prowess and the democratic character of their cantonal
governments, which tended to limit social strife.
In those areas that possessed a strong monarchy,
urban development took a somewhat different form. In
Spain, France, and England, the king retained a large
measure of control over the towns. London achieved
substantial autonomy in the chaotic reigns of Richard I
and John. Urban privileges, when they were granted,
were usually the fruit of royal weakness.
In the Low Countries, cities enjoyed more inde-
pendence than their French or English counterparts be-
cause the counts of Flanders and Holland and the dukes
of Brabant were rarely able to bring them to full obedi-
ence. With the consolidation of a powerful Burgundian
state in the fifteenth century, some of their freedoms
were curtailed. However, they retained more indepen-
dence than royal towns whose government was influ-
enced at every stage by the presence of a royal bailiff.
Even in France or England the towns enjoyed a
freedom unknown in the countryside. In matters of tax-
ation, public works, social policy, sanitation, and the
regulation of trades, the elected town councils were re-
markably autonomous. The decisions of city courts
were honored except when they came into conflict
with the king’s justice. In France the towns were repre-
sented both in the provincial estates and the Estates
General. Royal taxes were normally collected by city
officials who compounded with the crown for a speci-
fied amount and then made the assessments themselves.
Citizens had the opportunity to participate in their
own governance and were exempt from feudal dues and
obligations. Though royal authority might be strong,
the German saying held true: Stadluft macht frei (city air
makes one free). Personal freedom and the demands of
civic responsibility made medieval cities, though they
held less than 10 percent of Europe’s population, its pri-
mary agents of cultural and intellectual change.
Town Life in the Middle Ages
The freedom of a medieval town was a matter of per-
sonal status; the life lived within it was by most modern
standards highly regulated and even claustrophobic
(see illustration 10.6). The town walls defined a world
of perpetual shade—a constricted maze of narrow,
winding streets broken only occasionally by the open
spaces of a churchyard or market. Because space within
the walls was scarce and expensive, houses tended to be
narrow, deep, and high, with upper stories that often
overhung the street below until they nearly touched
their neighbors. Light and ventilation were usually
poor, and privacy nonexistent. Much of the intensity of
town life came from everyone knowing everyone else’s
business.
Crowding, together with the virtual absence of san-
itary facilities, account for the extreme susceptibility of
urban populations to epidemic disease. Regulations
were established against dumping human waste into the
streets, but piling it in courtyards, sometimes in close
proximity to wells, was common. Travelers could smell
a town long before it came into view. Town councils
made valiant, if usually futile, efforts to keep the streets
clean and to ensure the purity of the water supply. In
the absence of a germ theory, this usually meant pro-
hibitions on washing wool in the public fountains or
orders restricting tanneries to locations downstream if
not necessarily downwind. Death rates predictably
exceeded birth rates in almost every European city.
Other regulations tried to preserve order as well as
public health. Virtually every occupation had to be li-
censed. Business hours and practices were narrowly de-
fined in the hope of protecting the consumer and
reducing conflict between trades. Market women were
the object of special scrutiny because their activities of-
ten threatened the prerogatives of the guilds. Standards
of quality, enforced by official inspections, were laid
down for the cloth industry and the victualing trades.
The age and condition of meat or fish, the often dubi-
ous contents of sausages, and the conditions under
which perishables of all kinds were prepared and sold
were concerns, as was the integrity of weights and mea-
sures. Efforts were made to prevent the adulteration of
grain or flour by adding sand or other substances to in-
crease its weight. Every aspect of the operation of tav-
erns, inns, wineshops, and bathhouses was minutely
regulated. City ordinances and court records are a rich
catalog of ingenious frauds and entrepreneurial excess.
After disease, the other great curse of medieval
towns was fire. Fire companies were organized and reg-
ulations were proposed to prevent the most hazardous
practices, but the combination of wood or wood frame
construction and gross overcrowding could still turn or-
dinary kitchen mishaps into holocausts that threatened
the entire community.
The city’s walls not only defined the space in which
townspeople lived, but also symbolized their attitude
toward the outside world. For all their far-flung inter-
ests, medieval towns were intensely parochial. Carnival
plays and masks are a useful key to a people’s deepest
fears. In cities such as late medieval Nürnberg, the citi-
zens’ nightmares seem to have revolved around nobles,
Jews, peasants, and Turks. The fear of Jews and Turks190 Chapter 10