property deeds situated their locations within and alongside towns.
How individuals moved through these spaces and experienced this landscape, by
contrast, is revealed through the final acts that enshrine memories of space,
that is, through testaments and final charitable bequests.
44 See
for example, AD Aube 3 H 3791 (April 1229), and Gallia Christiana in provincias
ecclesiasticas (Paris,1856-1899)
[hereafterGC], 9, col.58, instr.61 (May1222). For
distributa
the changes in the city and its
suburban hinterland during the thirteenth century, see Pierre Desportes, Reims
et /esremois aux XIW et XIV" siecles(Paris, 1979), pp. 56-73, 183-96,
234-48, 295-308, 322-38.
45 See Anne E.
Lester, 'Cares beyond the Walls: Cistercian Nuns and the drre of Lepers in
Twelfth-and Thirteenth-Century Northern France', in Emilia Jamroziak and Janet
Burton (eds), Religious and Laity in Western Europe, 1000-1400: Interaction,
Negotiation,
and Power (Turnhout,2006), pp.
197-224, at 211-212.
46
for example, in 1256, the nuns of
Clairmarais purchased a house in the 'vicus called the Filles-Dieu',that is, in
the neighbourhood that developed around the house of repentant women, often
reformed prostitutes, known as Filles-Dieu.AD Aube, 3 H 3787 (June 1256). See
Desportes, Reims et les rimois, pp. 329-32.
47 Smail,
Imaginary Cartographies, p. 14.
' '
140
Cities, Texts andSocial Networks,
400-1500
TESTAMENTS,MEMORYAND SPATIAL PRACTICE
Testamentary records begin to appear
in northern France in the final decades of the twelfth century and were used
with some regularity by the early thirteenth century.'" Members of the
upper aristocracy and the ecclesiastical elite, typically bishops, were the
first to employ testaments. Generally these documents were short, staccato
texts bestowing properties and rents to only a very few monastic houses and
hospitals. But by the middle of the thirteenth century members of the lesser
aristocracy and the urban bourgeoisie like Peter began to use such records,
which grow far more detailed, to bestow rents, lands and occasionally movable
goods to a host of family members and religious and charitable institutions. It
is at this time as well that evidence of gifts to the poor proliferates.
Indeed, many testators implored those executing their wills to give personally
and by hand sums of cash in alms to the poor at particular intervals during the
year, or on the anniversary of their deaths." This change in testamentary
practice and specifically the notable increase in gifts to the poor and sick
along with the proliferation of hospitals and hospices for their care was part
of what Andre Vauchez termed the 'revolution de la charite' that took hold in
Europe between 1130 and 1260." Most scholarship on medieval wills tends to
focus on the wealth distributed and what this says about the testator's social
class, gender, personal possessions and habits." Indeed, testaments often
appear to be tremendously revealing texts, composed or dictated at a moment of
reflection and occasionally in the face of death or crisis when an individual
was meant to come to terms with his or her past life, actions, sins and
possible redemption. Yet the often-formulaic legal language that the documents
required and to which the paid scribe or notary
48 On the
appearance of and changes in northern French testaments, see Testaments
Saint-Quentinoisdu XIV" siecle,{ed.) Pierre Desportes (Paris, 2003). See
also and more generally, Actesacausedemart/ Acts of Last Will (Recueils de la
Societe Jean Bodin pour l'Histoire Comparative des Institutions, 59-62)
(Brussels, 1992-4); and Philippe Godding, 'La pratique testamentaire dnFlandre
au 13e si€cle', Tijdschriftvoor Rechtsgeschiedenis, 58
(1990): 281-300.
49 A comparable
phenomenon is discussed by Sharon A. Farmer, Surviving Poverty in
Medieval Paris: Gender, Ideo(ogy,and
the Daily Lives of the Poor (Ithaca,2002), p. 33.
50 Andre
Vauchez, 'Assistance et charite en occident, x1ne-xve siecles', in Vera Barbagli
Bagnoli. (ed.), Domande e consumi, livelli e stru.tture XIII -XVIII,Atti della
sesta settimana di studio (Florence, 1978), pp. 151-62. 51 See for example,
Martha C. Howell, 'Fixing Movables: Gifts by Testament in Late Medieval Douai',
Past and Present, 150 (1996): 3-45; A. van Brandt, 'Mittelalterliche
Bilrgertestamente: Neuerschlossene Quellen zur Geschichte der materiellen und
geistigen
K ultur', Sitzungsberichteder
Heidelberger philosophisch-historische
Akademie der Wissenschaften,
Klasse,(1973) pt. 3, pp. 5-32; and).
Chiffoleau, La comptabilie de l'au-dela: /es hommes, la mort
et la religion dans la region
d'Avignon ala fin duMayen Age (vers 1320-vers 1480) (Collection de
!'Ecole
Fran,aise de Rome, 47) (Rome,1980).
Anne E. Lester
often adhered can frequently belie
such personal revelations. Moreover, when
testaments survive in large numbers in
notarial registers or municipal archives,
as is the case in northern Italy and
Flanders, they have proved to be extremely valuable records for social history
because they yield to statistical analysis, revealing how families divided
their goods and properties, how municipalities provided for those in need, and
how individuals donated to institutions and the needy in their midst." All
of this means that most scholars do not read testaments as descriptive texts.
Furthermore, little work has been done on the physical experience of urban
space as represented in such texts. Yet, in part because of the relative
paucity of surviving testaments in the region around Champagne, scholars of
northern France have paid attention to their cartographic potential. Bronislaw
Geremek noted that Parisian wills make it 'possible to draw up a map giving a
picture of the topography of begging in Paris'." Similarly, Sharon Framer
has used the extremely detailed bequests of early fourteenth-century Parisian
testaments to locate and describe the lives of poor men and women in Paris,
articulating a landscape of need that was previously only partially mapped in
relation to existing ecclesiastical institutions." The wills that survive
from thirteenth-century Champagne delineate a similar landscape of charity and
need. As noted in the reading of Peter's will, surviving testaments from
Champagne sketch a topography of charity built around small intramural
hospitals and domus Dei complemented by extra-mural foundations, typically
including one or more leper houses, houses for the poor often dedicated to the
Holy Spirit, and (by mid-century) foundations for religious women, particularly
Cistercian nuns, who also cared for the poor and sick. This pattern obtains in
all of the fair towns and particularly Troyes, Provins and Bar-sur-Aube, as
well as in larger urban settlements of the county including Reims,
Chateau-Thierry, Ramerupt, Sens, St-Florentin and Auxerre.55 Drawn up in 1257,
Count Thibaut V's testament
52 See for
example, Steven Epstein, Wills and Wealth in Medieval Genoa, 1150-1250
(Cambridge, MA, 1984); SamuelK. Cohn,
The Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death:
Six Renaissance Cities in Central
Italy (Baltimore, 1992); Kathryn L. Reyerson, 'Changes in Testamentary Practice
at Montpellier on the Eve of the Black Death', Church History, 47
(1978): 253-69; and Howell, 'Fixing Movables'.
53 Bronislaw
Geremek, The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris, trans. Jean Birrell
(Cambridge,1977), p. 187.
54 Farmer
(Surviving Poverty,171-2) provides a list of Parisian wills she consulted. For
an example and edition of such a text, see Boris Bove, 'Vie et mart d'un couple
de marchands-drapiers Parisiens, d'apres les testaments de Jeanne et Etienne
Haudri (1309, 1313)', Paris et Ile-de-France Memoires,52 (2000): 19-81. 55 The
towns of Champagne were certainly not exceptional in this regard. For Toulouse
and sou_thern France, see the essays inJ ohn Hine Mundy, Studiesinthe
Ecclesiastical
and Social History of Toulouse in the
Age of the Cathars (Aldershot,2006); and for England, see Carole Rawcliffe,
Leprosy in Medieval England (Woodbridge,2006).
142 Cities,
Texts and Social Networks, 400-1500
articulates this landscape in its
clearestinstitutionalform, for the count bestowed
the enormous sum of 10,000 livresin
alms to monastic houses, and also gave
between 200 and 50 livres each to all
the hospitals and leper houses in his castles
in Champagne, Finally, the count set
aside 1000 livresfor the purchase of clothing
and shoes to be distributed to the
poor by the will's executors." His testament
charts a cartography of aristocratic
charity, but also reveals the experience of
poverty, sickness and need within the
county.
If the count's will creates a general
template macrocosm of monastic
institutions, hospitals and hospices,
men and women of lesser status and more
local horizons made similar provisions
in their testaments, creating charitable
microcosms. For example, in 1220, Lady
Alix ofVenizy, distributed twenty pounds
in annual rents to monasteries near
her familial holdings along the southern
border of Champagne and Burgundy,
stretching in an arc from Venizy to Sens
to Ramerupt." These were all
locations that encircled Lady Alix's holdings and
they represent her orbit of power,
authority and influence, They included her
personal chapels in Venizy and
Ramerupt as well as the hospital and leper house
in Ramerupt, Moreover, her testament
progresses through these donations as
she would have done, moving along
familiar roadways from one town to the
next.
Many of the aristocratic wills that
survive from the first decades of the
thirteenth century convey a profound
familiarity with the landscape beyond a local lordship or single town. When the
knight Hagan ofErvy prepared to depart on the Third Crusade in 1190, he drew up
a detailed testament, preparing for the contingency that he might not return
from the East." Half of his personal possessions were to go to the
Cistercian abbey of Pontigny, where he wished to be buried. The monks were also
to receive his horse, worth 10 librasas well as 100 solidifor its care (a
common aristocratic bestowal).59 After dispensing his green
56 Text
edited in Alexandre Teulet, et al. (eds), Layettes du tresor des chartes
(Paris, 1863-1909) 3, pp.391-2, no. 4387. For the English translation, see
Evergates, Feudal Society, 70-2, no. 53. These houses, among others, are the
formal institutions that also appear in the regular records of the royal
almoners from the end of the thirteenth century. See Robert-Henri Bautier and
Frarn;:ois Millard, 'Les aum.Ones du roi aux maladeries, maisonsDieu et
pauvres E!tablissements du royaume', in Assistance et assistis jusqu'C{1610
(Actes du 97e congers national des societes savants Nantes, 1972) (Paris,1979),
pp. 37-105.
57 See
Recueil de pieces pour faire suite au Cartulaire general de l'Yonne, ed.
Maximilien
Quantin (Paris, 1873), pp. 108-9, no.
245.
58 Text
edited in Cartulaire general de l'Yonne, ed. Maximilien Quantin (Auxerre, 1854,
1860), 2, pp. 424-5, no. 420. For the English translation, see Evergates,
Feudal Society, 68-9, no. 51.
59 For
example Foulques de Warmeriville, chapelian of the church of Reims, stipulated
in his 1262 testament: 'Item lego fabrice Remensis ecclesie palefridum meum cum
harnesio, ita quad de dicta palefrido repetentur debita que pro dicta ecclesia
michi debentur', in Louis Paris, Histoire de l'abbaye d:Avenay, 2 vols (Paris,
1879), vol. 2, pp. 140-2, no. 101. Similarly, Richard of Elmham, canon of
St-Martin-le-Grande London (d. 1228): 'legavi
Anne E. Lester
silk quilt, coverlet, sheets and a pillow
to Canon of Ervy (possibly a brother), his thoughts turned to charity.'° He
gave 100 solidi to Pontigny's porter for masses to be sung in his memory and 20
solidifor buying bread for distribution to the poor; 20 solidito the leper
house of Ervy and to the hospital of the count of Troyes, as well as to the
four monastic houses in the town, and 5 solidito each ofTroyes's hospitals,
Leaving Troyes in the text of his will,heading south, Hagan gave 20 solidito
the twenty leper houses on the road between Troyes and Pontigny and from there
continued bestowing small sums on the priests and deans of Sommeval, Auxerre,
and 10 solidieach to the forty rural churches in the castellanies ofErvy and
St-Florentin. Hagan's testament is a portrait of a knight's piety as he weaves
his way from town to town, with full knowledge of all those in need in the
rural interstices between the familiar urban landscapes. Aristocratic wills
make clear that charity and need were not exclusively urban phenomena; rather
there were arteries along which alms flowed in regular and consistent patterns
of aristocratic largess. These bequests followed the same roadways that ensured
the Champagne fair towns could boast the cloth, spices, credit markets and
merchant concourse that made them a vital part of the economic landscape of
northern France. In this sense, a small network of charities that barely took
institutional form provided alms for the poor and sick while also ensuring
spiritual succour for those who may have compromised their own salvation."
Indeed the margins and the centre were not so far apart, and were dependent
upon each for their prosperity,
By the middle of the century, a far
more nuanced and complex charitable landscape is discernable from the details
ofaristocratic and bourgeois testaments, which provided for well-established
hospitals and ecclesiastical institutions but also frequently evokes the many
more local, rural and suburban hospices, domus Dei and infirmaries."
Perhaps most indicative of this was the development of the monastic institution
of the porter or the porter's gate. By the 1220s and 1230s, the Cistercian
abbeys of Pontigny, Vauluisant and Clairvaux, once characterized by their
isolation in the 'deserted' rural hinterland, all boasted gates that welcomed
an expanding population of the poor." Charitable gifts were bestowed
Deo et beate Marie et beato Martino
corpus meum cum palefrido meo ad operationem ecclesie'. Edited in Nicholas
Vincent, 'The will of Richard of Elmham (d. 1228)', Historical Research,
70 (1997): 110-20, at 118.
60 Evergates,The
Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, p. 77. 61 On the idea of the city as a
locale of moral corruption and economic indulgence in tension with the
simplicity of the rural hinterland, see Gerald B. Guest, 'The Prodigal's
Journey: Ideologies of Self and City
in the Gothic Cathedral', Speculum, 81 (2006): 35-75.
62 Often
testaments from the seigneurial and urban milieu furnish the only reference to
these small locales of charity. See the comment in Frarn;ois-Olivier Touati,Archives
de la Iepre: Atlas des liproseries entre Loire et Mame au moyen dge
(Paris,1996), pp. 35-6.
63 On
the practice of Cistercian hospitality, see Jutta Maria Berger, Die Geschichte
der GastfreundschaftimHochmittelalterlichenMOnchtum:Die Cistercienser
(Berlin,1999 ); and Julie
Cities, Texts and Social Networks,
400-1500
144
upon these communities specifically
for the abbeys' porters, who were charged with using rents in cash to feed and
clothe the poor. The porter of Glairvaux fed the poor from two great copper
cooking pots each at the abbey's gate." An annual income from tithes
allowed the porter to purchase new shoes and cloaks sufficient to clothe eighty
paupers each year." In keeping with Geremek's suggestion, a corridor of
begging and poverty comes to light that connected the rural and the urban
landscape of Champagne. These gifts also conjure the presence and experience of
the poor as a population cold, hungry and consl:'antly
in motion. 66
Donations to the gates of these
Cistercian monasteries, like donations to hospitals and leper houses in towns
and their suburbs, in effect created a new charitable landscape. Without
founding a new hospital or religious house, certain acts of charity
nevertheless produced new spaces at monastic and city gates and in parish or
church doorways that came to function like institutions. This served to realign
and recreate familiar spaces. Similarly, many testaments from mid-century make
provision for the construction or repair of churches and chapels and thus
contributed in concrete ways to the creation of the urban and suburban
landscape, suggesting as well the experience of such spaces as only partially
built, incomplete and thus imagined. This was not only an imagined cartography
but also an imagined skyline, with parish churches and friars' convents slowly
raising their spires and belfries skyward in campaigns that could take
generations to complete. Gifts were regularly set aside in the testaments of
townsmen and women and urban canons for these projects. Thus Hodeardis, the
wife of Jacques Fredeline of Sens, gave generously to the monks of St-Paul in
Sens, where she elected to be buried, but she also made a modest donation to
the St-Maurice, a parish church just outside of Sens, probably her own
parish." By contrast, in 1262, Foulques de Warmeriville, chaplain of
Reims, gave his palfrey
Kerr, 'Cislerdan Hospitality in the
Later MiddleAges', in Janet Burton and Karen Stober (eds),MonasteriesandSociety
in the British Islesin the I.ater Middle Ages (Woodbridge,2008), pp. 25-39.
"' The great pots were a gift of Lady Helysende, Countess of Bar-sur-Seine,
and Lady Alice of Chacenay, and many other men and women, who joined together
in this donation in 1226. See Marie-Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville 1 ltudes sur
l'ita.tintifrieur des abbayes cisterciennes,et principalement de Ciairvaux,au
Xlr et au xm~si¾cle(Paris, 1858; reprinted Hildesheim,1976), p. 368, no. 21
(1226).
65 Elizabeth
of Chauteavillan gave the porter of Clairvaux the tithes of her estate in
1228specificaHy for this purpose. See d'Arbois de Jubainvtlle, Btu.dessur
l'Ctatinterieur,pp. 370-1, no.47 (1228).
66 On
the impermanence of poor relief and charity, see Gerem.ek,The Margins of
Society, pp. 187-210; and Miri Rubin, Charity and Community in Medieval
Cambridge (Cambridge,1987), pp, 237-88.
67 FrancisMolard,
'Testaments aux archives de l'Yonne•, Bulletin du comitides tmvaux
historique.set scientifeiues: sectwn d'histoire et de philology, (1884): 223
76, at 245-6, no, 16 (September1254).
Anne E. tester 145
and harness to pay down the
construction costs of the cathedral of Reims, but he also gave the standard 20
solidi for the fabric of the parish church of St-Nicaise, and 100 solidifor the
fabricof the Franciscan friars' church in Reims."
Common also were specific and often
lavish bequests in testaments for the construction of personal chapels where
the donor would be buried and have masses sung in his or her honour. Nearly
three decades after the nunnery was founded, in 1261, Briard and his wife
Agnes, goldsmiths and citizens of Reims, gave 100 librasto the Cistercian nuns
for the construction of a chapel in the nuns' church." Perhaps indicative
of a growing bourgeois fashion forpersonal chapels created through testamentary
gifts, Jacques de Dampierre of St·Quiriace, a wealthy townsman of Provins and
his wife Ermesende, founded a new chapel in the collegiate church in honour of
Saint Louis (d. 1270) and provided for its construction and maintenance in
their testaments between 1292 and 1302." Displaying superior planning and
foresight, the lady Mabil!e de Bessi gave the Cisterdan monks of Reigny 100
solidito celebrate an annual mass in her honour and elected to have her tomb
built in the new chapel still under construction. But, she explained, 'if she
should die before the chapel is finished', she gave instructions to be buried
'in the cloister ofReigny' and then, when the chapel was finally completed, she
implored the monks to 'find her body, and rebury it in the new chapel at the
abbey's gate', 71 That was her imagined final resting place, and it was an
ideal that would withstand the contingencies of new construction.
Many shared Mabille's desire to act
after death, and the vast majority of
surviving testaments from champagne
resonate with a discordance that is
particularly striking: as individuals
provided for their flnal rest, they also
provided for others to stay in motion
as representatives of themselves, keeping
their personal piety alive. Their
gifts produced an ephemeral and ever-changmg
landscape of charity. Like many
testators, Foulques, the chaplain of Reims,
instructed the three men who executed
his testament to 'use 40 librasto buy
68
Paris,Histoirede l'abbaye
d'Avenay,vol.2, p. 141.
~4 GC,
9, col 58, instr. 61 (May 1222) records Briard and Agnes's original foundation
gift. In 1261 waiter Angimeris and
Radulph called borengiers,citizens of Reims and
executors of Bria rd and Agnes's will,
came before Pontius de Parnaco, official of the court
of Lord Otto, Cardinal archdeacon of
Reims,to record again the contents of the couple's
testaments, Troves, AD Aube, 3 H 3788(April
1261). ·
10 The
couf)le'sseparate testaments are noted in Bautier,'L'exercke de lajurldiction
gracieuse en Champagne', pp, 53-55,
See also the Fonds of the HOtel-Dieu of Provins,
Provins, Bibliotheque munidpale 87,
no. 8 (1303) forErmesende's testament. I would like
to thank Adam Davis for passing along
this reference and a photo of the document itself,
Fora similar testamentary foundation,
see William. ChesterJordan, 'Honoring Saint Louis
in a Small
Town',Jouma1ofMedievalHistory,30 (2004): 263-77. Seealso,FrancisMo lard, 'Du
culte de saint Louisdans le
departement de l'Yonne',Armuairestatistiquedudepartementde
l'Yonne,53 (1889): 168-77.
11 Molard,
'Testaments aux archives de l'Yonne', pp. 246-8, no.17,
146 Cities,
Texts and Social Networks, 400-1500
bread and shoes to be distributed by
their hands to the poor of the city and diocese of Reims'." And if there
was anything left from his goods after his will had been carried out, all that
remained should be given out 'to poor and pious persons where they gather in
the city and diocese of Reims' .73 When Etienne Becquard, the archbishop of
Sens, considered how he would care for the poor of his vast archdiocese he also
saw them gathered in urban spaces, in 'his' cities and towns throughout his
great province. His testament is a sprawling map of
hospitals, monasteries, nunneries and
houses of canons provisioned with sums
to sing anniversary masses and to
recite Psalms for his salvation in a seemingly endless cacophony. After
provisioning Filles-Dieu,beguines, lepers, friars and sick men and women in the
domus Dei throughout the countryside, he turned to the poor, giving 100
librasto purchase wool cloaks and shoes to be distributed to paupers and those
in great need in the towns that lay just outside of Etampes, Blois and Corbeil;
and another 200 librasto be given out among the poor of 'our towns' of
Briennone, Nailly, Villier-Louis and Bligny-en-Othe, which encircled the city
of Sens." These acts' of post-mortem charity were carried out by the
executors of his will, but whether these goods were distributed in front of
parish churches, in particular vici, or before a local poor house is lost to
us, only the
suburban town names persist.
The transient nature oflocal charity
is made clear through a short descriptive clause in Margue de Lens's will. In
1254, this bourgeois woman of St-Quentin, a town north of Champagne but still
imbricated in its charitable topography, gave alms to all the Cistercian
nunneries of the county, as well as sums of money to the poor of her parish, to
the beguines and lepers, and to the sick and poor women and abandoned children.
But she also gave over the use of her house for twenty years to serve as a hospice
for the poor. The house was provisioned with eight upholstered beds and ten
measures of wheat, paid annually. Three women, her friends, were given custody
of the house and charged with caring for the poor during the twenty-year
period. She gave them an additional 200 librasto
I , maintain the house and to minister
to their needs, after which time the property
I,,
I;:I
':':,
11,
"'
1
72
11 'Item lego
quadragihta libras fortes ad emendos pannos et sotulares distribuendos
pauperibus civitatis et dyoce'sis Remensis per manus executorum meorum', Paris,
Histoire de
·;!!
It
l'abbaye d'Avenay, vol.2, p. 142.
73 '[E]tvolo
quad si de bonis meis ultra predicta aliquid fuerit residuum, quad illud totum
1:
residuum distribuatur per man us
dictomm executorum pauperibus personis et piis locis in civitate
ii
;, et
dyocesi Remensi constitutes', Paris, Histoire de l'abbaye d'Avenay, vol. 2, p.
142.
"
:I 74 '[L]egamus
centem libras turonensium, scilicet sexaginta ad emendos burellos, et
quadraginta ad emendos sotulares, distribuendos pauperibus et magis
indigentibus villamm ... per executores nostros vel ab eis deputatos', Molard,
'Testaments aux archives de l'Yonne',
:!
pp. 263-74, no. 28, at pp. 269-70. The
second grouping of towns he refers to as 'vii/arum nostramm'.
Anne E. Lester
was to revert to her heirs." This
record of a temporary poor house certainly has parallels in the towns and
cities of northern France and beyond. Th_ese w~re locations -mainly urban and
suburban houses -known to those who hved with and among the poor, who moved
through these neighbourhoods and understood their domestic spaces and their
genealogies.
The charitable landscape of Champagne
was built within its towns and cities, but it also extended far beyond the
urban walls and suburban plots. Indeed, charity in Champagne functioned through
the creation of and reliance upon a network of well-travelled routes and
suburban neighbourhoods that provided for those whom the towns could not.
Moreover, because Champagne was a region dependant on the rotating fairs of
Provins, Troyes, Bar-sur-Aube and Lagny, its inhabitants were constantly on the
move, familiar with the roads that stretched between Pontigny and Troyes,
Ramerupt and Bar-sur-Aube, and during the second half of the thirteenth century
between the fair towns and the royal capital of Paris. Merchants and creditors
from Douai, Ypres, Cologne, Genoa and Siena annually traversed the county.
Charity and mendicancy were as interconnected as trade and travel. As the
inhabitants of Champagne, particularly the citizens of its towns, described
their worlds in mundane documents of practice they detailed a charitable
landscape of interlocking concentric circles. Intramural urban hospitals, parish
churches, houses of recluses, and (later) convents of friars were augmented by
an ever growing suburban ring populated by Cistercian nunneries, leper houses,
hospitals and communities of the poor and aged. Champagne and its towns thus
suggest a different model for urban growth and mobility, in contrast to the
large metropolitan hubs that Paris or London would become in the centuries to
follow.
The charitable landscape of the county
reveals the workings and the spatial
practices of a much larger and more
fluid urban zone, characterized by a network
of towns, cities and suburbs that
functioned as an integrated and inter-connected
whole through which people travelled
frequently and with ease. The texts
generated by the inhabitants of
Champagne's towns described and produced
urban spaces, quantifying them,
locating them in relation to other structures
and inhabitants, and mapping them
within a known and accepted cartography.
Testaments suggest the ways in which
men and women moved through and within
such spaces. Indeed, a common feature
of the Champagne wills is their ability to
evoke movements that 'weave places
together', movements that in De Ce~teau's
75 'Legavit etiam post decessum suum domum suam ad hospitandum pauperes per
viginti annos et octo lectos estofatos et decem modios frumenti annuos
imperpetuum quos tenebit dicta domus per dictos viginti annos; quibus annis
viginti completis, dicta domuset dicti decem modii redibunt ad heredes ...
Voluit etiam quad amici sui ponerent tres mulieres in dicta domo pro ipsa
custodienda per dictos XX annos. Legavit etiam ducentas libras pro retinenda
dicta domo et pro ministrandis necessariis per dictos viginti an nos de
consilio amicorum suomm',Testaments SaintQuentinois,pp. 124-7; no. 44, at p.
126.
148
Cities, Texts and Social Networks.
400-1500
w_ords 'form one of those real systems
whose existence ... makes up the city'." Distinct from the maps that plot institutions
and routes in space, testaments ~llowfor the re"?nstruction of ~haritable
actions and mobility. They suggest 'the act ofpassmg by and the practices of
alms-giving and the operations of care and ~omfort that are no longer visible.
The experiences of urban space were defined Ill part by what transpired _atand
along their margins and interstices. Descriptive clauses m charters and wills
demand that their readers not forget that urban space was mad~ ~nd used, that
charity was dynamic, changing and responsive, and that as fugitive as one
hfewas, an individual's memories and final impulse for chanty could evoke the
spaces and ideals of the larger social body.
'I
11
r,
.i
ii
i l 76
De Certeau, The Pructic, ofEverydC!J
Life,p. 97.
chapter 7
Anger and Spectacle in Late Medieval
Rome:
Gauging Emotion in Urban Topography
Joelle Rollo-Koster and Alizah
Holstein
For Romans, the fourteenth century was
an especially trying time. The papacy
departed for Avignon in 1304, robbing
the city of its esteemed status as epicentre
of the Christian world and depriving
it of the practical comforts of a thriving
economy. In the years that the papacy
ruled from Avignon, Romans mourned
the loss ofprosperity, the ensuing
decline in the standard of!iving, and the city's
relegation to a backwater. This
despair was felt even by many non-Romans, who
from afar lamented Rome's pitiable
condition.' Yet hope, too, was an important
ingredient in the political potion, as
Romans put forth differing visions of the
future of their city. Throughout the
fourteenth century, the most successful social and political movements in Rome
were those that offered to reinstate the city in the larger Italian and
European political arenas, and to re-endow it with the symbolic importance it
had for centuries enjoyed. Whether this meant convincing the pope to return to
his throne at St Peter's, or reaching back to a more distant memory of Rome as
the seat of empire, the city never lacked for ambitious designs.
With which emotions, then, did Rome's
inhabitants greet the major political changes of their day, exhilarating or
disappointing as they might have been? Underlying this are more general
methodological questions: can we find a way to test Romans' responses to
particular events? And framed in an even broader sense, what tools can modern
historians utilize to assess the emotions expressed
1 Dante famously
depicted Rome as a widow mourning the loss of her husband, the Empire:
'Vienia.veder la tua Roma che piagne / Vedova e sola, e die notl:£ chiama; /
'Cesare mio, perche non m 'accompagne?', Dante Alighieri, La divina commedia;
Purgatorio,ed. ~atalino Sapegno (Milan, 2004), Book 6, 11. 112-14 (p. 66). The
jurist Bartolus of Sassoferrato described the political situation of mid-fourteenth-century
Rome as a res monstruosa: 'Est et septim-us modus regiminis, quim.mcest in
civitatR Romana,pessimus,Ibi enim sunt multi tyranni per diversas rngiones adeo
fortes, quod unus contra altum non prevalet ...Quod regimen Aristoteles non
posuit est enim res monstruosa. Quidenim, si quis videret unum corpus habens
unumcaput commune debile et multa alia capita communia fortiora. ilio et
invicem sibi adversantfa?Certe monstrum esset Appellatur ergo hoc regimen
monstnwsum', Bartolus of Sassoferrato, Tmctatus de regimine civitatis,ed. Diego
Quaglione in Politica e diritto nel Trecento italiano:il He tyranno' di Bartolo
da Sassoferrato (1314-1357)
(Florence. 19B3), ll. 65-74 (p.152),
4444444444
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First published 2013
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CONTENTS
List of Illustrations ix Contributors
X Editor's Preface and Acknowledgments xiii Abbreviations xv Introduction: The
Moment and Memory of the York Massacre of 1190 1
Sethina Watson Part I: The Events of
March 1190
1. Neighbours and
Victims in Twelfth-Century York: a Royal 15 Citadel, the Citizens and the Jews
Of York
Sarah Rees Jones
2. Prelude and
Postscript to the York Massacre: Attacks in East 43 Anglia and Lincolnshire,
1190
Joe Hillaby
3. William of
Newburgh, Josephus and the New Titus 57
Nicholas Vincent
4. 1190, William
Longbeard and the Crisis of Angevin England 91
Alan Cooper
5. The Massacres of
1189-90 and the Origins of the Jewish 106 Exchequer, 1186-1226
RobertC. Stacey Part II: Jews among
Christians in Medieval England
6. Faith, Fealty and
Jewish 'infideles' in Twelfth-Century England 125
Paul Hyams
7. The' Archa' System
and its Legacy after 1194 148
RobinR. Mundill
Contents
8. Making Agreements, with
or without Jews, in Medieval England and Normandy Thomas Roche 163
9. An Ave Maria in Hebrew:
the Transmission of Hebrew Learning from Jewish to Christian Scholars in
Medieval England Eva De Visscher 174
10. The Talmudic Community of Thirteenth-Century Pinchas Roth and Ethan
Zadoff England 184
11. Notions of Jewish Service in Twelfth-and Thirteenth-Century England
Anna Sapir Abulafia 204
Part III: Representations
12. Egyptian Days: From Passion to Exodus in the Representation of
Twelfth-Century Jewish-Christian Relations Heather Blurton 222
13. 'De Judaea, muta et surda': Jewish Conversion in Gerald of Wales' s Life
of Saint Remigius Matthew Mesley 238
14. Dehumanizing the Jew at the Funeral of the Virgin Mary in the
Thirteenth Century (c. 1170-c. 1350) CarleeA. Bradbury 250
15. Massacre and Memory: Ethics and Method in Recent Scholarship on Jewish
Martyrdom Hannah Johnson 261
16. The Future of the Jews
of York Jeffrey Cohen 278
Afterword: Violence, Memory and the
Traumatic Middle Ages Anthony Bale 294
Bibliography 305
Index
342
viii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Maps
1. Map of York, c.
1190 xx
Figures
1.
'The Funeral of
the Virgin', the chapter house at York Minster. 255 © Dean and Chapter of York:
Reproduced by kind permission of the Dean and Chapter and Hilary Maxon.
2.
'The Monkeys'
Funeral', detail from the Pilgrimage Window, 258 the north aisle of the nave of
York Minster. © Dean and Chapter of York: Reproduced by kind permission of the
Dean and Chapter and David O'Connor.
3.
'Lady Chapel
Window', from the south side of the choir 259 clerestory of York Minster.
Reproduced by kind permission of the Dean and Chapter of York. © Dean and
Chapter of York and W. J. Green.
.
Sethina Watson
happen when a public street became the
site of a religious procession or
during periods such as Lent, Easter or
the build-up to crusade. At these moments a space could become timeless, as
the boundaries between past, present and even eternity were elided. Then, the
gaze of a known unbeliever became a vehicle through which participants could
observe, and perhaps doubt, themselves. The problem of living, and believing,
in the presence of the other raised questions of faith, identity, oaths,
loyalty, leadership, and neighbourliness. As medieval chroniclers recognized,
these may be played out locally or nationally but they challenged both Jews and
Christians to see themselves in cosmic terms.
1
Neighbours and Victims in
Twelfth-Century York
a Royal Citadel, the Citizens and the
Jews of York
Sarah Rees Jones
Barrie Dobson's wide-ranging and
richly-detailed study of the massacre of the Jews of York in March 1190 remains
the definitive history of that terrible event. 1 Most importantly he
demonstrated that the massacre did not mark the end of a Jewish community in
the city but rather occurred near its beginning: very soon after their first
settlement under Josee and Benedict of York in the 1170s and 1180s. The return
of Jews to York after 1190, and the new Jewish community which flourished in
the early thirteenth century, was the subject of later papers by Dobson, now
reprinted in a single volume. 2
Here we do not try to cover the same
ground. Where Dobson' s history focussed on the Jews of York and the national
context for the events in March 1190, this chapter deals in more depth with the
city of York itself, both as a place and as a community in the later twelfth
century. Modern memorialization of the massacre of March 1190 has become
indelibly associated with Clifford's Tower, at the foot of which there is now a
plaque of commemoration for the victims of 1190. Yet this stone structure was
built some fifty years after the massacre and named another eighty years after
that: it was not the structure in which the massacre occurred. The stone tower
does stand on the site of a previous wooden castle keep, which stood on top of
a smaller earth motte at the centre of a castle first constructed by William
the Conqueror in 1068-69.3 It is usually assumed that this was the site of the
mass suicide and murder of the Jews in March 1190. However scholars have long
known that even this is simply a best guess for identifying the royal' arx' at
the centre of William of Newburgh's narrative, and other interpretations have
been sug
1 Dobson,
JMY.
2 JCME.
3 RCHME,
City of York, II, 57-89; T. P. Cooper, York: The Story of its Walls, Bars and
Castles
(London, 1904); T. P. Cooper,
The History of the Castle of York from its Foundation to the Present
Day (London, 1911}; King's Works, II,
889-994; J.Clark, Clifford's Tower and the Castle of York
(London,
2010).
>
Sarah Rees Jones
gested. 4 It is clear that the story
of York as the place of the massacre is more complex than the image of this
single later solid stone structure.
The history of York as a city and
community in the twelfth century has been little studied. In part this is
because of the paucity of evidence. Archaeological work has focussed primarily
on the city before the Norman Conquest, or on the period after 1300 from which
standing buildings survive in abundance. Documentary sources are also
problematic. No civic archives survive before the 1260s and references to York
in the records of royal government do not easily provide a narrative of local
people, places or events. Their focus is primarily on royal administration and
so, too, is that of the chroniclers, such as Newburgh and Howden. The majo.r
local documentary sources for York in the twelfth century are charters
recording land transactions in the city, which survive as originals and as
copies in later cartularies. 5 This chapter will integrate the evidence of
these charters with the betterknown chronicles and royal records before 1200.
York and its inhabitants are even
neglected in narratives of the 'York Massacre', largely due to the perception
of them as both unimportant in and disengaged from the events of 1190. This
can in part be traced back to the statement of William of Newburgh that 'the
more noble and substantial citizens of the town, fearing the dangers of the
king's reaction, cautiously declined to take part in such madness', a statement
which makes an even greater impression when it is contrasted with his clear
apportionment of blame to the citizens of Lincoln for the attack upon the
Jewish community there. 6 As a result attention has instead focussed on those
whom Newburgh did blame for the York attack; the YorkshJre knights Richard
Malebisse, William Percy, Marmaduke Darrell and Philip de Fauconberg. 7
However, as Alan Cooper reminds us, it was not only knights, but also working
men, youths and countrymen whom Newburgh blamed; only the more substantial
citizens of York were exonerated by him. 8
This focus on knights as the real
leaders of an unruly 'mob' in 1190 should be treated cautiously for it was
almost conventional by the later twelfth century to represent cities as a
civilizing influence against the endemic via
4 Vincent,
in this volume (p. 75); P. V. Addyman, 'Excavations at Baile Hill, York',
Chateau Gail
lard. Etudes de Castellogie Medievale
5 (1972), 7-12 (pp. 7-10); P. V. Addyman and J. Priestley,
'Baile
Hill, York', ArchaeologicalJournal134 (1977), 115-56, and see below p. 32. 5
Some 2,500 charters survive for York in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries:
S. Rees Jones,
Medieval Title Deeds for the City of
York, 1080-1530 (Colchester: UK History Data Archive,
1996), SN:3527; S. Rees Jones, The Database of Medieval Title Deeds for the
City of York: A Guide
for Users, University of York
Occasional Papers in History 3 (York, 1996). A book length study of
these materials is forthcoming: S. Rees
Jones, Medieval York: The Making of a City, 1068-1350
(Oxford University Press). 6 WN as
translated in Dobson, JMY, p. 32. For Lincoln see Hillaby in this volume. 7
Dobson, JMY, p. 33. 8 Cooper, below p. 95.
Neighbours and Victims in
Twelfth-Century York
lence of the knightly classes. 9 This
rhetoric was influenced by real politics. Henry II (1154-89) and his sons
Richard I (1189-99) and John (1199-1216) tried to build partnerships with major
towns in the provinces throughout the Angevin realms in France as well as
England in order to restrain the local power of the aristocracy. 10 In the
north this meant building a relationship with the citizens of York and eroding
the influence of local barons such as Roger de Mowbray and William, count of
Aumale and earl of York, who had taken control of the city and its region
during the wars of Stephen's reign (1135-54). As the chief city of the north,
York was exceptionally important to the crown. It was the only city in the
region under royal control and its strategic importance was pivotal in the wars
between the kings of England and Scotland. The crown could not afford to
alienate its leading citizens, but building a relationship with them was
difficult too. This complex, often strained, relationship between crown and
city provides a critical context for understanding both the arrival and
reception of Jews in York.
The scale of the ambitions of William
I, William II and Henry I in relation to York and their transformative impact
on the city have not been fully appreciated. We know that substantial changes
were made to other towns, such as the construction of the French borough in
Nottingham or of the new town centre in Norwich. 11 In the cases of Lincoln and
Exeter their elevation as new cathedral sees resulted in their major
redevelopment. 12 In contrast, established interpretations of the topography of
York argue that the medieval street plan was largely established before the
Conquest, during the tenth and eleventh centuries, when a new pattern of
markets and streets was superimposed upon the older Roman town plan.13 After
the Norman conquest two castles were constructed and York Minster was
reconstructed on a new alignment by the first Norman archbishop of York, but it
is usually argued that the overall street plan of the city remained largely
unaltered. 14 However both new evidence, and a reappraisal of older knowledge,
suggests that the Norman refashioning of York was much more extensive than this
and that it reflected the ambition of the first Norman kings to tum York into a
true royal capital in the North. This ambition ultimately proved unsustainable.
Nevertheless it produced a set of consequences that were instrumental not
9 P.
Godding and J. Pycke, 'Le Paix de Valenciennes de 1114: Commentaire et edition
critique',
Bulletin de la Commission Royale pour
la publication des anciennes lois et ordonnances de Belgique
29 (1981), 1-142. 10 M. Aurel!, The Plantagenet Empire, 1154-1224 (Harlow, 2007), pp. 194-5.
11 D. M. Palliser, T. R. Slater and E. P. Dennison, 'The Topography of Towns
600-1300', in The
Cambridge Urban History of Britain I:
600-1540, ed. D. M. Palliser (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 153
86 (p.
160); B. Ayers, 'The Urban Landscape', in Medieval Norwich, ed . C. Rawcliffe
and R.
Wilson (London, 2004), pp. 1-28. 12 M.
Jones, D. Stocker and A Vince, The City by the Pool: Assessing the Archaeology
of the City of
Lincoln (Oxford, 2003). l3 R. Hall,
English Heritage Book of Viking Age York (London, 1994). 14 ibid .; D. M.
Palliser, Domesday York, Borthwick Papers 78 (York, 1990).
p
Sarah Rees Jones
only to the arrival of a Jewish
community in York but also to the reception of that community by local
burgesses.
The Norman transformation of York
addressed the problem for the crown that before 1068 there was no direct royal
presence in the city. Is The first kings of England, from the reign of Edgar
(959-75) to that of Edward the Confessor (1042-66), never visited York. Instead
lordship over the city and its region was delegated to the archbishops of York
and the earls of Northumbria. The ancient and extensive lordship of the
archbishop of York centred on the two collegiate churches of St Peter (York
Minster) and Christ Church in Micklegate, which were located respectively in
the centre of the former Roman fortress and in the 'colonia', or civilian town,
on either side of the river Ouse. This lordship probably originated with the
foundation in the seventh century of York Minster around which a new town
slowly developed outside the Roman walls, while the church also acquired
estates incorporating much of York's rural hinterland. The earldom of
Northumbria was established in the later tenth century and appears to have been
endowed with urban and rural estates near York which were carved from those of
the church. By the mid eleventh century its principal residence was in Bootham
where there was also a new church dedicated to St Olave. In 1066 the combined
rural estates of the Minster and the earl extended across most of York's
immediate rural hinterland within a radius of about fifteen miles. In 1086
many of these villages also paid geld with the city and it was only later that
they were assigned to separate hundreds or wapentakes. I6 There is no evidence
for a royal residence in the city during the eleventh century and the crown
controlled no rural manors close to York from which such an urban residence
could have been supported.
This situation was dramatically
altered after the Conquest. The first Nor~ man kings transformed York into a
royal capital as destruction in the years of conquest was followed by extensive
redevelopment. William I built two castles in 1068-69, one on either side of
the river Ouse, and his decisive suppression of fierce local resistance
resulted in both the devastation of many houses in the city and a wholesale
replacement of local landowners with Frenchmen. The 'harrying of the north' in
the winter of 1069-70 extended into the countryside this policy of the
appropriation of estates through which the king himself emerged as the largest
new landowner in the county together with a small number of Norman barons.17
The first Norman kings also constructed a royal house (' domus regis') in York.
This occupied a very large site on the west bank of the Ouse close to the major
approach road to
l5 The following section discusses
briefly materials which are laid out much more fully in Rees Jones, Medieval
York. See also S. Rees Jones, 'Property, Tenure and Rents: Some Aspects of the
Topography and Economy of Medieval York', 2 vols. (unpublished D.Phil.
dissertation, University of York, 1987), I, 81-133.
16 Domesday
Book, 298 b-d.
17 P.
Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship: Yorkshire, 1066-1154 (Cambridge, 1994).
Neighbours and Victims in
Twelfth-Century York
the town used by royal visitors.Is It
is probable that it occupied most of the area (some 300 m by 100 m) within the
Roman walls of the former 'colonia' to the west of modern Tanner Row, and it
perhaps extended as far as the banks of the Ouse. It had a chapel dedicated to
Mary Magdalene and was used for meetings of the county court: the custodian of
the York royal house was required to provide benches for these meetings and wax
for the court's use was stored in the chapeL I9 It was regarded as one of the
most important
royal houses in England: in the early
1130s the hereditary custodian of the
house
was granted a fee of 5d. per day,
just 2d. less than the keeper of the
palace at Westminster. 20
Such a royal residence needed to be
supplied and much of the town and the surrounding countryside was turned into a
supporting economic infrastructure. A royal larder was situated on the east
bank of the river Ouse. It was close to the site of the original Roman river
crossing, which may have survived in use as the most direct route between the
royal house, the larder and the Minster. 2I The larder occupied a defensible
site just within the walls of the Roman garrison, which at that time were still
standing to a height of several metres. 22 The larder was also associated with
an open area known as 'Arkilltofts', just possibly the site of the former
residence of the AngloScandinavian thegn, Arnketil, who was among the leaders
of resistance to the Conquest in 1068 and 1069. Royal larderers sought to
control local markets and Arkilltofts may well have developed into a
marketplace under their authority, later becoming the civic market place, the
'Thursday Market', in the thirteenth century (now St Sampson's Square). 23 The
larderer's authority also extended over the city's summer fair ground which
was outside the walls and was shared with the archbishops. 24
Norman authority over the site of the
fair ground was further marked by a chapel dedicated to St Giles, a new cult
brought to England by the French around 1100. Other new churches were dedicated
to saints popular with the new Anglo-Norman and French elite, including the
churches of St Helen (the mother of Constantine) in Stonegate and St Sampson,
which were built near to the royal larder and in close proximity to the
vestigial remains of the
18 RCHME, City of York
III, 53; King's Works I, 42-7.
19 EYC I, pp. 405-6,
nos. 525-6, whose date is corrected in Rolls of the Justices in Eyre: Being the
Rolls of Pleas and Assizes for Yorkshire in 3 Henry III (1218-19), ed. D. M.
Stenton, Selden Society 56 (London, 1937), p. 420.
20 Rolls of the
Justices in Eyre, pp. 419-20; RCHME, City of York III, 53; King's Works I, 82.
21 R. B. Pugh, 'Prisons and Gallows', in VCH, City of York, pp. 491-8 (pp.
494-7). For the river crossing see below, pp. 21-2.
22 BL MS Cotton Nero D.
III, fol. 115r; York Archaeological Trust, York Archive Gazetteer, '44, Coney
Street/Feasegate, York. Site Code: 1998.2 YORYM, SE60305182', http:/ /www.iadb.
co.uk/ gaz/ gaz_details.php?SitelD=l055 [accessed 1 July 2008].
23 Charters
of the Vicars Choral of York Minster, ed. N. Tringham, 2 vols., YAS, Rec. Ser.
148 and 156 (Leeds, 1993-2002), I, 33-4. 24 H. Richardson, Medieval Fairs and
Markets of York (York, 1961).
.
Neighbours and Victims in
Twelfth-Century York
Sarah Rees Jones
Roman fortress walls and gates. 25 St
Giles was particularly associated with hunting and the royal larderers also
policed and defended the king's right to hunting in local forests. Indeed, in
one of the most radical transformations of the landscape of kingship in
England, the entire countryside surrounding York within a radius of fifteen
miles had been turned into royal forest by around 1100.26 Hunting was
tremendously important to the display of kingship in the twelfth century. It
conveyed simultaneously territorial, military and economic dominance. So this
transformation of the landscape in particular was indicative of the early
Norman kings' ambition for York.
The economic infrastructure for the
royal house was further enhanced by the flooding of the river Foss and the
creation of a royal fishpool in the city centre (also with a royal custodian)
just upstream from the new castle in Nessgate (which was renamed Castlegate).
27 The tenants of the crown's nearest larger rural manors, at Boroughbridge
some twenty miles upriver from York, were alsofreed from all tolls on the
passage of their ships into the city. This was a privilege which later brought
them into dispute with the city but it may originally have been intended to
facilitate the supply of the royal establishment in York.28
The growth of the royal presence in
York was at the expense of the earls of Northumbria. By 1086 the city itself
was formally divided for administrative purposes between the fee of the
archbishop and the fee of the king. The king's fee included all commercial
districts alongside the two river fronts in the city which archaeological
excavations have shown to have been urbanized over the course of the tenth and
eleventh centuries. There is no reference to the earl's estate in York in 1086
because it was at that time in the process of being transferred to a new Norman
foundation, the Benedictine monastery of St Mary. Indeed the transformation of
York's religious institutions further underpinned the new Norman colonization.
In addition to the foundation of new parish churches and chapels, a number of
major new religious foundations were endowed by the Norman kings and their
French followers. The Minster was rebuilt and its community reformed while
Christ Church in Micklegate was refounded as a Benedictine priory, now
dependent on a French mother house and dedicated to Holy Trinity. A number of
lesser religious houses and hospitals were established in the city's suburbs,
including a convent for nuns in Clementhorpe. Most importantly, the hospital
of St Peter (later rededicated to St Leonard) was established on a promi
25 'The Parish Churches', in VCH, City of York, pp. 365-404; RCHME, City of
York V, 20a, 44a.
The church of St Sampson is
constructed on top of the Roman wall. The church of St Helen
is constructed just within the site of
the southern entrance to the former Roman fortress. 26 VCH, East Riding III,
1-28; VCH, City of York, p. 501; C.R. Young, The Royal Forests of Medieval
England(Leicester, 1979), p. 21. 27 S. Rees Jones, with C. Daniell, 'The King's
Pool', in Medieval Urbanism in Coppergate: Refining a Townscape, ed. R. Hall
and K. Hunter-Mann (York, 2002), pp. 696-8. 28 Rolls of the Justices in Eyre,
p. 392.
nent site within the Roman fortress
area not far from the royal larder and occupying an equally impressive corner
of the surviving fortress walls. 29 St Leonard's, in particular, was patronized
by the earliest Norman kings and was one of the largest hospitals in England,
on a par with the great hospital of St Bartholomew in London. The hospital's
cartulary later celebrated William I and II as its re-founders but
memorialized King Stephen as a particularly important patron, together with
many of the most prominent Yorkshire barons, knights and burgesses of early to
mid twelfth-century York.30
Finally it is likely that the city
defences were incorporated into this reconstruction of the city. The overall
alignment of major sections of the defences may have originated in the Roman
period but it is clear that the actual defences were frequently reworked,
resulting eventually in long sections of the Roman walls being buried in al}
earth embankment with (at first) a timber palisade on top. Also, new sections
of defences were added to the central core of the former Roman garrison area
around York Minster connecting it to the two rivers (the Foss and the Ouse),
while the two sides of the garrison area defences within this newly enclosed
area were gradually abandoned. Houses, gardens and one church (the church of St
Sampson) were constructed in their place. Two of the medieval stone gateways
into the city at Micklegate Bar and Bootham Bar contain monumental early Norman
stone arches, suggesting that they were part of a considerable strengthening of
the defences around Micklegate and Petergate, as well as the confirmation of
those streets as major routes into and across the city.31 It is possible that
they marked processional routes linking all the major churches (Holy Trinity
priory in Micklegate, the Minster and St Mary's abbey) with the sites of royal
power (the royal house, the royal larder, St Leonard's hospital, and the fair
ground at St Giles). While we have no clear archaeological evidence for the
date of this reconstruction or for the extension of the walls of the Roman
garrison to the rivers Ouse and Foss, the latter must have been in place by
1177 when the Jewish cemetery was located outside. 32 Medieval Jewish
cemeteries were always located outside city walls and the site of the York
cemetery occupies what was probably the only such area which was both within
the king's fee and not already developed.
If we take all these developments
together we can see that the early Norman kings redeveloped the entire city as
an extension of, and service centre to, a new royal palace: a royal citadel
('arx') indeed. Mapping these developments on to a base map of Roman York
shows the extent to which these royal sites re-utilized still impressive,
visible aspects of the city's Roman topography and architecture, which were
clustered around a focus on the site
29 RCHME,
City of York V, 93-94.
30 BL
MS Cotton Nero D. III, fol. 3r; W. Page, 'Hospitals: York', in VCH, Yorkshire
III, 336-52.
31 RCHME,
City of York II, 95-101, 116-120.
32 S.
Rees Jones, 'The Historical Background', in J.M. Lilley et al., The Jewish
Burial Ground at
Jewbury(London, 1994), pp. 301-12.
.
Sarah Rees Jones
of the original Roman crossing over
the river Ouse, suggesting that this was still in use in at least some form
(whether as bridge or ferry). Coney Street, Blake Street and North Street all
converge on the site of this crossing and were the only three streets in York
in the early twelfth century whose names ended in the Latin (or English) suffix
-street '-straet' or '-strata' rather than the Old Norse -gate or '-gata'. 33
They were part of a network of adjacent streets in the king's fee including
Davygate (named after David the Larderer,
c. 1135~80) and Castlegate which can
only have acquired their names after the Conquest. 34
Above all the refashioning of the
entire city as a centre of Christian imperium reflected contemporary
historical writing about York. Since the time of Bede this had always asserted
the centrality of York's ecclesiastical mission: that royal authority was built
upon Christian foundations, and that the city of York was a central monument to
that imperial achievement.
35
And of course it was at just this
moment, in about 1138, that Geoffrey of Monmouth was elaborating on that
tradition in his inventive History of Britain which claimed a Trojan origin for
the princes of Britain. Monmouth's History linked the origins of York in
particular with the origins of the Christian faith itself. Ebrauc, the mythical
Trojan prince who Monmouth claimed as the founder of York, lived in the time
of David, king of Judea, whose own city, Bethlehem, was the chosen birthplace
of Christ. According to Monmouth, York became the seat of one of the three
pagan high priests of Britain, the archflamens, and was thus a natural choice
for the seat of an archbishopric when Britain was converted to Christianity. 36
Indeed throughout Monmouth's History it is York's role as a centre of
ecclesiastical government in the British Isles which is emphasized. Although
frequently conquered by pagan invaders, York's supremacy as the metro~ politan
see of northern Britain is constantly reasserted in Monmouth's narrative,
particularly in the story of King Arthur, who celebrated Christmas in York
following his defeat of the pagan Saxons, Scots and Picts. 37 This was the
moment when Arthur formally confirmed his hegemony over northern
33 Earliest recorded
forms include 1108x14 'Blaicastret', 1153x8 'Cunegestrate', 1166x79
'Nordstreta'. For earlier discussion of the etymology of York street names
see: A.H. Smith, The Place-Names of the East Riding of Yorkshire and York
(Cambridge, 1937); D. M. Palliser, 'The Medieval Street-Names of York', York
Historian 2 (1978), 2-16; G. Fellows-Jensen, 'The AngloScandinavian
Street-Names of York', in Aspects of Anglo-Scandinavian York, ed. R. A. Hall et
al. (York, 2004), pp. 357-71 esp. pp. 360-3.
34 We could possibly add both Stonegate and Petergate to this list of
names originating after the Conquest. The difficulty is that virtually all
York's medieval street names are recorded for the first time in the early
twelfth century. However the invention of both Castlegate and Davygate proves
that the Old Norse suffix -gata does not have to denote a pre-Conquest origin
for the name.
35 Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth I: Bern
Burgerbibliothek, MS. 568, ed. N.
Wright (Cambridge, 1985), pp. xix,
xxxix-xl, xlvi. 36 Monmouth, Kings of Britain, p. 125. 37 Ibid., pp. 220-1.
22
Neighbours and Victims in
Twelfth-Century York
mainland Britain before turning his
attention to Ireland. These stories were certainly well known in York and
Yorkshire. 38 Monmouth's patron, Walter Espec (d. 1147x58), was a great
Yorkshire landowner, a patron of its new monastic houses and an influential
figure in the city and region. The image of York as the great Christian capital
of northern Britain was reflected in many cultural contexts from the choice of
local church dedications (such as St Helen) to the depiction of the city on
early maps.
The early Norman kings' ambition of
creating a northern royal capital in York was reflected in their visits. Our
sources are extremely slight but it is clear that royal visits were more
frequent in the twelfth than in the eleventh century. Henry I visited at least
four times (1100-35), and his successor King Stephen was a still more frequent
visitor. 39 Henry II paid at least six visits to York as he fought to restore
royal authority in the north against local barons and the king of Scotland.
His crowning achievement came in 1175 when he staged in York Minster a public
ceremonial humiliation of William I 'the Lion', king of Scotland, in the
presence of the entire Scottish court. Henry also used his time in York to
display his sovereignty in other ways: he went hunting, he presided over
punitive sessions of the royal courts, he raised taxes and he affirmed himself
as the royal patron of York's religious houses.
This refashioning of York as a royal
citadel also fostered a transformation of the community resident in the city.
Following the Conquest and continuing into the twelfth century a great deal of
land in the city was transferred to French knights who owned their urban
estates alongside burgesses of Anglo-Scandinavian descent. Indeed the
description of York in the Domesday Book is largely a description of the
eighty-two tenements within the king's fee that had been awarded to nineteen
French knights. 40 The picture is too complicated to present in detail here,
but the redistribution of lands also consolidated the integration of the
landowning classes of the city and shire, tying the city into the politics of
the county and its leading knights and barons. 41 This pattern continued into
the twelfth century when new generations of servants of the king's household
also acquired estates in and around the city.
Norman families who retained York
estates from the time of the Conquest into the later twelfth century included
the Percy family. Their ancestor, William Percy, one of the first Norman
custodians of the castle, owned several properties in York, including most of
the parish of St Mary in Castlegate, and the advowson of the church was still
owned by Agnes de Percy in the
38 J. Crick, The
Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth IV: Dissemination and
Reception in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 64,196,207,209,
214-15.
39 E. Miller, 'Medieval
York', in VCH, City of York, pp. 25-116 (pp. 25-6), J. Green, 'King Henry
I and Northern England', TRHS 6th s.
17 (2007), 35-55; D. Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen
1135-1154(Harlow, 2000), pp. 38n, 40-41, 200, 243-4, 286-7.
40 Domesday Book, fols. 298
a, b.
41 Dalton, Conquest,
Anarchy and Lordship.
23
>
Sarah Rees Jones
later twelfth century. 42 If this
castle was the place of Jewish refuge in 1190, then any Jews approaching it
would have had to pass through this estate in order to reach it. This is a
chilling thought, especially since the head of a junior branch of that family,
William Percy of Carnaby, was later charged with inciting the violence against
them. Other important Norman landowners in York acquired their estates through
service to the king in the twelfth century. Walter Espec, the patron of
Geoffrey of Monmouth, owned land in Ogleforth, and others with York estates
included household officials of Henry I such as Herbert the Chamberlain and
Nigel d' Aubigny, a knight of the royal household who rose to become a 'provincial
viceroy' in the north, a royal justice in Yorkshire and custodian of York
castle until c. 1118.43 Indeed the c~ty estate of d' Aubigny and his son, Roger
de Mowbray, included a large and prominent site in Stonegate, known as 'Mulbrai
Halle', which dominated the central area of the Roman fortress and lay midway
between the Minster and the royal larder. 44 Mowbray became a powerful figure
in York politics in the 1140s and 1150s. He was a great rival to other local
barons who were more favoured than he was by both Stephen and Henry II, and he
was constantly thwarted in his desire to control the royal castle as his father
had once done. He eventually joined the rebellion 'of the young king' against
Henry II in 1173-74, holding the city for the rebels. A large hall in such a
prominent site in the city centre would be appropriate for the man who was once
described as the real 'lord of York'.45
Other royal officials rented or bought
property in Coney Street. Coney Street literally means 'the king's street' in
an amalgam of Old Norse and Latin. It connected the royal castle to the river
crossing between the king's house and the royal larder and may have been so
named because of its association with both offices and officers of the crown.
Bertram of Bulmer (sheriff 1128/9-30 and 1154-63), Fulk Payne! I, Geoffrey
Hageth, a royal justice, the infamous Richard Malebisse (alleged instigator of
the attack on the Jews in 1190), Roger Batvent under-sheriff of Yorkshire in
1194-98 and William Stuteville, sheriff from 1201 to 1203, all either leased or
owned houses in
42 Domesday
Book, fol. 298a; S. Rees Jones, 'Building Domesticity in the City: English
Urban
Housing before the Black Death', in
Medieval Domesticity: Home, Housing and Household in
Medieval England, ed. M. Kowaleski and
P. J. P. Goldberg (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 66-91 (pp.
!!0-2). 43 Charters
of the Honour of Mowbray, 1107-1191, ed. D. E. Greenway, Records of Social and
Economic History, n.s. 1 (London, 1972), pp. xvii-xxxii; J. 0. Prestwich, 'The
Military Household of the Norman Kings', EHR 96 (1981), 1-35 (pp. 24-5). 44
Property at 35a-39 Stonegate was known as 'Mulberiahalle': Mowbray Charters,
pp. xxiv n.,
lxxxii, 8; York Minster Fasti II, 51;
Abstracts of the Charters and Other Documents contained in the
Chartulary of the Cistercian Abbey of
Fountains, ed. W. T. Lancaster, 2 vols. (Leeds, 1915), p. 274.
'Mulberiahalle'
occupied a large area including the site of its modern namesake, Mulberry
Hall, at 17 Stonegate. 45 Jordan Fantosme,
Chronicle of the War between the English and the Scots in 1173 and 1174, ed.
F.Michel, SS 11 (London, 1840), 971-2;
H. M. Thomas, 'Mowbray, Sir Roger (I) de (d. 1188)', ODNB (Oxford, 2004).
Howden, ChronicaII, pp. 79-80.
Neighbours and Victims in
Twelfth-Century York
Coney Street and developed close links
with a number of the wealthier burgesses who also lived in that neighbourhood.
46 The riverside location made Coney Street one of the most important road
arteries in the city and archaeological evidence provides further clues about
the social transformation of this neighbourhood. In neighbouring Coppergate,
for example, the century after 1000 saw a significant reduction in discarded
metal objects associated with metalworking and an increase in metal goods
associated with riding horses. 47 This suggests an elevation in the social
status of the residents under the influence of the new Norman settlement.
Here, too, the most powerful of York's
Jews settled. When Benedict and Josee, and, later in the thirteenth century,
Aaron of York settled in Coney Street, or the adjacent street of Bretgate
(later known as Jewbretgate or Jubbergate), 48 they were choosing to live in
what was effectively a royal quarter and one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods of
the city, where their daily lives were lived cheek-by-jowl with other servants
of the crown and the most prosperous members of the York mercantile elite.
Coney Street was close to the castle (a possible place of refuge) but perhaps
more importantly it was close to the royal larder and market (Jubbergate led
from Coney Street to the market ground in Arkilltofts by the royal larder), and
it was alongside the river by which most travellers and much trade arrived in
the city. When a Jewish community resettled in York in the thirteenth century,
Coney Street was again the neighbourhood in which many of the wealthiest
members lived and where the schola,or synagogue, stood near to the church of St
Martin.
But the York in which Jews began to
settle from the 1170s was very different from the York of the earlier Norman
kings. For, despite those earlier kings' ambitions, the twelfth century, like
the later eleventh, turned into a period of protracted local warfare,
particularly after 1138. By the 1170s little was left of the royal
infrastructure put in place by William I and his two sons. King Stephen was the
last Norman king to seek to impose his personal authority in the city. As
challenges to his rule increased after 1138 he reverted to the older practice
of appointing a local earl to represent the crown's interest in the north. 49
Control of York was given to William d' Aumale who, as earl of York, presumably
took over the royal house as he did the castle. Aumale' s ascendancy, fiercely
resisted by opponents such as Roger de Mowbray, precipitated the outbreak of
private wars which were seen by local chroniclers as a disastrous period of
terrible anarchy in Yorkshire. The royal infrastructure crumbled and even the
royal mint in York began issuing coins in the
46 BL MS Cotton Nero D.
III, fols. 107r, 125r; JRUL MSS 220-1, fol. lr; Chartulary Fountains, pp.
275, 279; EYC I, no 234: EYC IX, 18.
47 P. Ottaway and N.
Rogers, Craft, Industry and Everyday Life: Finds from Medieval York (York,
2002), pp . 2956-67, 2996-7.
48 Dobson, JMY, p. 46.
49 R.H. C. Davis, King
Stephen, 1135-58, 3rd edn (London, 1990), pp. 125-8.
.
name of local barons rather than the
king.so Many new private castles sprang up around the county a~d private armies
terrorized t~e local pop~lation; even Henry II did not brmg peace to the north
after his accession m 1154. The impact of this local warfare is perhaps
reflected in the archaeological evidence of houseplots abandoned in some
streets of central York for nearly a century after the Conquest.s 1
After 1154 Henry II thus adopted a
very different policy towards Yorkshire from any of his predecessors. His
first priority was to destroy the power of the earl of York with military
force and several of the earl's strongholds in the county, such as Scarborough
castle, were taken for the crown. In the case of the city of York, Henry II at
first trod diplomatically. His first charter to York simply confirmed to the
merchant guild all the privileges they had previously enjoyed under royal
lordship, and he also took back custody of the royal castle and presumably of
the royal house.s 2 While Henry certainly visited York there is less evidence
of the personal aspects of earlier Norman kingship in his patronage of local
institutions. He confirmed Stephen's gifts to St Leonard's hospital, but he did
not provide new endowments.s 3 Nor are there any signs of investment in the
royal buildings of York: by 1186 the sheriff was collecting rent for the
abandoned site of the royal mint, and royal coin continued to be minted in
forges in private workshops.s 4 Rather surprisingly the castle remained a
timber construction, unlike other royal castles in the north (such as Carlisle,
Brough, Knaresborough, Pickering or Scarborough) whose keeps were rebuilt in
stone. Indeed in contrast to the great sums which Henry lavished on some of his
southern palaces, such as Clarendon, Woodstock or Westminster, in York there is
just one payment for the construction of a gaol to hold those arrested under
the Assize of Clarendon in 1165-66 and one other payment for work on the
towers ('turris') of York overseen by David, the king's larderer, in 1172-73.55
Yet if Henry spent little on local
royal buildings the financial records of royal government show that he
substantially increased his financial demands on the local community. The
annual farm (or rent) from York to the crown had been fixed at £100 by 1086 and
was included in the farm for the whole county, but from the beginning of his
reign Henry II regularly demanded substantial additional sums in the form of
non-voluntary 'gifts', aids, fines and escheats. An annual gift of £133 was
demanded of the city between 1155
50 Ibid., pp. 330-1.
51 Medieval Urbanism in Coppergate, ed. R. A. Hall and K. Hunter-Mann (York, 2002), pp.
705, 727, 756, 774-87,
859; N. McNabb, 'Anglo-Scandinavian, Medieval and Post-Medieval
Urban Occupation at 41-49 Walmgate, York, UK', The Archaeology
of York, Web Series 1
(York, 2003). http:/
/www.iadb.co.uk/wgate/main/discuss.php
[accessed July 2012].
52 British Borough
Charters, 1042-1216, ed. A. Ballard (Cambridge, 1913), p. 6.
53 BL MS Cotton Nero D.
III, fols. 3v-4r.
54 Miller, 'Medieval York',
p. 30; PR 33 Henry II, p. 82. See below, pp. 30-1.
55 PR 19 Henry II, p. 2;
RCHME, City of York II, 60. It is not clear whether these towers were part
of the castle or city defences, or
part of another structure.
Neighbours and Victims in
Twelfth-Century York
and 1161, rising to the exceptionally
large figure of £540 in 1161-2.56 In the 1160s similar sums were demanded; in
1162-3 (50 marks), 1164-5 (£200), and in 1168-69 (£333 6s. 8d.).57
The size of these demands meant that
the city did not always pay the whole sum demanded, but even these were
supplemented from the mid 1160s by sometimes equally large demands placed on
individual citizens or trading groups. From 1164 an annual charge of £10 was
placed on the weavers of York, representing an extension north of the Trent of
a policy of licensing craft groups which had started in southern towns in the
previous decade.ss More striking still, in the same year Lefwin of York, a
prominent citizen, was put in mercy for the sum of 300 marks (£200) and the
Dean (decanus) of York (possibly the secular reeve of the city) for another
£100. Indeed from 1160, and particularly following the Assize of Clarendon in
1166 the steady expansion of royal law resulted in increasing numbers of York
citizens appearing in the pipe rolls owing sums of money, ranging from 3s. 4d.
to £66; which they and their families would often take many years to redeem. An
early, but typical, case was that of William of Thixendale ('Sexdecimvallibus'
or 'Sezevaux') who was first fined 100 marks (£66 13s. 4d.) for taking his wife
('mulier') by force in 1160-61. For the next thirty-five years first William
and then his son appeared annually paying off this hefty fine in small
instalments until eventually the debt passed to the third generation and on
into the reign of King John. 59 This case illustrates well the impact of the
expanding scope of royal government. It brought larger numbers of local people
before the royal courts, resulting in demands for more and more money. However
it was above all the use of novel written procedures of administration which
meant that local offenders and their descendants could be subjected to demands
from royal officers for decades. The vice of royal government gripped ever
tighter, and must have seemed inescapable.
A further source of discontent,
especially as these novel demands accumulated, was the subjection of York to
the county sheriff. Other cities, such as Lincoln, were sometimes allowed to
pay their own farm to the crown and from the beginning of Henry II's reign the
citizens of York must also have known that burgesses in other (new) royal
boroughs in the county such as Knaresborough (from 1156), Doncaster (from 1160)
and Scarborough (from 1163) were allowed to account directly for their own
farms. 60 It may be that this lay behind the demand of some of York's burgesses
for a commune in 1173-74. In that year Thomas de Ultra Usam and his son were
fined 40 marks 'pro communa quam dicti sunt velle facere'. 61 Thomas may be
identified with the Thomas son of Ulviet who had paid a fine to join the guild
merchant in 1130 and certainly with the Thomas de Ultra Usam who was fined 10
marks in 1162-63.62 'Commune' is a word that has been used by modern urban
historians with a particular technical meaning: it describes a sworn
association of townsmen who organized themselves either for defence, for trade
or to assert their independence from lords and princes in collective and
semi-autonomous corporate self-government. However we know nothing more about
this particular commune in York. It may be more sensible to put it in the
context in which it appears in the pipe roll, which is among a long series of
fines imposed on York citizens for their part in the major rebellion against
Henry II known as the 'young king's revolt': the war of eighteen months'
duration led by Henry's three sons and his wife Eleanor together with many
rebel barons against his government in England and France. In the no~th one of
the leading rebels was Roger de Mowbray and numbers of men m both York and the
county were fined for communicating wi~ ~e king's e~emies ('quia communicavit
cum inimicis Regis'), or for ~emg m commum?n with Mowbray or the king's enemies
('pro communionem quam habmt cum Rogero de Molbrai'). 63 It seems possible
then that Thomas'. s ~communa', listed am?ng these fines, was in fact just
another way of descnbmg a charge of conspiracy rather than a description of
particular
56 PR 8 Henry II, p. 51; C.
Stephenson, 'The Aids of English Boroughs', EHR 34 (1919), 457-73.
57 PR 9 Henry II, p. 58; 11
Henry II, pp. 45-52; 15 Henry II, p. 36.
58 PR 11 Henry II, pp.
45-52.
59 PR 7 Henry II, p. 37 and
thereafter annually into PR 2 John, p. 102.
60 PR 2-4 Henry II, pp.
85-6; 7 Henry II, pp. 35-6; 10 Henry II, pp. 11-13.
61 PR 21 Henry II, p. 180.
form of borough government.
Certainly several other leading
citizens, including William of Tickhill, Gerard and Hugh the sons of Lefwin,
William of Selby, Robert Brun of Coney Street and Alan son of Romund, were
fined for conspiracy with the rebels in 1173-74?rfor _receiving fugitives, for
receiving the chattels of Flemings (who were allied with the rebels and so
banned from trade), for selling shields to the rebels, and/ or simply forced to
pay very large sums (£400 from Gerard son of Lefwin) in 'benevolences' to buy
the king's good will. Many of these men had already appeared before the king's
courts before 1173 for other reasons: William of Selby fined 10 marks for
selling wine against the assize in ~165; William of Tickhill fined 10 marks for
not wishing to stand as a pledge m 1168, Hugh son of Lefwin fined £5 for
recovery of 60 marks. 64 Whether this was the reason why they were engaged with
the rebels during the protracted rev?lt of 1173-74 ~e cannot tell, but almost
certainly they could not carry out their normal busmess without so engaging
andthey paid heavily for that. Indeed the family of the sons of Lefwin paid
nearly £1000 in fines and charg
62 Miller, 'Medieval
York', p. 32; PR 31 Henry I, p. 34; 9 Henry II, pp. 57-60. Thomas's grand
fath:r, Forne, was also named in 1106
as one of the four hereditary lawmen or judges who
presided over the city's internal
administration, a position that is first recorded in 1086: D.
M. Palliser, ?he Birth of York's Civic
Liberties, c. 1200-1354', in The Government of Medieval York: Essays m
Commemoration of the 1396 Royal Charter, ed. S. Rees Jones (York, 1997), pp.
88-107 (pp. 90-1).
63 PR 21 Henry
II, pp. 174-83.
64 PR
12 Henry II, p. 49; 15 Henry II, p. 39; 17 Henry II, p. 73.
28
Neighbours and Victims in
Twelfth-Century York
es over the later years of the reign
of Henry II, more than any other Christian family in the whole of England. 65
Nor were the immediate fines the end of their punishment. A punitive session of
the forest eyre in 1175, over which Henry presided in person, raised over £1600
in fines, and the ceremonious humiliation of the king of Scotland and his court
in 1175 in York Minster was surely intended to impress the citizens as much as
its baronial participants. 66
It is extremely significant that it
was in the aftermath of the great revolt of 1173-74 and its emphatic
suppression that Jewish moneylenders first settled in York. Some Jewish
scholars may have been invited to attend the court of the archbishop of York
for debate on matters of scripture earlier in the century, but the first
Jewish families to settle in York almost certainly moved there from Lincoln and
'may have operated as an outlying agency of a national financial network
dominated by Aaron of Lincoln until his death in 1186'.67 Along with other
provincial Jewries, the York community was granted in 1177 the right to
maintain its own cemetery, and a site was provided outside the city walls on
the banks of the River Foss.68 We know relatively little about this first
Jewish community. Most of our evidence about Jews in medieval York comes from
the plea rolls of the Jewish Exchequer established after 1190 and it relates
primarily to the second wave of Jewish settlement in the city in the thirteenth
century (and especially in the reign of Henry III). However incontrovertible
references to Jews in York begin from the early to mid 1170s: a purchase by
'Josee the Jew, son of David' of a burgage in Fossgate, a Hebrew bond referring
to Aaron of Lincoln, Josee of York and six other Jews
acquitting debts of 1260 marks due to
them up to the feast of Michaelmas 1176, and references to Josee of York
lending money to the king and receiving payments from the sheriffs of
Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Yorkshire. 69 Josee was joined in the 1180s by
Benedict, and both developed successful businesses building up portfolios of
property across the county and beyond. 70 These two men were exceptionally
wealthy, a fact that attracted comment: Newburgh described Josee's house as
'rivalling a noble citadel in the scale and stoutness of its construction' .71
Dobson believes that the Jewish com
65 H.
M. Thomas, The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and
Identity 1066c.1220 (Oxford, 2003), p. 185. 66 D. Crook, 'The Earliest
Exchequer Estreat and the Forest Eyres of Henry II and Thomas fitz Bernard,
1175-80', in Records, Administration and Aristocratic Society in the
Anglo-Norman Realm,ed. N. Vincent (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 29-44 (pp. 33-4). 67
R. B. Dobson, 'The Decline and Expulsion of the Medieval Jews of York', JHSE
Transactions
26 (1979
for 1974), 34-52 (p. 35). 68 Rees Jones, 'The Historical Background', in Jewish
Burial Ground at Jewbury, ed. Lilley et al. 69 Dobson, JMY, pp. 11-12.
70 ibid., pp. 12-13. In
1200 and 1205 King John granted properties of Benedict the Jew of York in
Northampton and York to new owners. His 'land and houses' in York were not
described but had been acquired by the crown from Philip, bishop of Durham
(1197-1208) and were
granted to Richard de Richeford: Rot.
Chart., pp. 52, 150.
71 WN,
trans. Stevenson, p. 314.
.
Sarah Rees Jones Neighbours and
Victims in Twelfth-Century York
munity before 1190 was 'a community
dominated by a small and closelyintegrated elite of money-lenders and dealers
in bonds' of no more than 150 men, women and children. But he goes on to
conclude that the community was also beginning to expand in new directions, in
particular through the development of its scholarly and religious life, as it
welcomed a group of prominent Jewish scholars including Rabbi Yorn Tob of
Joigny, Rabbi Elijah, a certain Moses and even Josee of York himself, who was
notable for his learning as well as his financial skills.72
The arrival and documentation of
York's first Jewish community coincided with, and may well have been the
product of, increased efforts by royal government to regulate and profit from
not only the financial activities of Jews but also many other aspects of local
trade and commerce throughout England. Robert Stacey charts the growth of royal
power over Jews and their financial transactions elsewhere in this volume. Over
a similar period officials of the royal household also developed regulations
for commodities purchased by the crown such as bread, ale, wine or cloth, and
these eventually became the basis for national assizes governing the sale of
these commodities. 73In 1177-78 the sheriff collected 20 marks in York for
infractions of the assize of measures and in 1179-80 the range of craft guilds
amerced by the king extended to the glovers and cordwainers, saddlers and
hosiers. 74A particular problem was the regulation of moneyers in York, who
towards the end of Stephen's reign, in the 115Os, had produced 'debased' coins
in the name of the local barons Robert de Stuteville and Eustace fitz John.
75Payments from the moneyers of York, and the associated exchange, to the royal
sheriff are a regular feature of the pipe rolls only from 11646576 but by the
117Os minting in the city was clearly being reorganized. In 1170-71 William de
Brettegate paid 20 marks to be relieved of the custody of the mint and from
1176 to 1180 an allowance was made to the sheriff for
the lack of payments from the city's
moneyers (variously numbered from three to eight). 77Nevertheless the York mint
clearly participated in a great general recoinage of English coin in 1180 and
it is likely that in York, as in Winchester, minting continued in a number of
forges on private premises
72 Dobson, JMY, pp
14-15.
73 F.Sargeant, 'The
Wine Trade with Gascony', in Finance and Trade under Edward III, ed. G. Unwin
(Manchester, 1918), pp. 257-311; P. Grierson, 'Weights and Measures', in
Domesday Book Studies, ed. A. Williams and R. W. H. Erskine (London, 1987), pp.
80-5; R. H. Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society, 1000-1500, 2nd
edn (Manchester, 1996), pp. 26, 94-5; J.
M. Bennett, Ale, Beer and Brewsters in
England: Women's Work in a Changing World, 1300-1600 (Oxford, 1996), pp.
99-100; J.Davis, 'Baking for the Common Good: A Reassessment of the Assize of
Bread in Medieval England', Economic History Review 57 (2004), 465-502.
74 PR 24 Henry
II, pp. 71-2: 26 Henry II, pp. 71.
75 M.
Blackburn, 'Coinage and Currency', in The Anarchy of King Stephen's Reign, ed.
E. King
(Oxford, 1994), pp. 145-205
(pp. 183-5). 76 PR 11 Henry II, pp. 49. 77 PR 17 Henry II, p. 73; 22 Henry II,
p. 99; 26 Henry II, p. 61.
ther than at a single official site,
although there may have been an unsuc::ssful attempt to establish such a
site.78By 1181-2 the sheriff was r_enting out the land where the old building
of the mint had stood ('terre ubi vetus f brica monetariorium Eboraci fuit').
79All these changes may have caught
:t
older moneyers such as Gerard son of Lefwin who had paid 50 marks ~or the mint
('cuneo') of the king in 1165, but who was fi~ed ~00 marks for denying the
possession of false money in 1184 along with his servant Everard Bradex who was
fined 30 marks. 80
After the great rebellion of 1173-74,
then, the novel exactions of the crown only increased in their sophistication
and range: the l:'ip~ r_olls for the 118Os record ever lengthening lists of
payments due from mdividuals. Demands on the city community as a whole also
continued culminating in a new' gift' of £226 6s. 4d. in 1186-87, and only one
third of this had been paid before the next year when the special 'tithe of
Saladin' was requested. 81The arrival of wealthy Jewish financiers, speaking
French, and protected and regulated by the crown, was most likely interpreted
locally as part of this broader expansion of royal financial impositions in
the city and its hinterland. Certainly the initial reception of Jews was not
untroubled. In 1178-79 Ralph de Glanville, as sheriff of Yorkshire, arrested a
man (unnamed) for the death of a Jew (unnamed), and in the same year for the
first time several (non-Jewish) individuals in York and Yorkshire were fined
as usurers: both signs, perhaps, that the crown intended to defend and protect
its rights over the money lending activities of 'its' Jews against the
non-Jewish population. 82
The Jewish community in York was
therefore less than one generation old at the time of the coronation of King
Richard I in London on 3 September 1189 which, according to Newburgh, several
of its leading Jews journeyed to attend. Here, Benedict of York was injured and
converted to Christianity by the prior of St Mary's abbey in York (who was also
in London) but recanted the next day before the king. He died of his wounds,
but others returned to York. Richard I issued an injunction against further
violence against Jews in England, but he and many of his leading officials soon
left for France. Crucially, and thanks to new research by Dr Hugh Doherty, we
now know that these officials included the new sheriff of Yorkshire, John
Marshal, who was not (as earlier historians thought) present in York in early
1190.83This fact, as well as a vacant archbishopric, left a dangerous absence
of royal authority in Yorkshire. By the beginning of March Jew-baiting had
spread to York, starting with murderous attacks on the houses and families of
the recently deceased Benedict and also Josee who is said to have led all
York's surviving Jews into the royal 'arx' for protection. Whether this was the
wooden keep later replaced by the stone Clifford's Tower is a matter of
conjecture. Roger of Howden described the massacre as occurring 'in veteri
castello' (which could refer to the 'vetus ballia', the second Norman castle,
on the west bank of the Ouse), while Matthew Paris described some Jews as
enclosing themselves within the 'domo regia' and setting fire to themselves
together with the 'domibus regiis' which could refer to the king's house ('
domus regis') on the west bank. 84 All three of these sites are possible candidates
for the 'arx' at the centre of Newburgh's tale, but we cannot be certain which
may have ?een_ the tru~ site of that awful immolation, and no archaeological
excavations m the present castle have yet revealed evidence to firmly support
Newburgh's account. 85
78 M. Biddle and D. Keene,
'Winchester in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries', in Winchester
in the Early Middle Ages: An Edition
and Discussion of the Winton Domesday, ed. M. Biddle (Ox
ford, 1976), pp. 241-448 (pp. 396--421).
79 PR 28 Henry II, p. 36;
33 Henry II, p. 82.
80 PR 12 Henry II, p. 49;
31 Henry II, p. 69. York coins bearing
Everard's name survive
from c.
1180: Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum,
Museum Accession Numbers: CM. 1250-2001 and
CM. 1259-2001.
81 PR 33 Henry II, p. 93;
'Ordinance of the Saladin Tithe (1188)',
in EHD, II: 1042-1189, ed. D. C.
Douglas and G. W. Greenaway, 2nd edn
(London, 1996), pp. 421-2.
82 PR 25 Henry II, pp. 23,
40.
.
83 Hugh Doherty, 'The
Sheriffs of Yorkshire and the Massacre of 1190', Conference paper, Um
Apart from chronicles, the events of
March 1190 are only documented in one surviving administrative source: the
lists compiled of the men fined for the ~assac~e in the years after 1190.86 As
Doherty has argued, royal reaction to this horrible lapse of its authority in
Yorkshire was swift and decisive . It followed the pattern of other recent
royal punishments by taking the form of financial penalties imposed on the
local community as well as seizing the e~tates of the leading perpetrators. An
initial list of those fined appears in the pipe roll for the second year of
Richard I's reign but new names were added to the original list in later years.
For this reason we do not know whether the ~itizens inclu?ed in the lists were
being punished because of their personal involvement m the violence of March
1190 or whether they were fined simply as the leading representatives of the
city of York. Following Newburgh, Dobson conch~ded that these men were fined
not because of their guilt but because of their wealth: that this was a list of
York's richest inhabitants, not, as in Lincoln, of those engaged in violence
against the Jews. 87
Although it is impossible to know who
was engaged in the events of March 1190 and how they were motivated we can
flesh out the biographies of many of those on the lists using the evidence not
only of the pipe rolls but also of title deeds recording property transactions
which are among our
versity of York, 22 March 2010. 84
Howden, ChronicaIII, 34; Paris, Chronica Majora I, 359. 85 A quantity of burnt
timbers were observed in archaeological excavations of the mound be
neath Clifford's Tower in 1902 and
were then interpreted as evidence of the destruction of
the Norma~ keep in th~ revolt of 1069.
The fire in 1190 has been speculatively suggested as
an alterna~1~~ ex~lanatJon. The record
of the observations is considered too sparse to sup
port a ~efinitive mterpretation : J.
Clark and Field Archaeology Services, Historic Buildings
Analysis: Clifford's Tower, York,
Report for English Heritage (London, 2005), p. 3. 86 PR 2 RichardI, pp . 68-70;
3-4 RichardI, pp. 69-70, 215-16. 87 Dobson, JMY, p. 32.
.
,.
Neighbours and Victims in
Twelfth-Century York
most abundant surviving sources for
York in this period. 88 Of the fifty-nine citizens of York named on these
lists, at least fifty-one can be identified in charters as participants or
witnesses in land transactions.
First, the names give us an insight
into continuity with the past. Many of the patrilineal names suggest that these
men were the descendants of AngloScandinavian families and representative of a
continuing population dating back before the Norman Conquest of 1068-69. Around
25 per cent of those fined were from the first generation to have been given
French first names (such as Thomas son of Ramkill, or Robert and Serio the sons
of Wulfsi). In the names of their fathers and grandfathers they carried the
memories of York's turbulent history over the period of the Conquest and its
aftermath.
Indeed the impression of a group well
acquainted with the city's past is reinforced when we collate references to
them elsewhere in the pipe rolls and in charters of land transactions in York.
At least eight of those fined in 1190 had already been fined by royal officers
over the preceding decade for various offences from rape, infringements of the
forest law, and trading infractions to offences related to the mint. 89 In
addition more than half of those fined in 1190 seem to have been near to the
end of their lives: evidence about them is relatively sparse, although it is
often possible to find references to the property holdings of close relatives
and descendants. 90 This generation included some of those fined the . largest
amounts in 1190, such as Warin of Cuningestrata who was fined 20 marks. Warin
witnessed a number of charters between the later 1150s and the mid 1190s, but
was then replaced in witness lists by his sons Thomas and Ambrose and his
grandson Stephen (also known as Stephen Wariner) who lived around the corner
from Coney Street in property between Ousegate and Coppergate in the early
thirteenth century .91 This would certainly support the idea that those fined
in 1190
88 See note 5 above.
89 Thes e eight men
were Everard Bradex , Philip son of Baldwin, Robert son of Askell , Robert of
Selby, Roger son of Gerard , Serio the brother of Robert (son of Wulfsi), Simon
Blund and Thomas of Bretgate. Robert son of Askell was fined 15 marks in
1179-80 for taking a woman by force: PR 26 Henry II, p. 62. Most of the other
offences were clustered between 1184 and 1186: PR 31 Henry II, pp. 68-9; 32
Henry II, pp. 68, 93-5.
90 Those fined in 1190
who appear to have been towards the end of their lives included Thomas son of
Richard, Warin of Cuningestrata, William son of Otwy, Turkill and Gerard of
Bretgate, Robert son of Liulf, John son of Goduse, Ralph son of Lundwar, Thomas
son of Yo!, Roger son of Bernulf, Walter son of Godfrey, Serio Bella, Robert
and Serio the sons of Wulfsi, Roger son of Lemmar , Philip son of Baldwin,
Simon Sakespee, Roger son of Gerard, Osbert Stutte, Avenel and Turstin Galien.
Another eight men who have not yet been identified include William Deusanz ',
William son of Walkelin , Herbert brother of Walter, Galfridu s carnifex
(Geoffrey the butcher), Malgerus talliator (Malger the tax assessor), Roger son
of Lemmar (although Lemmer the tanner is recorded as witness to a transaction
in Skeldergate in c. 1148x75: Cartulariwn Abbathia! de White!,y, Ordinis S.
Benedicti fundat.:e anno MLXXVIII, ed. J.
C. Atkinson, 2 vols., SS 69, 72
(Durham, 1879-81), I, 226), Elias clericus , Erkenbaldus Wes
dier, Robert son of Askill and William
of Buggeden. 91 Chartulary Fountains, pp. 268, 273, 275; York, YMA, Cartulary
of St Mary's Abbey, York, fols.
included some of the most senior
figures in the city. They also included the patriarchs of dynasties which
continued to be an important presence in the city into the next century and
beyond.
As well as providing links with York's
past the list also gives us a glimpse of the future. It includes some men who
survived into the next century. William son of Sigfrith (who was fined the
largest sum of 100 marks in 1190) was one of these together with Thomas Palmer
(also known as Thomas son of Hugh), Hugh son of Lefwin, Ralf the glover (le
wanter), Thomas son of Ramkill and Daniel the oxherd (le buuier or bouarius)
who all survived for long enough to be ta1laged in 1204.92Of these men two
(Thomas Palmer fined 25 marks and William Brinkelaw fined 1 mark) both went on
to achieve office as mayor and bailiff of the city in the second and third
decades of the thirteenth century. 93lndeed both Palmer and Brinkelaw were
associated with one of York's most prominent citizens in the reign of King
John, William Fairfax, who was one of the last royal reeves of York, possibly
an early mayor, a significant property owner and a major money-lender. Fairfax
was also engaged in the military resistance against King John in the barons' war,
leading an attack on the royal house in York during which he captured and
imprisoned its keeper. 94The group of men fined in 1190 therefore include not
only those who had resisted royal authority and led demands for York's
independence from the royal sheriff in the past, but also those who would
continue to do so in the future.
Beyond this we can make some
assessment of the wealth of the citizens of York who were fined after 1190 and
identify the neighbourhoods within the city where they probably (or in several
cases certainly) lived. That most of the citizens fined can be identified in
charters as owners of property in itself makes a point about their wealth,
since only a minority of the residents of medieval towns, probably less than 10
per cent, would have been landowners.95 Also their property ownership was
concentrated in those areas of the city where the king's influence was
strongest. The largest number (seventeen individuals) were associated with
properties in Coney Street, Coppergate, Ousegate and Castlegate, and the second
largest group (ten individuals) with the neighbourhood of Walmgate. 96
2r,
34r; JRUL MSS 220-1, fol. 58r; BL MS Cotton Nero D. III, fols 104r, 169r.
92 PR
6 John, pp. 207-8.
93 JRUL
MSS 220-1, fol. 4r; BL MS Cotton Nero D. III, fol. 204r; EYC I, 177,200.
94 Rolls
of the Justices in Eyre, pp. 423-4.
95 S. Thrupp, The Merchant Class of Medieval London, 1300-1500 (Chicago,
1948), p. 125; D. Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1985)
1, 218, 225.
96 Those who can be
identified as owners and residents in the streets between Coney Street and the
Castle: William son of Sirith, Thomas son of Richard, Wain of Cunigestrata,
Robert Glene, John son of God use, William of Otley, Thomas son of Yol, Serlo
Bella, Malgerus Talliator, Simon and Thomas Blund, Thomas son of Ramkill,
Philip son of Baldwin, William son of Constantine, Walter son of Reiner, Hugh
son of Lefwin and Osbert Stutte. Those associated with Bretgate (now Navigation
Road) off Walmgate: Turkillus of Bretgate, Everard Bradex,
34
Neighbours and Victims in
Twelfth-Century York
In particular some of those who paid
the largest fines in 1190 lived in and around Coney Street, where their
neighbours included not only some of York's wealthiest Jews but also royal
officials and Yorkshire barons. Apart from the eponymous Warin of Cuningestrata,
William son of Sirith may have lived here, since he witnessed two charters in
Nessgate (Castlegate) in the later twelfth century, although his son and
grandson both lived across the city in Goodramgate. 97Of several notable people
in the area Hugh son of Lefwin was one of the most important. His father was
active early in the reign of Henry II, owing the king the huge sum of £200 (£40
of which was assigned to one of his baronial neighbours in Coney Street, Fulk
Paynel). 98 His stepfather, William Tickhill, was an equally prominent citizen
and both were well connected with local knights and were owners of rural
estates as well as York property. Hugh was also a minor royal office holder (in
the king's exchange in York), and an alleged ally of the disgraced Roger de
Mowbray during the revolt of 1173-74 together with William Tickhill and his
brother Gerard, both of whom had probably died by 1190 leaving Hugh as the
family head. Hugh son of Lefwin lived in a stone hall in Coney Street on the
site of the later city Guild Hall. 99 He also owned other property in the same
street, at the centre of a network involving several of those fined in 1190.
His estate included a large house that Hugh had acquired from Richard
Malebisse, the alleged leader of the mob attacking the Jews in 1190. This same
house was first leased to John son of Goduse (another of those fined in 1190)
and later leased to Roger Bavent the undersheriff of Yorkshire from 1194 to
1198.100 It occupied a site beside the church of St Martin and thus near the
synagogue and the homes of some of York's leading Jews, such as Aaron of York,
that were first recorded in the early decades of the thirteenth century. 101
Other tenants of Hugh's in Coney Street included Thomas son of Ramkill who
lived in a house and held three plots there, while near neighbours included
Philip son of Baldwin and William son of Constantine. 102 Everard Bradex, the
moneyer employed by Gerard son of Lefwin, was another member of this group. All
four were witnesses to each other's charters and were fined along with Hugh in
1190.
William Deusanz, Thomas Palmer,
Gerardus of Brettegate, Ralf son of Lundwar, Richard
and Martin of Sezevaux, Daniel
Bovarius and Simon Sakespee. Smaller groups of four or
five individuals were associated with
Bootham and Micklegate respectively, while one to
three individuals were associated with
Goodramgate, Petergate, the Shambles, Fishergate
and Clementhorpe. . 97 For William son
of Sirith and falnily: BL MS Cotton Claudius D. XI, fol. 2r; BL MS Cotton
Nero D. III, fol. 103r; Bodi. MS
Dodsworth 7, fol. 22r; Charters Vicars Choral, I, 365. 98 PR 11 Henry II, p.
49; 12 Henry II, p. 39. 99 EYC I, 198-200; York, YCA, G16; TNA, SC 6/708, m.10;
Rees Jones, 'Property, Tenure and
Rents', I, 72. 100 Chartulary
Fountains, p. 274; JRUL MSS 220-1, fols. 3r, 4r, lOr. 101 Dobson, JMY, pp.
44-5. 102 YML, Cartulary of St Mary's Abbey, fol. 2r; JRUL MSS 220-1, fols. lr,
Sr, 74r; BL MS Cotton
Nero D. III, fol. 107r.
A similar and equally robust network
was based in and around Bretgate. Two streets in York shared this name. One,
off Coney Street, later became Jewbretgate or Jubbergate because of its
association with the homes of Jews living there in the thirteenth century.
However the Bretgate of this group was undoubtedly off Walmgate as the
description of the properties and their later history makes clear. Walmgate was
a distinctive neighbourhood whose fortunes were recovering in the later twelfth
. century as properties abandoned since the Conquest were resettled and
redeveloped with new industries. It was not yet enclosed within the city
defences (that was to happen during the reign of King John) but it is clear
that some of its residents were persons of substance, living in stone houses,
building up estates of property across the city and county, holding public
office and playing a leading role in city affairs. Thomas Palmer, the future
mayor of York, makes some of his earliest documented appearances as a tenant
in Walmgate. 103 The eponymous Turkill and Gerard of Brettegate were perhaps
dominant members of the neighbourhood who were fined in 1190. It also included
Simon Sakespee, the nephew of Walter son of Faganulf, whose family of
hereditary priests owned the churches of St Mary and St Margaret in Bretgate within
their patrimony in the early twelfth century: and Walter and Jordan Sakespee
were celebrated as major patrons of the hospital of St Leonard in York to
which they gave the advowson of those churches. 104 Like the Coney Street group
this Walmgate group appears tightly knit, but its wealthier members were also
linked with those in Coney Street, sometimes witnessing charters there. Indeed
the wealthiest families used these connections to move out. Some of the
earliest references to Richard and Martin of Thixendale ('Sezevaux') in York
place them in Walmgate, but the family soon acquired property elsewhere in the
city becoming, first, mayors of York and, eventually, county gentry in the
later thirteenth century. 105
The importance of these two
neighbourhoods for the men first fined for the massacre of the Jews in 1190 may
be significant. Both were neighbourhoods which lay within the king's fee in
York, rather than in the fee of the archbishop and the Minster (centred around
the Minster), or of St Mary's abbey (centred in Bootham). They were also both
old industrial and commercial neighbourhoods which were being transformed by
new prosperity in the last decades of the twelfth century. Given both the
vigorous growth of new centres of industry and commerce and their location
within the king's jurisdiction it is not surprising that it was the residents
of these neighbourhoods who were particularly active in emerging new
structures of civic government. Coney Street and Walmgate were also
neighbourhoods where we know (at least from slightly later evidence) that Jews
settled or had con
103 BL MS Cotton Nero D. III, fol. 9r.
104 JRUL MSS 220-1, fol. 3r; BL MS Cotton Nero D. III, fol. llr-v; EYCI,
240-51.
105 Yorkshire Deeds, ed. W. Brown et al., 10 vols., YAS, Rec. Ser. 39, 50,
63, 65, 69, 76, 83, 102, 111,
120 (Leeds,
1909-55) II, 203, no. 534. For the Sezevauz family see, Rees Jones, Medieval
York;
36
Neighbours and Victims in
Twelfth-Century York
nections, particularly in streets near
Coney Street, but there is also the very early reference to Jewish property in
Fossgate, which was an extension of Walmgate towards Ousegate and the city
centre. 106 More important may be the evidence that a number of York citizens
were indebted to Aaron of Lincoln (whose debts were administered by the crown
following his death in 1186) and the two streets where properties are
specifically identified as having been mortgaged to him were (again) Walmgate
and Ousegate (by one Richard Blundus). 107 All this suggests significant
engagement between wealthy Christian and Jewish residents in these
neighbourhoods in particular. Might these debts have provided a motive for
antipathy towards the king's Jews similar to that which has commonly been
ascribed to the knights of the shire? Yet, to complicate this picture, there is
evidence that the citizens fined in 1190 were themselves providers of credit.
Hugh and Gerard the sons of Lefwin both acquired rural estates in this manner,
while the growing practice of purchasing rent charges on property enabled many
of this group (and their associates and descendants) to build up extremely
valuable estates in the city.108
It is not possible here to explore all
the possible connections between those fined in 1190. This was a tight-knit
group, united by bonds of family, business and neighbourhood. Certainly they
were wealthy and prominent citizens, but also they were associated with
particular neighbourhoods sharing certain characteristics: of growing
commercial prosperity, of strong networks around key individuals and of
proximity to the institutions associated with royal government. They were also
the neighbourhoods in which York's new Jewish families were most active and
prominent. It was certainly to these neighbourhoods that Jews returned in their
second settlement in the reign of Henry III.
Perhaps not surprisingly a final
characteristic of the citizens fined for the attack on the Jews is the degree
to which they were associated with local knights, barons and royal officials
both before 1190 and afterwards. Theimportance of wealthy burgesses in the
county communities of twelfth-century England has not been adequately
recognized. However the close engagement of York men with the rebels in
1173-74 should come as no surprise; neither should their connections, through
trade and ownership of property, with Yorkshire barons and knights. We have
already seen that Hugh son of Lefwin acquired property in Coney Street from
Richard Malebisse, and later
106 See above, n. 69.
IO? PR 9 Richard I, pp. 46, 61-2.
Richard Blundus was possibly a relative of Simon Blund, who was fined in 1190,
although Blund was a common cognomen. Citizens of York are not explicitly
identified as such in the lists of his debtors, but names which do appear such
as 'Walter Aurifaber', 'William de Selby' and 'Nicholas de Buggethorpe' were
all names of wealthier York residents occurring in other contemporary records
and it is likely that they
were citizens. I08 For Hugh and
Gerard, sons of Lefwin see: Miller, 'Medieval York', p. 26. For the trade in
rents in the thirteenth century see: Rees Jones, Medieval York for more detail.
.
Sarah ReesJones
let it to the undersheriff of
Yorkshire; the connections of Hugh and Richard with Roger de Mowbray are also
well established. One of Hugh's other properties in Coney Street, inhabited by
Thomas and William Ramkill and their families, and later by Hugh's wife's
daughter, neighboured a house of William de Stuteville (a royal justice who
married the niece of Ranulf de Glanville, sheriff of Yorkshire). 109 Philip son
of Baldwin (fined in 1190) held land from Geoffrey Hageth the royal justice in
Coney Street, while Avenel (fined in 1190) looked after the town house of
Richard of Huddleston, owner of the manor of Huddleston in west Yorkshire where
stone for York Minster was quarriedY 0 These connections continued after 1190:
both Warin of Cuningestrata and Henry of Fishergate (among those fined for the
massacre) were employed on the works restoring and enlarging the castle after
1190.111
Perhaps the most important presence in
York before 1190, and indeed a critical absence in 1190 itself, was Ranulf de
Glanville, the former royal justiciar, sheriff of Yorkshire and close friend to
Henry II, who had presided over several of the courts in which York citizens
had been fined in the 1180s. Glanville was absent from York in March 1190,
since he had left the government on the accession of Richard in 1189 and
departed on the crusade. 112 Despite his association with the unpopular novel
demands of Henry II's government he too had become an established presence in
the city. In particular he had acquired a large stone house immediately before
the west front of York Minster. The house had been forfeited to the king by
Walter son of Daniel between 1178 and 1181 because Walter had murdered his wife
(his guilt having been decided by a duel in the king's court). It would have made
an imposing residence for Glanville's visits to York, but shortly before 1189
he granted it to William of Fishergate who in turn gave it to the hospital of
St Leonard, a gift that was confirmed by Henry 11.113 It is notable, however,
that Petergate was not one of the streets from which many citizen property
owners were fined in 1190, perhaps because Petergate lay within the
archbishop's jurisdiction, and to some extent was dominated by the community of
the cathedral close. Whether by accident or design, Glanville' s house lay
away from the neighbourhoods of those citizens who were most strongly
associated with events in 1190.
The months following the accession of
Richard I were important in the lives of all these men, for a reason other than
the massacre in March 1190. For it was in those same months that the citizens
of York first won exemp
109 See above and also BL MS Cotton Nero D. III, fol. 107r; YML, MS
Cartulary of St Mary's Ab
bey, fol. 2r; EYC, VII, 9. 110 EYC I,
180, no. 216. 111 PR 3-4 RichardI, p. 61. 112 J. Hudson, 'Glanville, Ranulf de
(1120s?-1190)', ODNB (Oxford, 2004). 113 Between 1205 and 1214 the house was
demolished in order to enlarge the Minster Close
around the west end of the cathedral:
BL MS Cotton Nero D. III, fol. 130v; BL MS Cotton
Claudius B. III, fol. 40r; YML, 12 /
1, pt ii, fol. 45r-v, pt iii, fols. 42r, 62r, 67v; pt iv fol. Sr; Rees
Jones, 'Property, Tenure and Rents',
II, 206-9.
Neighbours and Victims in
Twelfth-Century York
tion from taxes on their trade
throughout the Angevin empire, and were also allowed to pay the balance of the
annual farm due from the city directly to the crown, without the sheriff acting
as intermediaryY 4 The right to farm the city directly from the king lapsed
after just one year. We do not know why, but might speculate that the massacre
in March was the primary reason that the citizens failed to maintain this
privilege which would not be confirmed again until 1212 when King John granted
the city the right to pay its own farm in perpetuity by charter. 115 Instead of
being the first county town to receive this privilege by charter, York became
one of the last. 116
This achievement of civic liberty
needs to be placed in context. The inhabitants of York were already well used
to managing their own internal affairs, regulating trade, and holding courts
without any royal prescription and without keeping any records. 117 The new
freedom to pay their own farm, acquired first in 1189-90 and again in 1212, did
not therefore mark the beginning of local government in York, but it did
represent a decisive moment in which that autonomy was extended and reinforced
through the transfer of responsibilities for royal administration in the city
from the royal sheriff of the county to the citizens themselves. Winning, but
also then losing, the right to pay their own farm is a forgotten but crucial
part of the civic context to the attacks on the king's Jews in York that year,
in part because it perhaps reinforced a new emphasis being placed on the other
cultural contexts through which York citizens were asserting their autonomy
from royal administration around 1190, in particular the idea of York as a
Christian city founded in the shadow of York Minster. The final context in
illuminating the simmering cauldron which exploded in March 1190 is faith; in
this case, the meaning and uses of faithfulness in both constructing and
disrupting neighbourliness.
As Paul Hyams indicates 'faith' was a
powerful concept which militated against the easy integration of new immigrants
who were not Christian. In York the Christian faith had a strong historical
resonance in a city which had developed in the shadow of its cathedral church
and which had no long tradition of royal government. Indeed before 1200 the
courts of York Minster and other religious institutions, such as St Mary's
abbey and St Leonard's hospital often provided more effective and more local
places of trust for residents than did the royal courts.118 The flourishing
cult of St William in York (a recent archbishop who had died in 1154 and was
canonized in 1170) also provided a vehicle through which local people could
organize them
114 PR 2 Richard I, p. 59; Miller, 'Medieval York', pp. 30-1, 33.
115 Rot. Chart., pp. 40b, 187.
116J.
Tait, The Medieval English Borough: Studies on Its Origins and Constitutional
History (Man
chester, 1936), p. 291. 117 Palliser,
'York's Civic Liberties', p. 89. 118 For what follows see: S. Rees Jones, 'The
Cults of St William of York and St Kenelm ofWinch
combe', in Cities, Texts and Social
Networks 400-1500: Experiences and Perceptions of Medieval Urban Space, ed. C.
Goodson et al. (Farnham, 2010), pp. 193-214.
.
Neighbours and Victims in
Twelfth-Century York
Sarah Rees Jones
selves and express their desires for
good government in two ways. First, local saints' cults made it legitimate for
local people to group together in order to raise and spend money on good
causes, including the construction of a new stone bridge across the river Ouse.
Second, through the recording of mundane miracles (the revival of children who
had fallen down wells or of middle-aged men felled by strokes), the cults
provided ordinary people with a public theatre in which they could articulate
the things that really mattered to them: the health of their family, their
problems with old age, difficult personal relationships, the sufferings and
cruelties inflicted by war. These were the problems which affected their daily
health, wealth and happiness. They were very far removed from the agenda of
royal government but became one of the principal cornerstones of municipal
self-government down to modern times. Certainly in York the cult of St William
was in many ways more fundamental to the successful foundation of civic
government than the acquisition of a commune and it is telling that the main
offices of civic government were located in the chapel of St William built
after 1170 on Ouse Bridge, where a fraternity of prominent citizens established
both a hospital and other charities for the poor of the city. Such faith
communities were formed around a concern for mundane domestic issues which
should have provided the kind of motivation to enable Jews and Christians to
live well together, to share their anxieties about child-care, poverty and old
age. But by their very nature such fraternities excluded Jews, forcing them to
develop separate public networks of mutuality and charitable assistance.
This powerful conjunction of
resistance to royal interference and the embracing of local faith institutions
is nowhere more evident than in York's common seal, one of the most remarkable
survivals from York and one of the earliest surviving civic seals in
England.119 The seal is also attached to a charter containing one of the
earliest references to the citizens acting together as a corporate body, a
commonalty. It was issued not long after the momentous months in which York
both first acquired the right to pay its own farm to the crown and just as
quickly was plunged into the horrific events of 16 March 1190. The design of
the civic seal imitated the royal chancery seal in size and colouring, being
some 2.5 inches in diameter and made of green wax. 120 However the legends and
iconography of its two faces give equal weight to king and church. One side
depicts a walled city (or possibly, even, a castle) and the (now damaged)
legend: SIG[IL]LUM CIV[I]VM [CIVIT]A[TIS ... ] FIDELES R[EG]IS (the seal of the
citizens of the city of York, ... the faithful of the king). This is probably
the earliest surviving view of York, and may provide a unique insight into the
possible appearance of the castle, in par
119 BL Add. Charter 10636; British Museum Catalogue of Seals, no . 5542; R.
B. Pugh, 'The Seals,
Insignia, Plate and Officers of the
City', in VCH, City of York, pp. 544-6. 120 An impression of the royal chancery
seal of Henry II is appended to the city' s oldest surviv
ing royal charter: YCA Al.
ticular, close to 1190.121 On the
other side the seal displays the image of St Peter flanked by two angels and
the legend: [SIG]ILLUM ECL[ESI]E SAN[CTI PET]Rl CAT[HEDRALIS E]BURAC[ENSIS]
(the seal of the cathedral church of St Peter of York).122 This new civic seal
perfectly illustrates how York's development in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries was fundamentally shaped by both the ancient lordship of the church
and the more recent lordship of the crown. It asserts that the development of
a corporate civic identity was constructed within the context of faithfulness
to both. Made not long after the citizens had won (but also lost) their
long-sought status as a commune (a word that is not included in the legend as
it is in other towns' early common seals), and before this title was officially
regained in 1212, the seal perhaps betrays a determination to act as a body of
citizens regardless of any formal concession of such privilege from the crown.
The unique use of the term 'fideles' in the legend in the aftermath of 1190 is
a particularly evocative (even chilling) word for a group of citizens in
constant negotiation with the different authorities demanding their loyalty. It
was a word used increasingly commonly at the time, in other legal contexts, as
an alternative to 'ba~ones': the king's barons also emphasized their
faithfulness to the king (at a hme when many had not been so faithful). 123
Since the citizens of London also described themselves (on their seal) as
'barones' it is possible that York's leading citizens were aware of the
multiple claims they were making by using this word: as important as London,
as faithful subjects of the crown (in the face of evidence to the contrary) and
above all as a citadel of Christian government. The seal suggests an acute awareness
within the city of its external and historical reputation, and also illustrates
how much these citizens, living close to their new Jewish neighbours and in
daily interchange with them, were at the same time constructing a sense of
citizenship which drew explicitly on their faith.
So were the citizens of York who were
fined in 1190 simply the most important citizens of York and innocent of any
direct part in the violence unlike the working and young men of town and
country and at least some knights of the shire, as Newburgh claimed, or were
they (as the citizens fined at Lincoln were said to be) guilty of the massacre
of the Jews in 1190? The evidence presented here offers no clear answer. It
does demonstrate, however, that those listed in the pipe rolls in 1190 and 1194
were very closely associated as neighbours with both the leaders of the mob and
their victims on that night
121 Th
. · nlik th h ·
e image 1s u e ose on ot er city seals
and does not appear to be a walled city. It shows a central tall crenellated
tower with a double-arched window, flanked by two shorter towers and surrounded
by a curtain wall.
122 See Pugh, 'Seals, Insignia, Plate and Officers', p. 544; S. Rees Jones,
'York's Civic Administration, 1354-1464', in Government of Medieval York, ed .
Rees Jones, pp . 108-40 (p. 121).
123 M. Gervers and N. Hamonic , 'Pro Amore Dei: Diplomatic Evidence of
Social Conflict during the Reign of King John', in Law as Profession and
Practice in Medieval Europe: Essays in Honor of JamesA. Brundage, ed. K.
Pennington and M. H. Eichbauer (Farnham, 2011), pp. 231-62 (pp. 251-2)
.
in March. Even if they did not reveal
it, they certainly knew very well what had happened and who was responsible for
it.
As Dobson so acutely concluded his
study of the massacre in York in 1190 'it was the Jews who had to pay the
harshest price for the unpopularity of royal government whose purposes they
served'. 124This chapter has in part developed that theme: the leading citizens
of York were indeed feeling the grip of a new style of national bureaucracy
which was replacing more personal aspects of royal government and beginning to
invade many aspects of their daily life. The alternative framework on which
they could, and did, construct a collective identity was that of their
Christian faith. But this is only part of the story and in itself
oversimplifies the many connections between citizens and knights, royal
officials and merchants, Christians and Jews who lived in such very close
proximity with each other in the small neighbourhoods of Coney Street and
Walmgate. It is within those intimate, informal and complicated personal
relationships, which can barely be recovered historically, that the real
causes and consequences of the massacre of York 1190 should be sought.
124 Dobson, JMY, p. 37.
42
2
Prelude and Postscript to the York
Massacre: Attacks in East Anglia and Lincolnshire, 1190
JoeHillaby
The York massacre on 'Shabbat
ha-Godol', whilst by far the most disastrous attack on a Jewish community, did
not occur in isolation. The widespread riots in London, following Richard I's
coronation on 3 September 1189, led to a series of onslaughts on Jewish
communities in the eastern counties of England, the heartland of the late
twelfth-century English provincial Jewry.
Ralph de Diceto, dean of St Paul's
from 1180 to c. 1200, has little to say about the events in London, probably
because, the see being vacant, he took the place of the bishop of London at the
coronation and subsequent festivities. For a detailed account of events in
London we have to turn to William of Newburgh's Historia,which explains that
the riot erupted when the press carried some Jews, who along with women had
been forbidden entry, into Westminster Palace. The sources reveal that the
London mob was predominant, with a sprinkling of retainers of nobles attending
the ceremony, and a number of fire-raisers. Ultimately, as Newburgh points out,
in the general desire for plunder 'neither friends nor companions' were spared.
1
Attacks on Jewries spread to the
provinces. According to Diceto, the first took place at Norwich on 6 February,
followed by assaults at Stamford (Lincolnshire), York and Bury St Edmunds
(Suffolk) on 7, 16 and 18 March respectively.2 What follows is an attempt to
trace their path and character, against the background of the emerging
provincial Jewish communities concerned.
Lynn (Norfolk)
Richard I, Newburgh tells us, departed
on crusade, 'holding a solemn conference with the French king', on 30 December
1189. The first attack was not,
1 Diceto,
Historical Works; WN, ed. Howlett (Bk IV, ch. 1). For general discussion of the
London
riot, see J. Hillaby, 'The London
Jewry: William I to John', JHS 33 (1995 for 1992-94), 1-44
(pp. 26-30). 2 Diceto, Historical
Works II, 75-6.
