Textbook Sleep #55: Medieval Cities

An interesting question is whether or not cities existed in the midst of that essentially agricultural civilization into which Western Europe had developed in the course of the 9th century.

The answer depends on the meaning given to the word city.

If by it is meant a locality the population of which, instead of living by working the soil, devotes itself to commercial activity, the answer will have to be no.

The answer will also be in the negative if we understand by city a community endowed with legal personality and possessing laws and institutions peculiar to itself.

On the other hand, if we think of a city as a center of administration and as a fortress, it is clear that the Carolinian period knew as many cities as the centuries which followed it must have known.

That is merely another way of saying that the cities which were then to be found were without two of the fundamental attributes of the cities of the Middle Ages and of modern times, a middle-class population and a communal organization.

Primitive though it may be, every stable society feels the need of providing its members with centers of assembly or meeting places.

Observance of religious rites, maintenance of markets, and political and judicial gatherings necessarily bring about the designation of localities intended for the assembly of those who wish to or must participate therein.

Military needs have a still more positive effect.

Populations have to prepare refuges where will be found momentary protection from the enemy in case of an invasion.

War is as old as humanity and the construction of fortresses almost as old as war.

The first buildings erected by man seem, indeed, to have been protecting walls.

Even today, there is hardly a barbaric race among whom this tendency is not found and, as far back as we may go into the past, the situation remains the same.

The acropoles of the Greeks, the opida of the Etruscans, the Latins and the Gauls, the Bergen of the Germans, the Gorads of the Slavs, were in the beginning no more than places of assembly and, especially, shelters.

Their plan and their construction depended naturally upon the conformation of the terrain and upon the building materials at hand.

But the general arrangement of them was everywhere the same.

It consisted of a space, square or circular in shape, surrounded by ramparts made of trunks of trees or mud or blocks of stone, protected by a moat and entered by gates.

In short, it was an enclosure, and it is an interesting fact that the words which in modern English and modern Russian, town and Gorad, designate a city, originally designated an enclosure.

In ordinary times, these enclosures remained empty.

The people resorted to them only on the occasion of religious or civic ceremonies or when war constrained them to seek refuge there with their herds.

But, little by little, with the march of civilization, their interment animation became a continuous animation.

Temples arose, magistrates or chieftains established their residence, merchants and artisans came to settle.

What first had only been an occasional center of assembly became a city, the administrative, religious, political and economic center of all the territory of the tribe whose name it customarily took.

This explains why, in many societies and particularly in classic antiquity, the political life of the cities was not restricted to the circumference of their walls.

The city, indeed, had been built for the tribe, and every man in it, whether dwelling within or without the walls, was equally a citizen thereof.

An interesting question is whether or not cities existed in the midst of that essentially agricultural civilization into which Western Europe had developed in the course of the 9th century.

The answer depends on the meaning given to the word city.

If by it is meant a locality the population of which, instead of living by working the soil, devotes itself to commercial activity, the answer will have to be no.

The answer will also be in the negative if we understand by city a community endowed with legal personality and possessing laws and institutions peculiar to itself.

On the other hand, if we think of a city as a center of administration and as a fortress, it is clear that the Carolinian period knew as many cities as the centuries which followed it must have known.

That is merely another way of saying that the cities which were then to be found were without two of the fundamental attributes of the cities of the Middle Ages and of modern times, a middle-class population and a communal organization.

Primitive though it may be, every stable society feels the need of providing its members with centers of assembly or meeting places.

Observance of religious rites, maintenance of markets, and political and judicial gatherings necessarily bring about the designation of localities intended for the assembly of those who wish to or must participate therein.

Military needs have a still more positive effect.

Populations have to prepare refuges where will be found momentary protection from the enemy in case of an invasion.

War is as old as humanity and the construction of fortresses almost as old as war.

The first buildings erected by man seem, indeed, to have been protecting walls.

Even today, there is hardly a barbaric race among whom this tendency is not found and, as far back as we may go into the past, the situation remains the same.

The acropoles of the Greeks, the opida of the Etruscans, the Latins and the Gauls, the Bergen of the Germans, the Gorads of the Slavs, were in the beginning no more than places of assembly and, especially, shelters.

Their plan and their construction depended naturally upon the conformation of the terrain and upon the building materials at hand.

But the general arrangement of them was everywhere the same.

It consisted of a space, square or circular in shape, surrounded by ramparts made of trunks of trees or mud or blocks of stone, protected by a moat and entered by gates.

In short, it was an enclosure, and it is an interesting fact that the words which in modern English and modern Russian, town and Gorad, designate a city, originally designated an enclosure.

In ordinary times, these enclosures remained empty.

The people resorted to them only on the occasion of religious or civic ceremonies or when war constrained them to seek refuge there with their herds.

But, little by little, with the march of civilization, their interment animation became a continuous animation.

Temples arose, magistrates or chieftains established their residence, merchants and artisans came to settle.

What first had only been an occasional center of assembly became a city, the administrative, religious, political and economic center of all the territory of the tribe whose name it customarily took.

This explains why, in many societies and particularly in classic antiquity, the political life of the cities was not restricted to the circumference of their walls.

The city, indeed, had been built for the tribe, and every man in it, whether dwelling within or without the walls, was equally a citizen thereof.