Greeks, Jews. There are few details regarding an indigenous merchant community. Under
the Carolingians, the Rhadanite Jews were still a factor, and along with them one finds
mention of palace merchants purveying supplies to the itinerant royal court. At Aix-la-
Chapelle under Louis the Pious, there was mention of residences of merchants. By and
large, the fate of merchants was that of towns under the Carolingians: little
accommodation was made for either.
Pirenne and later historians have linked the urban revival and the growth of a
merchant class in the late 10th and 11th centuries to the recovery of international trade in
Europe. As has been demonstrated by Lestoquoy and Espinas for northern French towns
like Arras, long-distance commerce and the settling down of the itinerant merchants were
not the only causes of the reemergence of towns. Demographic growth of the local,
previously agricultural, community furnished candidates for the merchant class. Northern
French merchants were actively patroniz-ing the Champagne fairs by the end of the 12th
century, while their high-quality wool cloths joined Flemish products as premier French
exports in the Mediterranean world. Southern French merchants followed in the footsteps
of Italians to participate in this trade. Merchant wealth led to the acquisition of real estate
in town and countryside, as well as to marital alliances with the increasingly
impoverished nobility.
Merchants and artisans were sufficiently numerous and powerful to be politically
active in the 11th century in communal revolutions in such towns as Le Mans and in the
12th century in the establishment of southern French consulates. The political activities
of merchant elites received the positive endorsement of the French kings from Louis VI
through Louis VIII. The financial needs of Louis IX and his conservative stance on usury
led to a more exploitative attitude. By the reign of Philip IV, the urban autonomy of
French mercantile communities had fallen victim to the expansion and intrusion of royal
government, but the basic alliance between bourgeoisie and king would survive the
Middle Ages.
Kathryn L.Reyerson
[See also: CHAMPAGNE; FAIRS AND MARKETS; MEDITERRANEAN TRADE;
TEXTILES; TRADE ROUTES; WINE TRADE; WOOL TRADE]
Espinas, Georges, Lucien Fèbvre, and Jean Lestoquoy. “Fils de riches ou nouveaux riches.”
Annales: Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 1(1946):139–53.
Le Goff, Jacques. Marchands et banquiers au moyen âge. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1956.
Pegolotti, Francesco Balducci. La pratica della mercatura, ed. Allan Evans. Cambridge: Mediaeval
Academy of America, 1936.
Wolff, Philippe. Commerces et marchands de Toulouse (vers 1350-vers 1450). Paris: Plon, 1954.
MEROVINGIAN ART
. The term “Merovingian art” should refer to all the arts produced in the territories
dominated by kings of the Merovingian family from Clovis in the late 5th century to the
deposition of the last Merovingian king by the Carolingian, or Arnulfing, family in 751.
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1156