Life in a Medieval City (26 page)

Roman law is now taught in law schools at Montpellier, Orléans, Angers, Bologna, Reggio, and other places, but Paris teaches only canon law. Lawyers are not particularly popular. Their pretensions are resented, and their pedantic interpretations irritate everyone. They insist on exact forms and formulas. But they are improving the administration of justice and pointing the way to guarantees for the accused that a future age will regard as indispensable.

A jurisdictional dispute among the courts of a town sometimes becomes a bigger legal cause than the case that was originally to be tried. In 1236 the mayor and councillors of Laon imprisoned three men who the canons of the cathedral thought should be tried in the ecclesiastical court. The town officials refused to hand over the prisoners, whereupon the canons issued bans of excommunication against the councillors. But the parish priest to whom the bans were given sided with the town and refused to publish them. The canons excommunicated the priest. Priest and townsmen took the case all the way to Rome and won a favorable judgment, enforced by a papal excommunication against the canons. The same priest savored the revenge of entering the church at Vespers, lighted candle in hand, pronouncing the sentence, and turning the candle upside down.

Many regions are beginning to enjoy a medieval advance in jurisprudence—the court of appeals. The Parlement of Paris and the Parliament of London are two of the most famous. Another is taking shape in Troyes—the Council and Tribunal of the Count of Champagne, meeting from time to time in the
Grands Jours de Troyes
. In its origins no more than the count’s court sitting in judicial session, it will develop into a regularly appointed body of chief vassals, leading burghers and prelates, and will serve as trial court for the nobility and appeals court for the lower classes.

The Charter of 1230 may have sufficed for Thibaut’s financial needs in 1230, but a little more than a decade later it no longer did. Probably the minor Crusade of 1239, in which Thibaut distinguished himself, plunged him into fresh debts. In any case the mayor and council proved incapable of raising enough money for their sovereign, and so without ceremony he turned them out of office. In their place he installed a group headed by an enterprising Cahorsin financier named Bernard de Montcuc, who had arrived in Troyes some years earlier as a moneychanger. Together with his associates, who included two of his brothers, Bernard undertook to advance Thibaut four thousand three hundred pounds (
livres Tournois
) a year for five years—a thousand at the Hot Fair, two thousand at the Cold Fair, and the remainder at the Fair of Bar-sur-Aube. With these loans Thibaut could pay off his debts and presumably have enough to live on. Bernard and his consortium were repaid by two means: first, a special sales tax over the five-year period levied at four deniers per livre (one-sixtieth) on all merchandise sold in Troyes, and second, the farming out of low justice. As a sop to the businessmen of Troyes, those paying the sales tax were exempted from military service. To clear the way for these revenues politically, Thibaut appointed Bernard and his friends to serve in turn as mayors throughout the emergency.

Thus in Thibaut’s view the government of Troyes is little more than a money-raising agency. Though the Troyes burghers doubtless grumbled at first, their acceptance of the Montcuc scheme and their generally passive attitude toward the charter indicate a lethargy toward political affairs that differentiates them sharply from most other townsmen. In many cities charters have been won after violence and bloodshed, and once won are jealously guarded. The difference in the Troyen attitude is unquestionably a reflection of the vast advantages accruing to the burghers of Troyes from their fairs. Though their political liberties have proved illusory, their individual liberties are genuine. They possess freedom without self-government, and as long as the fairs prosper they will be satisfied.

Troyes is not the only town to suffer from a prince’s follies, and at the head of the list of princely follies stands crusading. Burgher discontent has played a major role in the decline of the crusading business since Peter the Hermit. In 1095 idealism caused many people to do foolish things, but by the thirteenth century ordinary people have lost their appetite for warfare, while princes and barons have grown more cautious about selling estates to equip armies. Nowadays only princes who can exact large contributions from their towns can think about Crusading. In most of France and Flanders the principal form of such contributions is the feudal “aid,” originally a gift to a lord on the occasion of a daughter’s marriage or a son’s knighting—a ham from one peasant, a sack of grain from another. In the more affluent, urbanized society of the thirteenth century, the aid is a cash payment. When a sovereign requests it, his towns must assess themselves. No town is happy about an aid, and some find it thoroughly objectionable. Douai, in Flanders, paid 32,600 livres over a period of twenty years for a variety of needs and extravagances of its counts and countesses. Noyon went bankrupt, the goods of its burghers being seized to pay creditors.

Two years ago, in 1248, Louis IX, valiant and devout king of France, went on crusade. The king’s idealism about the Holy Land was shared by few of his subjects or peers. Some two thousand eight hundred knights and eight thousand foot sergeants were recruited, nearly all on a mercenary basis. Jean de Joinville, seneschal of Champagne, accompanied the king, who was a personal friend, with reluctance. Later he described his departure from home: “I never once let my eyes turn back towards Joinville, for fear my heart might be filled with longing at the thought of my beautiful castle and the two children I had left behind.” The happiest result of the expedition, in fact, is Joinville’s own memoir of it, which adds a leaf to Troyes’ literary laurels. After a rather brilliant beginning, in a successful amphibious assault on Damietta, the expedition bogged down in the swampy upriver country around the fortress city of Mansourah. Famine and scurvy turned the camp into a hospital and charnel house, and the survivors were easily taken prisoner by the Saracens. The queen ransomed the king by trading Damietta, after which Louis ransomed Joinville and the other knights by paying four hundred thousand livres. Originally the sultan demanded five hundred thousand, but when the king unhesitatingly agreed, the equally chivalrous sultan knocked off a hundred thousand livres, commenting, “By Allah, this Frank does not haggle!”

The money was raised on the spot by a bit of pressure on the wealthy Knights Templar, but is now in the process of being paid by the king’s subjects, mainly the burghers of his cities, already touched for sizeable aids, and facing still more bills for Louis’ new fortifications in Syria. It is hardly surprising that quite a few burghers identify themselves with the wrong side of the debate between Crusaders and non-Crusaders that is a favorite subject of the trouvères. They feel that after all, “it is also a good and holy thing to live quietly at home, in friendship with neighbors, taking care of children and goods, going to bed early and sleeping well.” If the sultan of Egypt should take it into his head to invade France, they will be ready to pay an aid, and take up their pikes and crossbows besides. But they do not see the wisdom of journeying far over the sea to die, and die expensively at that.

16.

The Champagne Fair

There are ten fairs in the land of France,
One at Bar, another at Provins,
Another at Troyes and a fourth at Lendit,
And three in Flanders, and the eighth at Senlis,
The ninth at Cesoirs, the tenth at Lagny
.

—
GARIN DE LOHERAIN

T
he Hot Fair of Troyes, celebrated in song and story, is the most important of the six Fairs of Champagne, which are divided unequally among four towns stretching across the county from its easternmost to westernmost borders. Geography and season make the first two fairs of the cycle,
¹
those of Lagny and Bar-sur-Aube, the smallest. Lagny is close to Paris, Bar on the edge of Burgundy, a hundred miles east. The Lagny Fair is held in January–February, that of Bar next in March–April. Third in the calendar year comes the May Fair of Provins, running through May and June, followed by the Hot Fair, or Fair of St.-Jean, held in Troyes at the height of summer in July and August. The distance from Provins to Troyes is only forty miles, and many fair clients pack up at Provins to unpack again in Troyes. The next fair, in September–October, is the Fair of St.-Ayoul in Provins, and again there is heavy inter-fair traffic. Finally comes the Fair of St.-Rémi, the Cold Fair of Troyes, in November and December. These four, in the two neighboring cities, lasting through the good traveling weather, form the major loci of this unrivaled marketplace for wholesale merchants and moneymen from Flanders, Italy, England, Germany, Spain, and even more distant places.

The Hot Fair is the climax of weeks of preparation. Apprentices have been up early and late, sewing, cleaning, sorting, finishing, storing, and repairing. The big halls and little stalls of the fair area have been put in order for their guests, as have the hostels and houses used for lodgings. In the taverns the dice are freshly cleaned, a precaution that may prevent a few knife fights. The cadre of regular prostitutes has been reinforced by serving wenches, tradeswomen, and farmers’ daughters. Cooks, bakers, and butchers have added extra help and lengthened their families’ working hours.

An army of officials ensures that all goes smoothly. At their head are two Keepers of the Fair, chosen from the ranks of both nobles and burghers. They are appointed by the count at the excellent stipend of 200 pounds (livres) a year, expense allowances of 30 pounds, and exemption from all tolls and taxes for life. Their chief assistants, the keepers of the Seal, receive 100 pounds apiece. A lieutenant of the Fair commands the sergeants, a hundred strong, who guard the roads and patrol the fair. There are tax collectors, clerks, porters, roustabouts, and couriers. Notaries
²
attest all written transactions. Inspectors check the quality of merchandise. Finally, heralds scour the countryside to advertise the fair to the rustics.

The hubbub of the fair is as sweet a sound to the count as to the citizens of Troyes. Notaries, weighers, and other fee collectors divide their earnings with him. Thieves and bandits come under his high justice, their booty confiscated in his name. Sales taxes, the “issue” fee levied on departing merchandise, and other charges go to the count. So do rents on many stalls, booths, halls, stables, and houses. The bishop profits, too, drawing a sizeable income from rents, as do burghers and knights of Troyes. The Knights Templar draw revenues from their monopoly of wool weighing.

In return for all the fees and charges, the visiting merchants get freedom and protection. Fair clients are guaranteed security for themselves and their merchandise from the day of arrival to the day of departure, sunrise to sunset. At the height of the fair the streets are even lighted at night, making them almost safe.

Merchants are not only protected from bandits and robber barons, but from each other, and in fact today this is the more important protection of the two. Crimes committed at the fair are answerable to special courts, under the supervision of the Keepers of the Fair, but both town and provost try cases too, and law enforcement becomes a lively three-way competition. The special courts were actually created because the foreign merchants demanded protection against the other two agencies. Merchants can choose which court they will be tried in, and the most important cases fall to the courts of the fair. Energetic measures are taken to ensure collection of debts. A debtor or a swindler will be pursued far beyond the walls of Troyes and stands little chance of escaping arrest if he shows his face at another fair. This is not all. He is liable to arrest in any city of Flanders or northern France, and if he is Italian he will be least safe of all in his home town, for the keepers of the Fair will threaten reprisal against his fellow townsmen if they do not assist in bringing him to justice. The extent to which these guarantees are actually enforced was graphically demonstrated eight years ago when a caravan of merchants was set upon by robbers on the highway between Lodi and Pavia. It was ascertained that the bandits were from Piacenza. The aggrieved merchants reported the offense to the keepers of the Champagne Fairs, who promptly and effectively threatened to exclude the merchants of Piacenza unless restitution was made.

These protections, together with a general diminution of lawlessness and improved physical conditions for travel, have brought merchants from all over Europe in steadily increasing numbers. Throughout the yearly cycle the stream of traffic to and from Champagne never ceases.

But merchants can trade at the fair without making the journey in person. A regular contract form known as a “letter of carriage” exists for the purpose: “Odon Bagnasque, carrier, promises to Aubert Bagnaret to transport at his own cost, including tolls, with risks of robbery falling to Aubert, six bales from Marseille to Troyes, from the day of this act to Christmas, in exchange for a horse given by Aubert.” Or they can enter into a form of partnership developed by the Italians, known as the
commenda
, by which a younger man undertakes the risks of a journey in return for a quarter of the profits, while an older merchant puts up the capital. When the young businessman has some capital of his own, he can alter the agreement and put up a third of the capital, taking half the profit. This and other forms of contract are so common in Italy that a Genoese patrician dying in 1240 left no property but his house and a portfolio of
commenda
investments.

The fair, though primarily a wholesale and money market for big business, is also a gala for common folk. Peasants and their wives, knights and their ladies, arrive on foot, on horses, on donkeys, to find a bargain, sell a hen or a cow, or see the sights. Dancers, jugglers, acrobats, bears, and monkeys perform on the street corners; jongleurs sing on the church steps. Taverns are noisily thronged. The whores, amateur and professional, cajole and bargain.