purely a function of inward migration, for urban death
rates greatly exceeded live births until the eighteenth
century. Yet for some cities, including Venice, Florence,
and Milan, populations reached 100,000 or more by
the mid-thirteenth century, and several others topped
50,000 (see table 10.3).
Rapid increases in population and commercial activ-
ity mandated sweeping changes in town government.
The old system of rule by a bishop or secular lord
assisted only by a handful of administrators was no
longer effective. Town life was not just becoming more
complex. An increasingly wealthy and educated class of
merchants, rentiers, and artisans was growing more as-
sertive and less willing to have its affairs controlled by
traditional authorities whose knowledge of commerce
was deficient and whose interests were not always those
of the business community. From an early date, these
people began organizing themselves into what became
communes or representative town governments.
The basis of the communes varied widely. The
more substantial townspeople had long been members
of occupational organizations such as the guilds or of
neighborhood organizations that dealt with problems
too minor to concern the bishop or lord. These neigh-
borhood organizations might be based on the parish,
the gate company (a volunteer organization created to
maintain and defend one of the city’s gates or a portion
of its walls), or, as in Italy, the tower association, a
group of citizens whose tower homes (see illustration
10.4) stood in close proximity to one another, usually
around a single piazza, and whose members were usu-
ally related to one another by blood or clientage.
In times of crisis, such as an attack on the city, rep-
resentatives of these groups would gather together to
concert a common policy. As the meetings of these ad
hoc committees became more frequent they gradually
evolved into town councils or permanent signorie, which
increasingly challenged the political and judicial au-
thority of their nominal lords. They succeeded in this
primarily because the nascent communes represented
wealth and manpower that the lords desperately186 Chapter 10
Estimated populations of various European cities are
given below for the period 1250–1300. This was, for
most of them, a peak not reached again until the later six-
teenth century, but none of them probably had more
than 100,000 people. As the numbers indicate, Italy was
by far the most urbanized region of medieval Europe.
Most German cities had fewer than 20,000 people. All
figures are approximate.
Population City
100,000 Milan, Italy
Venice, Italy
Florence, Italy
80,000 Paris, France
50,000 Barcelona, Cataluña
Bologna, Italy
Cologne, Germany
Córdoba, Spain
Ghent, Low Countries
London, England
Palermo, Sicily
30,000–40,000 Bruges, Low Countries
Hamburg, Germany
Lübeck, Germany
Montpellier, France
Padua, Italy
Pisa, Italy
Naples, Italy
Rome, Italy
Sevilla, Spain
Toledo, Spain
20,000 Nuremburg, Germany
Strasburg, Germany
Source: Estimates compiled by the authors from various sources.TABLE 10.3Urban Populations Before the Black DeathIllustration 10.4
Medieval Italian Tower Houses.This view of San
Gimignano, Tuscany, shows a cluster of typical medieval tower
houses. Their survival is a tribute to San Gimignano’s relative
isolation from the troubles of the thirteenth century.