The Commercial Quickening and Religious Reform

I. The Commercial Revolution

A. Fairs, Towns, and Cities

1. The New Commercial Centers — Markets associated with particular places were used for regular weekly meetings to sell goods. Fairs, often specialized, which lasted days or weeks, drew traders from longer distances and took place once a year. Through taxes and tolls on merchants, fairs produced substantial revenues. Permanent commercial centers in towns and cities often developed around castles or monasteries. As great lords in the countryside increasingly accepted money payments instead of services and dues from their peasants, they had more money available to foster the development of markets and fairs, thereby encouraging trade and settlement.

2. The Jews in the Cities — Many long-distance traders were Italians and Jews, who supplied fine wine, spices, and fabrics. Italians took up these trades because of the geographic opportunities and urbanization. Some Mediterranean Jews had been involved in commerce since Roman times. Jews in northern Europe, often driven off their land as political power fragmented, relocated to towns or cities, where some became moneylenders and financiers. Jews in cities often had an ambiguous status, they were not recognized as citizens and were often excluded from oath-based Christian craft organizations or the government. They had their own institutions and synagogues, and often lived voluntarily segregated in a “Jewish quarter,” participating in a shared economy with Christians as consumers, traders, and moneylenders.

3. The “Unplanned” Town — Many marketplace towns were unplanned and usually included marketplaces, a castle, and several churches. Population increased dramatically. An accompanying building boom provided housing, specialized buildings for trade and city government, and expanded walls. Networks of often narrow and dark streets were made of packed clay or gravel. Waterways accelerated the development of towns and became part of a single, interdependent economy.

B. Organizing Crafts and Commerce

1. Guilds — Medieval industry was highly organized, principally through guilds, a kind of club for crafts and tradespeople. Originally religious or charitable associations, these evolved into professional corporations with statutes, rules, and dues that set standards within a trade and controlled membership. Guilds often cooperated in making goods and were hierarchical, with masters and journeymen supervising apprentices. Masters set guild policies and served as officers.

2. Partnerships and Contracts — A new range of business agreements brought people and resources together to finance larger commercial initiatives. These efforts were the ancestors of modern capitalism. Contracts for sales, exchanges, and loans became more common. Church bans on interest, or usury, led to contracts designed to circumvent them. The use of loans to finance businesses signaled a changed attitude toward credit: risk was acceptable if it brought profit.

3. The Rise of Industry — The growth of contracts and partnerships made large-scale productive enterprises easier to establish and finance. Light industry began in the eleventh century, centering on cloth production. Water mills provided some power, and deep-mining technology allowed for more exploitation of raw materials. Manufactured iron tools made farming more efficient.

C. Communes: Self-Government for the Towns

1. Townspeople — Urban dwellers with their specialized occupations did not fit into the old categories of those who prayed, fought, or worked. Townspeople developed a sense of solidarity and had particular economic and political needs. Townspeople had a sense of independence from servile dues and service and sought their own officials and law courts. Communes were town institutions of self-government; they developed as legal corporate bodies so that towns could govern themselves.

2. The Geography of Communes — Communes were most common in Italy, France, and Flanders. In Italy, cites were centers of political activity filled with tradespeople interested in self-governance. Urban independence movements were sometimes violent, but many towns gained a measure of self-rule.

D. The Commercial Revolution in the Countryside

1. Rural Marketplaces — By 1150, rural life was increasingly organized around the marketplace, bringing new opportunities and obligations to both peasants and lords. As economic pressures on the rural aristocracy increased, the aristocracy sought to increase their wealth and prestige by becoming integrated into the commercial economy.

2. Integration into the Commercial Economy — Lords hired trained, literate agents to administer their estates, calculate profits and losses, and make marketing decisions. Population increase and rising demand for food led to efforts to cultivate new land, particularly in Flanders. Most of these efforts were sponsored by the nobility but sometimes, as in England’s Fenland region, free peasants worked to reclaim land on their own.

3. Peasants, the Money Economy, and the Commercial Revolution — Some peasants banded together and established rural communes. Integration into a money economy benefited peasants in a number of ways. Rising prices made their fixed rents less onerous, and better access to markets allowed them to sell their surplus production for cash, which they could then spend on other goods. In some cases peasants also gained personal freedom from their lords; however, cash obligations also increased.

II. Church Reform

A. Beginnings of Reform

1. Cluniac Reform — Pressure for church reform increased as more people sought a church free of secular entanglements. The Benedictine monastery of Cluny, established in 910 and endowed by the Duke and Duchess of Aquitane, under the protection of the saints Peter and Paul through the pope, was renowned for its spiritual activity and prayer. Its abbots encouraged clerical celibacy and urged the laity to cease oppressing the poor. Their status and activity represented the reforming energy of the era.

2. Church Reform in the Empire — Some clerics in Germany and Italy, particularly in its commercial regions, began to condemn the use of practices that violated canon law. They were especially offended by clerical marriage, simony (buying church offices), and lay investiture (the practice of lay rulers installing clerics into their offices), and began urging the use of canon law to reform the church. They were supported by Emperor Henry III, who appointed Leo IX (r. 1049–1054) as pope to reform the church under his control.

3. Leo IX and the Expansion of Papal Power — Leo expanded papal power by calling church councils, expanding canon law, and urging church reform. His efforts to reestablish papal control over the eastern church led to the Great Schism in 1054 between Constantinople and Rome. Leo and his successors supported Norman efforts to conquer Sicily, then under Muslim control, “investing” the territory to Norman lords. The popes became more and more involved in military enterprises in Sicily and Spain, as the Christian reconquista of Spain intensified.

B. The Gregorian Reform and the Investiture Conflict, 1075–1122

1. Gregory VII and Henry IV — Papal reform peaked during the papacy of Gregory VII (r. 1073–1085). Gregory VII supported papal primacy, or the supremacy of the pope over the church, particularly in regard to secular rulers, and believed that the emperor was just another layman with no right to interfere in church matters. Proud, ambitious, spiritually sincere, and single-minded, he sought to free the church from worldly influence, and was opposed by Henry IV, the ruler of Germany and much of Italy. Henry saw the bishops he appointed as the natural rulers of the church and opposed the new ideas of Gregory and the reformers.

2. The Investiture Conflict — The Investiture Conflict began in 1075 over the appointment of the Archbishop of Milan and other Italian bishops. When Henry insisted on appointing these church offices, Gregory excommunicated him and authorized Henry’s subjects and vassals to rebel against him. Faced with the threat of rebellion, Henry had to beg forgiveness, but tensions continued and Henry caused a rival pope (antipope) to be elected. Papal and imperial armies fought from 1077–1122.

3. Outcome of the Investiture Conflict — After both men’s death, the Concordat of Worms in 1122 ended the conflict. Henry V gave up the authority to appoint clerical offices, although he continued to influence their election. The Concordat established the idea that secular and spiritual power could be separated. As the emperor was weakened, local princes and cities became more independent of imperial authority.

C. The Sweep of Reform

1. New Emphasis on the Sacraments — Church reform went deeper than the conflicts at the top of the church hierarchy. The church overall became more systematic and disciplined. An important dimension to this development had to do with the increasing emphasis on the sacraments, which were seen by many as the means by which God’s grace was brought to people. For example, the church increasingly regulated and stressed the spiritual significance of marriage. They also emphasized the important of the Eucharist and the celebration of Mass.

2. Clerical Celibacy — Sacramental life highlighted the importance of the priest, and a new emphasis on clerical discipline, particularly priestly celibacy, arose. This reform was not promulgated in the eastern church and was at odds with local practice in many places. Despite opposition, in 1123 the pope proclaimed all clerical marriages invalid, and largely succeeded in enforcing the rule.

3. The Papal Monarchy — As the popes consolidated canon law and established the curia, a kind of church court at Rome, the papal bureaucracy and accompanying financial apparatus grew through the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This expanded the power of the pope and attracted criticism of the system’s growing cost. The pope, with his bureaucracy, law courts, and financial apparatus, had become a monarch.

D. New Monastic Orders of Poverty

1. Critics of the Benedictine System — Benedictine monasteries, such as the monks of Cluny, came under growing criticism for the elaborate and opulent character of their facilities, liturgy, and lifestyle. In contrast, the Carthusian order, founded by Bruno of Cologne, took vows of silence and lived as hermits, copying manuscripts. The Carthusians grew slowly, but the Cistercian order founded by St. Bernard (c. 1090–1153) expanded rapidly. Beginning at Citeaux in Burgundy in 1112 with thirty friends and relatives, by the mid-twelfth century more than three hundred Cistercian monasteries had spread throughout Europe.

2. Cistercian Spirituality — Cistercians accepted Benedict’s rules, but emphasized simplicity. Monasteries had two houses, one with lay brothers to perform labor and a second dedicated to prayer. Their churches were all dedicated to Mary, and they emphasized God’s feminine dimension and Jesus as approachable, human, and protective. Cistercian spirituality extended beyond their monasteries and influenced many, including St. Anselm, whose theological works emphasized Jesus’s humanity, the power of human charity to redeem, and the love between Christians. Cistercian monasteries emphasized poverty, purity, and work, and each monastic enclave possessed highly organized farms and grazing lands called granges. The estates and flocks of Cistercian monasteries yielded substantial profits, so despite having been founded in rebellion against the wealth of the commercial revolution, the Cistercians eventually became part of it.