View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages Part 28

PART II.

Progress of Commercial Improvement in Germany, Flanders, and England --in the North of Europe--in the Countries upon the Mediterranean Sea --Maritime Laws--Usury--Banking Companies--Progress of Refinement in Manners--Domestic Architecture--Ecclesiastical Architecture--State of Agriculture in England--Value of Money--Improvement of the Moral Character of Society--its Causes--Police--Changes in Religious Opinion --Various Sects--Chivalry--its Progress, Character, and Influence-- Causes of the Intellectual Improvement of European Society--1. The Study of Civil Law--2. Inst.i.tution of Universities--their Celebrity-- Scholastic Philosophy--3. Cultivation of Modern Languages--Provencal Poets--Norman Poets--French Prose Writers--Italian--early Poets in that Language--Dante--Petrarch--English Language--its Progress-- Chaucer--4. Revival of Cla.s.sical Learning--Latin Writers of the Twelfth Century--Literature of the Fourteenth Century--Greek Literature--its Restoration in Italy--Invention of Printing.

[Sidenote: European commerce.]

The geographical position of Europe naturally divides its maritime commerce into two princ.i.p.al regions--one comprehending those countries which border on the Baltic, the German and the Atlantic oceans; another, those situated around the Mediterranean Sea. During the four centuries which preceded the discovery of America, and especially the two former of them, this separation was more remarkable than at present, inasmuch as their intercourse, either by land or sea, was extremely limited. To the first region belonged the Netherlands, the coasts of France, Germany, and Scandinavia, and the maritime districts of England. In the second we may cla.s.s the provinces of Valencia and Catalonia, those of Provence and Languedoc, and the whole of Italy.

[Sidenote: Woollen manufacture of Flanders.]

1. The former, or northern division, was first animated by the woollen manufacture of Flanders. It is not easy either to discover the early beginnings of this, or to account for its rapid advancement. The fertility of that province and its facilities of interior navigation were doubtless necessary causes; but there must have been some temporary encouragement from the personal character of its sovereigns, or other accidental circ.u.mstances. Several testimonies to the flouris.h.i.+ng condition of Flemish manufactures occur in the twelfth century, and some might perhaps be found even earlier.[571] A writer of the thirteenth a.s.serts that all the world was clothed from English wool wrought in Flanders.[572] This, indeed, is an exaggerated vaunt; but the Flemish stuffs were probably sold wherever the sea or a navigable river permitted them to be carried. Cologne was the chief trading city upon the Rhine; and its merchants, who had been considerable even under the emperor Henry IV., established a factory at London in 1220. The woollen manufacture, notwithstanding frequent wars and the impolitic regulations of magistrates,[573] continued to flourish in the Netherlands (for Brabant and Hainault shared it in some degree with Flanders), until England became not only capable of supplying her own demand, but a rival in all the marts of Europe. "All Christian kingdoms, and even the Turks themselves," says an historian of the sixteenth century, "lamented the desperate war between the Flemish cities and their count Louis, that broke out in 1380. For at that time Flanders was a market for the traders of all the world. Merchants from seventeen kingdoms had their settled domiciles at Bruges, besides strangers from almost unknown countries who repaired thither."[574] During this war, and on all other occasions, the weavers both of Ghent and Bruges distinguished themselves by a democratical spirit, the consequence, no doubt, of their numbers and prosperity.[575] Ghent was one of the largest cities in Europe, and, in the opinion of many, the best situated.[576] But Bruges, though in circuit but half the former, was more splendid in its buildings, and the seat of far more trade; being the great staple both for Mediterranean and northern merchandise.[577] Antwerp, which early in the sixteenth century drew away a large part of this commerce from Bruges, was not considerable in the preceding ages; nor were the towns of Zealand and Holland much noted except for their fisheries, though those provinces acquired in the fifteenth century some share of the woollen manufacture.

[Sidenote: Export of wool from England.]

For the first two centuries after the Conquest our English towns, as has been observed in a different place, made some forward steps towards improvement, though still very inferior to those of the continent. Their commerce was almost confined to the exportation of wool, the great staple commodity of England, upon which, more than any other, in its raw or manufactured state, our wealth has been founded. A woollen manufacture, however, indisputably existed under Henry II.;[578] it is noticed in regulations of Richard I.; and by the importation of woad under John it may be inferred to have still flourished. The disturbances of the next reign, perhaps, or the rapid elevation of the Flemish towns, r.e.t.a.r.ded its growth, though a remarkable law was pa.s.sed by the Oxford parliament in 1261, prohibiting the export of wool and the importation of cloth. This, while it shows the deference paid by the discontented barons, who predominated in that parliament, to their confederates the burghers, was evidently too premature to be enforced. We may infer from it, however, that cloths were made at home, though not sufficiently for the people's consumption.[579]

Prohibitions of the same nature, though with a different object, were frequently imposed on the trade between England and Flanders by Edward I. and his son. As their political connexions fluctuated, these princes gave full liberty and settlement to the Flemish merchants, or banished them at once from the country.[580] Nothing could be more injurious to England than this arbitrary vacillation. The Flemings were in every respect our natural allies; but besides those connexions with France, the constant enemy of Flanders, into which both the Edwards occasionally fell, a mutual alienation had been produced by the trade of the former people with Scotland, a trade too lucrative to be resigned at the king of England's request.[581] An early instance of that conflicting selfishness of belligerents and neutrals, which was destined to aggravate the animosities and misfortunes of our own time.[582]

[Sidenote: English woollen manufacture.]

A more prosperous era began with Edward III., the father, as he may almost be called, of English commerce, a t.i.tle not indeed more glorious, but by which he may perhaps claim more of our grat.i.tude than as the hero of Crecy. In 1331 he took advantage of discontents among the manufacturers of Flanders to invite them as settlers into his dominions.[583] They brought the finer manufacture of woollen cloths, which had been unknown in England. The discontents alluded to resulted from the monopolizing spirit of their corporations, who oppressed all artisans without the pale of their community. The history of corporations brings home to our minds one cardinal truth, that political inst.i.tutions have very frequently but a relative and temporary usefulness, and that what forwarded improvement during one part of its course may prove to it in time a most pernicious obstacle. Corporations in England, we may be sure, wanted nothing of their usual character; and it cost Edward no little trouble to protect his colonists from the selfishness and from the blind nationality of the vulgar.[584] The emigration of Flemish weavers into England continued during this reign, and we find it mentioned, at intervals, for more than a century.

[Sidenote: Increase of English commerce.]

Commerce now became, next to liberty, the leading object of parliament.

For the greater part of our statutes from the accession of Edward III.

bear relation to this subject; not always well devised, or liberal, or consistent, but by no means worse in those respects than such as have been enacted in subsequent ages. The occupation of a merchant became honourable; and, notwithstanding the natural jealousy of the two cla.s.ses, he was placed, in some measure, on a footing with landed proprietors. By the statute of apparel, in 37 Edw. III., merchants and artificers who had five hundred pounds value in goods and chattels might use the same dress as squires of one hundred pounds a year. And those who were worth more than this might dress like men of double that estate. Wool was still the princ.i.p.al article of export and source of revenue. Subsidies granted by every parliament upon this article were, on account of the scarcity of money, commonly taken in kind. To prevent evasion of this duty seems to have been the principle of those multifarious regulations which fix the staple, or market for wool, in certain towns, either in England, or, more commonly, on the continent.

To these all wool was to be carried, and the tax was there collected. It is not easy, however, to comprehend the drift of all the provisions relating to the staple, many of which tend to benefit foreign at the expense of English merchants. By degrees the exportation of woollen cloths increased so as to diminish that of the raw material, but the latter was not absolutely prohibited during the period under review;[585] although some restrictions were imposed upon it by Edward IV. For a much earlier statute, in the 11th of Edward III., making the exportation of wool a capital felony, was in its terms provisional, until it should be otherwise ordered by the council; and the king almost immediately set it aside.[586]

[Sidenote: Manufactures of France and Germany.]

A manufacturing district, as we see in our own country, sends out, as it were, suckers into all its neighbourhood. Accordingly, the woollen manufacture spread from Flanders along the banks of the Rhine and into the northern provinces of France.[587] I am not, however, prepared to trace its history in these regions. In Germany the privileges conceded by Henry V. to the free cities, and especially to their artisans, gave a soul to industry; though the central parts of the empire were, for many reasons, very ill-calculated for commercial enterprise during the middle ages.[588] But the French towns were never so much emanc.i.p.ated from arbitrary power as those of Germany or Flanders; and the evils of exorbitant taxation, with those produced by the English wars, conspired to r.e.t.a.r.d the advance of manufactures in France. That of linen made some little progress; but this work was still, perhaps, chiefly confined to the labour of female servants.[589]

[Sidenote: Baltic trade.]

The manufactures of Flanders and England found a market, not only in these adjacent countries, but in a part of Europe which for many ages had only been known enough to be dreaded. In the middle of the eleventh century a native of Bremen, and a writer much superior to most others of his time, was almost entirely ignorant of the geography of the Baltic; doubting whether any one had reached Russia by that sea, and reckoning Esthonia and Courland among its islands.[590] But in one hundred years more the maritime regions of Mecklenburg and Pomerania, inhabited by a tribe of heathen Sclavonians, were subdued by some German princes; and the Teutonic order some time afterwards, having conquered Prussia, extended a line of at least comparative civilization as far as the gulf of Finland. The first town erected on the coasts of the Baltic was Lubec, which owes its foundation to Adolphus count of Holstein, in 1140.

After several vicissitudes it became independent of any sovereign but the emperor in the thirteenth century. Hamburgh and Bremen, upon the other side of the Cimbric peninsula, emulated the prosperity of Lubec; the former city purchased independence of its bishop in 1225. A colony from Bremen founded Riga in Livonia about 1162. The city of Dantzic grew into importance about the end of the following century. Konigsberg was founded by Ottocar king of Bohemia in the same age.

But the real importance of these cities is to be dated from their famous union into the Hanseatic confederacy. The origin of this is rather obscure, but it may certainly be nearly referred in point of time to the middle of the thirteenth century,[591] and accounted for by the necessity of mutual defence, which piracy by sea and pillage by land had taught the merchants of Germany. The n.o.bles endeavoured to obstruct the formation of this league, which indeed was in great measure designed to withstand their exactions. It powerfully maintained the influence which the free imperial cities were at this time acquiring. Eighty of the most considerable places const.i.tuted the Hanseatic confederacy, divided into four colleges, whereof Lubec, Cologne, Brunswic, and Dantzic were the leading towns. Lubec held the chief rank, and became, as it were, the patriarchal see of the league; whose province it was to preside in all general discussions for mercantile, political, or military purposes, and to carry them into execution. The league had four princ.i.p.al factories in foreign parts, at London, Bruges, Bergen, and Novogorod; endowed by the sovereigns of those cities with considerable privileges, to which every merchant belonging to a Hanseatic town was ent.i.tled.[592] In England the German guildhall or factory was established by concession of Henry III.; and in later periods the Hanse traders were favoured above many others in the capricious vacillations of our mercantile policy.[593] The English had also their factories on the Baltic coast as far as Prussia and in the dominions of Denmark.[594]

[Sidenote: Rapid progress of English trade.]

This opening of a northern market powerfully accelerated the growth of our own commercial opulence, especially after the woollen manufacture had begun to thrive. From about the middle of the fourteenth century we find continual evidences of a rapid increase in wealth. Thus, in 1363, Picard, who had been lord mayor some years before, entertained Edward III. and the Black Prince, the kings of France, Scotland, and Cyprus, with many of the n.o.bility, at his own house in the Vintry, and presented them with handsome gifts.[595] Philpot, another eminent citizen in Richard II.'s time, when the trade of England was considerably annoyed by privateers, hired 1000 armed men, and despatched them to sea, where they took fifteen Spanish vessels with their prizes.[596] We find Richard obtaining a great deal from private merchants and trading towns. In 1379 he got 5000_l._ from London, 1000 marks from Bristol, and in proportion from smaller places. In 1386 London gave 4000_l._ more, and 10,000 marks in 1397.[597] The latter sum was obtained also for the coronation of Henry VI.[598] Nor were the contributions of individuals contemptible, considering the high value of money. Hinde, a citizen of London, lent to Henry IV. 2000_l._ in 1407, and Whittington one half of that sum. The merchants of the staple advanced 4000_l._ at the same time.[599] Our commerce continued to be regularly and rapidly progressive during the fifteenth century. The famous Canynges of Bristol, under Henry VI. and Edward IV., had s.h.i.+ps of 900 tons burthen.[600] The trade and even the internal wealth of England reached so much higher a pitch in the reign of the last-mentioned king than at any former period, that we may perceive the wars of York and Lancaster to have produced no very serious effect on national prosperity. Some battles were doubtless sanguinary; but the loss of lives in battle is soon repaired by a flouris.h.i.+ng nation; and the devastation occasioned by armies was both partial and transitory.

[Sidenote: Intercourse with the south of Europe.]

A commercial intercourse between these northern and southern regions of Europe began about the early part of the fourteenth century, or, at most, a little sooner. Until, indeed, the use of the magnet was thoroughly understood, and a competent skill in marine architecture, as well as navigation, acquired, the Italian merchants were scarce likely to attempt a voyage perilous in itself and rendered more formidable by the imaginary difficulties which had been supposed to attend an expedition beyond the straits of Hercules. But the English, accustomed to their own rough seas, were always more intrepid, and probably more skilful navigators. Though it was extremely rare, even in the fifteenth century, for an English trading vessel to appear in the Mediterranean,[601] yet a famous military armament, that destined for the crusade of Richard I., displayed at a very early time the seamans.h.i.+p of our countrymen. In the reign of Edward II. we find mention in Rymer's collection of Genoese s.h.i.+ps trading to Flanders and England. His son was very solicitous to preserve the friends.h.i.+p of that opulent republic; and it is by his letters to his senate, or by royal orders restoring s.h.i.+ps unjustly seized, that we come by a knowledge of those facts which historians neglect to relate. Pisa shared a little in this traffic, and Venice more considerably; but Genoa was beyond all compet.i.tion at the head of Italian commerce in these seas during the fourteenth century. In the next her general decline left it more open to her rival; but I doubt whether Venice ever maintained so strong a connexion with England. Through London and Bruges, their chief station in Flanders, the merchants of Italy and of Spain transported oriental produce to the farthest parts of the north. The inhabitants of the Baltic coast were stimulated by the desire of precious luxuries which they had never known; and these wants, though selfish and frivolous, are the means by which nations acquire civilization, and the earth is rendered fruitful of its produce. As the carriers of this trade the Hanseatic merchants resident in England and Flanders derived profits through which eventually of course those countries were enriched. It seems that the Italian vessels unloaded at the marts of London or Bruges, and that such part of their cargoes as were intended for a more northern trade came there into the hands of the German merchants. In the reign of Henry VI. England carried on a pretty extensive traffic with the countries around the Mediterranean, for whose commodities her wool and woollen cloths enabled her to pay.

[Sidenote: Commerce of the Mediterranean countries.]

[Sidenote: Amalfi.]

The commerce of the southern division, though it did not, I think, produce more extensively beneficial effects upon the progress of society, was both earlier and more splendid than that of England and the neighbouring countries. Besides Venice, which has been mentioned already, Amalfi kept up the commercial intercourse of Christendom with the Saracen countries before the first crusade.[602] It was the singular fate of this city to have filled up the interval between two periods of civilization, in neither of which she was destined to be distinguished.

Scarcely known before the end of the sixth century, Amalfi ran a brilliant career, as a free and trading republic, which was checked by the arms of a conqueror in the middle of the twelfth. Since her subjugation by Roger king of Sicily, the name of a people who for a while connected Europe with Asia has hardly been repeated, except for two discoveries falsely imputed to them, those of the Pandects and of the compa.s.s.

[Sidenote: Pisa, Genoa, Venice.]

But the decline of Amalfi was amply compensated to the rest of Italy by the constant elevation of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice in the twelfth and ensuing ages. The crusades led immediately to this growing prosperity of the commercial cities. Besides the profit accruing from so many naval armaments which they supplied, and the continual pa.s.sage of private adventurers in their vessels, they were enabled to open a more extensive channel of oriental traffic than had hitherto been known. These three Italian republics enjoyed immunities in the Christian princ.i.p.alities of Syria; possessing separate quarters in Acre, Tripoli, and other cities, where they were governed by their own laws and magistrates. Though the progress of commerce must, from the condition of European industry, have been slow, it was uninterrupted; and the settlements in Palestine were becoming important as factories, an use of which G.o.dfrey and Urban little dreamed, when they were lost through the guilt and imprudence of their inhabitants.[603] Villani laments the injury sustained by commerce in consequence of the capture of Acre, "situated, as it was, on the coast of the Mediterranean, in the centre of Syria, and, as we might say, of the habitable world, a haven for all merchandize, both from the East and the West, which all the nations of the earth frequented for this trade."[604] But the loss was soon retrieved, not perhaps by Pisa and Genoa, but by Venice, who formed connexions with the Saracen governments, and maintained her commercial intercourse with Syria and Egypt by their licence, though subject probably to heavy exactions.

Sanuto, a Venetian author at the beginning of the fourteenth century, has left a curious account of the Levant trade which his countrymen carried on at that time. Their imports it is easy to guess, and it appears that timber, bra.s.s, tin, and lead, as well as the precious metals, were exported to Alexandria, besides oil, saffron, and some of the productions of Italy, and even wool and woollen cloths.[605] The European side of the account had therefore become respectable.

The commercial cities enjoyed as great privileges at Constantinople as in Syria, and they bore an eminent part in the vicissitudes of the Eastern empire. After the capture of Constantinople by the Latin crusaders, the Venetians, having been concerned in that conquest, became, of course, the favoured traders under the new dynasty; possessing their own district in the city, with their magistrate or podesta, appointed at Venice, and subject to the parent republic. When the Greeks recovered the seat of their empire, the Genoese, who, from jealousy of their rivals, had contributed to that revolution, obtained similar immunities. This powerful and enterprising state, in the fourteenth century, sometimes the ally, sometimes the enemy, of the Byzantine court, maintained its independent settlement at Pera. From thence she spread her sails into the Euxine, and, planting a colony at Caffa in the Crimea, extended a line of commerce with the interior regions of Asia, which even the skill and spirit of our own times has not yet been able to revive.[606]

The French provinces which border on the Mediterranean Sea partook in the advantages which it offered. Not only Ma.r.s.eilles, whose trade had continued in a certain degree throughout the worst ages, but Narbonne, Nismes, and especially Montpelier, were distinguished for commercial prosperity.[607] A still greater activity prevailed in Catalonia. From the middle of the thirteenth century (for we need not trace the rudiments of its history) Barcelona began to emulate the Italian cities in both the branches of naval energy, war and commerce. Engaged in frequent and severe hostilities with Genoa, and sometimes with Constantinople, while their vessels traded to every part of the Mediterranean, and even of the English Channel, the Catalans might justly be reckoned among the first of maritime nations. The commerce of Barcelona has never since attained so great a height as in the fifteenth century.[608]

[Sidenote: Their manufactures.]

The introduction of a silk manufacture at Palermo, by Roger Guiscard in 1148, gave perhaps the earliest impulse to the industry of Italy. Nearly about the same time the Genoese plundered two Moorish cities of Spain, from which they derived the same art. In the next age this became a staple manufacture of the Lombard and Tuscan republics, and the cultivation of mulberries was enforced by their laws.[609] Woollen stuffs, though the trade was perhaps less conspicuous than that of Flanders, and though many of the coa.r.s.er kinds were imported from thence, employed a mult.i.tude of workmen in Italy, Catalonia, and the south of France.[610] Among the trading companies into which the middling ranks were distributed, those concerned in silk and woollens were most numerous and honourable.[611]

[Sidenote: Invention of the mariner's compa.s.s.]

A property of a natural substance, long overlooked even though it attracted observation by a different peculiarity, has influenced by its accidental discovery the fortunes of mankind more than all the deductions of philosophy. It is, perhaps, impossible to ascertain the epoch when the polarity of the magnet was first known in Europe. The common opinion, which ascribes its discovery to a citizen of Amalfi in the fourteenth century, is undoubtedly erroneous. Guiot de Provins, a French poet, who lived about the year 1200, or, at the latest, under St.

Louis, describes it in the most unequivocal language. James de Vitry, a bishop in Palestine, before the middle of the thirteenth century, and Guido Guinizzelli, an Italian poet of the same time, are equally explicit. The French, as well as Italians, claim the discovery as their own; but whether it were due to either of these nations, or rather learned from their intercourse with the Saracens, is not easily to be ascertained.[612] For some time, perhaps, even this wonderful improvement in the art of navigation might not be universally adopted by vessels sailing within the Mediterranean, and accustomed to their old system of observations. But when it became more established, it naturally inspired a more fearless spirit of adventure. It was not, as has been mentioned, till the beginning of the fourteenth century that the Genoese and other nations around that inland sea steered into the Atlantic Ocean towards England and Flanders. This intercourse with the northern countries enlivened their trade with the Levant by the exchange of productions which Spain and Italy do not supply, and enriched the merchants by means of whose capital the exports of London and of Alexandria were conveyed into each other's harbours.

[Sidenote: Maritime laws.]

The usual risks of navigation, and those incident to commercial adventure, produce a variety of questions in every system of jurisprudence, which, though always to be determined, as far as possible, by principles of natural justice, must in many cases depend upon established customs. These customs of maritime law were anciently reduced into a code by the Rhodians, and the Roman emperors preserved or reformed the const.i.tutions of that republic. It would be hard to say how far the tradition of this early jurisprudence survived the decline of commerce in the darker ages; but after it began to recover itself, necessity suggested, or recollection prompted, a scheme of regulations resembling in some degree, but much more enlarged than those of antiquity. This was formed into a written code, Il Consolato del Mare, not much earlier, probably, than the middle of the thirteenth century; and its promulgation seems rather to have proceeded from the citizens of Barcelona than from those of Pisa or Venice, who have also claimed to be the first legislators of the sea.[613] Besides regulations simply mercantile, this system has defined the mutual rights of neutral and belligerent vessels, and thus laid the basis of the positive law of nations in its most important and disputed cases. The king of France and count of Provence solemnly acceded to this maritime code, which hence acquired a binding force within the Mediterranean Sea; and in most respects the law merchant of Europe is at present conformable to its provisions. A set of regulations, chiefly borrowed from the Consolato, was compiled in France under the reign of Louis IX., and prevailed in their own country. These have been denominated the laws of Oleron, from an idle story that they were enacted by Richard I., while his expedition to the Holy Land lay at anchor in that island.[614] Nor was the north without its peculiar code of maritime jurisprudence; namely, the Ordinances of Wisbuy, a town in the isle of Gothland, princ.i.p.ally compiled from those of Oleron, before the year 1400, by which the Baltic traders were governed.[615]

[Sidenote: Frequency of piracy.]

[Sidenote: Law of reprisals.]

There was abundant reason for establis.h.i.+ng among maritime nations some theory of mutual rights, and for securing the redress of injuries, as far as possible, by means of acknowledged tribunals. In that state of barbarous anarchy which so long resisted the coercive authority of civil magistrates, the sea held out even more temptation and more impunity than the land; and when the laws had regained their sovereignty, and neither robbery nor private warfare was any longer tolerated, there remained that great common of mankind, unclaimed by any king, and the liberty of the sea was another name for the security of plunderers. A pirate, in a well-armed quick-sailing vessel, must feel, I suppose, the enjoyments of his exemption from control more exquisitely than any other freebooter; and darting along the bosom of the ocean, under the impartial radiance of the heavens, may deride the dark concealments and hurried flights of the forest robber. His occupation is, indeed, extinguished by the civilization of later ages, or confined to distant climates. But in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a rich vessel was never secure from attack; and neither rest.i.tution nor punishment of the criminals was to be obtained from governments who sometimes feared the plunderer and sometimes connived at the offence.[616] Mere piracy, however, was not the only danger. The maritime towns of Flanders, France, and England, like the free republics of Italy, prosecuted their own quarrels by arms, without asking the leave of their respective sovereigns. This practice, exactly a.n.a.logous to that of private war in the feudal system, more than once involved the kings of France and England in hostility.[617] But where the quarrel did not proceed to such a length as absolutely to engage two opposite towns, a modification of this ancient right of revenge formed part of the regular law of nations, under the name of reprisals. Whoever was plundered or injured by the inhabitant of another town obtained authority from his own magistrates to seize the property of any other person belonging to it, until his loss should be compensated. This law of reprisal was not confined to maritime places; it prevailed in Lombardy, and probably in the German cities. Thus, if a citizen of Modena was robbed by a Bolognese, he complained to the magistrates of the former city, who represented the case to those of Bologna, demanding redress. If this were not immediately granted, letters of reprisals were issued to plunder the territory of Bologna till the injured party should be reimbursed by sale of the spoil.[618] In the laws of Ma.r.s.eilles it is declared, "If a foreigner take anything from a citizen of Ma.r.s.eilles, and he who has jurisdiction over the said debtor or unjust taker does not cause right to be done in the same, the rector or consuls, at the pet.i.tion of the said citizen, shall grant him reprisals upon all the goods of the said debtor or unjust taker, and also upon the goods of others who are under the jurisdiction of him who ought to do justice, and would not, to the said citizen of Ma.r.s.eilles."[619] Edward III. remonstrates, in an instrument published by Rymer, against letters of marque granted by the king of Aragon to one Berenger de la Tone, who had been robbed by an English pirate of 2000_l._, alleging that, inasmuch as he had always been ready to give redress to the party, it seemed to his counsellors that there was no just cause for reprisals upon the king's or his subjects' property.[620] This pa.s.sage is so far curious as it a.s.serts the existence of a customary law of nations, the knowledge of which was already a sort of learning. Sir E. c.o.ke speaks of this right of private reprisals as if it still existed;[621] and, in fact, there are instances of granting such letters as late as the reign of Charles I.

[Sidenote: Liability of aliens for each other's debts.]

A practice, founded on the same principles as reprisal, though rather less violent, was that of attaching the goods or persons of resident foreigners for the debts of their countrymen. This indeed, in England, was not confined to foreigners until the statute of Westminster I. c.

23, which enacts that "no stranger who is of this realm shall be distrained in any town or market for a debt wherein he is neither princ.i.p.al nor surety." Henry III. had previously granted a charter to the burgesses of Lubec, that they should "not be arrested for the debt of any of their countrymen, unless the magistrates of Lubec neglected to compel payment."[622] But by a variety of grants from Edward II. the privileges of English subjects under the statute of Westminster were extended to most foreign nations.[623] This unjust responsibility had not been confined to civil cases. One of a company of Italian merchants, the Spini, having killed a man, the officers of justice seized the bodies and effects of all the rest.[624]

[Sidenote: Great profits of trade,]

[Sidenote: and high rate of interest.]

[Sidenote: Money dealings of the Jews.]

If under all these obstacles, whether created by barbarous manners, by national prejudice, or by the fraudulent and arbitrary measures of princes, the merchants of different countries became so opulent as almost to rival the ancient n.o.bility, it must be ascribed to the greatness of their commercial profits. The trading companies possessed either a positive or a virtual monopoly, and held the keys of those eastern regions, for the luxuries of which the progressive refinement of manners produced an increasing demand. It is not easy to determine the average rate of profit;[625] but we know that the interest of money was exceedingly high throughout the middle ages. At Verona, in 1228, it was fixed by law at twelve and a half per cent.; at Modena, in 1270, it seems to have been as high as twenty.[626] The republic of Genoa, towards the end of the fourteenth century, when Italy had grown wealthy, paid only from seven to ten per cent. to her creditors.[627] But in France and England the rate was far more oppressive. An ordinance of Philip the Fair, in 1311, allows twenty per cent. after the first year of the loan.[628] Under Henry III., according to Matthew Paris, the debtor paid ten per cent. every two months;[629] but this is absolutely incredible as a general practice. This was not merely owing to scarcity of money, but to the discouragement which a strange prejudice opposed, to one of the most useful and legitimate branches of commerce. Usury, or lending money for profit, was treated as a crime by the theologians of the middle ages; and though the superst.i.tion has been eradicated, some part of the prejudice remains in our legislation. This trade in money, and indeed a great part of inland trade in general, had originally fallen to the Jews, who were noted for their usury so early as the sixth century.[630] For several subsequent ages they continued to employ their capital and industry to the same advantage, with little molestation from the clergy, who always tolerated their avowed and national infidelity, and often with some encouragement from princes. In the twelfth century we find them not only possessed of landed property in Languedoc, and cultivating the studies of medicine and Rabbinical literature in their own academy at Montpelier, under the protection of the count of Toulouse, but invested with civil offices.[631] Raymond Roger, viscount of Carcasonne, directs a writ "to his bailiffs, Christian and Jewish."[632] It was one of the conditions imposed by the church on the count of Toulouse, that he should allow no Jews to possess magistracy in his dominions.[633] But in Spain they were placed by some of the munic.i.p.al laws on the footing of Christians, with respect to the composition for their lives, and seem in no other European country to have been so numerous or considerable.[634] The diligence and expertness of this people in all pecuniary dealings recommended them to princes who were solicitous about the improvement of their revenue. We find an article in the general charter of privileges granted by Peter III. of Aragon, in 1283, that no Jew should hold the office of a bayle or judge.