Link to Chronology
In which we rush to an unsatisfying conclusion
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Nine
The Renaissance and the Reformation
Chapter III
The European States From the Middle of the Fifteenth to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century
1. International Politics
p587 ...The fifty years which had elapsed since the end of the Hundred Years' War had sufficed to revolutionize the traditional order of politics. The conclusion of the great struggle between France and England merely confronted the European community with unexpected problems. While in the West new powers had made their appearance -- the Burgundian State on the shores of the North Sea, and to the south of the Pyrenees the Spanish State, henceforth including Castile and Aragon in a single monarchical bloc -- in the East the Turkish Empire was threatening the Christian world with a new Islamic invasion...
p588 The Turkish invasion was undoubtedly the greatest misfortune to afflict Europe since the end of the Roman Empire. Wherever the invaders advanced they brought with them economic ruin and moral decadence. All those peoples which were subjected to the Turkish yoke -- Bulgars, Serbs, Rumanians, Albanians, and Greeks -- relapsed into a state verging upon barbarism, from which they never emerged until the beginning of the 19th century... Between the Islamism of the Turks ... and the Christianity of their subjects no reconciliation was possible... With the exception of a portion of the Albanian people, not one of the nations subjected to the Sultan was converted to Islam, and for that matter the Turks made no effort to convert them... their religion, by depriving them of all rights of whatever kind, helped to ensure their servitude... The only means of successfully resisting the Turkish offensive would have been a general European league combining the financial and military resources of the Continent for a period of several years... But the States of the 15th century were materially incapable of such an effort... [the most powerful States] left the burden of the conflict to those who were directly involved.
p589 ...By uniting their forces, the Republic of Venice, the Habsburgs of Austria, and the kings of Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland could have opposed [?] an effective barrier to the enemy. But instead of doing this, each State allowed itself to be guided by its ambitions or its interests; they never acted with one common accord...
p590 ...This battle [Mohacz (1526)] was a magnificent triumph for Austria, for it gave her the long-coveted crowns of Bohemia and Hungary, at last assured by the victory of the Turks... [Louis II, their king, was killed at Mohacz.] Soliman... advanced without difficulty as far as Pest, and in 1529 he reached the walls of Vienna, which the inclement weather and sickness in his army prevented him from capturing. [I believe this is when coffee first reached Europe.] However, he retained all Hungary as far as the Enns...
p592 Under... [Soliman's] reign (1520-1556) the Turkish Empire covered the largest area it was ever to attain. The shores of the Black Sea had already been occupied under Selim I (1512-1520), and the Tartars of the Crimea were subjected to tribute. Rhodes, in the Aegean, was conquered in 1522, and the Knights of St John, who had heroically defended it, removed to Malta, whither Charles V had summoned them, and which they were to retain until the French Revolution. Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt were annexed (1512-1520) [why aren't we focusing on Selim I? Oh, Vienna.] Algiers and Tunis, conquered by the renegade corsair Barbarossa, became the outposts of the Grand Seigneur in the eastern Mediterranean... [But in the middle of the 16th century] The moment of its apogee was also the moment of its decline... [Isn't that implicit in the word "apogee?"] Financial disorder and fiscal oppression, with all their political, economic, and moral consequences, made their appearance in Turkey directly her expansion was checked... as a whole, the history of Turkey after the death of Soliman II was that of an incurable decline. She would have disappeared long ago as a State if the European powers had not safeguarded her existence, because they could not agree upon the partition of the spoils... Did not Francis I seek the help of Soliman II against Charles V?
p593 This alliance, so monstrous at first sight, was only one of the consequences of the political disorder of Christianity since the middle of the 15th century.
Pirenne has many opinions about Turkey -- currently one of the Central Powers. What I've quoted here seems to me to be true, but it's amazing what he's left out.
Pirenne's written enough about coinage -- minting and debasement for example -- and about economies in general that you would think he would be alive to the consequences of the influx of American silver starting during the 16th century. The Ottoman regime, so brilliantly buttressed as a dynasty and in so many other ways, seems to have been unable to respond and recover from the devaluation of silver coinage. She continued to collect the usual taxes, yet was able to buy less and less with the proceeds.
And then there's the geopolitical reality that there's really no excuse for Pirenne not being aware of. Like Germany, the Ottoman Empire was located in the center, not on an edge. The Turks could dominate the Habsburgs, or they could dominate the Persians, but it was next to impossible for them to do both at the same time. Austria and Persia were the same kind of natural allies, versus the Ottomans, that France and the Ottomans were vs Habsburg Austria. (Or that France and Russia were vs Germany in the Great War.) Yet another instance of an empire being faced with greater and greater inertia the more extensive its conquests extend. And this contradicts Pirenne's claim that it was their failure to continue expanding that was the problem. You can't be strong everywhere, and every conquest gives you more places to defend.
I'm going to really abbreviate the brief history of England and France.
p594 ...since the end of the 12th century... [France's] foreign policy had always been determined by the vital necessity of expelling England from the soil of France... England was not only the essential enemy: she was the only enemy of France. She had no enemies on the Continent, or only such as were incited against her by England... Now, directly the Hundred Years' War came to and end this state of affairs ceased for good... Henceforth she would have to fight upon her land frontiers, and by a complete reversal of tradition England would never attack her in future except by entering into a coalition with the European enemies of France.
The formation of the Burgundian State marked the beginning of this new orientation of political history...
...The Low Countries emerged from their feudal subdivision to unite themselves, under a single dynasty, in a single State, the common ancestor of Belgium and modern Holland... flourishing cities, famed throughout the world for their cloth industry or their commerce, one of which, Bruges, had been for three centuries the great international port of the Occident, while another, Antwerp, was entering upon an even more astonishing period of prosperity... But the wealthier and more powerful this new neighbor became, the more dangerous was it to France. Whether it would or not, it was a permanent menace. From Amiens its troops, in two days' march, could appear under the walls of Paris; and above all, owing to its situation it imposed itself upon England as a natural ally...
p597 [After Charles VII, Duke of Burgundy, is killed fighting the Swiss near Nancy, French King Louis XI is about to dismember the Burgundy State in the Low Countries when] ...In order to escape from the attempts of Louis XI, ... [Marie of Burgundy] offered her hand to the Austrian. [Maximilian of the House Habsburg] The opportunity was too good to miss. Maximilian hastened to her side, and the marriage was concluded at Bruge on August 28th, 1477. This was an expedient hastily devised under the pressure of necessity; yet never has a political marriage exercised such an influence over the future of Europe. By bringing the young Burgundian State into the hybrid complex of the Habsburg domain, not only did it condemn it to suffer henceforth the repercussions of the various schemes of the most ambitious and greedy of dynasties, but at the same time it opened between France and the House of Habsburg the long conflict which came to an end only in the 19th century. [Why not include Austria's role in The Great War?] ...her only purpose was to keep them [the Low Countries] for herself, and it was always her endeavor to separate them from Germany... For the interests of the princes and those of the peoples to be completely divergent has always, in any period of history, been disastrous. Of this the history of the House of Habsburg is the most striking proof. By its acquisition of the Low Countries it found itself drawn into that career of aggrandizement, in which nations were reckoned only as heritages and countries as domains, and which was to make the Habsburgs, down to our own days, the sworn enemy of all national aspirations and all public liberties.
p600 ...Until... [the marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon (1469)] the Spanish kingdoms had been too weak to intervene actively in the destinies of Europe... but the doubly national union of Ferdinand and Isabella, while it put an end to the long mutual conflict which was exhausting their kingdoms, enabled them also first to rally and then to subordinate the peoples to their power. So completely did they subject them to their guidance in every domain that assuredly, in no country and at no period of history, have sovereigns exercised so profound an influence. In the Spanish State, as established by them, Catholic and political sentiment were associated so completely that it was impossible to dissever them. The monarchy summoned to its aid the old religious fanaticism of its subjects, and in their eyes its cause was identified with that of the Faith. Its zeal for orthodoxy had rendered it profoundly national, and now, surrounded by the most intolerant of peoples, its intolerance was the instrument of its success. From 1480 onwards the Inquisition, entrusted with the task of watching over the converted Jews (maranos), became, without losing its ecclesiastical character, a State institution, since the State appointed the Grand Inquisitor and there was no appeal to Rome against sentences which he pronounced. The figure of Torquemada is inseparable from the figures of Ferdinand and Isabella. All three were sincere in their hatred of heresy, and while the Crown confiscated for its own benefit the property of the victims who died at the stake, enriching itself by their agonies, it employed this wealth only in fresh enterprises, which were as profitable to itself as they were to the Church. [I had forgotten, if I ever knew, that the Spanish Inquisition predates the Reformation.] The Holy War, long interrupted, was resumed against the Moors, so that the final constitution of the national territory seemed like the result of a Crusade. But it was not enough to fight the Musulmans; the Jews, no less than they, were the enemies of Christ. In 1492, the very year of the conquest of Granada, they were expelled from the State. This conquest and this expulsion swelled the treasury to overflowing, and provided the necessary resources for further political and religious expansion. While Christopher Columbus set forth to discover a new world to subject and convert, the expeditions against the coasts of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunis seemed to announce that all the forces of Spain were about to league themselves against Islam... But having arrived at this decisive moment of her history, Spain turned aside. She turned aside from the Holy War and allowed herself to be involved in the dynastic ambitions of her princes. Without understanding that she was renouncing her mission, she proceeded to concentrate all the energies which she had acquired in her secular conflicts with the Crescent in order to subject the Christian Continent to her princes; only in the end to collapse, ruined and exhausted by two hundred years of effort, almost as barren as the neighboring shores of that Morocco whose certain and profitable conquest she had sacrificed to her sovereigns' dreams of universal dominion.
p603 [Not going to go into detail about the dynastic struggle in Italy but...] Regarded against the entire background of French history, the Italian expeditions of Charles VIII and Louis XII had the appearance of mere excursions. They were not related to any national necessity. Inspired purely and simply by dynastic ambition, they were "wars of magnificence"; which is to say, useless wars... But the policy which they inaugurated... had no other consequence than a futile waste of men and money. Their only lasting result was that they oriented Spain toward Italy, and so, as an inevitable consequence, produced a rapprochement with the House of Habsburg.
It seems to me that Pirenne is confusing himself here by thinking "Spain" when he should be thinking "Ferdinand of Aragon." As the Romans -- and even the Carthaginians -- could have told you, nothing makes more sense than to unite the countries on either side of the Western Mediterranean Sea. Pirenne is right that including the South shore would also have made sense.
It was evident... that between Maximilian, fighting against France in the Low Countries, and the Catholic kings, fighting against France in the Kingdom of Naples, a political alliance and its inevitable consequence, a dynastic alliance, was imminent. In 1496 the double marriage of Don Juan, the heir of Ferdinand and Isabella, with Margaret, the daughter of Maximilian, and of Philip, the son of Maximilian, with the Infanta Juana bound the two families closely together... once more Nature favored the Habsburgs... The successive deaths of Don Juan (1497), and of his elder sister Isabella (1498), and of Isabella's son, Don Miguel (1500), resulted in the inheritance by Philip and Juana of the succession to the Spanish kingdoms. Six years later Philip was unexpectedly carried off by inflammation of the lungs, bequeathing his rights to his son Charles, then barely seven years of age...
No one expects the luck of the Habsburgs. (Monty Python reference.)
Charles V was one of those very rare characters of modern history whose name was to become universally known. [I've always associated the beginning of "modern" history with Frederick the Great, or at least that century.] He became very nearly as famous as Charlemagne or Napoleon. Yet it was not to his genius but to his heritage that he owned his eminence. With no more that mediocre abilities, he was raised by circumstances to such a position that only Charlemagne before him, and Napoleon after him, exercised such an influence over Europe. He was the meeting point of three dynasties and three histories: those of Austria, Burgundy, and Spain. The grandson of Maximilian of Habsburg and Marie of Burgundy, [Valois?] and also of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, he found himself in possession of so many portions of Europe that it seemed as though his power would finally extend over the whole Continent... And to all this must be added the new world which the conquistadors had laid at his feet. Fernando Cortez made himself master of Mexico between 1519 and 1527, and Pizarro of Peru between 1531 and 1541. The astonishing conquest of South America was completed before Charles died... Its consequences became manifest only under his son...
At the moment when Spain fell into his hands through the death of Ferdinand (January 23rd, 1516), and Austria through the death of Maximilian (January 12th, 1519) he knew no more of the one country than of the other. Educated in the Low Countries by Belgian seigeneurs, who, regarded him merely as "their natural prince," did not even think to have him taught German -- and he never did learn it -- nor Spanish, he so shocked the Castilians when he appeared among them in 1517, speaking only French and surrounded by Flemish and Walloon favorites, that they welcomed him by the revolt of the Comuneros. But it did not take him long to adopt the distant, cold, and impersonal attitude which seemed necessary in a prince destined to reign over such a variety of countries and peoples... he did not really belong to any of the peoples whose crowns he inherited, and he found it easy to treat them all with an impartiality which arose from his indifference. Insensible to all national feeling, he thought of nothing but the greatness of his house... There was a striking contrast between him and his contemporaries, Francis I and Henry VIII, who seemed the very incarnation of France and England...
p605 ...His policy was not and could not be that of a King of Spain; it was and it had to be the policy of a Habsburg, and Spain, under his guidance, devoted her energies to the realization of schemes that were not only alien but opposed to her true interests.
p606 ...Hemmed in on every side by the domains of Charles... France found herself in danger of being stifled by an adversary who, once he had triumphed over her, would exercise universal dominion over Europe...
...the defeat of the King of France at Pavia (February 25th, 1525)... had startled the whole world, and France now appeared as the champion of European liberty. Pope Clement VII, in order to free Italy from the Spanish yoke, made approaches to France, and after the sack of Rome by the German troops of the Emperor [Charles V] he formally entered into an alliance with that country. Henry VIII did the same... the outbreak of Protestantism in Germany, and the invasion of Hungary by the Turks, ensured the neutrality of the Empire. Equilibrium was re-established. In 1529 the Peace of Cambrai restored Burgundy to France, who on her side renounced her lapsed suzerainty over Flanders and Artois, as well as her claims in Italy... [This peace didn't hold] ...in order to wage war upon the Catholic king [Charles] who had recently sacked Rome, the Most Christian king, allied himself with heretics [Lutherans] and Musulmans! The Peace of Crespy... (1544), left matters in statu quo... [Charles uses this peace to defeat the Lutheran princes.] In order to obtain the assistance of the successor to Francis I -- Henri II, who in his own country was cruelly persecuting the heretics -- they offered him the three bishoprics, Metz, Toul, and Verdun (1552). This finally directed French policy to one of the aims which it had envisaged... since the 13th century with a view to restoring the frontier traced in 843 by the Treaty of Verdun... Before abdicating... [Charles V] concluded with his adversary the Truce of Vaucelles (1556).
p608 ...The succession which transmitted to his son Philip II comprised, in addition to Spain, the Kingdom of Naples, the Milanese State, the Franche Comte of Burgundy, and the Low Countries, without speaking of his immense possessions in the New World. Italy, subjected in the north and the south, bade farewell to the dreams of liberation... Italy, until the modern era, was to be no more than a geographical expression... The States of the Pope, and those of the Venetian Republic, alone preserved their independence... As for the Low Countries, enlarged by the final annexation of the Duchy of Guelders and the Frisian provinces, they were henceforth to constitute in the north of Europe the "citadel of steel" of the Spanish kings. The Imperial dignity had served him [Charles] only to assure the future of his house. He had not only taken the Low Countries from Germany; he had even obtained for his brother Ferdinand, in 1521, the crown of the King of the Romans, and had ceded to him the patrimonial duchies of Austria, which together with the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary that fell to Ferdinand in 1526, finally safeguarded the Habsburg power in Central Europe. Divided into two branches, the family none the less remained united by its dynastic interests...
2. Internal Politics
This section seems very repetitive to me. Pirenne is arguing that both the Renaissance and the Reformation contributed to the strengthening of the great kings.
p612 The Reformation, in fact, at all events in its beginnings, shared no less than the Renaissance in this conspiracy of all the great social forces on behalf of the sovereign power. Whether the princes protected it or fought against it, they none the less profited by it.
And with that we end. Damn the Armistice!
I wonder if anyone had ever considered taking up where Pirenne left off? This must have been frustrating even for Pirenne, as the history of the Low Countries was just getting really interesting at this point. The Wars of Religion were about to begin, while the Wars of Dynastic Domination (or against Dynastic Domination) were only getting started. Likewise, international maritime trade and commerce was about to explode. And, once again, the profits of that trade would generate unprecedented wealth and capital formation. In general, the history of Europe was about to jump into high gear and to become the history of the world.
Already, though Pirenne hasn't gotten into this at all, European navigation has become the dominant vector for change on the planet. Initially as a vector for disease to and from the Americas, but soon as a vector for the dissemination of biological diversity (those potatoes, again, plus all the other plants and animals that would become established in new homes after a voyage inside the hulls of European ships).
What I would most like to see continued, however, is the history of ideas, religion, dynasties, cities, and capitalism... is that asking so much?
Link to Chronology
A revolution from above
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Nine
The Renaissance and the Reformation
Chapter I
The Transformation of Social Life From the Middle of the Fifteenth Century
3. Ideas and Manners
p536 ...In Italy the new orientation of ideas, manners, and artistic feeling began at the very moment when the economic development of the nation had reached its apogee. It was not contemporary with this development, but subsequent to it, and while the intellectual movement continued to progress the economic development was already beginning to decline. This intellectual development was the fine flower of the entire civilization that preceded it; the product of thought and beauty succeeding to the product of force. This development was not unlike that of ancient Greece in the days of Pericles: Athens in the 4th century, and Florence in the middle of the 15th century, shone with a glory which was no longer commensurate with their real strength; the dazzling radiance which they shed upon the world, before they made way for more vigorous successors, had the splendor but also the ephemeral quality of a sunset. At the very moment when the genius of Machiavelli, Guiccardini, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci was in flower, the discovery of the New World was diverting the current of European life from the Mediterranean.
I see what he means about Florence but how was Pericles's Athens in decline?
The case was very different to the north of the Alps. Here the Renaissance was not a sunset but a sunrise... it must not be believed that capitalism provoked the renaissance of thought which was contemporaneous with it. The one and the other were different symptoms of the same crisis of growth... What the discovery of the New World was for capitalism, the Italian Renaissance was for the intellectual movement...
p537 ...The relaxation of morals in the 15th century, and the predominance of temporal interests, were no less striking in Northern Europe than in Italy... The Low Countries, under the Dukes of Burgundy, between France and England, the one exhausted by war and the other a prey to civil discord, were enjoying a period of peace and prosperity, and they afforded a spectacle which presented curious analogies with that of Italy. One might have observed, at the court, in the society of the great nobles, and among the government officials and the capitalists, whether landowners or merchants, a kind of life whose principal features were precisely those which are commonly attributed to the early Renaissance in Tuscany and Lombardy: a general relaxation of morality, a love of luxury and social festivities, a demand for elegance and comfort in private dwellings, a pronounced taste for fine clothing, and for the nobler pleasures of art, and the general diffusion of education and good breeding. Here... we see that the aristocracy of birth, like the aristocracy of wealth, was living a social life of a kind that no longer had anything in common with the conventional cortesia of the Middle Ages... it is enough to recall the adorable landscapes which assuredly contributed to the success of the Belgian school of painting in the 15th century in order to realize that the discovery of Nature at this period was by no means a purely Italian discovery. The same may be said of the discovery of the individual...
p539 This worldliness of manners and of thought in and about the court of Burgundy was also to be observed, though in a less degree, in France and England... What were the first books to be printed? When Caxton established his printing-press in London, his customers, who consisted for the most part of noblemen, but also included a city haberdasher, asked him to produce translations from the French and Latin. He himself translated the Aenid... The printing-press did not create the taste for reading, for that already existed, but it hastened its diffusion... the great difference between the 15th century and the age of Charlemagne and the Middle Ages was that the culture which men of the 15th century acquired by reading was purely secular. The Church had no part in it...
p540 We cannot doubt that in all these people [Edward IV, Richard III, Louis XI, the Dukes of Burgundy and others] there was an insatiable thirst for learning: an awakening -- unconscious, I believe, but none the less an awakening [what??!] -- of curiosity, eager to see beyond the two narrow frontiers within which the traditions of caste and religion had hitherto imprisoned it...
p541 ...The "New Learning," as the English called it, was a direct return to antiquity, provoked, of course, by the example of the humanists, but not subordinated to them. It is true that there had been humanists in the North, and especially poets, like Pierre Gilles and the author of the Basia, Jean Second, while the Certamen poeticum Haftianum of Amsterdam was in the direct line of descent. Longolium of Malines belonged to the same school. But not so the great writers: neither Roechlin in Germany, nor Colet [John?] and More in England, nor the greatest of all, Erasmus. The literature of antiquity influenced them less by its form than by enfranchising their thought. It enfranchised it from the scholastic tradition, not only by means of the classic tongue, which they immediately adopted, but by the new standpoint which it gave them. The Miles Christianus of Erasmus might be described as their programme. And what do we find in it? The secular spirit!... religion is envisioned as an exhortation to morality, addressed to the honest man. The ideal is no longer asceticism, but the life of the citizen, with all its duties... hence... a whole plan of reforms, with a view to the future, and especially pedagogic reforms, which would replace the schools of the clergy by new schools, in which children should be educated in the cult of belles lettres, and in which "politesse" would have its place in a training which was to prepare the pupil no for the cloister, but for life. The Adagia of Erasmus, which appeared in 1500, exercised a pedagogical influence comparable only to that of Rousseau's Emile. For the first time... it was seen that the function of the school was to impart intellectual culture. One may say that the whole organization of education to this day is based on the conception of education evolved by these northern humanists. For them, the object of education was the free development of the personality... More, like Erasmus, was opposed to monasticism, asceticism, the celibacy of priests, and the worship of relics; and both, if the truth be told, tended to transform Christianity into a philosophia evangelica... in the North the spirit of the Renaissance was revolutionary, but it was purely theoretical... It made war upon the Church. It spared the State, hoping that the progress of enlightenment would win acceptation [?] for its opinions.
p543 In return, all the social authorities made much of the humanists, just as they made much of the philosophers before the French Revolution... In their optimism they believed that the world might be changed. Vives wanted the Utopia to be placed in the hands of schoolboys, together with the Colloquia. If governments, and even popes and kings, applauded these books, as did all the high officials also, it was because they were careful to avoid political discussion. Their attitude was precisely that of Voltaire. In order that enlightenment should triumph, they had need of a strong government, an authority superior to the parties, more powerful than the Church. Like all intellectuals, they were, though they did not confess it, in favor of the "intelligent despot." The revolution of which they dreamed was to be carried out from above, because they expected that it would be the work essentially of science and reason. No doubt they wanted to extend its benefits to all men, but it must begin at the top, and as for the means by which it was to be brought about, they relied on the social aristocracy, hoping for the final constitution of an intellectual aristocracy...
p544 Everywhere... [but Spain], during the twenty years which elapsed between the end of the 15th century and the appearance of Protestantism, it seemed as though a new world was on the point of birth. All that was strong and youthful and vigorous revolted against the past. Never, perhaps, have the social authorities so unanimously supported an intellectual movement... All were moving and straining in the same direction: authority, society, fashion, the politicians, the women, the artists, the humanists. There was a boundless confidence abroad, a feverish joy. The mind was liberated from authority, was free to wander under the heavens; the monopoly of knowledge was abolished, and it was now the possession of the whole community. And the knowledge that was derived from antiquity was all the more seductive, inasmuch as it went hand in hand with beauty, and was, so to speak, almost identical with beauty.
This would be more convincing if we hadn't just read about the Hussite Wars in Bohemia, almost exactly a century before. I'm sure Pirenne is correct about how Erasmus and his friends felt, but notice that you will not find the common man in the list above of social factions all straining in the same direction.
Continued next time.
Link to Chronology
I've been in dental hell, though without actually being able to schedule an appointment with a dentist. I'm also very close to being caught up with my reading, so while there's some good stuff coming up, I will run out of material again soon. My plan is to publish every few days, or a couple times a week.
Antiquity rediscovered
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Nine
The Renaissance and the Reformation
Chapter I
The Transformation of Social Life From the Middle of the Fifteenth Century
1. Italy and Italian Influence
p505 ...Just as Florence took precedence of all the cities of the Middle Ages, so the Italian Renaissance manifested a variety and originality and vigor unknown elsewhere, and to which it owed its astonishing influence.
The fact is that the traditional authorities which dominated both social and intellectual life declined or disappeared far earlier in Italy than in the rest of Europe. And this was largely a consequence of the the extraordinary development of urban life. Just at first the nobles inhabiting the cities were involved in incessant conflicts with the bourgeoisie, but gradually, insensibly, they began to engage in commerce, so that the very clear line of demarcation which elsewhere divided the noble from the non-noble was slowly effaced, the descendants of knights and the offspring of enriched merchants intermingling in a community of manners and interests, independently of birth. The social status became more important than the juridical status; moreover, in the course of the 14th century the Italian nobility abandoned the profession of arms, thereby losing the raison d etre of its constitution as a distinct and privileged class. War became a profession that was left to specialists, the condottieri, men of the most various origins, the majority being successful parvenus; men in whom there was no trace of the old feudal loyalty... The progress of economic organization, the development of commercial society, and the improvement of instruments of credit had the consequence, from the very first, of requiring in the banker or the man of affairs an intellectual ability and culture which were not found in the same degree among the merchants of the North... While giving due attention to his business, he allowed himself some hours of leisure, so that he was able to distract himself by intellectual interests, embellish his house with works of art, and acquire a refinement which made him singularly unlike the "patricians" of Germany, Flanders or France. And so, recruited at once from the nobility and the bourgeoisie, a sort of mundane aristocracy came into existence, comprising all those who lived the same kind of life, enjoyed the same degree of education, had the same tastes, and indulged in the same pleasures; and this kind of aristocracy had not its like in any other country. [I am reminded of Charles Swann. Swann's Way was published just before the Great War.] The old society was disintegrating. New groups were in process of formation, no longer determined by convention and prejudice, but coming into existence freely, by virtue of affinities; and in these groups one may say that the spirit of class was replaced by the spirit of humanity.
The development of capitalism involved still further consequences. [Footnote: "Here I should need my books and my notes before I could say anything definite." I think this is the first time he has passed on a subject like this. Maybe he hadn't lectured on the subject as yet?] We should note... the effective principality of the Medici in Florence, which had no other origin than their wealth.
...Florence is the only European city that could be compared with Athens; and like Athens, Florence was in every sense of the word a State which had to deal with as many foreign as domestic problems. It is not surprising that the first political theorists worthy of the name, Machiavelli (1469-1527) and Guiccardini (1483-1540), should have been born upon this fertile soil... They were as independent of theological conceptions as of the juridical constructions which had hitherto influenced political ideas. Urban life was overflowing the narrow frontiers of the Middle Ages and becoming civic life.
p507 ...Never having been squeezed into a single State, Italy was then able to become, in respect of the rest of Europe, something of what ancient Greece was for Rome. If the policy of Frederick II had succeeded in unifying Italy, Florence would have been impossible.
p508 The overthrow of social and political traditions was accompanied by the decadence of manners and morals... the morality of the Middle Ages... regarded the secular life as something secondary and inferior... in accordance with the strict theological precept, all commercial profit, all successful speculation, all bargaining was to be condemned as proceeding from the sin of avarice... One must read compilations like those of Caesar von Heisterbach (1180-1240) or Thomas de Cantimpre (1201-1263) to obtain an exact idea of the mentality of the 13th century with regard to commerce. It could hardly imagine the merchant's strongbox without picturing the devil squatting on the lid...
p510 While the Renaissance had liberated itself from the ascetic morality of the Middle Ages, it did not replace it by any other morality. The strongest and noblest souls imposed upon themselves an ideal of virtue and honor; for others glory was the dominant motive; but the majority seem to have obeyed no other rules than those of personal interest, or they allowed themselves to be led by their tastes and their passions. The loosening of the conjugal tie, and the frequency of assassinations, poisonings, and crimes of every kind and in every class of society, are incontestable evidence of a moral crisis. [Doesn't this contradict the picture he's painted for us of the behavior of the rival princes?] And yet, in the midst of this disorder, we see the beginnings of a sense of individual liberty, of human dignity, of the beauty of energy, and of the responsibility of the private man before his own conscience. Shall we go too far if we credit the Renaissance with having realized... that morality should not consist of a mere code of precepts, and that it cannot be complete without the free adhesion of the personality? This, no doubt, is an aristocratic conception; in the sense, at least, that it is given to few to attain to it. But was not the whole achievement of the Renaissance aristocratic? Was it not characterized above all by the formation of an intellectual elite? ... And was it not to this intellectual elite that it owed its most striking feature, which -- above all in Italy -- gave it its final and proper physiognomy -- the return to antiquity?
p511 ... If the literature of antiquity had had the power of provoking... ["The change in the ideas, the manners and the morals of the 15th century"] the Renaissance would have occurred as early as the reign of Charlemagne... between the Aeneid and the "Divine Comedy" there is a gulf. Dante did not understand Virgil, and could not have understood him; he was too profound, too exalted a Christian and a mystic. What the Middle Ages was able to feel and appreciate in the thought of antiquity was neither the form nor the spirit, but a few sentences, a few anecdotes, a few "moralities," understood in a symbolic sense. The unknown masters who built the Romantic and Gothic Cathedrals had before their eyes a great number of ancient monuments, and they lived in their midst without seeing them... Their incomprehension of classic art is comparable only to the incomprehension of the art of the Middle Ages itself after the triumph of the Renaissance... Without a preliminary orientation of thought and feeling, neither the Renaissance, at the close of the 14th century, nor Romanticism, as the beginning of the 19th century, would have found so many and such fervent adepts...
This is an interesting variation on the argument in In Search of Lost Time and in Proust Was a Neuroscientist that the artist must train an audience to see art in a new way.
p512 ...At the very moment when the Church was ceasing to satisfy the needs of the intellect, it happened... that an incomparable art and literature became available, which did satisfy them. Men deserted the cathedral to find themselves before the open doors of the temple of antiquity...
p513 ... the Italian humanism of the 15th century... made... classic Latin, correct and elegant -- the international language of all educated people, down to our own day. It thus created, for the benefit of laymen, a uniform [aristocratic] culture, externally very like that of which the clergy had hitherto retained the monopoly. In so doing it completed the constitution of that intellectual aristocracy which social evolution had created in the heart of the nation... [I could remove my "aristocratic" insertion, but I love that I anticipated where Pirenne was heading.] Writers whose taste was formed by the study of the classics transferred to their national languages the idea of beauty which they discovered in the classics... Men assimilated the forms and the ideas of antiquity, but did not allow themselves to be dominated by them. Their minds were sufficiently enfranchised to retain their independence...
He's thinking about art here, but when it comes to political ideas I'm not so sure about this. To what extent were the ideas that shaped the American Constitution (think slavery) influenced by the example of Athens and Rome? For that matter, the European adoption of the African slave trade occurred under the watch of the Renaissance.
p514 A universal curiosity was abroad. Hardly anything was known of the philosophy of the ancients, apart from Aristotle, and he was discredited by the portrait which the Scholastics had drawn of him. Platonism was therefore welcomed with all the greater enthusiasm. The Greek literature which the Byzantine refugees had revealed to Italy, even before the Turkish capture of Constantinople, opened up new intellectual horizons. Already a few pioneers dreamed of going even further, and ventured into the domain of Hebraic studies and Oriental philology. Lastly, the exact sciences began their glorious careers. Physics, astronomy and mathematics flourished in that springtime of modern thought which gave the Italy of the 15th century its incomparable charm. It must not be forgotten that Copernicus studied at Padua and Bologna, and the scientific labors of Toscanelli and Luca Paccioli contributed largely to the discovery of the New World.
Pirenne wouldn't have known that the Basques had been fishing in the New World for centuries. Though he might have, if he had read carefully the accounts of the later "Discoverers". It doesn't actually require that much science to cross an ocean or navigate around a continent. What it does require, and this is something Pirenne should have been on top of, is the commercial interest to do the thing.
Medieval communes
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Seven
The Hegemony of the Papacy and of France in the Thirteenth Century
Chapter II
The Papacy, Italy, and Germany
1. Italy
p305 ...Municipal life became as preponderant in Lombardy and Tuscany as it had been in antiquity, but while its material conditions were almost unchanged, its spirit was different. The Roman municipality had enjoyed only a local autonomy, subordinated to the formidable power of the State. [This was only true after Rome had conquered the peninsula.] The Italian city of the Middle Ages -- at least in the north and the center of the peninsula -- was a republic.
p306 From the 11th century onwards the mercantile and industrial class which was in process of formation took advantage... of the conflict between the pope and the Emperor to rebel against the bishops, and to wrest from them the administration of the cities. The first Italian communes were sworn by the "patarenes" [Footnote: The name of Patarious seems to be a mere corruption of Catharus.] in the midst of the turmoil of the War of Investitures: a time of mystical exaltation. Their origin was purely revolutionary, and from the time of their birth they contracted a habit of violence that was to characterize them to the end. By force or by agreement, the commune imposed itself, in each city, on the mass of the population, and its elective consuls, like the sheriffs of the Belgian cities, exercised both the judical and the administrative power. But as the bourgeoisie developed the social contrasts in its ranks were accentuated, and parties were formed in support of various conflicting interests... The party of the grandi were composed of the urban nobility, with whom were associated a good many enriched merchants; the party of the piccoli comprised the corporations or guilds of artisans of every kind, whose numbers multiplied as prosperity increased. The absence of a princely power, above the parties and capable of moderating their quarrels, gave the conflicts between the two groups, arising from questions of taxation and the organization of municipal power, a bitterness and severity unequaled elsewhere. From the middle of the 12th century civil war became a chronic epidemic. The grandi had the best of it; the piccoli were pitilessly massacred; if they surrendered they were driven out of the city; their houses or palaces were destroyed, and while waiting for the moment when they could avenge themselves they lived on the adjacent countryside, pillaging and harassing their compatriots.
As a general thing these exiles found protection and allies in a neighboring city. For while there was permanent warfare in the heart of the bourgeoisies, the mutual relations of the cities were also generally warlike. Constituting as they did so many independent economic centers, each of them thought only of itself, doing its utmost to force the peasants and population of the surrounding countryside to furnish its food supply... Thus the clash of interests was as violent outside the city as within it. Trade and industry were developed by means of battles... Each city imagined that its prosperity depended on the ruin of its rivals...
I'm skipping again the discussion of the interplay of the cities with the Hohenstaufens which lead to another battle of Guelf and Ghibelline -- differently defined in Italy to make things even more confusing.
And this state of city vs city sounds so much like Greece and early Rome. The main difference being the absence of kings.
p308 ...From the second half of the 12th century attempts were made to render... [the municipal government] independent of civil conflicts by confiding it to a podesta. The podesta was... a temporary prince elected by the commune, and in order to guarantee his impartiality and his independence of the parties it usually chose him from an alien commune... Almost always the podestas were obliged... to rely on the support of one of the hostile factions. In certain cities they succeeded, as early as the 13th century, in possessing themselves, either by cunning or by violence... of the supreme authority, and in founding the first of those tyrannies which were to play so considerable a part during the epoch of the Renaissance. I need only mention the Scaligers of Verona and the Visconti of Milan.
The political and social ferment of the Italian cities naturally influenced their religious life. There were simultaneous outbreaks of mysticism and heresy, which provided fresh aliment for the fever that consumed them. St Francisco of Assisi was the son of a merchant, and the Order of Franciscans found its true field of action in the bourgeoisies. Moreover, there were swarms of Cathars, Brothers of the Free Spirit, and Waldenses...
It can hardly be doubted that they would have recruited the majority of their adherents among the workers engaged in production for export. As in Flanders. this trade was already highly developed in the Italy of the 13th century, and as in Flanders, it resulted in the formation of a veritable working-class proletariat. The weavers of Florence, the great cloth-producing center of Southern Europe, differed as widely as the weavers of Gand, Ypres or Douai from the usual type of urban artisan. Far from working on their own account, they were mere wage-earners, employed by the merchants. The nascent capitalism of the age subjected them to its influence, and its power, like its influence, increased in proportion as the merchants developed the export trade. By the first half of the 13th century the Florentine cloths were exported to all parts of the Orient [Near East?], and the merchants of the city were importing their wool from England. Such an active manufacture naturally presupposes a considerable degree of capitalistic development. The fortunes accumulated by the trade in merchandise were still further increased by financial transactions. In the course of the 13th century the money-changers (bankers) of Siena and Florence found their way into all parts of Western Europe, where they were known as Lombards... in England, the Low Countries, and France they advanced larger and larger sums to the cities, princes, and kings, and were employed as collectors, treasurers, and guardians of money... On the disappearance of... [the Sienese company of Bonsignori, in 1298] Florence became the chief money-market and banking center of Europe, and so remained until the 15th century... We know that it was in the form of Florentine florins, minted from 1252 onwards, and presently imitated by Venice (ducats), and then in France, that gold coins, abandoned since the Merovingian epoch, once more made their appearance in international trade, providing the instrument of exchange which had become indispensable to its progress...
p310 The social position of the Italian bankers and merchants brought them so closely into touch with the nobility that they were often confounded with it. This process took place all the more rapidly, inasmuch as the Italian nobility, instead of residing in the country... had its dwelling-houses in the city. By the end of the 12th century the nobles were already beginning to interest themselves in commercial operations, while the merchants... were often ennobled... under the influence of capital the line of demarcation between the juridical classes, which elsewhere remained so clearly drawn, in Italy grew fainter, almost to the point of disappearance, during the course of the 13th century. An aristocracy was formed for which social position was of greater importance than blood, while individual worth overcame the prejudice of birth.
Just like when the Medieval nobility was first forming.
He then goes into the Papal States which were a dead zone between Sicily in the south and these developing cities in the north.
p312 The Kingdom of Sicily, in the south of the peninsula, was another world. While it was as wealthy as Northern Italy, and while its life was feverish and exuberant, it was politically apathetic... In the 13th century (1275) it was estimated that the inhabitants numbered 1,200,000, a population greater than that of England... There is more than one point of similarity between the Frederick II [Hohenstaufen] of the 13th century and the Frederick II [the Great, Hohenzollern] of the 18th century, and this is easily explained, if we reflect that they could both do anything they liked with the people whom they governed... In the Europe of the 13th century the Kingdom of Sicily was something unique, with its expert and despotic constitution, borrowed from the Byzantine and Musulman worlds... Not until the modern era did the European States achieve so complete an administrative system...
2. Frederick II
p313 ...Lying, cruelty and perjury were his favorite weapons; in a later age they would be the favorite weapons of a Sforza or a Visconti, and to make the analogy more complete, he had their love of art and their respect for learning. He has been called the first modern man to ascend the throne, but this is not true unless we understand by a modern man "the pure despot who will stop for nothing in the search for power."
p314 This Frederick, whom the Popes were later to describe as the Beast of the Apocalypse, the servant of Satan, the prophet of the Antichrist, began his career under the auspices of Innocent III, and as an instrument of the Church...
...
p315 ...His treatment of the Church was inspired, not by a principle, but solely by his personal interests. Provided the Church did not hinder the realization of his policy he was ready to make it every concession... In reality the Popes made war against him for temporal rather than religious reasons. The quarrel... reveals itself... as a quarrel between two Italian powers...
...
p319 [After his death] As for the Kingdom of Sicily, the Pope hastened to retrieve it forever from that "generation of vipers," the Hohenstaufens. He decided to give it to France.
Growth of the Cities
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Chapter III
The Growth of the Cities and its Consequences
1. The Growth of the Cities
p227 ...In Italy, as in Flanders, the maritime commerce, and the inland commerce which was its continuation, resulted in the activity of the seaports: Venice, Pisa, and Genoa in the South; Bruges in the North. Then, behind the seaports, the industrial cities developed: on the one hand, the Lombard communes and Florence; on the other, Ghent, Ypres, and Lille, Douai, and further inland, Valenciennes and Brussels. It was evidently the proximity of the seaports that gave such an extraordinary impetus to the industry of the cities -- an impetus unique in Europe. The Italian and Flemmish ports, with their hinterland, acquired an international importance, and in this way they were unique.
...The Italian merchants visited Flanders from the beginning of the 12th century. But presently the fairs of Champagne became the point of contact, and, so to speak, the Bourse of Italo-Flemish commerce... But these were merely business rendezvous, and no really important cities were founded on the sites of these fairs...
p228 The South of France was not far behind Italy. Marseilles, Montpellier, and Aigues-Mortes played their part in Mediterranean commerce. And behind them were Albi, Cahors, and Toulouse, which gravitated toward them, and prospered without interruption until the Albigensian War. In Spain the port of Barcelona likewise acquired great importance, though it did not produce any very active urban centres in the hinterland.
Which was also true in Roman times, I believe. Was any of this different than the systems of commerce created by the Greeks, Carthage, and Rome BCE?
Avignon and Lyon develop on the Rhone. Paris is a separate, purely political creation.
Germany had no center of international trade. She was in touch with Italy through the Rhine and the Danube; on the one river Cologne and Strasbourg made their appearance; on the other, Ratisbon and Vienna. The most important of these centres was Cologne, where the Germany of the West and South came into contact with the Germany of the North, and both were in touch with the Low Countries. The Germany of the North... had Hamburg and Bremen on the North Sea, and above all, Lubeck, founded by Henry the Lion, on the Baltic.
There's much more but I'm not interested in the history of Germany and areas east at the moment.
p229 ...a host of small secondary towns arose, of the same character as the large cities, and living under the same law. It had now become indispensable that each region should have its little urban center. [Why exactly?] The disorganization of the domainal system, and the appearance of free peasants, [from where?] necessarily called into existence -- to replace the "courts" from which the servile population had supplied their needs -- little bourgs, which offered an asylum to the artisans, and served as commercial centers for the great cities. [That part I get.] Their urban life was a spontaneous gift from the great cities. New towns were founded... A host of others led a quiet, semi-urban, semi-agricultural existence; Kreuzburg, where I am writing these lines, received its charter in 1213. These were towns of secondary formation, belonging to a period when the bourgeoisie had established itself, and when the princes, impelled by the advantages which they derived from these towns, were establishing them in all directions. Formerly the traveler passed from monastery to monastery; now he journeyed from town to town; there were towns on all the roads, at intervals of a few leagues, constituting a transition between the great cities, like the little beads of a rosary between the dizaines.
p230 The rise of the town provoked an increase of population, relatively comparable to that which occurred in the 19th century. And even more remarkable than the increase of the urban population were the effects of this multiplication of urban centers on the population of the countryside. Compared with the Carolingian population, we may estimate, roughly, that its strength was doubled. The maximum increase was attained at the beginning of the 14th century. From that time, until the 18th century, there was no essential change. [Huh?]
It would be of great importance to obtain some idea of the relative strength of the urban as compared with the rural population. But this is unfortunately impossible. ...we may be certain, that in all the centers favored by commerce the bourgeois population continued to increase until about the middle of the 14th century. Everywhere the walled enclosures... had to be enlarged, and faubourgs which had been built outside the gates had to be enclosed by walls... The largest cities -- Milan, Paris, Gand -- must have contained about 50,000 inhabitants, more or less. The cities of medium size would have contained from 20,000 to 50,000 inhabitants; the small towns from 2,00 to 5,000...
2. The Consequences for the Rural Population
p231 ...in the Middle Ages... the town was absolutely distinct from the open country. It was divided from it even materially, sheltering behind its moat and walls and its gates. Juridically, it was another world. Directly one entered the gates one became subject to a different law, just as one does to-day on passing from one State to another. Economically the contrast was as great. Not only was the city a centre of commerce and industry, but there was no commerce and no industry elsewhere. In the country they were everywhere prohibited. Every city endeavored to dominate the surrounding countryside, to subjugate it. The country had to provide it with a market, and, at the same time, to guarantee its supplies of foodstuffs. There was not, as there is to-day, constant exchange and interpenetration; there was a contrast, and the subordination of the one element to the other...
The rise of the towns... made it impossible to preserve the domainal system... Having no market in which to see its products, the domain restricted its production to the needs of its own consumption... Now, from the moment the towns made their appearance this special situation ceased to exist... For apart from its merchants and artisans, the urban population was a sterile population -- to employ a favorite formula of 18th century physiocrats. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiocracy] It could live only by sending out of the city for its means of subsistence -- that is, by purchasing them from the cultivators of the soil. It therefore provided them with the outlet for their products which they had hitherto lacked... And so the moral and the economic conditions to which the domainal organization corresponded both disappeared simultaneously. The peasant, whose activity was now solicited by the outer world, no longer regarded his work as a mere burden. Further, as a necessary consequence of the new state of affairs, the seigneur himself was even more conscious of the need of a reformation. For since the prestations of his tenants were fixed by custom, he soon discovered that his resources were dwindling unpleasantly. His revenues were still the same, while his expences were constantly increasing. The towns... by their purchases, were putting money into circulation throughout the countryside; and as money became more and more abundant its value diminished in proportion. The cost of living was continually rising, and the landowners, restricted to fixed revenues, found themselves launched on the road to ruin. For the petty military noblesse, who, as a general thing, possessed only small fiefs which just provided them with a living, the crisis was a veritable catastrophe. A large proportion of the chivalry, so numerous in the 11th century, was overwhelmed by poverty, at the close of the 12th century.
YES. And what became of them? And this also explains why the landed interests were so eager to monetize some of their lands around the cities. This was the result of the same Invisible Hand that lead to the Enclosures and the Clearances in Britain.
It is difficult to say whether the increase of the population of the rural districts, which manifested itself at the very time when the conditions of rural life were undergoing such a profound modification, should also be referred to the appearance of the towns. After the devastations of the Normans, the Saracens, and the Hungarians, Europe had known a period of relative tranquility, during which the natural excess of births over deaths must insensibly have increased the numbers of the inhabitants. [Might there not also have been a climate explanation for this tranquility and rise in population?] But it is only in the second half of the 11th century that we perceive, in certain parts of Europe, the traces of a malaise due to excess in density of the population, and we are almost bound to believe that in affording the peasants new means of livelihood, the towns... had contributed... to increase their number. However it may be, it is certain that in the Low Countries, for example, the cultivated land, about 1050, was beginning to prove insufficient for the needs of the inhabitants. Moreover, events like the conquest of England in 1066, and the Crusade, evidently justify the supposition that the population was somewhat excessive, at all events in the North of France.
p234 ...From the beginning of the 11th century we have something more than presumption to go upon. The peopling of the regions beyond the Elbe by immigrants from the banks of the Rhine, Holland, and Flanders, evidently cannot be explained save by the superabundance of the rural population of the countries.
Thus, at the moment when the ancient domainal system had had its day, and no longer responded to the needs of a more economically advanced society, there were numbers of men who offered themselves to whomsoever would give them land. The great landowners, and above all the territorial princes, did not fail to profit by so favourable a situation. They possessed plenty of uncultivated land, for it seems that to the west of the Rhine and to the south of the Danube... the great domains had hardly spread beyond the fertile soil already cultivated in the days of the Roman Empire. The rest of the land was untouched forest, heath, and marshland. The time had come to bring this land into cultivation. This great task... was begun in the middle of the 11th century, reached its apogee during the course of the 12th century, and was completed, at a gradually relaxing pace, towards the end of the 13th century. From that period until the end of the 18th century the area of cultivated soil was not sensibly increased in the Occident, and this fact alone shows the importance of the progress effected by internal colonization in the Middle Ages. No doubt the intakes would have been less extensive had agriculture been more advanced... The crisis of the domainal organization could have been avoided had it been possible to increase the fertility of the soil by more rational methods.
Jane Jacobs maintains that agricultural innovation is also the product of cities. The 18th or 19th century Gentry might have been able to lead agricultural innovation after they had been trained by the city economy (and science) but it would be asking too much of the nobility of the Middle Ages.
p235 In the newly peopled areas, ...The peasant's relations to the landowner were now merely such as arose from his quality of tenant. He paid a rent for the land which he occupied, but his person was free... The area of the "new town" was divided into a certain number of equal units, and these, on payment of quit-rent, could be secured under hereditary title. A charter... recognized the personal liberty of the inhabitants, and determined the powers and the competence of the mayor and the court who were charged with the affairs of the colony and the administration of justice, and defined the respective rights of the seigneur and the peasants as to forestal usage, etc. Thus a new type of village appeared, the village a loi. it no longer had anything in common with the old domainal organization, except for the fact that, like the latter, it presupposed a great property and a small-scale exploitation. For the rest, everything was new. Not only was the peasant a free man, but the pretestations which he had to pay the seigneur, instead of consisting of natural products, were usually payable in money... All over Europe there was a new growth of villages, and the very form of their names, ending in sart in the French-speaking countries, and in kerk, kirche, rode, rath in countries where German was spoken, still enable us to distinguish them from their neighbors in the long-settled regions.
The Church played a considerable part in this great cultural task of the 12th century. She entrusted the work to the new orders of Cistercians and Premonstrants... the latter founded by St Bernard in 1113, [Footnote: Citeaux (not far from Dijon) was founded in 1098 by Robert de Molesnes, but it did not become the center of a movement until Saint Bernard entered it in 1113.] and the former by Saint Norbert in 1119 -- resumed the ascetic propaganda which the Benedictines had abandoned. In order that the prescription of manual labor be applied in all its rigor, they established themselves, by preference, in uncultivated regions where there was land to be cleared and drained. The princes made haste to help on the pius work by ceding tracts of moor and marshland to the monks. The two orders played a great part in draining the Flemish polders and bringing the soil of Eastern Germany into cultivation. The domains which they constituted there were of a completely novel type, in which we see, for the first time in the Middle Ages, the principle of large-scale agricultural exploitation. Instead of being parcelled out in family holdings, the newly-cleared area were organized into great farms, which were worked by "convert brothers" or free peasants under the direction of a monk. The cultivation of cereals or the breeding of cattle was practiced, not as formerly, with a view to immediate consumption by the convent, but for the purpose of sale in the markets... The profits realized enabled the monks to acquire more land, and to continue the work of bringing it into cultivation... [The proprietors of the old style domains are forced to monetize their holdings to raise cash. Quit-rent and similar methods free the peasants and allow the landowners to survive the inflation of money.] One may say that from the beginning of the 13th century the rural population, in Western and Central Europe, had become or was in the process of becoming a population of free peasants. And this great transformation was accomplished without violence, without the co-operation of principles and theories, as an inevitable consequence of the revival of trade and the appearance of the towns, which, by providing agriculture with the outlets of which it had hitherto been deprived, had compelled it to modify its traditional organization and to adopt freer and more flexible forms of exploitation. Economic progress had destroyed the social patronage which the seigneur had hitherto exercised over his men. In proportion as liberty was substituted for serfdom the landowner put off his old paternal character, and material interest tended to become the sole criterion of his relations with his tenants.
