Appendix XI: The Market and the Mediæval City

In a work on the mediæval city (Markt und Stadt in ihrem rechtlichen Verhältnis, Leipzig, 1896), Rietschel has developed the idea that the origin of the German medieval communes must be sought in the market. The local market, placed under the protection of a bishop, a monastery or a prince, gathered round it a population of tradesmen and artisans, but no agricultural population. The sections into which the towns were usually divided, radiating from the market-place and peopled each with artisans of special trades, are a proof of that: they formed usually the Old Town, while the New Town used to be a rural village belonging to the prince or the king. The two were governed by different laws.

It is certainly true that the market has played an important part in the early development of all medieval cities, contributing to increase the wealth of the citizens, and giving them ideas of independence; but, as has been remarked by Carl Hegel — the well-known author of a very good general work on German medieval cities (Die Entstehung des deutschen Städtewesens, Leipzig, 1898), the town-law is not a market-law, and Hegel’s conclusion is (in further support to the views taken in this book) that the medieval city has had a double origin. There were in it “two populations placed by the side of each other: one rural, and the other purely urban;” the rural population, which formerly lived under the organization of the Almende, or village community, was incorporated in the city.

With regard to the Merchant Guilds, the work of Herman van den Linden (Les Gildes marchandes dans les Pays-Bas au Moyen Age, Gand, 1896, in Recueil de travaux publiés par la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres) deserves a special mention. The author follows the gradual development of their political force and the authority which they gradually acquired upon the industrial population, especially on the drapers, and describes the league concluded by the artisans to oppose their growing power. The idea, which is developed in this book, concerning the appearance of the merchant guild at a later period which mostly corresponded to a period of decline of the city liberties, seems thus to find confirmation in H. van den Linden’s researches.