Kap 3 Immigrant Mercers and Silk Workers
[…] the mercers, who were the principal retailers of silk cloth and mercery goods in Paris, also took the lead in organizing and monitoring silk cloth production. […] In Venice, the weavers themselves apparently organized silk production. In late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Paris, fourteenth-century Lucca, and fifteenth-century Florence, by contrast, silk textiles were produced through a putting-out system, one in which silk entrepreneurs – mercers in Paris, setaioli in Italy – played a central roll. Nevertheless, while the records from Lucca and Florence allow us to conclude that the setailoi owned the silk fiber through every stage of the production process, the sources for Paris do not allow us to draw the same conclusion. Indeed, it seems likely, as I will argue, that silk dyers and weavers in Paris were under the regulatory, but not economic, control of the mercers. [p76]
By 1275 we begin to discern that as a consequence of their social, political, and corporate prominence the mercers enjoyed ease of access to the royal provost, and as a result of that access they were able to convince him to promulgate statues that protected their economic interests while restricting the behaviour of silk artisans in other guilds. [p78] Exempel, provosten återberättar köpmännens klagan:
When some of the mercers of the city of Paris lend out their raw silk in order for it be worked or thrown … the throwsters pawn it or sell it to Lombards or Jews or they exchange with [the Lombards and Jews] the good silk that had been lent to them … for waste silk, which they then return in place of the good silk to the one who had lent it to them. […] Fagniez, Gustave, ed. Documents relatifs à l’histoire de l’industrie et du commerce en France i två volymer, vol 1:1277-278. Paris: Alphonse Picard et Fils, Editeurs, 1898. citerad i Farmer p78
Responding to this collective complaint from the mercers, the royal provost orohibited Jews and Lombards in Paris from taking raw or dyed silk fiber as a pledge for consumer loans. Provosten säger också att ingen får sälja eller pantsätta silkesfibrer som getts för att bearbetas: brottslingar förvisas från staden. Förvisning var i de nordfranska städerna straffet för skuldsatta som inte kunde betala sina skulder: provosten behandlar dem inte främst som tjuvar utan som skuldsatta. Vävare kunde blanda restprodukter i det färdiga silket, färgare kunde blöta silket för att göra det tyngre (betalning per viktenhet): detta var misrepresenting goods in the marketplace, men inte stöld: köpmännen ägde inte silket medan det färgades eller vävdes. Däremot kunde de kontrollera produktionen på annat vis: vissa köpmän lät bygga vävar- och färgarverkstäder i eller i anslutning till den egna handelsboden eller verkstaden, och från 1324 fungerade köpmannagillet som kvalitetskontrollanter för hela silkesproduktionen. (Farmer talar här om vävare av de större tygstyckena, draps de soye – vävningen av mindre tygstycken kontrollerades av köpmännen direkt, dvs de överlät aldrig äganderätten till silket till vävarna.) [p79-83] Åtminstone en handelsman – Lando Belloni av Lucca, med egendom i det lombardiska kvarteret i Paris, ska ha fungerat som arbetsledare eller förman för vävandet och färgandet. [p93]
Överlåtandet av silket under vävningen och färgningen innebär ett överlåtande av risk. Ett enda misstag under färgningen förstör hela arbetet; vävningen innebär en risk därför att produktionstiden är så lång: när stycket är klart har priserna förändrats. [p84]
Många silkeshandelsmän i Paris var invandrare. In the period from 1294 to c. 1340 thirteen mercers whose principal taxpaying address was in or very near the Troussevache, Quincampoix, or Lombard mercery either are known to have originated in northern Italy or had surnames pointing to possible origins in seven different silk-weaving towns and regions – Lucca, Venice, Cyprus, Frankish Greece, the Levant, Iberia, and Cologne. Moreover, three additional men who were apparently from Cyprys, one apparently from Venice, and one apparently from Montpellier, all of them having tax addresses in the Troussevache, Quincampoix, or Lombard mercery, may have been mercers; and a “Lombard” mercer whose precise hometown is unknown was taxed on the rue Quincampoix. Even if some of their surnames reflected the origins of progenitors rather than the origins of the mercers themselves, the evidence is still striking, especially when we note that the only mercer with a surname indicating Mediterranean origins who was not taxed in these three areas was Jehan of Apulia (de Puille), a mercer of modest means who was taxed in the Petit-Pont mercery. Also striking is the fact that at least seven of these mercers conducted business with the most elite royal and aristocratic courts. It seems, then, that silk-weaving regions were well represented among Parisian mercers who paid taxes in the most prestigious mercers’ neighbourhoods. [p96-97] Farmer nämner exempelvis en Jehan le Roumain, skattskriven i Troussevache, som även dyker upp i Eleonoras av Kastilien, drottning i England, household accounts. [p95]
Den parisiska silkesvävare och handelsmän åtnjöt över huvud taget goda kontakter med Europas kungahus. Förutom nämnde Jehan le Roumains kontakter med det engelska hovet kan nämnas Lando Belloni av Lucca, som av det franska hovet fick köpa silkestyger som tillhört drottning Clémence d’Anjou; en grupp handelsmän med efternamnet Tabarie (det vill säga, från Tiberias i kungadömet Jerusalem) sålde huvuddukar till grevinnorna av Artois, Flandern och Hainaut, och även till drottning Margareta av England. Parisiskt silke ägdes av Isabella av Frankrike, Edvard II:s hustru och drottning av England, och av drottning Blanka: till trettonhundratalets slut har alla kända ägare av parisiskt silke blods- eller äktenskapsband till den franske kungen. [p97-103]
The evidence thus suggests that the mercers of Paris were the principal organizers of silk production there and that their numbers included individuals from nearly every silk-producing region of Europe and the Mediterranean. Some of the mercers from Venice, Cyprus, and Lucca, moreover, appear to have links with silk workers [var skattskrivna nära varandra, jobbade förmodligen ihop], including a few from Venice, Cyprus, and an unidentifend part of Italy. It is highly probable that some of these immigrant mercers played a role in convincing some of the immigrant silk workers from their place of origin to move to Paris and that those workers, as well as some of the immigrant mercers, played a role in introducing new silk technologies to Paris. [p100-101]
It was primarily through the household workshops that medieval artisans and entrepreneus conveyed their skills to their peers and to the hext generation, and the fragmentary evidence suggests this was the case among immigrant mercers and silk weavers in Paris. Men and women with knowledge of silk production immigrated to Paris, bringing their families with them or marrying Parisians once they arrived. They set up workshops and began to train their spouses, their children, and – in some cases – their apprentices to practice the skills that they had learned in silk-producing towns in various parts of the Mediterranean. [p105]
Kap 4 Gender, Work, and the Parisian Silk Industry
The evidence from the Countess of Flanders’s account book, which tells us that her agent Marie du Val gave alms to a poor silk throwster, provides corroborating evidence [utöver de skattelängder Farmer diskuterar i stycket innan: arbetare i mansdominerade gillen i silkesindustrin betalade minst dubbelt så mycket i skatt] that the incomes of a number of women in predominantly female silk crafts were near the bottom of the economic hierarchy. Such evidence is bolstered, moreover, by the guild statutes, where we find both throwsters and women weavers of silk head covering being accused of pawning off or selling silk fiber that had been entrusted to them to psin or weave. We find no such accusations against the predominantly male guild that participated in the silk industry. These discussions of silk women’s involvement with pawnbrokers suggest that many silk women were drawn into destructive cycles of consumer debt, presumably because there were times when their incomes did not match their expenses. [p114]
Betyder väl också att arbetet var deras huvudsakliga inkomstkälla? Dvs, de kunde inte hitta andra sätt att dryga ut inkomsterna.
Å andra sidan, att de betalade skatt över huvud taget innebär att de var rikare än 60% av hushållen i Paris. Av uppskattningsvis 1600 till 4800 yllespinnare syns i skattelängderna bara tio. [p123-124]
Another institutional circumstance [förutom gynnsamma arvslagar och änkeskydd] that helped create favourable conditions, in late thirteenth-century Paris, for silk women who were either single or widowed was the strength, there, of the movement of semireligious women known as Beguines. As Tanya Stabler Miller has demonstrated, the landscape of Paris was dotted with small communities of independent Beguines, many of whom were involved in silk work. And as the testament of the wealthy Beguine mercer Jehanne du Faut makes clear, the bonds between Beguines could cross social and economic divisions, thereby mitigating some of the disasvantages that fell upon women who had no familial inheritence to draw upon. Jehanne du Faut bequeathed a house in the Parisian Beguinage to a silk throwster, and she desginated as her principal heir a woman named Beatrice la Grande who had worked as her “factor” (“Beatrice dicta la grant factor et impensor”). [p133]
Kap 5 Jews, Foreign Lombards, and Parisian Silk Women
Gilleslagen som citeras ovan, som förbjuder (kvinnliga) silkesarbetare från att sälja eller pantsätta silke, nämner judar och lombarder. Judar och lombarder utgjorde under andra hälften av tolvhundratalet de två grupper som specialiserade sig på panthandel, and both groups included individuals who worked with (and thus could assess the quality of) silk fiber. [p138]
Men! Kvinnor som lånade eller pantsatte brukade, under tolvhundratalet, föredra judiska penninglånare. (Judiska penninglånare gav i större utsträckning än lombarder små lån till förmånligare villkor.
Första stycket. Kvinnor som behövde låna pengar var mer benägna att låna av judar. Under tolvhundratalets andra hälft hade bilden av judar och lombarder som konsumtionskreditspecialister etablerat sig. Bägge lånade i långt större utsträckning och till långt fler än andra penningutlånare, men lombarder lånade i högre utsträckning till personer och institutioner högre i samhällsstegen; judar i högre utsträckning till fattiga och lågborna. [p139-140]
Lombarderna blev aktiva norr om alperna i slutet av elvahundratalet. Innan elvahundratalet sysslade lånade de flesta judiska penningutlånare bara mot pant. During the prosperous twelfth century, however, when increasingly effective royal and seigneurial protection helped guarantee Jewish loans, and when the Capetian kings had not yet begun a century-long cycle of arbitrary seizures of Jewish property and expulsion of Jews, French and Francophone Jewish moneylenders expanded their commercial and moneylending activities to include written contractual arrangements. Their clients included not only territorial princes but also prominent religious institutions, such as the abbey of Saint Denis. Documents of practice suggest, however, that by the late 1240s Jewish lending had become increasingly marginalized and that pawn loans had once again gained prominence. Thus by the 1240s, if not before, French Jewish moneylenders were specializing in the kinds of loans that were especially attractive to workers of modest means, including single women artisans. [p140]
Judiska communities hämtade sig aldrig från fördrivningen från den franske kungens domäner 1182: från 2000 judar i Paris 1182 till 82 hushåll (uppskattningsvis drygt 300 personer) 1296. [p140-141]
French Jewish moneylenders suffered a second major blow in 1223, when King Louis VIII declared that all debtors who had outstanding Jewish loans had three years to pay back the loans, they were only responsible for paying back the principal, and that principal would go to the king or other lords who exercised direct lordship over Jews rather than to the Jewish lenders who extended the loans in the first place. In one fell swoop, then, the king negated the single most important source of income for French Jews, wiped out most of their capital, brought money into his own coffers, and won the support of French Christians who owed money to Jewish moneylenders. Kungen bjöd två år senare in lombardiska penninglånare till Paris, förmodligen för att stabilisera kreditmarknaden. [p141]
Ludvig IX, helgonet, beslagtog på nytt judiska lån 1227. 1228 förbjöd han judar från att ockra; 1230 definierades ocker som allt tagande av ränta. After he took his crusader vow in 1244, moreover, Louis IX apparently redoubled his efforts to stamp out French Jewish moneylending. [p141] [hur förhöll han sig till lombardiska ockrare? – in 1269 and again in 1274 Louis IX and Philip III ordered the expulsion of all Lombard, Cahorsin, and foreign “usurers” from France. p161] Många judar återgick till pantlån, eller försökte bokföringsmässigt dölja penninglån; vissa flydde. Narrative sources suggest, however, that in Paris Jewish moneylending continued right up to the expulsion of 1306. [p143]
More revealing still [än Parisian charters from the 1230s som visar hur man dolde lån] are the the inquests that King Louis IX conducted in 1247-1248 in order to investigate corruption among his administrators. Since Jewish loans were now considered illegal, such corruption included efforts to enforce Jewish loans.[p143] [se även Anti-Corruption Campaigns in the 13th Century – J Med Hist 35:2]
In his examinations of the inquests from Touraine, Anjou, Normandy, Maine, Artois, and lower Languedoc, Gérard Nahon found that 37 percent of borrowers on Jewish loans were from small villages. Among both rural and urban loans, moreover, Nahon found that over two-thirds of the transactions involved original loans of less than 5 livres. [Nahon, Gérard. Le credit et les juifs dans la France du XIIIe siècle, p1126-1127.Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociale, 24/5 (1969): 1121-1148] The inquests from Picardy affirm this general pattern. [Jordan. An Aspect of Credit in Picardy in the 1240s: The Deterioration of Jewish-Christian Credit Relations, p142. Revue des études juives 142 (1983): 141-152] By the 1240s, Nahon and Jordan suggest, French Jewish moneylenders had become specialists in modest loans, loans that helped village peasants, widows, and presumably spinsters survive from one week to another. [p143] Från Paris finns inga direkta bevis, men skattelängderna visar på mycket måttliga judiska tillgångar: förmodligen mycket måttliga judiska lån. Narrativa källor stöder detta. [p144]
Similarly, a number of narrative accounts concerning the alleged Parisian host desecration of 1290 indicated that the Jewish man who perpetrated the desecration was a moneylender. The man, the narratives claimed, had offeredt to redeem the clothing that a poor Christian woman had pawned to him if she would bring him a consecrated host as payment for her loan. [p144]
One final Parisian source, the chronicle of Geoffrey of Paris, looked favourably on jewish moneylending, lamenting, after the expulsion of 1306, that poor Christians were going to suffer as a result of this royal act: All the poor complain, for the Jews were much milder/In the conduct of their business than the Christians are now;/These demand guarantees and mortgages, pledges, too, and take everything/Until they have stripped men quite bare … but had the Jews remained/In the kingdom of France, Christians would have had/Much succour that is their no longer. [p144] [“Chronique rimée attribuée á Geoffroi de Paris,” 119, lines 3121-3127, 3762-3765. English translation by Richard Howard, quoted by Shatzmiller, Shylock Reconsidered, 98. Schatzmiller, Joseph. Shylock Reconsidered: Jews, Moneylending, and Medieval Society. Berkely: University of California Press, 1990]
Documentary evidence thus suggests that Jewish moneylenders in arious parts of thirteenth-century northern France specialized in modest pawn loans and that many of them were women whose lending activities met the needs of women borrowers. [p145]
[judiska penninglån spred sig bland allmogen – en allmoge beroende av dessa lån för att överleva. Kan inte de Vitrys tal om furstars judar, om kristna judar, vara ett försök att brygga en ‘ockrets två kulturer’ – att få till stånd ett allmänt ockerhat? snarare än ett uttryck för ett brett förankrat allmänt hat]
Andra stycket. Förhållandet mellan parisiska och judiska silkesarbetare.
Tredje stycket. Utvecklingen under trettonhundratalet.
If, in the thirteenth century, women silk workers easily borrowed money from Jewish moneylenders, and possbily Lombard moneylenders as well, and if their numbers inluded Jewish textile workers and entrepreneurs, the same was not necessarily true in the fourteenth century, when royal repression of both the Jewish and the foreign Lombard communities brought about major transformations. [p157-158]
For the Jews of France, the long thirteenth century came to an end in 1306, when King Philip the Fair ordered the expulsion of all the Jews of his kingdom. [p158] William C. Jordan has estimated that between 100,000 and 150,000 Jews were sent into exile in 1306. The exiles were allowed to take som travel money and the clothing on their backs, but otherwise were compelled to leave behind all of their assets, including their business inventories and records. The numbers, and poverty, of these exiles placed enormous pressure on both the Hewish and the Christian communities where they settled – in northern Spain, Provence, Savoy, Hainault, Flanders, and Germany – leading to new waves of anti-Jewish sentiment and violence in the early fourteenth century. [p158] [Jordan. The French Monarchy and the Jews, p202-213, 215, 223-224, 230-237. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989]
In 1315, King Louis X issued a charter inviting Jews to resettle in France for twelve years. A few Jews did return, but we do not know much about their numbers; nor is it clear when exactly they left again: it seems, in fact, that a number of them left France at least five years before the charter expired in 1327. Between 1327 and 1361, there were virtually no Jews in France. [p158]
se även Jordan “Jews on Top” i Journal of Jewish Studies 29 (1978)
rucksichtslosekritik 