Life in a Medieval City (11 page)

Cartwright and cooper
, two skilled workers. This Chartres Cathedral window shows the cartwright finishing a wheel while the cooper fits a hoop to a barrel—one of the inventions of the Middle Ages.

For extra soft leather—shoe uppers, coverings of coffers, scabbards, bagpipes, bellows—the leather is returned to the beam to be shaved down with a two-handled currier’s knife. Then it goes to the pit, which is filled and drained with a succession of liquid baths. The first is old and mellow, the last fresh and green, their flavor imparted by oak bark, oak galls, acacia pods, and other sources of tannin. In the final stages the hides lie flat in the pit of liquid for several weeks, with crushed bark between the layers. The whole process of tanning takes months—usually, in fact, over a year. A new, quicker process, employing hot water, will appear later in the century, taking as little as ten days.

Tanning an oxhide is a laborious process, but it multiplies the skin’s value. Whitened oxhide and horsehide are even more expensive.

Footwear is insubstantial—little better than slippers. Ladies of fashion wear goatskin leather, or cordwain (from “cordovan,” a fine leather originally made by the Moors of Cordova), even less sturdy than ordinary cowhide.

The shoemaker is not only a skilled craftsman, but a merchant of some status, capable of acquiring modest wealth. A shoemaker of Troyes named Pantaléon has given his son Jacques an education in the Church. Jacques is today a canon at Lyons, soon will be bishop of Verdun, and will eventually become Pope Urban IV.

Besides shoemakers, hatmakers, candlestick makers, and other craftsmen, there are the practitioners of the service trades: food purveyors, oil merchants, pastrycooks, wine sellers, and beer sellers. In addition there is the wine crier, who is also an inspector. Each morning he goes into the first tavern he can find that has not yet hired a crier for the day; the tavern keeper must accept him. He oversees the drawing of the wine, or draws it himself, and tastes. Then, furnished with a cup and a leather flagon stoppered with a bit of hemp, he goes out to cry the wine and offer samples of it to the public. Before setting out he may ask those in the tavern how much the tavern keeper charged them, in order to check on the prices. Customers are served directly from the barrel; glass bottles are almost nonexistent.

There are some fifty vintages in thirteenth-century France. Among the favorites are Marly, Beaune, Epernay, Montpellier, Narbonne, Sancerre, Carcassonne, Auxerre, Soissons, Orléans, and, most highly regarded, Pierrefitte. Burgundy is already famous and northern Champagne produces excellent wine, though not the sparkling variety with which the province will centuries later become identified. Cider is unknown except in Normandy, and outsiders who have tasted it consider it to be a curse God has visited on the Normans. One observant chronicler reports that the French prefer white wine, the Burgundians red, the Germans “aromatic wines,” and the English beer.

Another trade closely associated with the taverns is prostitution. The girls of the Champagne Fair cities are famous throughout Europe. When the fair is on, servant girls, laundresses, tradeswomen, and many others find a profitable sideline. Child labor being the rule, prostitution begins at an early age.

Taverns are the chief setting for another vice—gaming. The dicemakers’ guild has strict laws against making fraudulent dice, which nevertheless find their way into the hands of professional sharpers. The fine for making such dice is heavy, so the sharpers pay a high price for them. Poor light in the taverns facilitates trickery.

Others engaged in service trades include the coal sellers, hay merchants, barbers, furniture menders, dish menders, and clothes menders—these latter three being the leading itinerants, whose peculiar rhymed gibberish echoes daily through the streets.

An ancient trade of the countryside, recently urbanized, is that of the miller. The numerous mills of Troyes are owned by the count, the bishop, the abbeys, the hospital, and various other proprietors. Most are situated on canals, with a few on the Seine below the city, mounted on floating hulls, the wheel over the side and the millstones seated on a cupola-shaped platform amidships. Sacks of grain are brought by boat to the miller, who pours the grain into the funnel over an opening in the upper stone. The current turns the wheel, which activates the stone, and the milled flour trickles into a sack beneath the platform.

Both millers and mills have other functions besides grinding grain. In slack periods the millers fish or spear eels. Mill wheels furnish power for a growing variety of businesses, notably tanning and fulling. The old undershot wheel, pushed lazily around by the current flowing against the lower paddles, is being supplanted by the overshot wheel, which is turned by water flowing over the top. Either type of wheel can be used when a weir or dam is constructed that creates a narrow, rapid current. The power of this current can be multiplied by guiding it to the mid-point of a waterwheel, so that the wheel’s turn starts underneath, or by guiding it to the top of the wheel, so that the wheel’s turn starts at the top. Although water mills are important, old-fashioned mills worked by horses and cattle still hold their own, because animals can work in all weather, whereas river and millrace currents may freeze in winter or dry up in summer.

From time to time the horse market is held in the Corterie-aux-Chevaux, near the Porte de la Madeleine. Nervous colts, sedate palfreys, powerful chargers, mares with foals trotting at their heels, broad-shouldered oxen, pack-asses and pack-mules, pigs, hogs, cows, chickens, ducks, and geese noisily crowd the market place. Knights, ladies, burghers and peasants bargain, argue, examine animals, turn back horses’ lips, feel coats and muscles, and now and then mount a palfrey or a charger.

Only nobles and rich burghers ride horses; everyone else rides donkeys or walks. A pregnant lady or wounded knight may be carried in a litter (carriages are far in the future). The knights who come to the horse mart sometimes take prospective mounts outside the city walls to try out. Often there are races, with the noisy assistance of the boys and young men.

The saddlemakers display their work at the market, and it is worthy of display. Bows of saddles are wooden, often ornamented with plates of ivory, hammered metal, or elaborately painted leather, with semiprecious stones soldered into the surface of the pommel and cantle. The saddlecloth is richly embroidered. Sidesaddles are manufactured for ladies, but not all ladies use them.

Farm implements, fashioned by the city’s blacksmiths, are on display too. These include sickles for harvesting grain, long-handled scythes with lateral grips added for efficient haymaking, sharp-bladed felling axes. Wooden spades have iron cutting edges. There are also farm machines—many-toothed harrows and wheeled plows, with coulter, plowshare and mouldboard for turning the earth to left or right.

The development of heavier breeds of horses has greatly augmented their value. They bring much higher prices than a mule or an ordinary draft horse. If Julius Caesar could wander through the horse market of Troyes, he would be startled far less by the wheeled plow and the new, heavily padded, rigid horse collar than by the size of the horses. Neither the Romans nor their foes ever rode anything like these. The Parthians and Byzantine Greeks began the development of the big warhorse, now completed in this area of northern France and Flanders. It is no accident that this is
par excellence
the region of feudal chivalry.

Guilds have two kinds of regulations. One has to do with external affairs, with what might be called the commercial side of the guild; the other deals with internal matters, such as wages, duration and conditions of apprenticeship, welfare, and obligations to the guild.

Every guild recognizes its stake in protecting the public, for since the guild restricts competition, it has an obligation to guarantee standards of quality. On being invested, the officers of the bakers’ guild solemnly swear that they will “guard the guild” carefully and loyally, and that in appraising bread they will spare neither relatives nor friends, nor condemn anyone wrongly through hatred or ill-feeling. Officers of other guilds swear similar oaths. Guild legislation on the quality of merchandise is painstakingly detailed. Precise quantities and types of raw materials are specified and supervision follows through all the stages of manufacture and sale. Ale must have no constituents except grain, hops, and water. The beadmaker must discard beads less than perfectly round. Butchers are not to mix tallow with lard or sell the flesh of dogs, cats, or horses. Makers of bone handles are forbidden to trim them with silver lest they pass them off for ivory. Knife handles may not be covered with silk, brass, or pewter for the same reason. If a tailor spoils a piece of cloth by faulty cutting, he has to make restitution to the customer and pay a fine besides. Chandlers must use four pounds of tallow for each quarter-pound of wick, and wax tapers are not to be adulterated with lard. A tailor may not mend old clothes, for that function belongs solely to the old-clothes mender, who in turn must not make new clothes. Sometimes the old-clothes mender does such a good job that the result looks like new; therefore, to keep the distinction visible, the mender is enjoined from pressing, folding, and hanging his products like new garments.

In most guilds inspection is no sham formality. Visits are made unexpectedly, scales checked, substandard goods confiscated on the spot, either to be destroyed or to be given to the poor, while the culprit pays a fine commensurate with the value of the merchandise. The jeweler found using colored glass and the spice dealer guilty of purveying false merchandise pay the highest fines.

Combinations to fix prices or to seek a monopoly on materials are forbidden. Retailers cannot buy eggs, cheese, and other produce from farmers except at the Friday and Saturday markets, and even here they cannot buy until the farmer is actually in the marketplace with his wagon or pack animal. They cannot buy from him on consignment, or arrange in advance to take his produce. These restrictions are all designed to prevent monopoly of food in time of famine, a threat never far distant. Unhappily, guild regulations and town ordinances alike frequently go unobserved.

The second kind of guild regulation, governing its internal affairs, often merely codifies ancient customs, such as observance of holidays, early closing on Saturdays during Lent and during the “short days” of the year.

The membership of most guilds is divided simply into masters and apprentices. A middle grade, the valet or journeyman, has been introduced in a few crafts where business demands more labor but masters do not want more competition. In most guilds a master is permitted only a single apprentice, or perhaps two. Grain merchants, ale brewers, goldsmiths, greengrocers, shoemakers, and some others are allowed more, and all masters are given great freedom in hiring relatives—as many sons, brothers, even nephews as they wish. Guild regulations reflect the nature of industry, which is small scale and familial.

Guilds often provide members with baptismal gifts when their children are born, help ill and destitute members, pay something toward hospital and funeral expenses, and do a little charitable work. This mutual-aid aspect of the craft guild goes far back. A guild that does not provide benevolent services usually has a “brotherhood,” an auxiliary that may be the original form of the association. Weavers, furriers, bakers, and many other crafts have brotherhoods, each under an appropriate patron saint: St. Catherine for the wheelwrights, because she was broken on the wheel; St. Sebastian for the needlemakers, because he was martyred by arrows; St. Mary Magdalen for the perfumers, because she poured oil on Jesus’ feet; St.-Barbe (“beard”) for the brushmakers; St.-Cloud (“nail”) for the nailmakers; St. Clare (“clear”) for the mirrormakers.

The contract between master and apprentice (regardless of whether they belong to a guild) is sometimes written, sometimes simply “sworn on the relics”—all medieval oaths are taken on sacred relics. The master undertakes to feed, lodge, clothe, and shoe his apprentice and “to treat him honorably as the son of a goodman.” Sometimes the apprentice receives a stipend—a small one. Sometimes the master also undertakes to educate the apprentice. Often he needs employees who can read and write and add and subtract. Twice a week the apprentice may go to the notary to learn his letters.

An apprentice’s day is long and hard. His situation depends very largely on the personality and condition of his master. A kind master is a blessing; perhaps an even greater blessing is a prosperous master. A kind mistress may be important too. Since the apprentice’s labor is not restricted to the trade and he may be called on to do any kind of household chore, many apprentices find themselves more tyrannized by mistresses than by masters. Guilds often specify in their regulations that an apprentice should not be beaten by the master’s wife.

Apprenticeship varies in duration, usually from four years to twelve; five years is common. The length of service is often related to the size of the initiation fee, as in the case of weavers, whose craft can be quickly learned and yet is remunerative. A weaver’s apprentice may become a master in four years by paying four pounds (livres), in five years by paying three pounds, in six years by paying one pound, in seven years without any payment. Brasswire makers require twelve years, or ten years plus a fee of twenty shillings (sous). Goldsmiths undertake a ten-year apprenticeship.