Life in the Middle Ages by Richard Winston

Author:Richard Winston [Winston, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: azw, epub, pdf
Tags: Biography and Memoir/Historical
ISBN: 9781612309484
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2016-03-24T04:00:00+00:00

The merchants were an anomaly in the medieval scheme of things. They did not belong to the three great classes that supposedly made up the whole society: those who fight, those who pray, and those who work. Instead, they were concerned with “servile” matters, with buying and selling, shipping, delivering, collecting. Yet merchants clearly fitted somehow into the divine order. Where the merchant passed, merchandise soon appeared for purchase. If he bought wool, the hills covered themselves with sheep. If he bought wine, vineyards spread over what had been waste ground. And although the merchant made himself rich, he left riches behind him. Moreover, what the merchant brought from elsewhere, sometimes from the farthest shores, had an allure that homegrown products lacked. The luxuries the traders brought became necessities. Soon such goods were the very symbol of what was most coveted.

By the twelfth century, trade was going full swing in France. The roads, which had been neglected for hundreds of years, had been improved and widened so that two carts cold pass each other. Bridges had been built where previously there had been only a ford or an unreliable ferry. There were no longer those endless nuisance tolls levied by each small lord whose territory the road led through. The greater lords had seen the wisdom of encouraging trade and had made themselves the protectors of merchants. These lords even vied with each other in devising special legislation, regulations, and safeguards designed to lure merchants into their lands. Thus, they had developed a whole network of land routes that facilitated connections with Flanders, with Italy, with the French ports of the Mediterranean.

The Alps were no longer the barrier they had once been between north and south. Passes had been explored, and the trails carved through their stony terrain had been greatly improved. Paths were not wide enough for pack animals, and the rushing mountain streams were bridged. Merchants could count on staying over in the hospices maintained by religious orders in the mountains. For the monks, looking for solitude, had even built houses up there in the eternal snows and had been taking in pilgrims and travelers since Carolingian days. Now that the traffic was so much greater, the brothers increased the number of their shelters in the Mont Cenis, Simplon, and St. Bernard passes.

There were also routes that avoided the mountains, following the Rhône toward Avignon or Arles. But whichever route a merchant chose, he could count on inns at frequent intervals. These inns still left much to be desired. Merchants had still, in the words of one, “to journey hither and thither, in rain and wind, in snow and hail, now drenched, now dry, now sweating, ill fed, ill lodged, ill warmed, and ill bedded.” Moreover, the sinister innkeeper is a stock character in folktales, reflecting what must have been a common experience – surly hosts and cheerless atmospheres. But at least the inns provided a roof over the head and fodder for the mules and horses.

Highway robbery was still a danger, but incidents were rarer.

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