The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [11]
To the early medieval mind, the universe of Augustine was static and unchanging. The world had been made for the edification of man in order to bring him closer to God. It had no other purpose. Nature was inscrutable and there was nothing to be gained from its study. All that mattered was preparation for the next life. The attitude towards the natural world was at best apathetic, more often deeply pessimistic. Objects of everyday reality were meaningless except as symbols of God’s incomprehensible design.
Into this backward-looking, ritualistic, rigidly structured life, the growing economic forces at work in the new towns brought stress. As the trade in surplus goods increased, merchants found that the raw materials they needed were controlled by feudal lords who neither understood nor cared about commerce. Transportation of goods through their lands was both dangerous and costly. Alternative sites for commerce had to be found and the towns seemed to offer the best alternative.
Free from the feudal bonds of the countryside, the urban dweller was envied by his peasant counterpart. ‘Stadtluft macht frei’ (the air of the town makes you free), they said in eleventh-century Germany, because after a statutory period of residence there a serf would automatically become a freedman. Soon enough the townspeople, with their economic strength and their craftsmen supported by the general surplus, began to demand from kings and emperors those statutes which would reinforce their freedom in law. Merchants who had no place in the feudal pyramid of serf, knight, priest and king now had the money to buy social status.
As the aristocrats began to commute their serfs’ dues from service to cash, money began to weaken the old social structure. Ambition began to express itself in outward show. ‘It is too easy to change your station now,’ complained the Italian, Thomasin of Zirclaria. ‘Nobody keeps his place!’ The word ‘ambition’ took on common usage for the first time.
The wheel of fortune makes its appearance. As Dame Fortune spins the wheel, the fortunes of the ambitious rise and fall.
In this fourteenth-century Catalan wall-painting a Jew is shown wearing the distinctive yellow circle which all Jews were forced by law to wear sewn on their outdoor clothing.
The new supply of cash brought a critical change in the position of the monarch. Until now, his ability to raise revenue had been limited by the nature of the feudal contract between him and his baronial vassals. These contracts had been drawn up at a time when there was little or no cash, and dues were paid in military service or certain forms of aid. Moreover, the king had not been able to by-pass his aristocrats and speak direct to their vassals because in doing so he would have infringed their rights. This inability to raise revenue had hampered central government, but the increasing cash in circulation now strengthened the king’s position, enabling him to raise taxes whenever he chose without upsetting the old land-and-service contract.
Money also made longer journeys possible. As the forest roads became more secure, craftsmen and especially builders were encouraged to travel. Architectural styles spread and became more uniform. It was at this time too that anti-Semitism, previously rare, began to increase. Money-lending, which was forbidden by the Christian Church, was permitted under Jewish law, and the Jews, prevented from owning land, turned to the new business currency. Many of them grew rich and were resented.
The towns in which all this brawling dynamic activity took place were for the most part built round a large open square, the houses terraced, with gardens at the rear.