Great Wave

by Fischer, David Hackett;

  Other price studies include Norman S. B. Gras, The Evolution of the English Corn Market from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1915); T. H. Lloyd, “The Movement of Wool Prices in Medieval England,” Economic History Review Supplement 6 (1973) 38–50; P. D. A. Harvey, “The English Inflation of 1180–1220,” Past and Present 61 (1973) 3–30; Mavis Mate, “High Prices in Early Fourteenth–Century England: Causes and Consequences,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 28 (1975) 1–16.

  Specially helpful for price relatives is an unpublished thesis, Clyde George Reed, “Price Data and European Economic History: England, 1300–1600” (thesis, University of Washington, 1972).

  The most comprehensive French study of the medieval price revolution is still d’Avenel, Historique économique de la propriété, des salaires des denrées et de tous les prix en general depuis l’an 1200 jusqu’en l’an 1800, cited above, vols. 2 and 3.

  Especially helpful for Italian prices in this period are Gino Luzzatto, “II costo della vita a Venezia nel Trecento,” Ateneo Veneto 25 (1934); Michel de Bouard, “Problemes de subsistances dans un état médieval: Le marché et les prix des céréales au Royaume angevin de Sicile: 1266–82,” Annales d’Histoire Économique et Sociale 10 (1938); Raimondo Carta–Raspi, L’economia della Sardegna medievale: scambi e prèzzi (Cagliari, 1940); Magalde and Fabris, “Notizie storiche e statisttiche sui prèzzi e salari nei secoli XIII–XVIII nelle città di Milano, Venezia, Genova, Firenze, Lucca, Mantova e Forli”; Faraglia, Storia dei prèzzi in Napoli . . . and Ettore Rossi and Paolo Maria Arcari, “I prèzzi a Genova dal XII al XV secolo,” all cited above.

  For central and eastern Europe, see, in addition to Abel, Agrarkrisen und Agrarkonjunktur, cited above, Alfred Dieck, “Lebensmittelpreise in Mitteleuropa und im Vordern Orient zum 12. bis 17. Jahrhundert,” Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie” 2 (1955), Italian tr. in Romano, ed., I prèzzi in Europa, 143–50 idem, “Tauschobjekte, Preise und Löhne des Vorderen Orient und Mitteleuropas im Mittelalter und Nachmittelalter,” Forschungen und Fortshritte 36 (1962); and Waschinski, Wahrung, preisent-wicklung . . . in Schleswig–Holstein, cited above.

  On wages, see William Beveridge, “Wages in Winchester Manors,” Economic History Review 1st ser. 7 (1936–37) 22–43; idem, “Westminster Wages in the Manorial Era,” Economic History Review, 2d ser. 8 (1955–56) 18–35; Douglas Knoop and G. P. Jones, “Masons’ Wages in Medieval England,” Economic History 2 (1933) 473–99; idem, The Medieval Mason (Manchester, 1967); L. F. Salzman, Building in England down to 1540 (Oxford, 1952); R. Beissel, Geldwert und Arbeitslohn im Mittelalter (Freiburg in Breisgau, 1884); B. Geremek, Le salariat dans l’artisanat parisien aux XIIIe–XVe siècles (Paris, 1968); Etienne Robo, “Wages and Prices in the Hundred of Farnham in the Thirteenth Century,” Economic History 3 (1934) 24–34; a discussion of wages appears in H. Thomas Johnson, “Cathedral Building and the Medieval Economy,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History 4 (1967) 191–210; B. W. E. Alford and M. Q. Smith, “The Economic Effects of Cathedral and Church Building in Medieval England: A Reply,” ibid. 6 (1969) 158–69; H. Thomas Johnson, “The Economic Effects of Cathedral and Church Building in Medieval England: A Rejoinder,” ibid., 169–74.

  On rent, see E. A. Kominskii, “Services and Money Rents in the Thirteenth Century,” Economic History Review 5 (1935) 24–45; idem, “The Evolution of Feudal Rent in England from the Eleventhth to the Fifteenth Centuries,” Past & Present 7 (1955) 12–36; idem, Studies in the Agrarian History of England in the Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1956); Ronald Witt, “The Landlord and the Economic Revival of the Middle Ages in Northern Europe, 1000–1250,” American Historical Review 76 (1971) 965–88; Brice Lyon, “Medieval Real Estate Developments and Freedom,” American Historical Review 63 (1957) 47–61; P. D. A. Harvey, ed., The Peasant Land Market in Medieval England (Oxford, 1984); P. R. Hyams, “The Origins of a Peasant Land Market in England,” Economic History Review 23 (1970) 18–31.

  Rates of interest in medieval Europe are surveyed in Sidney Homer, A History of Interest Rates (New Brunswick, 1963), 94–99.

  Monetary movements are explored in Marc Bloch, “Le problème de l’or au Moyen Age,” Annales d’Histoire Économique et Sociale 5 (1933) 1–34, tr. J. E. Anderson in Land and Work in Medieval Europe: Selected Papers by Marc Bloch (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), 186–229. Also important is a companion piece by Bloch, translated by Anderson as “Natural Economy or Money Economy: A Pseudo–Dilemma,” in ibid., 230–41.

  A leading study is Peter Spufford, Money and Its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1988). Other contributions to a large literature include Pierre Vilar, A History of Gold and Money, 1450–1920 (London, 1976); Carlo M. Cipolla, Money, Prices, and Civilization in the Mediterranean World: Fifth to Seventeenth Century (Princeton, 1956), cited above; idem, “Currency Depreciation in Medieval Europe,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 15 (1963) 413–22; Michael Prestwich, “Early Fourteenth–Century Exchange Rates,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 32 (1979) 470–82; idem, “Edward I’s Monetary Policies and Their Consequences,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 22 (1969) 406–16; C. C. Patterson, “Silver Stocks and Losses in Ancient and Medieval Times,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 25 (1972) 205–35; D. M. Metcalf, “English Monetary History in the Time of Offa: A Reply,” Numismatic Circular 71 (1963) 1651; Frederic Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore, 1973), in which the author summarizes many years of study on this subject; idem, “Le vecchie monete di conto Veneziane ed il ritorno dall’ore,” Atto dell Instituto Veneto di Scienze Letre ed Arti: Classe di Scienzi Morali, Letter, ed Arti 117 (1958–59) 49–78. See also Robert S. Lopez, “Back to Gold, 1252,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 9 (1956) 219–40; A. M. Watson, “Back to Gold and Silver,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 20 (1967) 1–34; L. B. Robbert, “Monetary Flows: Venice, 1150–1400,” in J. F. Richards, ed., Precious Metals in the Later Medieval and Early Modern Worlds (Durham, 1983), 274–93.

  The problem of velocity is studied in N. J. Mayhew, “Population, Money Supply, and the Velocity of Circulation in England, 1300–1700,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 48 (1995) 238–57; other important studies of medieval money and prices by the same author include: “Money and Prices in England from Henry II to Edward III,” Agricultural History Review 35 (1987) 121–32; “Modelling Medieval Monetisation,” in B. M. S. Campbell and R. H. Britnell, eds., A Commercialising Economy: England, 1086–1300 (Manchester, 1995), 55–77.

  On finance a classic work is Mario Chiaudano, “I Rothschild del Dugento: La Gran Tavola di Orlando Bonsignori,” Bullettino Senese di Storia Patria 42 (1935) 103–42; William M. Bowsky, The Finance of the Commune of Siena, 1287–1355 (Oxford, 1970); idem, A Medieval Italian Commune: Siena Under the Nine, 1287–1355 (Berkeley, 1981).

  On markets and commerce, see R. H. Britnell, “The Proliferation of Markets in England, 1200–1349,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 34 (1981) 209–221; Richard Hodges, Dark Age Economics: The Origins of Towns and Trade, A.D. 600–1000 (London, 1982); Raymond De Roover, “The Commercial Revolution of the Thirteenth Century,” in F. C. Lane and J. Riemersma, eds. Enterprise and Secular Change (1953).

  Industrialization in medieval Europe is the subject of E. M. Carus Wilson, “An Industrial Revolution of the Thirteenth Century,” Economic History Review 11 (1939) 39–60; Rolf Sprandel, “La production du fer au moyen age,” Annales E.S.C. 24 (1969) 305–21; Jean Gimpel, The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages (New York, 1976); William N. Bonds, “Some Industrial Price Movements in Medieval Genoa (1155–1255),” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History 7 (1969–70) 123–39; Henrietta M. Larson, “The Armor Business in the Middle Ages,” Business History Review 14 (1940) 49–64; C. F. ffoulkes, “European Arms and Armor,” in G. Barraclough, ed., Social Life in Early England (London, 1960) 124–38; F. Philippi, Die erste Industrialisierung Deutschlands (Munster, 1909); idem, Das Eisengewerbe im Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 1968).

  On ag
riculture, see J. Z. Titow, Winchester Yields: A Study in Medieval Agricultural Productivity (Cambridge, 1972), which covers the period from 1209 to 1349; D. L. Farmer extends this series from 1350 to 1453 in “Grain Yields on the Winchester manors in the Later Middle Ages,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 30 (1977) 555–66; E. A. Kominskii, Studies in the Agrarian History of England in the Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1956); David Herlihy, “The Agrarian Revolution in Southern France and Italy, 801–1150,” Speculum 33 (1958) 23–41; idem, “The History of the Rural Seignury in Italy, 751–1200,” Agricultural History 33 (1959) 1–14.

  For harvests and disettes, see E. Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, vol. 1, 1259–1400; Heinrich H. W. F. Curschmann, Hungersnöte in Mittelalter. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Wirtschafts-geschichte des 8. bis 13. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1900); M. E. Levasseur, Les prix aperçu de l’histoire économique de la valeur et du revenu de la terre, en France du commencement du XIIe siècle a la fin du XVIIIe, avec un appendice sur le prix du froment et sur les disettes depuis l’an 1200 jusqu’ a l’an 1891 (Paris, 1893), appendix.

  For the problem of poverty, see Alfred N. May, “An Index of Thirteenth–Century Peasant Impoverishment? Manor Court Fines,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 26 (1973) 389–402.

  On economic ethics in medieval Europe, there is a large literature. Much of it centers on the problem of just price. See Henri Garnier, L’idée du juste prix chez les théologiens et canonistes du Moyen Age (New York, 1973); Benjamin Nelson, “The Usurer and the Merchant Prince: Italian Businessmen and the Ecclesiastical Law of Restitution, 1100–1550,” Journal of Economic History Supplement 7 (1947) 104–22; idem, The Idea of Usury (Princeton, 1949); T. P. McLaughlin, “The Teaching of the Canonists on Usury (Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Centuries),” Medieval Studies 1 (1939) 81–147; A. Sapori, “L’interesse del danaro a Firenze nel trecento (Dal testamento di un usuraio),” Archivio Storico Italiano 10 (1928) 161–86; and Noonan, Usury, cited above.

  Various other aspects of the relationship between material and cultural history are explored in J. R. Strayer, “The Crusades of Louis IX,” in K. M. Setton, ed., A History of the Crusades (Philadelphia, 1962); Jocelin de Brakeland, The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, H. E. Butler ed., (London, 1949); Steven Epstein, Wills and Wealth in Medieval Genoa, 1150–1250 (Cambridge, 1984).

  On Chartres Cathedral, see Robert Branner, ed., Chartres Cathedral (New York, 1969); Lucien Merlet and Eugene de Lepinois, Cartulaire de Notre-Dame de Chartres (3 vols., Chartres, 1862–65) 2:103; Robert Branner, ed., Chartres Cathedral (New York, 1969); Charles Rohault de Fleury, Memoire sur les instruments de la passion de N.-S. J.-C. (Paris, 1870).

  The renaissance of the twelfth century is discussed in Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (London, 1927); R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven, 1953); Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable, eds., Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1982); G. Pare et al., La Renaissance du XIIe Siècle: Les Écoles et l’Enseignement (Paris, 1933); J. L. Bolton, The Medieval English Economy, 1150–1500 (London, 1980); Carlrichard Brühl, Palatium und Civitas: Studien zur Profantopographie spatantiker Civitates vom 3. bis 13. Jahrhundert (Cologne, 1975), 1:19.

  The Crisis of the Fourteenth Century

  The best starting point is Bruce M. S. Campbell, ed., Before the Black Death: Studies in the ‘Crisis’ of the Early Fourteenth Century (Manchester, 1991; rpt. 1992), with an excellent consolidated bibliography (209–26).

  General studies include Edouard Perroy, “A l’origine d’une économie contractée: Les crises du XIVe siècle,” Annales E.S.C. 4 (1949) 167–82; trans. in Rondo Cameron, ed., Essays in French Economic History (Home-wood, III., 1970); R. E. Lerner, The Age of Adversity: The Fourteenth Century (Ithaca, 1968); R. Boutruche, Seignurie et féodalité (2 vols., Paris, 1968); R. Delatouche, “La crise du XIVe siècle en Europe occidentale,” Les Études Sociales 28 (1959) 1–19; F. Graus, “Das spätmittelalter als Krisenzeit . . .,” Mediaevalia Bohemica Supplement 1 (Prague, 1969); idem, “Die Erste Krise des Feudalismus,” Zeitschrift für Geschichts-wissenschaft 3 (1955) 552–92; Cicely Howell, “Stability and Change, 1300–1700,” Journal of Peasant Studies 2 (1975) 468–82; N. Hybel, Crisis or Change: the Concept of Crisis in Light of the Agrarian Structural Reorganization in Late Medieval England (Aarhus, 1989).

  Many schools of interpretation exist: Malthusian, which puts stress on imbalances between population and the means of subsistence; Marxist, on the class structure and the means of production; monetarist, on changes in the money supply; market–centered, on structures of exchange; climatological, on weather events.

  The Malthusian model of the crisis is developed in Michael Postan, Essays on Medieval Agriculture and General Problems of the Medieval Economy (Cambridge, 1973); and idem, The Medieval Economy and Society: An Economic History of Britain in the Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1972), cited above. A critique of the Postan thesis appears in Barbara F. Harvey, “The Population Trend in England between 1300 and 1348,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5th ser. 16 (1966) 23–42; and D. G. Watts, “Model for the Early Fourteenth Century,” Economic History Review 20 (1967) 543–47, which argues that the Malthusian model does not appear to work if one omits the crisis years! Important discussions appear in Guy Bois, “Against the Neo–Malthusian Orthodoxy,” Past & Present 79 (1978) 60–69. The thesis is restated in Edward Miller and John Hatcher, Medieval Society and Economic Change, 1086–1348 (London, 1978), and M. M. Postan and John Hatcher, “Population and Class Relations in Feudal Society,” Past & Present 78 (1978) 24–37. An argument for local complexity appears in H. E. Hallam, Rural England, 1066–1348 (Brighton, 1981); idem, “The Postan Thesis,” Historical Studies 15 (1972) 203–22; and Edward Britton, The Community of the Vill (Toronto, 1977). Much of this controversy centers on population trends in East Anglia; strong empirical evidence from there to support Postan is presented in L. R. Poos, “The Rural Population of Essex in the Later Middle Ages,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 38 (1985) 515–30.

  Marxist models include R. H. Hilton, “Y eut-il une crise générale de féodalité?” Annales E.S.C. 6 (1951) 23–30; E. A. Kosminskii, Studies in the Agrarian History of England in the Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1956); Robert Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe,” Past & Present 70 (1976) 30–75; and Guy Bois, Crise du féodalisme: économie rurale et démographie en Normandie orientale du début du XIVe siècle au milieu du XVIe siècle (Paris, 1976); trans. as The Crisis of Feudalism. . .(Cambridge, 1984). For discussions of Marxist models in general and Brenner in particular, see Trevor Aston and C. H. E. Philpin, eds., The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe (Cambridge, 1985). A critique of Guy Bois is Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, “En Haute-Normandie: Malthus ou Marx?” Annales E.S.C. 33 (1978) 115–24. Marxist interpretations in the West have been much influenced by the work of a Polish scholar, W. Kula, Théorie économique du système féodal: Pour un modèle de l’ économie polonaise XVIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1970); this study of a later period has had a major impact on Marxist medievalists.

  For monetarist models see J. Schreiner, “Wages and Prices in England in the Later Middle Ages,” Scandinavian Economic History Review 2 (1954) 61–73; Earl J. Hamilton, “The History of Prices before 1750,” in Rapports du XVe congrés international des sciences historiques (Stockholm, 1960) 1:144–64, also separately issued (Stockholm, 1960); W. C. Robinson, “Money, Population, and Economic Change in Late Medieval Europe,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 12 (1959) 63–76; N. J. Mayhew, “Numismatic Evidence and Falling Prices in the Fourteenth Century,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 27 (1974) 1–15; idem, “Money and Prices in England from Henry II to Edward III,” Agricultural History Review 35 (1987) 121–32; and especially the work of the able American Annalist John Day, The Medieval Market Economy (Oxford, 1987); idem, “The Decline of a Mone
y Economy: Sardinia in the Late Middle Ages,” Studia in memoria di Federico Melis (Naples, 1978) 3:155–176; and idem, “Crise du féodalisme et conjunctures des prix à la fin du moyen age,” Annales E.S.C. 34 (1979) 305–18. A critique of monetarist models in general and Day’s review-essay in particular is Guy Bois, “Sur la monnaie et les prix a la fin du moyen age: réponse a John Day,” ibid., 319–23.

  On market–centered models, exchange rates, balance of payments, and price surges there are Mavis Mate, “High Prices in Early Fourteenth-Century England: Causes and Consequences,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 28 (1975) 1–16; idem, “The Impact of War on the Economy of Canterbury Cathedral Priory, 1294–1340,” Speculum 57 (1982) 761–78; C. G. Reed, “Price Movements, Balance of Payments, Bullion Flows, and Unemployment in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” Journal of European Economic History 8 (1979) 479–86; Michael Prestwich, “Early Fourteenth-Century Exchange Rates,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 32 (1979) 470–82; Edward Ames, “The Sterling Crisis of 1337–1339,” Journal of Economic History 25 (1965) 496–522; B. Kedar, Merchants in Crisis: Genoese and Venetian men of Affairs and the Fourteenth-Century Depression (New Haven, 1976).