3 of 6

Write now Article Tools

The European Medieval period is one that is marked by the increase of urban life. The small villages and towns and isolated defensive positions of the Dark Age period evolve into walled defendable large urban sprawls and the whole structure of society begins to change. In the past villages would have been fairly self serving in their nature, that is to say that the village itself would provide most of the goods and services that it would need. With the growth of cities, however, specialisation of skills takes place and the idea of trades begins to grow. A Dark Age villager would have been a farmer and hunter as well as soldier as required. By the High Medieval period, those three skills would be single career paths.

Cities are never just one thing; neither does it ever stop evolving. It is easier to see the medieval city as somehow superior to its Dark Age and Roman past and inferior to the Renaissance cities that followed. The medieval city however is just a transitory phase between one and the other and reflects the needs and desires of the time.

Medieval cities grew as a result of the increasing trade that was being stimulated across the continent, trade routes that had initially died with the collapse of the Roman Empire. Feudal castles were able to draw trade routes to them, as a market place and as protection for travelling merchants and these points of defence began to develop into market towns. The attraction to the common man of moving to a city was that given the right circumstances they could become property owners, trades men, artisans or one of a host of other opportunities that were opening up in the new cities. This would then make them free of the feudal obligations of their fore fathers generations, thus the saying "the city air makes you free" Although still run under a feudal structure by the baron or titular lord who held the city in the name of his king or prince, urban rulers soon realised that there was more to be gained through the taxation of the city activities than there was from the agricultural surplus of the countryside. Many enterprising city leaders, such as the Counts of Champagne, attracted more commerce by instigating seasonal fairs many of which have survived to the present day, the Champagne Fairs for example only lost their importance with the ascendance of Atlantic shipping.

With the growth of cities, society was changing, trades were organised into guilds, and those trades could now have fixed laws and rights as well as fixed locations. Instead of journeymen artisans travelling from village to village, now the villages came to them.

With this growth of the urban society, the needs of that population grew too not just physically in the form of increased material choice and luxury services, medicine and protection, but also spiritually as the once isolated monastic buildings not only moved into the cities but also grew in splendour and magnitude in the form of the great cathedrals that we see today.

The social structure of the cities also begged different needs than the rural towns of an earlier age. Civil offices, public policing, inns and entertainments and aesthetic features such as parks were developed for a population that were now enjoying the new luxuries of free time and expendable incomes, rather than the subsistence of feudalism.

The development of cities were one of the major spring boards into the present age, the new found freedoms of the population and the technological advancements born of an organised society would soon lead to industrialisation and the modern age.

Learn more about this author, Dave Franklin.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

Add your voice

Know something about The importance of European cities in the High Middle Ages?
We want to hear your view. Write now!