immunity from the attentions of duke, count, and judge, because of the
perils from the northern barbarians and from internal strife.^20 The
immunity renewed by King Lothar for the church of Notre-Dame du
Puy in 955 introduces us to another term in growing use for a fortified
settlement, often under the walls of a great church: the bishop of Puy
was granted the whole burgus around his cathedral with the tolls
collected there, a mint, and policing powers (districtus) over the inhabi-
tants.^21
Burgiwere soon spread across Western Europe, from Magdeburg,
the cathedral city founded by the emperor Otto I to spearhead German
colonization eastward, to the burhscontructed by King Alfred and his
successors to defend and then advance the boundaries of Wessex;^22 and
to Dryburgh and Jedburgh in the Scottish border-country, where town-
ships remain by the ruins of twelfth-century abbeys. The first bourgs
were the settlements at the gates of cathedrals or suburban abbeys—the
burgus Sancti Martiniat Tours is mentioned from the first half of the
ninth century—and it was possible for towns with more than one great
church, like Caen and Bayeux in Normandy, or Durham in England, to
have a number of burgiin the suburbium. At Caen, as at Cherbourg,
there were also burgiattached to the ducal stronghold.^23 But the name
was soon applied, in France at least, to rural settlements and market
centres as well, some of the tiniest of which survived within their
original bounds till the Revolution. The multiplication of bourgs was a
phenomenon of the great demographic expansion which began in the
tenth century. The factor uniting the different sorts was their common
subordination to churches or castles, on the initiative of whose lords,
ecclesiastical or lay, they were invariably created.^24
Urban fortification was promoted by kings. In England, the repairing
of burhsat Rogationtide was a public duty, and a fine for breaking the
peace of a borough was laid down by royal edict. In Germany,
the Saxon kings began to construct burgi for defence against the
The growth of feudal society 47(^20) Recueil des Actes de Charles III le Simple, ed. F. Lot and Ph. Lauer, Chartes et Diplomes
relatifs à l’histoire de France (Paris, 1940–9), i. 150–2 (no. 67) and cf. ibid.i. 16 (10); cf. also
Recueil des Actes de Louis IV, ed. M. Prou and Ph. Lauer, Chartes et Diplomes (Paris, 1914),
- 25 , 38. 16.
(^21) Recueil des Actes de Lothaire et de Louis V, ed. H. D’Arbois de Jubainville, L. Halphen,
and F. Lot, Chartes et Diplomes (Paris, 1908), 12.
(^22) For bourgs in general see R. Fossier, Enfance de l’Europe(Paris, 1982), 100, 226–8, 275,
544–9, 564–70.
(^23) Hollyman, Développement du vocabulaire féodal, 82–4; L. Musset, ‘Peuplement en
bourgage et bourgs ruraux en Normandie’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 9 (1966), 178–
96; Recueil des Actes des Ducs de Normandie de 911 à 1066, ed. M. Fauroux, Mémoires de
la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, 36 (Caen, 1961), 73, 75, 119, 123, 130, 138, 182,
253–4, 281, 325, 346–8, 364, 407, 425, 426. 5 ; M. Bonney, Lordship and the Urban
Community: Durham and its Overlords, 1250–1540(Cambridge UP, 1990), 41–9.
(^24) Musset, ‘Peuplement en bourgage’, 186–7; Fossier, Enfance de l’Europe, 100, 226–8.