Link to Chronology
A new nobility
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Eight
The European Crisis
(1300-1450)
The Avignon Papacy, the Great Schism, and the Hundred Years War
Chapter I
General Characteristics of the Period
1. Social and Economic Tendencies
p389 [continued] ...the cities...were acquiring a political importance in the outer world which they had never before possessed... now that bands of mercenaries and fleets were playing a greater part in warfare, it was becoming more costly than ever. The old sources of revenue were insufficient... the only thing to be done was to apply to the Third Estate -- that is, to the cities -- and to ask them to open their purses... From the beginning of the 14th century the necessity of taxation dominated the prince's policy, and compelled him to accede to the demands of the cities and the Estates, which wrested privileges from him, and would presently even claim the right to participate in his policy... The 15th century was the epoch in which the bourgeoisie began to play a political as well as a class role. It took its place beside the clergy and the noblesse... [Footnote: It was in the 14th century that the financiers began to acquire political importance.]
p391 The financial needs of the princes made the 14th century a century of parliamentarianism, or shall we say, a century of Estates... [Not long ago, "princes" was used to denote the powerful nobles the kings were in conflict with, but now "princes" seems to include the kings.] every assembly of Estates was always to the advantage of the Third Estate. It was the Third Estate alone which supported the institution and profited by it, because it disposed of the finances. And it was the Third Estate alone which made conditions and demanded guarantees.
But the Third Estate was itself merely a class of privileged persons, and beneath it was the majority of the nation, the Fourth Estate, which was never mentioned, though it bore the burden. Undoubtedly its condition was much less tolerable after the 14th century than it had been for two hundred years. We have seen how the rise of the cities... shattered the domainal system, releasing great expanses of territory and great numbers of rural inhabitants. At that time the rural classes gave evidence of unusual energy. They cleared uncultivated ground, they emigrated, and yet the population was rapidly increasing. But there was an end to all this during the first half of the century... the available land was occupied... and the cities were closing their gates. Meanwhile taxation was heavier than ever and still increasing. Moreover, there was a surplus of workers, so that the situation of the peasants was most unfavorable. The nobles took advantage of this, endeavoring to re-establish their old feudal rights, and, in a general manner, to exploit the peasants, for the old patriarchal relations of the domainal epoch no longer existed. In maritime Flanders a terrible rebellion broke out, which lasted from 1324 to 1328. The peasants hunted the chevaliers, and refused to pay their tithes. A true social hatred finds expression in the Kerelslied. [Subversive songs?] This rising ended in the massacre of Cassel, and in wholesale confiscations. In France, the so-called revolt of the Jacques in 1357... gave evidence of a profound hostility between the rural masses and the noblesse... The English rebellion of 1381, which is that concerning which we are best informed, was due to attempts on the part of the nobles to re-establish the old corvees, in order to avoid paying the higher wages which were one of the consequences of the Black Death...
p393 Generally speaking, people began to despise the peasants as a helot who stood outside society... The cities too oppressed the rural districts, taking care that no industries should be practiced there. All through the 14th century Gand was organizing expeditions which destroyed the looms and the fullers' vats in the villages and country towns. And the monasteries no longer extended the old social protection over the "villeins," but added to their wretchedness by their exaction of the tithe.
As for the nobles, they too were passing through a serious crisis... I cannot find that anything remained of the old idealism, apart from certain outward gallantry... The chief preoccupation of the chevalier was now his fief... What did survive was the military character of the noble class. But this often assumed the aspect of mercenary military service... Knights-errant began to make their appearance, fighting on all fronts and for all causes... These were professional soldiers, who were not very far removed from the condottiere -- leaders of bands, experienced captains to whom war was a lucrative calling... At heart these knights were adventurers: very valiant men, but also violent and greedy... Some also went to break a lance in Granada.
...
p394 ...it was no longer by this military noblesse that battles were won. Artillery, which was first heard at Crecy, still played only a secondary part in any campaign, but the infantry was gradually recovering the position which it had lost since the Carolingian epoch. At Cortrai it destroyed the French chivalry; the Swiss infantry had been winning battles since 1315; the foot-soldiers were the backbone of the English army, where they were formed into companies of archers; and the tactics of Johann Ziska, leader of the Hussites, was based on the infantry... And while, from the military point of view, the nobles were in retreat... They played no part in government, and they were not becoming more cultivated... The upper ranks of the clergy... became the monopoly of the younger sons of noble families. The democratic character of the Church was disappearing... In the upper ranks of the ecclesiastical hierarchy there was a stupendous moral and intellectual decadence; in accordance with the tastes of society, the clergy were becoming worldly.
If we examine them closely, shall we not see among the nobles... a tendency analogous to that which we may observe in the patriciate of the bourgeoisie? Neither class was undergoing any further development; they were digging themselves in... Their only care was to preserve their privileges and their property... Not one of them was distinguished for his piety or his beneficence. And here I am speaking of those who played some part in the life of the world. The others hunted, looked after their estates, and oppressed the peasants. It is surprising to discover how completely sterile were the nobles of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th century, despite their numerical strength.
p395 ...In the 14th century we see the first traces of what may be called the noblesse de cour. In the 13th century it hardly existed...
p396 ...the nucleus of this new court [which appeared as the monarchy regained power] consisted not of nobles, but of commoners: councillors, servants in charge of the king's plate and his wardrobe, etc., with a few clerks. But was the king to be surrounded by plebeians? The court is a resort of the nobility. Consequently the king proceeded to ennoble his officers and his functionaries. This was a new nobility, entirely different from the old military chivalry. It was now conferred for civil services, and intelligence or learning... And this new nobility was entirely dependent on the sovereigns... The king alone was the source of nobility, and so he remained until the end of the ancien regime. From the end of the 13th century, anyone who was ennobled was ennobled by the king alone. The nobles of the robe... took their place beside the nobles of the sword.
p396 Here was a novel factor of very great social importance. To my thinking, it saved the noblesse, which was decaying as a military caste, and could not enrich itself, because it constituted a juridical caste, which was becoming more and more a closed social category. In the person of these newcomers it received fresh recruits, and they were commonly very wealthy recruits, thanks to their participation in the government. It despised them, but it was they who saved it.
... In point of formation, and in respect of its occupation, the noblesse de robe was a kind of lay clergy. It had nothing in common with the old nobility in whose ranks it now installed itself. Why then did the new nobility enter the old? Because there was no other place for it in the society of those days. It could not, on coming to court, remain in the ranks of the bourgeoisie, which would have continued to influence it and to detach it from the prince... The social habits and interests of the new class merged themselves in those of the old. And with this the nobility acquired a more comprehensive status. Henceforth it included the entire elite of the nation. To be an homme convenable [I'm having a hard time finding a translation for this. In the context I would expect it to me "a man of consequence"] a man must be a member of the noblesse. The consequences of this fact were hardly perceptible in the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th. They were to be incalculable later, and even to this day there are many States which have not yet shaken them off. The Renaissance was powerless to dissolve this social block. This was reserved for the modern democracies. However profound the influence of the bourgeoisie might be in the State, the noblesse, during the whole of the ancien regime, retained its primacy of social rank, and every man who emerged from the bourgeoisie endeavored to enter it.
There's an idea I thought I had gotten from Fernand Braudel (though now I'm doubting everything but the information on camels and the importance of geography on the history of the Mediterranean basin), that the transition from middle class to upper class was based on the ownership of land. The successful merchant would eventually invest his capital in land and become, quite literally, a landlord. The best example I can think of for this is the case of Voltaire. He started his fortune with his writing, invested it in trade, and then bought substantial properties in France and Switzerland where he spent the end of his life tending his garden as a seigneur.
After a generation or two, the interests and manners of such landowners would be indistinguishable from those of the Guermantes.
Take 2: I love the idea that some family could trace their nobility back to the 14th century and still not be of the "true" Carolingian noblesse. Though we have already seen that even that noblesse was of mongrel parentage, with the only common denominator being land ownership on a large scale.
And were the descendants of this noblesse of the robe still distinguishable from the "true" noblesse by the 18th century? Or did they, like the Carolingians before them, blend into a new, equally bloody minded Second Estate?
Link to Chronology
The bourgeoisie at war with itself
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
In the preface, the author's son, Jacques, mentions that his father started writing in March of 1917 and always recorded the date in the margin of his manuscript. Unfortunately, I don't have access to those marginal dates, so I can only guess where, in time, he was as he wrote this. But I think it's very likely he would have been in 1918 by this point, and it's not impossible that he was writing this in March, so close enough to exactly one hundred years ago to claim that meaningless distinction.
The Indigo Girls' Emily Saliers wrote the following lines in her song Virginia Woolf,
If you need to know that you weathered the storm
Of cruel mortality
A hundred years later I'm sitting here living proof
I couldn't have said it any better.
Book Eight
The European Crisis
(1300-1450)
The Avignon Papacy, the Great Schism, and the Hundred Years War
Chapter I
General Characteristics of the Period
1. Social and Economic Tendencies
p379 Nothing more involved and bewildering and more full of contrasts can be imagined than the period extending from the beginning of the 14th to about the middle of the 15th century. The whole of European society, from the depths to the surface, was as though in a state of fermentation... A spirit of restlessness was abroad, affecting men's minds as well as their policies; even religion was not immune; it was a restlessness that almost amounted to mental confusion. The world was suffering and struggling, but it was hardly advancing. For the only thing of which it was clearly conscious was the fact that all was not well with it. It longed to escape from its ills, but it did not know how... In their fundamental characteristics the Church, the State, and the social and economic constitution remained, throughout these hundred and fifty years, what they had been at the close of the 13th century. The same may be said of science. Gothic architecture and the Scholastic philosophy still had enough vitality to produce interesting work, but the period of masterpieces was past. Everywhere the world was in labor, but it produced only abortive births. There was a definite feeling abroad that it was waiting for a spiritual renewal...
p380 What is really new about this period... is its revolutionary tendencies. They were nowhere triumphant, but they were felt in every department of life. The State and the Church were not more secure against them than was society. All the traditional authorities were criticized and assailed: the popes and kings no less than the landowners and the capitalists. The great masses of the people, who had hitherto endured or supported the power of the State, were now rebelling against it...
p381 Venice in the South and Bruges in the North remained the two busiest commercial centers: Venice as the point of contact between East and West, and Bruges the connecting link between the trade of the North and that of Italy...
In Italy a true system of capitalism was evolving, though it was hampered by the more and more restricted economic demands of the cities.
The towns engaged in the Flemish weaving industry in the North, and Florence in the South, were still, as in the 13th century, the two great centers of industry and the export trade. Cotton was only beginning to make its appearance. No technical progress was manifested. Machinery and methods were still very much what they were in the days of ancient Egypt...
...larger ships were built, and they made longer voyages...
p382 The bill of exchange with acceptance made its appearance in the first half of the 14th century. Pegolotti wrote the Practica della Mercatura. Book-keeping by double entry seems to date back to 1394... [these developments] betray a tendency toward the development of capitalism and the improvement of trade and commerce, yet... we shall readily perceive that one of... [the period's] most obvious characteristics was its hostility to capitalism, except in Italy.
The explanation of this must be sought in the evolution of the bourgeoisie; that is to say, of the class responsible for the entire commercial and industrial activity in Europe. Apart from very rare exceptions... [Venice] from the end of the 13th century, the preponderance of the patricians in the cities was replaced, more or less completely, by that of the handicrafts, trades and professions.
...from being under the control of the great merchants... [the municipal economy] came under that of the small producers, and that henceforth the spirit which inspired it underwent a corresponding change.
I'm probably going to quote too much in this section, but I do find it fascinating.
In the beginning, the guilds or trade fraternities were free associations of artisans following the same calling, who combined for the defense of their common interests. As far as their aims were concerned, they could quite accurately be compared with the voluntary syndicates or trade unions of our own days; their most important function was to regulate competition. Every newcomer, under penalty of ostracism, had to affiliate himself to a guild... [To avoid] conflicts between the syndicated confraternities and those recalcitrant workers who refused to sacrifice their liberty... [it was necessary] to transform... [the trade organizations] from voluntary into obligatory syndicates recognized by the communal authority. The oldest examples of this transformation date back to the 12th century; by the beginning of the 14th century it was general... all over Europe. Henceforth, in every city, each trade was the monopoly of a privileged group of masters...
p383 Everywhere the trade corporation had its chiefs... who were clothed with official authority; everywhere it drew up professional regulations and saw to it that they were observed; everywhere it enjoyed the right of assembly; everywhere it constituted a moral personality, having a treasury and common premises, and everywhere the hierarchy of its members was the same...
p384 Generally speaking, we must envisage the master as the head and proprietor of a workshop, in which were employed, under his orders, one or two journeymen, and an apprentice. In him we have the most perfect type of the artisan -- that is to say, the small producer working in his own home. The raw material which he elaborated was his own property, and he sold the finished product at his own exclusive profit. The consumers on whom his livelihood depended were the burgesses of the city and the peasants of the surrounding countryside... If he was to live at all he had to be protected against competition; not only the external competition of the foreigner, but also the local competition of his fellow craftsmen. To prevent such competition was the first object of the corporation. In order to assure the independence of the masters it restricted their liberty, subjecting it to curious regulations. The economic subordination of each member guaranteed the security of all... He was forbidden to sell his wares at a price below the tariff fixed by the regulations; he was forbidden to work by artificial light; he must not use tools of unusual form, or modify the traditional technique, or employ more journeymen or apprentices than his neighbors, or allow his wife to work, or his children as were not of age; and lastly -- and this prohibition was absolute -- he must not advertise his wares or praise them to the detriment of those produced by others. Thus each worker was given his place in the sun, but it was a place very strictly delimited, and it was quite impossible for him to emerge from it. [Footnote: Capitalism is not in itself opposed to the tendencies of human nature, but its restriction is. Economic liberty is spontaneous. The trade corporation suppresses liberty because it threatens the majority. It presupposes, of course, that this majority exercises political power.] But no one ever dreamed of doing so. For when a man's livelihood is secure his desires are moderate. The corporation provided the petite bourgeoisie with a framework admirably adapted to its character. Without a doubt, it had never been so happy and contented as under their regime. For this class, but for this class alone, they had solved the social problem. By safeguarding it against competition they also protected it against the intervention of capitalism. Until the French Revolution the craftsmen and petty manufacturers were obstinately faithful to the corporations that so well safeguarded their interests. Few economic institutions have been so tenacious.
Living in an age when these safeguards have all been removed, when local manufacturing -- both on this scale and even on the capitalist scale -- has been almost entirely replaced by a Ricardoan dependence on distant inexpensive sources of goods, I have to say that this regime served more than just the petite bourgeoisie. In our day it is the lower classes you are suffering the most from unrestricted trade.
p385 The first half of the 14th century was the period when the handicrafts attained their apogee... A sort of industrial Malthusianism began to make its appearance, which surrendered the local market to a small number of masters, and the absence of competition among them simply meant that the consumer was exploited... in the cities themselves, in the ranks of the bourgeoisie, what complaints and protests were heard! What indignant reproaches were bandied about between the different trades, each condemning in the others the excesses of the monopoly which it felt to be justified in its own case alone! At the same time, the original spirit of fraternity was replaced, among the craftsmen, by an increasing opposition of interests between the masters and the journeymen, who were more and more reduced to the status of mere wage-earners. Riots broke out; there were strikes... from the beginning of the 15th century the abuses of the system were so evident that there were those who demanded the abolition of the corporations and the liberty of handicrafts.
p386 The situation was much more serious in those cities that were the centers of the textile industry... The kind of trade organization which was suitable for craftsmen... was obviously unable to satisfy the needs of workers engaged in mass production for an unrestricted market. It could not possibly afford protection against the influence of capital to the weavers, fullers and clothworkers, master or journeymen who crowded the lanes and alleys of Gand, Bruge, and Ypres. or the vicoli on the banks of the Arno. Here the artisan was necessarily subordinated to the rich merchant who provided him with wool, and to whom the manufactured product was delivered after the various manipulations which it had to undergo... in this case the employer himself was merely a wage-earner employing other wage-earners. Further, the workers in the cloth trade... numbered hundreds or even thousands... [This trade subject to the uncertainty of international affairs and wars.] Even in normal times there were incessant disputes as to wages... Thus, the condition of the workers in the cloth industry in those cities where the industry provided the basis of a considerable export trade was very like that of the modern proletariat. And they were an organized proletariat...
p387 The political result of these [proletarian] corporative organizations was naturally to wrest the government of the cities from the patrician oligarchies who were in power in the 13th century. It was no longer possible for a few "lineages" of landowners and merchants, sitting in the city council, to do precisely what they chose in the matter of regulating trade and commerce, and assessing taxes... They did not surrender their position without resistance. Their government had been, in the full force of the term, a class government, and they obstinately clung to their privileged position. The whole of the 14th century was filled with the conflict of the grandi and the piccolo for the possession of the municipal power... [As was the case in the 19th century struggle over the parliamentary franchise] the masses, refused the right to manage their own affairs, persisted in their demands. The fundamental cause of the two crises was the same... what the patricians were defending against the claims of the handicrafts was the same preponderance which the property-owners' Parliaments of our own time defended so long and so obstinately against the demands of universal suffrage. The whole of the 14th century, like the whole of the 19th century, was shaken by the struggles of democracy... In those petty States, the cities of the Middle Ages, the conception of democracy was proportionately restricted; it was as narrow as the limits of the city... Society was too subdivided, subject to too many clashes, too localized to permit the emergence of the concept of general liberty. The city was a little enclosed world, living for itself, indifferent to the feelings and the interests of classes which were alien to it. The artisan was as strictly bourgeois as the patrician, and quite as exclusive in his feelings toward all those who did not inhabit his commune. He knew nothing of the leveling spirit of proselytism, as indifferent to local groups as it is to juridical classes, which the spectacle of the modern democracies has accustomed us to regard as inherent in any popular regime. Fundamentally, democracy as he conceived it was merely a democracy of privileged individuals, since the bourgeois itself... was a privileged class.
Is this notion of democracy really so very different? Pirenne was writing before national socialism and before the nativist politics of our time. The politics of the medieval city state looks like the same old human smallish-group dynamic we seem to be most comfortable with.
p388 However, the pure democratic regime was triumphant in only a few cities. In most cases some sort of compromise was arrived at. The patriciate, voluntarily, or under pressure from the mob, made way for the corporations, and constitutions came into force of which we may say... that they organized a sort of representation of interests. Once the opposing interests had achieved equilibrium, these constitutions... became congealed into fixity... These democracies of privileged petits bourgeois were characterized by egoism and protectionism. Urban politics became even more exclusive than before where... it was not compelled to reckon with the State. [Flanders and Italy.] It's aim was the achievement of complete political liberty, of the free city, as it already existed in Germany... Capital, encompassed by suspicion and fumbling legislation, could develop only beyond its control, in the domain of inter-urban trade. Here men still made their fortunes, though less frequently than in the previous century. The local patricate no longer played a part in the development of capitalism, and became a class of rentiers. By the side of the patriciate new men were making their appearance, who taxed their ingenuity to evade the regulations of protectionism... [to be covered in the following period.]
... from 1282 onwards the nobili were excluded from the government of Florence by the constitution... This was a government of merchants and manufacturers, a government of the popolo grasso. But the popolo minuto was socially oppressed. [Description of the back and forth revolutions in Florence during the 14th century.]
p389 The same sort of thing happened in the Flemish cities... The patriciate looked to France for support, and the battle of Courtrai was in reality a social victory for the artisans... Gand... where the weavers were in greater strength than anywhere else, was distinguished by sullen violence... For six years... they held their own against the prince, the nobles, and all "good folk who had anything to lose." From all parts of Europe the suffering proletarians fixed their gaze upon Gand... It was felt that they were threatening the entire social order, at Roosebeke (1382) the King of France inflicted upon them a terrible defeat... all their energy could achieve nothing. It was impossible for them to escape from the capitalism under which they suffered... The other trades turned against them. The fullers, who were even poorer, and whom they oppressed, made common cause with their enemies. The result... was to make the merchants and business men look to the princes for support, and to take steps to remove the industry from the cities to the countryside.
