Urban–Rural Connections

Reyerson, Kathryn L.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-38942-4_6

Kathryn L. Reyerson³

Part of the book series: The New Middle Ages ((TNMA))

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Abstract

There were close ties betw een town and country in Montpellier and its region. Networks and connections linked the urban market to rural producers. Woman and men were involved in agricultural production. The case study of the mercer Bernarda de Cabanis reveals interesting connections with women of the agricultural milieu of the Montpellier hinterland. Bernarda lent money to the wives of cultivators and accepted in-kind reimbursement in mercery. She trained agricultural women as mercers in apprenticeship. She also marketed mercery in Montpellier. The question is raised of whether her entrepreneurship had philanthropic overtones as a kind of microcredit. Bernarda’s actions in lending and teaching a trade permitted women of modest cultivator status to acquire marketable skills.

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Notes

1.
See “Land, Houses and Real Estate Investment in Montpellier,” 39–112. The businesswoman Martha de Cabanis had significant rural lands, including vineyards. See “Mother and Sons, Inc.,” Chap. 8.
2.
See Louis Stouff, Arles à la fin du moyen âge, 2 vols. (Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, 1986) and Noël Coulet, Aix en Provence. Espace et relations d’une capitale (milieu XIVe s. – milieu XVe s.), 2 vols. (Aix en Provence: Université de Provence, 1988).
3.
Philip Wolff, “Les bouchers de Toulouse aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles,” Annales du Midi 65 (1953): 375–395.
4.
Francine Michaud, “The Peasant Citizens of Marseille at the Turn of the Fourteenth Century,” in Kathryn Reyerson and John Drendel, eds. Urban and Rural Communities in Medieval France. Provence and Languedoc, 1000–1500 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 275–289.
5.
On the political history of Montpellier, see Bernardin Gaillard, “La condition féodale de Montpelliéret,” Mémoires de la Société archéologique de Montpellier, 2nd ser. 8 (1922): 344–364, and Louis J. Thomas, “Montpellier entre la France et l’Aragon pendant la première moitié du XIVe siècle,” Monspeliensia, mémoires et documents relatifs à Montpellier et à la région montpelliéraine 1, fasc. 1 (Montpellier, 1928–1929): 1–56.
6.
Bonnet, “Les séjours à Montpellier de Jacme le Conquérant roi d’Aragon,” 176–177.
7.
See my study, “Urban/Rural Exchange: Reflections on the Economic Relations of Town and Country in the Region of Montpellier before 1350,” Urban and Rural Communities in Medieval France. Provence and Languedoc, 1000–1500, ed. Kathryn Reyerson and John Drendel (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998): 253–273.
8.
See “The Tensions of Walled Space.”
9.
Jacqueline Caille, “Urban Expansion in the Region of Languedoc from the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century: The Examples of Narbonne and Montpellier,” Urban and Rural Communities in Medieval France. Provence and Languedoc, 1000–1500, ed. Kathryn Reyerson and John Drendel (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998), 51–72.
10.
See “Urban/Rural Exchange.”
11.
See my co-authored article, “Les dynamiques commerciales dans les petites villes languedociennes aux environs de 1300,” with Gilbert Larguier and Monique Bourin in Dynamiques du monde rural dans la conjuncture de 1300. Échanges, prélèvements et consommation en Méditerranée occidentale, ed. Monique Bourin, François Menant and Lluis To Figureras (École française de Rome, 2014), 171–204. See Andrea Caracausi and Christof Jeggle, Commercial Networks and European Cities, 1400–1800 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2014). See also “Urban/Rural Exchange.”
12.
The countryside also housed activities related to the production of linen and woolen cloth. See “Le rôle de Montpellier dans le commerce des draps de laine.”
13.
See “Urban/Rural Exchange.”
14.
A. D. Hérault, II D 95/374, G. Nogareti, passim. See “Mother and Sons, Inc.,” Chap. 8.
15.
See “Land, Houses and Real Estate Investment in Montpellier.”
16.
See “Women in Business,” 134–135.
17.
See the collection of papers in Les disettes dans la conjuncture de 1300 en Méditerranée occidentale, ed. Monique Bourin, John Drendel, and François Menant (Rome: École française de Rome, 2011).
18.
For tables noting women’s activities on the agricultural market, see “Women in Business.”
19.
Henri Bresc, “Marchands de Narbonne et du Midi en Sicile (1300–1460),” Bulletin de la Fédération historique du Languedoc méditerranéen et du Roussillon (1973), 93–99.
20.
See my article, “Montpellier et le trafic des grains en Méditerranée avant 1350,” Montpellier, la Couronne d’Aragon et les Pays de Langue d’Oc (1204–1349), Actes du XIIe Congrès d’Histoire de la Couronne d’Aragon, Mémoires de la Société archéologique de Montpellier XV (Montpellier: 1987): 147–162.
21.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 41r.
22.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 44v. The setier is the equivalent of about 49 liters.
23.
See “Montpellier et le trafic des grains.”
24.
For a discussion of agricultural problems in Languedoc, see Marie-Josèphe Larenaudie, “Les famines en Languedoc au XIVe, siècle,” Annales du Midi 64 (1952): 27–39. See also the discussion in “Commerce and Society in Montpellier,” I: 212–214.
25.
See “Commerce and Society,” II: 169–194, for a synoptic inventory of grain transactions surviving in the notarial registers. For further discussion of the relations between Montpellier and the little towns of its hinterland, see my co-authored article with Bourin and Larguier, “Les dynamiques commerciales dans les petites villes languedociennes aux environs de 1300), 171–204.
26.
For tables of participants in the grape and grain trades, see Chap. 2 of Business, Banking and Finance.
27.
On grape cultivation in the region of Montpellier, see Gaston Galtier, “Le vignoble et le vin dans le Languedoc oriental de la fin du XIe siècle à la Guerre de Cent Ans,” Études médiévales offertes à M. le Doyen Fliche de l’Institut (Montpellier: Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, 1952), 9. See also the invaluable Dion, Histoire de la vigne et du vin en France.
28.
On grape futures, see “Commerce and Society in Montpellier,” I, Chap. 3, section on “Grapes and Wine,” 232–240. See “Mother and Sons, Inc.,” Chap. 8.
29.
See Business, Banking and Finance, 51–55, and “Commerce and Society in Montpellier,” I: 232–240.
30.
See “Women in Business,” 128–130.
31.
See Business, Banking and Finance and “Land, Houses, and Real Estate Investment.”
32.
See Business, Banking and Finance, Chap. 3 on loans.
33.
See Chap. 3 of Business, Banking and Finance. On women and credit in general, see Jordan, Women and Credit. Hutton, Women and Economic Activities in Late Medieval Ghent, 86–87, finds, “One out of every four credit acts includes a woman as creditor, debtor, or surety in her own name, a considerably higher rate than Jordan’s average of 11 to 16 %.”
34.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/369, ff. 97r, 99v, and 103r, over the period 10–25 November 1333.
35.
Business, Banking and Finance, 73–75.
36.
See William Chester Jordan, “Jews on Top: Women and the Availability of Consumption Loans in Northern France in the Mid-Thirteenth Century,” Journal of Jewish Studies 29 (1978): 39–56.
37.
Jordan, Women and Credit, 24–26.
38.
For social/occupational categories used here, see my article, “Population Attraction and Mobility,” 267–8, and Business, Banking and Finance.
39.
On loans by Jews of Montpellier, see R. W. Emery, The Jews of Perpignan in the Thirteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), Appendix 3, 131–133. The Jews were expelled from Montpellier in 1306, and though they returned after 1315, I do not find them in later notarial registers before 1350. For my discussion of Jewish loans, see Business, Banking and Finance, 68–74.
40.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/369, J. Holanie, f. 10v.
41.
On usury in Montpellier, see my article, “Les opérations de crédit dans la coutume et dans la vie des affaires à Montpellier au moyen âge: le problème de l’usure,” Diritto comune et diritti locali nella storia dell’Europa (Milan: Guiffrè, 1980), 189–209.
42.
Of 29 women lenders, 11 were single and 11 widowed, while 7 were married.
43.
See “Women in Business,” and “Mother and Sons, Inc.” for discussion of widows.
44.
“L’Expérience des plaideuses.” The Crusolis family’s heroic attempt at dowry recovery demonstrates considerable agency for married women and a desire for control over resources.
45.
Hutton, Women in Economic Activities in Late Medieval Ghent, 81–86, found webs of credit and the circulation of wealth among women lenders. Certainly, the involvement of women in credit in Ghent parallels that of women in Montpellier, with some slightly different patterns of involvement.
46.
Women were present as lenders in 29 acts and as borrowers in 30.
47.
Fifteen of the 30 women borrowers were not from Montpellier, though 13 of these 15 were from nearby.
48.
Emery, The Jews of Perpignan, 131–133.
49.
See William Chester Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews from Philip Augustus to the Last Capetians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), on Jewish banishments.
50.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/371, J. Holanie, f. 124r.
51.
The municipal chronicle of Montpellier stated in the year 1333 that famine raged, young men were weakened by a diet of raw herbs, and people were dying in the streets, as noted earlier. See “La chronique romane,” Le Petit Thalamus de Montpellier, 347.
52.
For a discussion of issues of subsistence, see “Montpellier et le trafic des grains en Méditerranée avant 1350.” See also Bourin, Drendel and Menant, eds. Les disettes.
53.
See “Medieval Silks in Montpellier: The Silk Market ca. 1250-ca.1350,” Journal of European Economic History, 11 (1982): 117–140.
54.
See “Medieval Silks in Montpellier.”
55.
Farmer, “Paris and the Mediterranean: Evidence from the Late Thirteenth-Century silk Industry,” French Historical Studies 27(2014): 383–419. See also Chap. 5.
56.
See “Medieval Silks in Montpellier.” On linen, see Jean Combes, “L’Industrie et le commerce des toiles à Montpellier de la fin du XIIIe siècle au milieu du XVe,” Recueil de mémoires et travaux publié par la société d’histoire du droit et des institutions des anciens pays de droit écrit, fasc. IX, Mélanges Roger Aubenas (Montpellier, 1974): 181–212.
57.
See “Women in Business,” and “Land, Houses and Real Estate.” See also Chap. 5.
58.
“Population Attraction and Mobility.”
59.
For a description of the family relationship, see A. M. Montpellier, BB 3, J. Laurentii, f. 24r.
60.
On the trade organizations of Montpellier, see Gouron, La réglementation des métiers.
61.
The 1328 Statutes of the mercers are found in A. M. Montpellier, Grand Chartrier, Louvet 1117, as noted earlier.
62.
Bernarda’s activities are recorded in other registers than those of the Cabanis notary Guillelmus Nogareti. See “La participation des femmes de l’élite marchande à l’économie.”
63.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 55r.
64.
Business, Banking and Finance, Chap. 3.
65.
See Chap. 5.
66.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 4v. and A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 4r-4v. In the second loan, the wife of the cultivator Alazacia certified to the transactions renouncing the Senatusconsultum Velleianum, among Roman law protections. The benefacio muliebri and other protections (ambo omnibus bastidis) were also mentioned. See Adolf Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1953).
67.
Recall Jordan, Women and Credit. See also Jordan, “Jews on Top: Women and the Availability of Consumption Loans in Northern France in the Mid-Thirteenth Century.”
68.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, f. 134r. This hiring/apprenticeship document is partially illegible.
69.
See my forthcoming article, “Economics and Culture: The Exchange between Montpellier and Papal Avignon,” in The Worlds of Papal Avignon, ed. Susan J. Noakes. See also my collaborative paper with the late Faye Powe, “Metalwork of Montpellier: Techniques and Workshop Practices in the Fourteenth Century,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, 1984. Workshop practices are perhaps best revealed in contracts associated with the silversmiths and the goldsmiths.
70.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/369, J. Holanie. ff. 43v and 107v, for the mercery sales.
71.
Business, Banking and Finance, Chap. 2.
72.
A. M. Montpellier, BB 1, J. Grimaudi, ff. 7r, 21r, 27r, and 50v. In the first act of September 1293, she was described as Maria Orlhaque, wife of Bernardus; in subsequent acts of October, November, and December, she is called widow. See also A. D. Hérault, II E 95/368, J. Holanie, ff. 114v and 142r, for the remaining acts.
73.
In another case, the wife of a wood merchant bought silk for 40 l. melg. from a local mercer; she may have been acquiring goods for her own enterprise, common to merchants’ and artisans’ wives, as apprenticeship contracts to teach techniques of silk embroidery suggest. See A. M. Montpellier, BB 1, J. Grimaudi, f. 10v.
74.
A. M. Montpellier, BB 1, J. Grimaudi, f. 10v.
75.
See “Medieval Silks in Montpellier.” Among the clients of the most prominent specialists in mercery of Lucca, the Cabanis brothers, was a widow of Toulouse who purchased this product in person in Montpellier. Another widow of Toulouse, also a Cabanis client, dealt through a procurator in Montpellier to purchase mercery of Lucca. See A. D. Hérault, II E 95/ 374, G. Nogareti, ff. 30 and 38r.
76.
On the cloth trade, see “Le rôle de Montpellier dans le commerce des draps de laine avant 1350.” Hutton, Women and Economic Activities in Late Medieval Ghent, finds women as active entrepreneurs in the cloth trade in Ghent, though deferring to men in the largest transactions. See 115–119. She also finds husbands and wives in economic partnership in many artisanal activities (118–119).
77.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/369, J. Holanie, f. 64v.
78.
A cultivator and his wife bought 4 l. 6 s. 8 d. of wool cloth from a draper of Montpellier on 30 March 1333. See A. D. Hérault, II E 95/369, J. Holanie, f. 5v.
79.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/369, J. Holanie, f. 66v. See Chap. 8 for discussion of prostitutes in Montpellier.
80.
A. D. Hérault, II E 95/369, J. Holanie, f. 110r. On the same day, Ricardis Contastina, widow of a wood merchant, and a cultivator of Montpellier established a debt to a Montpellier draper for 12 s. 9 d. t. p. for wool cloth, probably for their own use.
81.
For tables detailing the activities of women in commercial transactions, see “Women in Business,” and Business, Banking and Finance, passim.
82.
See “Le rôle de Montpellier dans le commerce des draps de laine.”
83.
See Joseph and Frances Gies, Women in the Middle Ages (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1978), Chap. 9.
84.
See my study of market sellers on the Montpellier marketplace and the horizontal and vertical ties connecting women in that context, “Les réseaux économiques entre femmes à Montpellier (fin XIIIe-mi-XIVe),” in Lucie Laumonier and Lucie Galano, eds. Montpellier au Moyen Âge. Bilan et approches nouvelles (Brepols, forthcoming).
85.
See “Changes in Testamentary Practice in Montpellier.” See also Chap. 9.
86.
On wet nursing, see Rebecca Lynn Winer, “The Mother and the Dida [Nanny]: Female Employers and Wet Nurses in Fourteenth-Century Barcelona,” in Jutta Gisela Sperling, ed. Medieval and Renaissance Lactations. Images, Rhetorics, Practices (Farnham Surrey and Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2013), 55–78. On Montpellier, see Leah Otis-Cour, “Municipal Wet Nurses in Fifteenth-Century Montpellier,” in Barbara A. Hanawalt, ed. Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986): 83–93.
87.
See Carol Bresnahan Menning, Charity and State in Late Renaissance Italy: The Monte di Pietà of Florence (New York: Cornell University Press, 1993). See also the work of Maria Giuseppinna Muzzarelli, “I Monti di Pietà fra tradizione e innovazione: una storia in cinque punti,” in: Prestare ai poveri. Il credito su pegno e i Monti di Pietà in area Mediterranea (secoli XV-XIX) (Naples: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 2007), 31–42. The first evidence for the monte was apparently London in the 1360s.
88.
Julius Kirshner, Pursuing Honor While Avoiding Sin: The Monte delle Doti of Florence (Milan: A. Guiffré, 1978).
89.
The last decades have produced an extensive scholarly literature on microfinance and microcredit. Microcredit is a narrower concept concerning small loans. Microfinance concerns financial services more broadly. See James C. Brau and Gary M. Woller, “Microfinance: A Comprehensive Review of the Existing Literature,” The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance 9 (2014): 1–28 as accessed in http://marriottschool.net/emp/brau/JEFBV%202004%20Vol.%209%20Micro%20Finance.pdf (12/14/15). See also Susanna Khavul, “Microfinance: Creating Opportunities for the Poor?” Academy of Management (2010): 57–71 at http://www.neeley.tcu.edu/uploadedFiles/Academic_Departments/Management/zol003102949p.pdf (accessed 12/14/15).
90.
I was first exposed to the concept applied to a medieval context by my Ph.D. student Kelly Morris, who is working on the orthodox Beguine house of Roubaud in Marseille, animated by Douceline de Digne. The Beguines made small loans to modest-status women. See also Muhammed Yunus, “What Is Microcredit?” Microsphere Fund for People and Nature http://www.microsfere.org/microcr-dit/quest-ce-que-le-microcr-dit-par-muhammad-yunus.html (accessed 1/1/16).
91.
See Chap. 9 for treatment of women’s philanthropy.
92.
Compare with The Art of the Deal.

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Department of History, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Kathryn L. Reyerson

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Reyerson, K.L. (2016). Urban–Rural Connections. In: Women's Networks in Medieval France. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38942-4_6

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38942-4_6
Published: 13 August 2016
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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