Rural markets, High Middle Ages, medieval economy, Carolingian period, economic growth, medieval commercial activity, Henri Pirenne, Laurent Feller, Jean-Pierre Devroey
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Abstract
This dissertation explores the role of rural markets in the High Middle Ages, analyzing their organization, products sold, and their impact on the medieval economy.
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[...] - FELLER Laurent, ' On the Formation of Prices in the Economy of the High Middle Ages Annales. History, Social Sciences p - 661. - FOSSIER Robert, ' The Problem of Local Markets in Picardy in the XIth Century and XIIe centuries Fairs and markets in the Countryside of Medieval and Modern Europe, Toulouse, Presses Universitaires du Mirail p - 27. - PIRENNE Henri, The Cities of the Middle Ages, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France 171p. - PIRENNE Henri, "Mahomet and Charlemagne", Belgian Review of Philology and History Vol. [...]
[...] The goal for peasants was to obtain money by selling agricultural surpluses and other products in order to bring these monies into the house or to obtain non-produced goods. The same applies to large landowners, both lay and ecclesiastical, who wanted to receive rents transformed into cash. As for peasants, livestock probably constituted the factor of surplus release, following the fact that the tithe represented the tenth of what was produced and that the lords' rents were mainly vegetable rents, as the polyptychs emphasize. [...]
[...] However, the takeover is not a legitimate way to rise in society. Nevertheless, Jean-Pierre Devroey notes the attraction of this sin from the Merovingian era, whether from clergy or laypeople holding small or large capitals. For example, a small wine merchant from Lyon multiplied his capital by 300 (from a third of a sou to a hundred sous) between the VI and VIIe centuries. This is an element contributing to the intervention of central power in the regulation of rural market rules, which we can develop through the examples of the Capitulary of Frankfurt (794) and Nijmegen (806) under the Carolingian era. [...]
[...] Bread was also a very present product, constituting one of the materials of the Eucharist. Then, wine and salt are the flagship products of rural markets. As an indispensable product for seasoning and preservation, salt holds a privileged place in the exchange product throughout the High Middle Ages. Jean-Pierre Devroey has highlighted the existence, alongside seigneurial exploitations, of independent producers and large salt farmers. Its price varied depending on several elements: the law of supply and demand, or the weather. [...]
[...] ] but also to feed the market by balancing redistribution circuits'16. Sakae Tange has put forward the hypothesis that despite the dominance of the large domain in certain regions, the presence of small independent and/or autonomous farms was found, as well as the peasant dependent on the lord frequenting the market as an independent actor17. In addition, a second role of monasteries can be found in the formation of prices and practices. We then observe the deployment of a whole vocabulary of exchange with key words such as: supervacuum (surplus) pretium (prix) negocium (commerce), or even avaritia (greed). [...]
