faith 251economic growth, prosperous activity, and repopulation.
They were much sought after by towns in FRANCEafter
the HUNDREDYEARS’WAR.
The fair was a regulated peace institution and bene-
fited from privileges, protection chief among them. Safe
conducts were issued to merchants going to fairs and
traveling on roads. There were also partial or total
exemptions from taxes, tolls, or duties. Given privileged
jurisdiction, the fair had a specific court that judged mat-
ters according to procedure that prioritized safeguarding
the rights of creditors.
There were several generations of fairs. The first
important ones were those in FLANDERSat Messines at
the end of the 11th century, Ypres and Lille by 1127, and
BRUGES by 1200. All followed an annual cycle geared
around the sale of local cloth. Bruges also developed a
financial market. The five fairs of ENGLANDspecialized in
the sale of indigenous wool. Those of Champagne and
Brie were meeting places, from the early 12th century,
where cloth and LINENfrom the north were sold and
southern merchants bought cloth and linen and sold
exotic SPICES, SILKS, jewelry, perfumes, dyes, and GOLD.
They also developed financial instruments that led to
major activity in the sphere of credit and exchange.
The fairs of Champagne declined in the late 13th
century and were replaced in financial markets after
- These activities were moved to other fairs, such
as those at Paris, those of the duke of Burgundy at
Chalon-sur-Saône, those of LANGUEDOC, Frankfurt am
Main, BRABANT, Antwerp, and Bergen-op-Zoom. The fairs
of Flanders continued. The greatest activity at the fairs of
Chalon-sur-Saône occurred between 1320 and 1360;
after 1410, wars damaged the French centers. After
1417, the trade of the Chalon fairs moved to Geneva,
whose high point was between 1415 and 1450. Its four
meetings were markets for the Milanese, Florentines,
French, Burgundians, Swiss, and south Germans, and
even Iberian merchants.
In the 15th century, the old fairs of France were
marginalized in the major international circuits, but the
local fairs continued to flourish. The main centers of
fairs were Antwerp and Bergen-op-Zoom, because of the
activity of the English and southern and western Ger-
mans. To them were added the fair of Deventer and
those of Leipzig in SAXONY, at the meeting point of East-
ern and Western commerce. The fairs of LYONwere pro-
moted by the kings of France from the 1440s and
eventually appropriated many of the financial functions
of the Geneva fairs after 1462. Their active market was
in silk, silk goods, cloth, FURS, linen, metals, drapery,
and spices. It had also become the seat of financial busi-
ness of the great Florentine houses such as the MEDICI,
or Pazzi.
See alsoBANKS AND BANKING.
Further reading:Robert S. Lopez and Irving W. Ray-
mond, eds., Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World:
Illustrative Documents with Introductions and Notes(New
York: Columbia University Press, 1955); Henri Dubois,
“Fairs,” EMA1.526–1.527; L. de Ligt, Fairs and Markets
in the Roman Empire: Economic and Social Aspects of Peri-
odic Trade in a Pre-Industrial Society(Amsterdam: J. C.
Gieben, 1993); Ellen Wedemeyer Moore, The Fairs of
Medieval England: An Introductory Study(Toronto: Pontifi-
cal Institute of Medieval Studies, 1985); Robert S. Lopez,
The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950–1350
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971); Charles
Verlinden, “Markets and Fairs,” The Cambridge Economic
History of Europe,Vol. 2, Trade and Industry in the Middle
Ages, 2d ed., ed. Michael Postan and Edward Miller
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987),
119–153.fairs of Champagne SeeFAIRS AND MARKETS.faith(Arabic, iman; Hebrew, emunah) The basic
meaning of faith in terms of religion was the inner accep-
tance of what cannot be proved beyond doubt by human
reason. The term faithin the sense of inward and outward
belief was employed in the Middle Ages in at least two
distinct ways in Christian thought. There was the “objec-
tive faith” in the body of usually written traditional truth
as found in orthodox creeds, in the accepted canons of
councils, in the teaching of the fathers of the church, and,
above all, in the understanding of biblical revelation. It
was defined as “that which one believes.” “Subjective
faith,” which was the first of the theological VIRTUES, tied
to hope and love or charity, as had been suggested by the
teachings of Saint Paul. This was supposed to be a rather
supernatural human response to divine truth and was
defined as “that by which one believes” and by implica-
tion actually accepted and practiced in one’s daily life in
an almost childlike manner.
One of the main discussions of medieval theology
was a reconciliation of faith and reason. The majority of
medieval theologians taught that faith was a divine grace,
granted only to those who were worthy of it. It passed
through the sacraments that must be administered
through and by the clergy, to those with a virtuous purity
in their hearts. Christians thus showed and made acts of
faith only by virtue of God’s gifts upon their souls.
Through faith, the faithful were able to acquire a truth
not necessarily comprehensible to the human intellect, or
that which could be attained only through faith itself,
such as a belief in the Holy Trinity. In the late 11th cen-
tury ANSELMof Canterbury and in the 13th century
Thomas AQUINAScalled such struggles to believe intellec-
tually in certain unfathomable things “faith seeking
understanding.” In the later Middle Ages, a distinction
was made between a faith that could be learned and
explained by Scholastic thought and the mystical faith
gained by certain kinds of religious experiences.