52 THE ORIGINS OF FREEMASONRY FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO THE MIDDLE AGES
Key among these was the emancipation of the serfs, who made up the
bulk of the populace. Triggered in the eleventh century by precepts of
the Church, this emancipation was given a general impetus by the
Crusades at the beginning of the twelfth century, but the specific
motives for this action in the domains of kings, dukes, counts, and
barons, as well as in the realms of bishops and abbots of monasteries
throughout Europe, was an enthusiasm for Christian sentiment and the
necessity of finding ways to meet expenses generated from waging the
Holy War: The richest of the serfs could buy their freedom and continue
to pay rent to the nobles, their former masters, who could then use this
money to organize their expeditions to the East.
The effects of this movement varied depending upon the region. In
France, serfdom disappeared utterly from the lands of the West
(Brittany, Normandy, and Anjou). On the other hand, it remained quite
active in southwest France and the Languedoc. In northern and eastern
France, serfdom continued to affect almost the entire rural populace,
whereas the incidence of serfdom in the Ile de France region was quite
variable. Even where it did exist, however, the conditions of serfdom
were no longer what they had been. In the ninth and tenth centuries,
they were very near those of slavery, but in the thirteenth century serf-
dom affected entire segments of the population and was characterized by
responsibilities that benefited the serf's sovereign lord. This kind of serf-
dom did not definitively vanish until the time of the French Revolution.
The Crusades, concurrent with this broad serfdom, engendered a
commercial cosmopolitanism that encouraged the development of a
class of merchants and a kind of social and cultural intermixing, which
brought about a rebirth of ideas that we will explore in more detail later.
These phenomena set off a powerful movement toward the forma-
tion of associations with the specific purposes of defense, protection,
and independence. These led first to the immigration of tradesmen
toward towns, then to the development of cities, and eventually to the
emancipation of these areas, which put the finishing touches on the
emancipation of individuals. A veritable urban revolution was under-
way. Life, activities, and knowledge that had found refuge for centuries
around monasteries and castles was now concentrated in cities. This
regrouping of the populace in fact inspired the formation of law,
municipal bodies, universities, brotherhoods, and guilds to respond to