is of Venetian origin and refers to the section of the city
reserved for Jews, but London had its Steelyard, where
the Hansa merchants locked themselves up at night,
and a Lombard Street where Italians were supposed to
reside and operate their businesses. The outside world
was perceived as threatening and only the citizen could
be fully trusted.
Citizenship was a coveted honor and often difficult
to achieve. With the exception of certain Swiss towns
where the franchise was unusually broad, only a minor-
ity of the male residents in most cities enjoyed the right
to participate in public affairs. For the most part that
right was hereditary. Citizenship could be earned by
those who performed extraordinary services for the
commune or who had achieved substantial wealth in a
respectable trade. Town councils tended to be stingy in
granting citizenship, which carried with it status and re-
sponsibility. The citizen was relied upon to vote, hold
office, perform public service without pay, and con-
tribute to special assessments in time of need. Full par-
ticipation in the life of the commune could be expensive
and required a certain stability and firmness of character.
The distinction between citizen and noncitizen was
the primary social division in the medieval town, but
there were others. In most cities economic and political
power rested in the hands of the richest citizens:
bankers, long-distance traders, or their descendants
who lived from rents and investments. Their wealth
and leisure enabled them to dominate political life.
They were also jealous of their prerogatives and resis-
tant to the claims of other social groups. Serving the
patricians, and sometimes related to them by blood,
was a professional class composed of lawyers, notaries,
and the higher ranks of the local clergy.
The men of this class frequently enjoyed close rela-
tions with princes and nobles and served as representa-
tives of their cities to the outside world. In the later
Middle Ages their contribution to the world of litera-
ture and scholarship would be disproportionate to their
numbers. The women of the urban patriciate, however,
were probably more isolated from society and more
economically dependent than the women of any other
social class. As wives, their economic role was negligi-
ble. Even housework and the care of children were usu-
ally entrusted to servants. As widows, however, they
could inherit property, enter into contracts, and in
some cities, sue on their own behalf in court. These
rights allowed patrician widows to become investors,
though, unlike the women of the artisan class, their di-
rect involvement in management was rare.
Compared with the patricians and rentiers, artisans
were a large and varied group not all of whom were cre-
ated equal. The social gap between a goldsmith and a
tanner was vast, but their lives bore certain similarities.
Artisans were skilled workers who processed or manu-
factured goods and who belonged to the guild appropri-
ate to their trade. Patricians were rarely guild members
except in such towns as Florence where guild member-
ship was a prerequisite for public office. The masters of
a given trade owned their own workshops, which dou-
bled as retail salesrooms and typically occupied the
ground floor of their homes. They sometimes worked
alone but more often employed journeymen to assist
them. These skilled workers had served their appren-
ticeships but did not own their own shops and usually
lived in rented quarters elsewhere. Because the master
had demonstrated his competence with a masterpiece
that had been accepted by the other masters of his
guild, he was also expected to train apprentices. These
young men, often the sons of other guild members,
learned the trade by working in the master’s shop and
living in his household. Apprenticeships typically began
around the age of twelve and continued for seven years
in northern Europe and three or four in Italy.
Artisan households were often large, complex units.
Their management and the management of the family
business were usually entrusted to the artisan’s wife.
While her husband concentrated on production and
training, she dealt with marketing, purchasing, and fi-
nance. If the artisan died, she often continued the en-
terprise, using hired journeymen in his place or doing
the work herself, for many women had learned their fa-
ther’s trade as children. In some cities, widows were ad-
mitted to guilds, though not without restrictions.
Women’s work was therefore crucial to the me-
dieval town economy. According to the Livre des Métiers,
written by Etienne Boileau in the thirteenth century,
women were active in eighty-six of the one hundred
occupations listed for contemporary Paris. Six métiers or
trades, all of which would today be called part of the
fashion industry, were exclusively female (see document
10.5). In addition, women everywhere played an im-
portant part in the victualing trades (brewing, butcher-
ing, fishmongering, and so on) and in the manufacture
of small metal objects including needles, pins, buckles,
knives, and jewelry.
Women also played an important role as street
peddlars. Operating from makeshift booths or simply
spreading their goods on the ground, the market
women sold everything from trinkets to used clothing,
household implements, and food. After the expulsion of
the Jews, many women became pawnbrokers. Their
central role in retail distribution, their aggressive sales
techniques, and their propensity to engage (like their192 Chapter 10