Abstract
Nowadays, few people are aware of the fact that the concept of “citizenship” has its origins in antiquity and that it was developed further in the European cities in the later Middle Ages. The revolutionary regime in France and, in the nineteenth century, the newly formed national states extended the juridical status from its local basis into that of the state territory. Burghers of national states were thus named after the franchised inhabitants of towns in the ancien régime. The title of Maarten Prak’s overview of the whole preindustrial era refers to this distinction. He defines citizenship as a set of social and economic practices rather than as a juridical category, which was emphasized by the older historiography. Its institutionalization and the elaboration of a civic ideology were unique European creations. Prak’s brief reflections on civic organizations in Asia and in the American colonies reveal that Europe’s uniqueness resides in the relative autonomy of its urban corporations, particularly vested in their military and political roles. Cities in China and in the Ottoman empire did have corporative organizations for economic and social purposes, such as occupational guilds, collaborative actions in neighborhoods, and religious confraternities. The Ottoman empire moreover had numerous waqfs, which formally were pious foundations, in practice largely applied to a broad variety of purposes, even for purely commercial activities. However, these cities were incorporated in a fairly stable imperial state administration jealously preserving its monopoly of violence (pp. 262, 270-73). They did not enjoy the corporate juridical status typical for European cities.
The level of the latter’s autonomy varied considerably, depending on the balance of power, measured by population figures and capital accumulation. At one extreme were the capital cities in North-Central Italy, attaining between 50,000 and 100,000 inhabitants by around 1300; after centuries of internal wars, the peace of Lodi in 1454 stabilized the repartition of the peninsula between four major and four minor regional states, each of them dominated by a capital city having more than double the size of the next in the hierarchy. The opposite extreme was to be found in the continental areas with a low urbanization level and hardly any city enjoying political rights, of which Poland was a typical case. 1 Prak’s demonstration implies nothing less than a revision of Max Weber’s century-old theory opposing the allegedly strong centralized powers in the East to the relative autonomy and autocephaly of European cities. Since the fifteenth century, the latter gradually lost most of their old privileges through the steady growth of states’ fiscal and military capacity. Monarchical firepower destroyed the city’s autonomy.
The crucial point was, again, the balance between cities and the monarchical and aristocratic powers based on landed property. Cities developed in Italy and Northwest Europe from the eleventh century onward in a period of relatively weak state structures, which made it possible for them to bargain with the surrounding aristocrats. Their relation mostly was one of armed conflicts, which were usually won by the larger concentrations of people. They had to fight for their vital interests, which they established case by case, and step by step, in charters acknowledging privileges applicable to particular cities. Mimicking aristocrats living in castles, citizens needed to protect themselves by walls, gates, and militias. The origin of urban liberties and privileges explains their great variety, marking a fundamental contrast to the great empires. They remained characterized by their localism and by citizens’ preparedness to defend them with their arms. In Charles Tilly’s vision, cities had the advantage of the concentration and accumulation of commercial capital that was inherently mobile and thus able to escape monarchic harassment. 2 Their Achilles’ heel, however, was their particularism: each city looked out for its own interests and found it difficult to join forces with others, who were mostly seen as competitors. In the long term, this division turned to the advantage of monarchical states that gradually imposed their supremacy, enjoying ever greater scale advantages, with the Low Countries and England as the most notable exceptions.
Prak’s book encompasses the whole European continent during eight centuries, and compares his findings with the Asian cases we mentioned and the Spanish and English colonies in America. He succeeds in making his point clear by studying in lively detail limited numbers of individual cities and states, looking first to similarities, then to contrasts. His narrative style is captivating and clearly shows the fundamental characteristics of European citizenship, acknowledging that these emerged first and strongest in Western Europe. In the extensive rural areas, towns remained much smaller and their density low; their privileges were accordingly limited, and their corporative structure weak. In Prak’s words, “whereas the basic features of urban citizenship were pretty uniform, their effects were not.” He seeks the explanation of the variation primarily in “the different ways in which local political arenas connected to national institutions” (p. 247). This model perfectly applies to England, where urbanization was scattered within a state structure already firmly established since the eleventh century. In my perception, however, political institutions in the end necessarily reflect the variation in population density and commercialization, even with time lags. Prak’s encompassing analysis rests on an astonishingly extensive bibliography that considers the preindustrial period in its evident continuity, with change occurring on the basis of the existing structures.
The four monographs to be discussed hereafter are archival studies focusing on particular aspects of European citizenship in the late Middle Ages and sixteenth century. Christian Liddy wrote an exemplary analysis of the archival and other documents on the status and role of citizens in the five largest English royal cities: London, York, Norwich, Coventry, and Bristol. Following Liddy’s references, the latter four each had a population of between 25,000 and 30,000 around 1300. Their distance to London varied between 105 (Coventry) and 230 (York) miles. Even if their size was considerable on a European scale, up to the seventeenth century the urban density was much lower in England than in the Low Countries or Tuscany. In a comparative perspective, the relative isolation of English cities may help to explain their dependency on the crown and the low level of political participation on the local level, as demonstrated in this book. Citizenship was far from coming within reach of all inhabitants. The first step was the official admission as a freeman. This entailed a solemn ceremony held in the common assembly, where the new citizen had to pledge a formal oath, similar to the act of fealty to a lord. He had to swear loyalty to the king and obedience to the town’s officers. Moreover, he had to promise to pay his due taxes, to perform the charges to the commune such as watches, to be available for civic office, and to do everything in his power to help the town (pp. 25-30). The government of all these cities remained firmly in the hands of an exclusive elite.
In London, twenty-five aldermen served for their lifetime as officers in the wards, and they formed the council ruling the city under the guidance of the mayor. They acted as Justices of the Peace presiding over the wardmotes, the courts hearing pleas against misdemeanors, and property offenses. The mayor was elected for a year’s term, an event that frequently triggered turmoil, both with regard to the choice between candidates and to the definition of the electorate. Traditionally, the civic franchise could be understood as an electoral franchise, granting voting rights to all the city’s freemen, as it had been stipulated in London’s “great charter” of 1319. Massive meetings in the Guildhall entailed a high risk of disorderly shouting, which prompted the “better men” to restrict the franchise to those who were summoned. Such restrictions caused further turmoil, including meetings in the crafts’ guild halls where the right of putting forward nominations and a broader participation in the election were claimed. Toward 1500, the governing elites, the “richest and wisest,” succeeded in restricting the election of the mayor to only the masters and wardens of the crafts “and other good men specially summoned for the purpose,” who all belonged to the wealthier class. “The civic authorities interpreted frank speaking [as it might occur during elections] as belligerence,” says Liddy (pp. 101-12, quote on p. 108). They had good reasons, as the co-optation system preferred by the acting mayors manifestly excluded common freemen, let alone the mass of other inhabitants. The yearly mayoral elections offered occasions to contest the narrowing of the political arena, as was manifest by the use of Latin in the urban administrations until well into the sixteenth century. The London “great charter” was granted in 1319 to pacify a contest between two factions within the citizenry. Over the years, it remained subject to contestation, rather than functioning as an effective constitution (pp. 183-91). Around 1500, the crown intervened as a reaction against riots triggered by the enclosures, and granted constitutions to more cities, expressing the need of harmony, unity, and the pursuit of the common good. In practice, the cities’ structural fragmentation led to political contestation that further strengthened the oligarchizing tendency. The need of the tiny elite to establish its legitimacy was underscored by the elaborate inauguration rituals.
This point is illustrated by Barbara Hanawalt’s extensive analysis of London court records. She demonstrates with ample source material how the ideals of civic harmony were impregnated by public ceremonies such as the magnificent procession for the mayor’s oath-taking before the king and the Exchequer in Westminster. This annual event was a show of the civic hierarchy and its organization. The public authorities and the corporations displayed all their splendor through the procession’s order and the officials’ attentively selected liveries. The author says that “the terms symbol, ritual, and ceremony are used somewhat interchangeably in this book” (p. 5). It is a pity that these central concepts have not been used in a more specific sense, as they are obviously referring to different realities. Among historians, there is consensus about this terminology. All public actions and spaces have a symbolic dimension. Rituals are distinguished by precisely defined, standardized, and repetitive gestures, which make a transition manifest, such as a mayor’s oath-taking. The procedure’s formal character makes the action predictable. A ceremony is the visualization of an established pattern. 3 The author also describes judicial public rituals aimed at imposing discipline and civic values. Sanctions were imposed distinguishing the official elite whose offenses could be bought off but did include a public humiliation in the Guildhall, while common people had to undergo shaming rituals such as wearing distinctive dress or the imposition of walking with a whetstone around the neck, bareheaded, without shoes, or shaved. The city’s public space was a “theatre of punishment,” where musicians drew attention to the convicted being dragged through the streets in a hurdle, or brought in procession to be exposed at the pillory. The ultimate sanction was the removal of citizenship, ritualized by bringing the offender outside the gate, which implied that he could no longer trade in the city (pp. 82-83). Offenses endangering public health by selling tainted food were sanctioned heavily because they were seen as assaults on the common good. Craftsmen were controlled by the wardens of their guild, who punished infractions concerning the quality of their products as well as disruptive behavior.
The sources presented by Professor Hanawalt typically point to the city authorities’ constant concern with disciplining the growing population. Three officials in London’s service elaborated some practical guidelines for the city’s government, and their writings have been quoted through the centuries. One of them was Andrew Horn, chamberlain from 1320 to 1328, who copied extracts from classical authors compiled by the Florentine scholar Brunetto Latini (c.1220-1294). He bequeathed his writings to the Guildhall. 4 One century later, another common clerk quoted these texts in a kind of handbook that has been used very frequently, although it was written in Latin. The general idea was the desire for order and respect for the governing elite (pp. 53-59). From the very first lines of her book, Hanawalt points to the constant stream of immigrants into London to explain the special attention the city awarded to the ceremonies she described. Although she does not provide data for this argument, it is likely that the capital’s allure made it more difficult to maintain social order. It would nevertheless be worthwhile to consider other factors as well, since the provincial capitals also paid great attention to the inauguration ceremonies, although their mayors did not have to take their oaths before the king. The book’s cover illustration even shows the installation of the mayor of Bristol, for which London has no known equivalent (Liddy, pp. 109-23). Moreover, London’s larger size and more diverse population may also have required more attention to social order.
A refreshing look at urban conflict is offered by Patrick Lantschner. His general thesis is that conflict was inherent in medieval urban societies: “contention about the organization of public life lay at the heart of urban politics in Italy and the Southern Low Countries” (p. 200). He looks for patterns of conflict in various political systems that emerged from them, comparing three cities in each of the two regions, Europe’s most urbanized in the Middle Ages. He couples the selected cities by a preconceived three-stage model: Bologna and Liège are characterized as volatile systems with frequent revolts and warfare within a changing polycentric environment. Florence and Tournai are approached from the viewpoint of constitutional conflict, Lille and Verona as contained systems in contexts of less varied and more controlled surrounding structures. In a first part, the author analyzes, in his six cases, the legitimation of conflict, its modes, and the forms of the action groups. Parties favoring or opposing the papacy were a typical feature in Bologna and Florence, while family clans, factions, neighborhoods, and guilds were the general basic structures. The author corrects the previous literature by stressing the essential role of coalitions between various categories, some of which, such as the patriciate and the guilds, often operated in opposed formations. His detailed and precise analysis leads him to the insight that urban wars, however frequent, had relatively few victims by contrast with some battles waged by princes, such as the repression of a rebellion against the bishop of Liège in 1408. Judicial procedures, on the contrary, led to high numbers of executions and banishments (pp. 58-59). Comparing institutional settings, Lantschner observes that corporations, even the ecclesiastical ones (Liège) and the university (Bologna), lacked integration into a stable political framework and rather contributed to the expression of protest and the formation of polarizing coalitions (p. 64).
His conclusion may be correct for four of the six cities he analyzed (it evidently does not apply to the “contained” cities Lille and Verona), but does it lead us to further generalizations? It would not be difficult to point to other cities where, after a period of violent conflicts between corporations, a stabilization could be reached lasting for centuries. The basis might be a dominant class providing the excluded masses with material and symbolic compensations (Venice), or a complex system of power sharing (Ghent and Leuven). Even in the “fiery city” of Liège (“cité ardente”), a court, Tribunal des XXII, created in the late fourteenth century, continued to function until the end of the ancien régime and contributed to pacification of social relations. Lantschner’s focus on conflict patterns in six contrasted cities provides valuable new insights and a method that might be applied to and verified in other situations; only then would it bring us to more general conclusions than the sketchy ones drawn in a few pages (pp. 200-207). His selection is small and not explicitly representative. In the end, the author provides six excellent case studies within a clear interpretative framework and with comparisons highlighting the relevant factors. However, any different selection—for example, one including a city in the neighboring duchy of Brabant—would have highlighted other relevant factors. In the Brabantine case, that would evidently have been the gradual formulation of constitutional rights for each of the three estates; the largest cities were less dominant vis-à-vis the smaller towns and the aristocracy. Would this have to be labeled as a “contained” system, or rather as a “constitutional” one, but then on the territorial level?
Notwithstanding this reservation, this reviewer admires the book’s analytical quality, based on extensive research in the primary sources of the “parallel stories” of the six cities in different countries and in various languages. The description of their conflictual patterns is highly sophisticated and precise, and the contextualization of the local conflicts in their polycentric interterritorial configurations is enlightening. It might have been commendable to include more information about the resources which each of the formations (“action groups”) was able to mobilize, especially their demographic and economic basis. The focus on the historical conscience of conflicting formations helps us to understand the lasting series of violent conflicts in cities like Bologna and Liège: caught in a feuding mentality, each party remembered its losses for which it strove to find compensation. Bipolar confrontations, even of volatile coalitions, were not easily settled.
In contrast, Europe’s largest city, Venice, was not riven by civil war and its immigration flow did not provoke lasting tensions or violent conflicts. Nevertheless, high offices and political participation remained the exclusive right of the patriciate and the “original citizens.” What made it different from fifteenth-century London, where the guilds repeatedly expressed their resentment against foreigners, including numerous craftsmen from the Low Countries? Barbara Hanawalt discovered that “it could flare up into murderous attacks on their members” (pp. 125-27). Thanks to the abundant archives, Ersie Burke was able to unravel this enigma in Europe’s largest city that, after a century of steady growth, by 1575 reached a peak of about 180,000 inhabitants (p. 7). The author, who in 1984 published a book on re-immigration, and who is an expert also by her personal experience of two migrations, has now produced a PhD thesis resulting in a fascinating book containing rare statistical data on the social aspects of Greek immigration into sixteenth-century Venice. Originally, people from the Dalmatian and Albanian coasts and from the Ionian islands migrated easily because they belonged to Venice’s Stato da mar. They were free to settle in Venice or its territories, where they also enjoyed legal protection. They were seafarers and acquainted with Venetian galleys passing through their harbors. The Serenissima’s main attraction lay in its job opportunities and its “diverse, open and inclusive” character (p. xxv). The metropolis was in a constant need of immigrant laborers in the shipbuilding industry and maritime workers. In addition to this voluntary migration, later flows of refugees came from people fleeing Ottoman rule after the capture of Nauplion (1540) and of Cyprus (1570-1571).
It is striking, however, that only 23 percent of the registered Greek immigrants were active as maritime workers, and that 44 percent of these 312 men acted as captains, pilots, and officers; 39 percent as sailors; and only 9 percent as oarsmen (pp. 67, 75). Most of the 1,330 Greeks whose occupation is known during the period 1498-1600 were active as artisans (26 percent), merchants (20 percent), and professionals (10 percent). Tailors stand out as the largest category of artisans, followed by a great variety, including goldsmiths and other metal workers (p. 70). This is a strikingly high percentage of skilled artisans, merchants, and men in leading positions. Most likely, this image is biased by the under-registration by common people, particularly in the sources drawn from the religious confraternity of the Greeks, the Scuola di San Nicolò dei Greci, established in 1498 with the approval of the Serenissima’s Council of Ten. Armenians, Albanese, and Dalmatians had preceded them, in 1253, 1443, and 1451, respectively. In 1511, the Greeks could start building their own church, San Giorgio dei Greci, where the Greek rite was performed under the protection of the Venetian state, against the patriarch’s will (pp. 116 ff.). It is evident that more Greeks of lower professional status immigrated without paying the Scuola’s membership fee and thus remaining out of the archival documentation analyzed here. This is indicated through a sample of 250 wills, of which 48 percent expressed no preference for their burial, 32 for San Giorgio, and no less than 20 percent for a Latin ground (p. 158). The total number of Greek residents has been estimated between 4,000 and 4,500 people; 75 percent of them were settled in the parishes nearest to the arsenal, the busiest shipping area of the city (pp. 19-21). The census of 1592-1594 shows that 34 percent of 205 Greek households consisted of nuclear families, another 34 percent shared, and 24 percent lived alone (p. 26). Even more interesting is the indication that 51 percent of 201 couples were of mixed origins, against 45 percent from the same patria (p. 33). Even if this sample may show an overrepresentation of the higher middle class, it reveals a pattern of intermarriage which presupposes a high level of integration. The author rightly concludes, “the Venetian Republic managed to deal with its subject people, its Jewish community, and all the other minorities that called Venice home. Can we perhaps learn something from the Venetians?” (p. 214). However, even in Venice, political rights remained highly exclusive.