Another Darkness, Another Dawn

by Becky Taylor

  And so, faced with novelty, those encountering Gypsies for the first time sought to make them explicable. Consequently, whether or not the Gypsies recorded in Paris in 1427 in fact read palms, the people they encountered believed that they did: this was clearly the kind of activity, along with low-level criminality, that populations expected of certain kinds of stranger visiting their town. And crucially, as far as the sources allow us to interpret their actions, it appears that for their part Gypsies sought to make themselves explicable to the strangers they encountered. The best surviving account of a number of affiliated groups of Gypsies travelling through northern Germany and the Hanseatic towns in 1417 describes how they

  Had chieftains among them, that is a Duke [Ducem] and a Count [Comitem], who administered justice over them and whose orders they obeyed. They were however, great thieves, especially their women, and several of them in various places were seized and put to death. They also carried letters of recommendation from princes and especially from Sigismund, King of the Romans, according to which they were to be admitted and kindly treated by states, princes, fortified places, towns, bishops and prelates to whom they turned. Certain among them were on horseback, while others went on foot. The reason for their wandering and travelling in foreign lands was said to have been their abandoning of the faith and their apostasy after conversion to paganism. They were committed to continue these wanderings in foreign lands for seven years as a penance laid upon them by their bishops.7

  Here we see the mixed reception they received in some places, alongside mention of their organizational structure – the use of noble titles and self-policing – and letters of protection linked to the need to make a redemptive pilgrimage. While varying in form, these letters were a consistent feature of the early accounts of the presence of Gypsies in western Europe. The image of organized communities led by ‘dukes’ or ‘counts’, loyal to its own customs even when they were at odds with the norms of fifteenth-century French or German society, is an intriguing one.8 Unpicking the meaning behind this phenomenon throws up the first case of something we will come across time and again in trying to explore the relationship between Gypsies and mainstream society: we have evidence of how they presented themselves to the wider world; what we don’t know, and probably can never know, is what they themselves actually believed. In essence, was it ‘true’ or was it a convenient front or, indeed, something in between?

  The form of organization recorded here closely mirrors that of the Ottoman system of sancak leaders, although chronology works against a simple translation of this practice, for the first Gypsy groups were in western Europe well before the fall of Constantinople. However, leaving this to one side, travelling as a group of extended family members with the nominal head being the eldest male is one of the commonest forms of organization for nomadic people. When we combine this with the need of marginal groups and people to make themselves explicable to the authorities, the use of terms such as ‘count’ or ‘lord’ becomes understandable.

  We can see this through looking at the contemporary world of vagrants, beggars and ‘masterless men’, who were a growing feature of the period. It was not uncommon for such people, when arrested or challenged by the authorities, to claim that they were ‘Lord of the Rogues’. Claiming some kind of lordly status might improve a vagrant’s chances when dealing with the authorities as well as making explicable what otherwise might be seen as a threatening, amorphous social group. In no way can we assume from the fact that vagrants used the term ‘kingdom’ that they organized themselves into formal ‘kingdoms’. In fact court records show that vagrants were commonly arrested in very small groups, which were less likely to attract attention than large bands.9 Given the importance of hierarchy in early modern Europe, that socially marginal people presented themselves via a language of ranks and degrees is not surprising, and it is no less unsurprising that Gypsies did the same, as evidence from Spain suggests. There, Gypsies arriving in the 1520s passed themselves off as pilgrims with their leaders seeking to ensure safe passage for their kin by presenting themselves as condes (counts). Historian David Pym has described this as ‘a deftly camouflaged and temporarily effective translation of their own role within the Gypsies’ patriarchal clan system to the new social formation through which they were moving’. As occurred in other parts of Europe, letters of safe conduct were duly issued to the new arrivals, who initially at least enjoyed a cordial welcome.10

  The use of letters of penance and the explanation of enforced pilgrimage played directly into the world experiences of late medieval Europe. Of all the reasons for travel there was nothing as socially sanctioned and universally explicable as pilgrimage and penance. While it was often the wealthy who undertook pilgrimages, this was by no means exclusively the case, and the combination of begging for alms and undertaking a journey of penance had been long-sanctioned by the Church: St Francis had taught that beggars were holy and that the holy should live as beggars, and mendicants were a common feature of the medieval landscape.11 So while Gypsies, on one level, may have appeared foreign and inexplicable, their stories of pilgrimage in combination with papal and imperial letters of protection set them firmly in the camp of legitimate passers-through. Sometimes welcomed in royal and noble courts, often given food and money, and even exempted from punishment for crimes, it seems that for the first years of their time in western Europe they were able to make their presence explicable and acceptable enough for authorities and communities to accept their presence, albeit sometimes grudgingly.

  Evidence from the town accounts books of these early visits of Gypsies to German cities shows how they were routinely given alms in their capacity as pilgrims and accredited travellers: accounts from Hamburg, for example, show that they were given £6 in 1441, two years later they received £4, and over the next decades whenever they visited the town they were given similar sums of money. Likewise, their first visit to Frankfurt in 1418 saw them well received; when they returned in 1434 they were given money to buy bread, meat and straw for their animals and in 1446 a Gypsy was even given citizen status.12 Perhaps one of the most striking details of this period comes from a chronicle of 1417 from Augsburg that states that they had letters giving them permission to steal from those who refused them alms.13

  The letters of protection Gypsies carried in this period varied in content and provenance, and there has been much inconclusive debate over their authenticity. The most commonly recorded letter of protection was a document apparently issued by Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund during his stay in Constance in 1417–18.14 In line with the medieval practice of issuing letters of safe conduct for individual travellers and their followers (the forerunner of passports), Sigismund apparently authorized the document giving the bearers free passage through his land. It was this – or variations of this – which many Gypsy groups, including those discussed above travelling around northern Germany and the ports of the Baltic, carried with them.15 Versions carried by Andrew ‘duke of Little Egypt’ in France named the pope rather than the emperor as the signatory. These told how his group had first been conquered by Christians, whereupon they converted, but shortly thereafter were attacked by the Saracens: ‘enduring but a brief attack and making but little attempt to do their duty and defend their country, surrendered’, renouncing Christ. For this, the pope allegedly decreed that ‘for seven years they should go to and fro about the world without ever sleeping in a bed’, and that they would receive a ‘good and fertile land’ once they had fulfilled their penance.16

  The advantage of the letters ostensibly granted by the pope over that of Sigismund’s is that they had universal application across Christian lands, while the emperor’s only held good for the Holy Roman Empire. One writer on the subject believes that these documents were entirely counterfeit:

  the Gypsies could always assert they had made [the pilgrimage] and produce vouchers for the truth of their assertion; for the manufacture of false passports and other forgeries was a flourishing industry in tho
se days and when their old letters (perhaps also forgeries) were out, or lost their virtue, or neared their time limit, they could easily have been replaced by other more efficacious. It is scarcely credible that a horde of four hundred disorderly Pagans could visit Rome, interview the Pope, and occasion a great debate in council, without leaving in the archives some record of their passage.17

  This legitimately raises the question of the exact mechanics by which groups of Gypsies might have obtained the letters, were they to be genuine. In The Gypsies (1995) Angus Fraser speculates that Sigismund would have been willing to grant them an audience ‘for the sake of news from his Hungarian kingdom’.18 How likely such a meeting was is open to doubt, and as with the fabled visit to Rome, there is no independent surviving evidence of such an event. All we do have is the reports of the chroniclers testifying to the existence of such documents, and one surviving copy. What is certain, however, is that taking together the letters of protection for pilgrims, the use of noble titles and the tendency of varying authorities to respond to the presence of Gypsies by giving them alms, it seems reasonable to suggest that Gypsies were successful in presenting themselves in ways that were acceptable and explicable to late medieval audiences.

  But as the world of Europe began to fracture and change rapidly, so too did the reception of Gypsies. Even in the early days Gypsies might be treated with suspicion: their first visit to Paris, for example, saw them camping outside, rather than being welcomed within, the city walls. And if we look closely at records from Germany, even as early as the mid-fifteenth century, we can see how precarious their initial welcome had actually been. By the third visit of Gypsies to Frankfurt in 1499 they were kept outside the city gates, and in following years, having managed to gain entry, were forcibly removed. Indeed throughout German city states from the late fifteenth century the policy was to keep them outside the walls. When entry was allowed it was in exceptional circumstances, such as in Cologne in 1539 and 1599 when a Gypsy woman was granted entry in order to cure a sick noblewoman.19 Where we do see continued evidence of alms-giving it seems increasingly to be motivated by a desire to pay them to go away and to protect the town and its inhabitants from their presence. So, for example, the records from Siegburg, although showing frequent gifts to Gypsies after their first arrival in 1439, also have recorded next to the amounts comments such as um der Stadt schaden zu verhüten (‘to prevent harm to the city’) and von der Hand zu weisen (‘dismissed out of hand’).20 By 1504 the king of France had ordered an enquiry into the existence of Gypsies in the country, and decreed that if they were presented there, they should be ‘hunted, robbed and thrown out’.21 In fact the late fifteenth century saw a proliferation of decrees ordering the banishment and punishment of Gypsies, something that was to become a standard feature of European life right up to the end of the eighteenth century.

  What then caused this further hardening in attitudes? The intellectual curiosity stimulated by the Renaissance, an increase of travel in the early modern period and the opening up of the New World to Europeans was not, as we might expect, mirrored by a similar openness to strangers. Historians have shown how the Reformation in the sixteenth century heightened ideas of foreignness and revealed how it was a contest over space as much as it was over theology. Through the desecration of religious buildings, the destruction of pilgrimage routes and through positioning Rome and the pope as ‘foreign’, Protestants shaped a new geography of Europe with new boundaries, both physical and imaginary. Even apart from the arrival and appearance of Gypsies across Germany in particular, ‘a new urban mentality emerged, pitting insiders against outsiders’.22

  This was the period when western Europeans had to come to terms with the discovery of peoples untouched by monotheistic religion. Beginning with Marco Polo’s travels eastwards, Europe’s encounters with and colonization of the Canary Islands, the Caribbean and the two American continents threw up questions over ‘race’ and difference. Although not finding full expression until the late nineteenth century, by the 1600s writers were positioning peoples according to their level of ‘civilization’ and relationship with nature. The essayist and humanist thinker Montaigne reflected, ‘These nations . . . seem to me barbarous in the sense that they have received very little moulding from human intelligence and are still very close to their original simplicity.’23 Europeans had had contact with other cultures before this, most notably via trade, pilgrimage and crusade routes across the Mediterranean, but

  For the merchant it was a matter of little immediate importance whom the Arab married. To the colonist and the missionary, however, it could be crucial. It was colonisation which forced the ‘savage’ and the ‘barbarian’, and with them the intelligibility of other worlds, fully upon European consciousness.24

  Not only did this train of thinking profoundly influence relations between colonizers and indigenous peoples but spilled over into treatment of ‘outsiders’ within Europe. Consequently in this period we see the increasingly rigorous definition and treatment of minority groups including the Sephardic Jews and the mudejar Muslims in Spain and the Jewish communities across the Holy Roman Empire. In this time of uncertainty there was a powerful temptation to fit previously unknown peoples into already known categories, and the Gypsies were no exception.25

  If we look in depth at one particular city we can gain some insight into how attitudes towards strangers and minorities, including Gypsies, changed from the mid-fifteenth century onwards. Frankfurt was a free imperial German city, with strong national and international trade links and vibrant semi-annual fairs, and which hosted the election of Holy Roman Emperors. All this meant that there was a relatively high proportion of foreign merchants and other outsiders, and there had been, for example, a sizeable Jewish population since the twelfth century. Like most German cities it was contained by walls that, while having been originally defensive in function, had also developed other uses too. Walls acted as financial regulators, in the form of customs barriers or ‘murage’. They also marked the area of special urban law, distinguishing the city from the ‘lordly order outside the town’ and denoted the area covered by the imperial charter that guaranteed anyone, regardless of place of origin and social standing, who lived in the city for a year, the status of free person. This was often encapsulated in the phrase Stadtluft macht frei (‘city air brings freedom’). City states have unsurprisingly been depicted as heralding modernity, with their walls being seen as the visible symbol of the ‘strife for independence and freedom’.26

  Jews had long been the archetypical outsiders in European society, and in common with their experiences in other parts of Germany their presence in Frankfurt had been punctuated by periodic pogroms as well as expulsion following the arrival of plague. By the early fifteenth century they had once again been allowed back in the city, and had become integrated into its trading life and political culture, being able, for example, to be granted the status of burgher (citizen). But their new position did not last and the second half of the fifteenth century saw them being expelled from almost all German cities, and from many of the German territories of the Holy Roman Empire.27 Frankfurt took a slightly different approach, requiring them from 1462 to live in a designated part of the city, in essence a ghetto – the Judengasse – that was surrounded by a wall, the three gates of which were locked at night, on Sundays and on holidays. Only those who had business in the town were allowed to leave the Judengasse, indicating how the city wanted the benefits of their skills while not wanting to face the reality of their presence. These actions were part of a wider trend of marking Jews as outsiders: they were required to wear yellow rings on their clothes, and their stay in the Judengasse was conditional on making payments to the municipality. By 1480 Jews were no longer recognized as burghers, but were rather referred to as Fremdlinge (foreigners). Over the next century their marginalization was further entrenched, so that by the time of the Fettmilch Uprising of 1614 the guilds of the town insisted on the expulsion of all Jews, something that
was physically enforced by the town’s populace. Expulsions right across Germany’s towns meant that Jews were increasingly forced to travel so, by the mid-sixteenth century, this had translated into the relatively new justification for their plight – the myth of the eternally wandering Jew – which had bound up with it more general negative connotations of permanent travel and travellers.28

  This period also saw the hardening of attitudes towards and physical exclusion of other groups across German cities including Frankfurt. There, during the uprising of 1614, one of the town’s grievances was that too many masterless maids had been allowed to settle in the city: not only were they accused of bringing down wages, but also of bringing vice and dishonour to the city. This was the culmination of nearly 150 years of marginalization of self-supporting women generally and prostitutes in particular, and was by no means peculiar to Frankfurt. Lyon’s city gates were installed to keep out, among others, ‘old women or widows with children’, while in Munich ‘masterless women’ who returned three times to the town were pilloried and then expelled.29 In the light of the treatment of Jews and certain types of women then, the exclusion of Gypsies from city boundaries and decrees expelling them from certain territories – such as the general order to remove them from the Holy Roman Empire following the Diet of Freiburg in 1498 – appear as part of a broader trend. Consequently, when we think about the exclusion of Gypsies from cities across western Europe we need to see this not as something exceptional, visited solely on Gypsies as Gypsies, but rather as part of a broader story of how an emerging early modern Europe struggled to deal with groups who were seen as sitting outside social norms.30