What is the medieval town ?

- economic criteria: variety of occupations, including some with a non-agricultural profile
- social classes defined along different lines than the rest of the medieval society (i.e. different sources of income)
- political - freedom in the sense of communal movement => the town = autonomous community of merchants, traders, and craftsment
- the largest buildings - city cathedrals (the largest churches in Europe)
                                   - city halls (urban councils)

towns - old Roman centers (1)
          - new towns (2)
2 => generally grew within the shadow and under the protection of a castle
    > permission was given by the local landlord for a market to be held in a village

Size and structure:

- the concept of town was very vague in the Middle Ages

What is a city for us today?
 

- a place with banks (at least a local branch), chain stores, a mall, etc.  => no such criteria existed back than!

Jacques Le Goff:
- an indicator of the relative importance of urban centers was their attractiveness to aome church orders (Dominicans, Franciscans) => orders of friars were urban by default => for they addressed the needs of the urban population (especially the poor)

- in the absence of real data, rough estimates may be used to classify cities in terms of size:
a. giant cities (over 50,000 inhabitants):
        - Florence, 90,000 before 1348
        - Milan, 75,000 by 1288
        - Venice, 90,000
        - Paris, 70,000 - 80,000 by 1328
        - Bruges, 50,000

b. very large cities (25,000 - 50,000)
        - Bologna, Rome, Naples
        - Barcelona, Valencia
        - Cologne, Lu:beck, Prague

c. large cities (10,000 - 25,000)
        - Pisa, Siena (Italy)
        - the majority of Flemish cities (Arras, Liege)
        - London
        - German cities: Mainz, Bremen, Hamburg, Riga, Ulm, Basel, Zurich, Cracow

d. medium sized/ small towns (2,000 - 10,000)
        - the majority of county towns in England

- much of the urban population had come from the surrounding area => in many cases,  townspeople maintained close relations with relatives in nearby villages
- the suburbs: rows of houses or clusters of cottages laying outside city walls => early regulations against buildings too close to the walls in order to maintain a clear field of fire around their walls
- medieval urban houses had 2 or 3 floors (surviving examples in many Italian cities, Nurenberg, Sighisoara), with shops and workshops on the ground floors level
    > garden plots were in time divided up, and built upon => small, crowded and insanitary courtyards, much like the ugly, stinky courts described by Fr. Engels in 19 C. Manchester
- much of the urban property was owned by families
(huge differences in wealth and income => often reflected in tax lists)
- social distinctions => made apparent in settlement patterns (well to do, patrician classes lived close to the market place; workers in Basel lived outside the city walls)
    * Florence - popolo grasso
                      - popolo minuto

- certain crafts tended to group together
        - tanners in Paris - were all on the right bank of the Seine, above the Ile de la Cite
        - money lenders, jewellers lived close to where richer citizens lived

- ethnic groups clustered in residential areas
        - Hanseatic/German merchants in London and Venice
        - Genoese merchants in Constantinople
        - Jewish merchants => ghettoes appeared more because of Jewish exclusivness than of Christian intolerance