The towns of northern France, notably in Artois, Burgundy, the Île-de-France, and especially Champagne, prospered not only from regional exchange but also from the great overland trade flows connecting Normandy, England, the Baltic, and the Low Countries with the cities of Italy. The fairs of Champagne, becoming the leading entrepôt of European merchants, reached their apogee in the 13th century. Favoured by the count’s privilege, the traders operated at Lagny, Bar-sur-Aube, or—in greater numbers—Provins and at the “warm fair” of Troyes in June; the “cold fair” of Troyes ended the yearly cycle in October. The fairs were designated as occasions for payment and repayment, contributing significantly to the progress of banking and business accounting.
Enlarged and more diversified demand encouraged urban growth and prosperity. Townsmen were eating better: in the north, at least, the per capita consumption of meat, butter, and cheese, as well as of spices, seems to have increased by the 13th century. As for wine, not only was more being drunk but the taste for vins de qualité became more acute, and the great regional vintages, notably that of Gascony, were established. Townspeople furnished their houses more amply than in the past (lamps, wooden chests, and draperies came into common use), and they produced more articles themselves.
The progress of industry, in fact, was a remarkable feature of the period. Crafts in metal, wood, leather, and glass expanded in such large towns as Paris. Cloth work—weaving, dyeing, fulling—prospered in regional centres such as Toulouse, with specialities in fine cloths concentrated in Artois and Flanders. In most places, however, the crafts remained in the shadow of commercial enterprise, in which greater fortunes continued to be made. Artisanal associations proliferated everywhere; often termed brotherhoods (confratria, confraternitas), they fostered new urban and suburban solidarities for charitable and ceremonial purposes as well as for the promotion of economic interests.
Urban society became more competitive and more stratified. At Lyon, Bordeaux, and elsewhere, some fortunes were established enough, usually from commerce, to enable their possessors to live as landlords, build stone houses, buy rural property, and aspire to titles of nobility. This patriciate—despite occasional setbacks at the hands of “new men,” a rising class of administrators chosen over men of high birth for their expertise in politics—dominated municipal governments, acting as mayors and magistrates (échevins) in the north or as consuls in the south. While not altogether self-serving—they supported civic projects such as the building or decorating of churches—they were disinclined to share power. Below them, often as their tenants or debtors, were small entrepreneurs, middlemen in trade (or between local industry and regional trade), master craftsmen, and bankers; and below all—and increasingly restive—was a swelling class of impoverished artisans, servants, vagabonds, and beggars. Rural society
Rural life changed more gradually. The expanding markets favoured well-endowed or efficient lords or peasants who could produce a surplus of goods for sale. Such conditions were less common in the south than in the north, although they could be found in most wine-producing areas. But, while rising prices benefited producers, they contributed to certain difficulties in the countryside. Fixed revenues in coin proved an unsatisfactory alternative to payments in kind, which landlords specified when new land was put under cultivation. Moreover, needs and tastes became more expensive and tended to exceed aristocratic resources; lavish generosity continued to be an admired and practiced virtue, and costly Crusades—occasionally lapsing into speculative adventures—regularly attracted noblemen after the end of the 11th century. Larger lordships began to employ salaried estate managers, while in the south the division of landed fortunes among numerous heirs resulted in a multiplied and impoverished petty nobility. Many rural landlords fell into debt in the 13th century. And, as wealth and nobility became less correlated, some nobles, especially those who were financially hard-pressed, sought to close ranks against the intrusion of new men or creditors. They insisted on noble birth as a condition for knighthood, reserving the designation of “squire” (or donzel, in the south) for those of noble birth awaiting or postponing the expensive dubbing (adoubement). At the upper extreme, a noble elite, the barons, achieved recognition in administration and law.
Peasant societies also became stratified. Men unable to set aside a surplus against times of famine and those who had to borrow or rent their tools or teams found it difficult to avoid dependence on other men. In some areas serfdom was renewed, or confirmed, as jurists interpreted the more stringent types of peasant obligation in the light of the revived Roman law of slavery. But here again economic and legal status did not necessarily coincide. Rich peasants who employed other men to drive their teams could be found in any village; such people as the mayor, the lord’s provost, and the peasant creditor established themselves as a rural elite, whose resources insured them against calamity and opened up diverse opportunities in prospering regional economies. Where enfranchisement occurred, the lord usually received a good payment; even when servility persisted, there was a tendency to commute the arbitrary tallage into fixed common sums. New villages continued to be established, especially in the south, where many previously existent communities of peasants also received charters of elementary liberties in the 13th and early 14th centuries.
These conditions notwithstanding, the manor, or seigneurie, resisted fragmentation. The favourable market for grain and the psychological attachment of lords to their fathers’ possessions preserved demesne land (for use by leasehold, not freehold, tenants) as the chief source of seigneurial income through the 13th century. The lords also continued to require the services of labourers, although the shortfall increased between work owed and work needed. Accordingly, lords resorted to paid seasonal labour, so that the margin between profit and loss became a more critical calculation than in the past. A new alternative was to lease the demesne to paid managers or sharecroppers, but this practice spread more slowly in France than in neighbouring countries. Whether lords had demesnes and servile tenants or not, the association between landlordship and power remained close. Tenancies or properties smaller than the grand old residences known as manses appeared everywhere but especially in the north, where horsepower and three-field crop rotations were making possible more productive agriculture. The burgeoning viticultures of Burgundy and Gascony proved incompatible with traditional demesne lordship and encouraged sharecropping and peasant initiative. Innovation was less common in the uplands of the centre and south, where the manse tended to retain its identity and fiscal utility. Religious and cultural life
The Christian church was badly disrupted by the invasions of the 800s and early 900s as well as by the rise of the local strongmen that accompanied the invasions. In Normandy five successive bishops of Coutances resided at Rouen, far from their war-torn district, which had converted to paganism under the Vikings. Elsewhere standards of clerical deportment declined, threatening the moral leadership with which Carolingian prelates had supported public order. Renewal came in two influential forms.