Introduction to the XVI Century

From Euan Cameron (Oup, 2006)

1. Introductory Remarks

• XVI Century: a turning point in the History of Europe

- XV Century still Middle Ages

- By 1600 all the reference-points had changed

• An age of adjustment

Keywords

• Growth in population• Price revolution• Print revolution• Reformation and Counter-Reformation• Rise of the nation states• Growth of secular thought in philosphy,

politics, and science

The scene in 1500

• Population decline

• Geopolitical shift: from north-south to east-west

• Social structure was still typical of late medieval world

Classes

• Class, generational, or gender equality was the last thing in the minds of the people of the late Middle Ages

• Class composition: greater or lesser nobility, bourgeoisie, artisans, greater or lesser tenant farmers, labourers, servants

• Clergy, a parallel society: priesthood, monks, nuns, and also clerks (literate people)

Renaissance and Middle Ages

• a bridge between the Middle Ages and the Modern era

• Middle Ages: intermediate time between Greek and Roman antiquity and Modern era

• Renaissance: belief that Europe had recovered the elegance and sensibilities of ancient classical models

2. The Economy

• Succumb of the Mediterranean (Italy and Iberia): the centre of economic gravity shifted decisively north-westwards to the Atlantic seaboard, in an age of overseas exploration, followed by economic exploitation and colonial settlement

The “long XVI century” (1470-1650)

• Main characteristics: 1. the recovery of population; 2. unprecedented rise in prices (aka ‘price revolution’) though not in wages; 3. inflation; 4. immiseration of large section of the population; 5. birth of modern economy in terms of growth, innovation, and accumulation; 6. emergence of agricultural capitalism

Population

• Europe:

in 1500= 60.9 million in 1550= 68.9 million in 1600= 77.9 million

with a rise of the century of 28%(See Jan de Vries Tables, and p. 20 of the volume)

Prices

• Rampant inflation.• Explanations: 1. Credit, in particular new forms of funded

public debt, or the establishment of joint-stock banks and bourses;

2. Impact of bullion imports from the New World

Wages

• Wages failed to keep pace with prices

• Northern Europe show the wages index rising by 50%, France no more than 10%

Eastern Europe

• Victim of economic retardation

• Stigma of ‘backwardness’

• Agrarian regime could be described as ‘market-oriented feudalism’

The Mediterranean lands

• Italy, Iberia and southern France became semi-periphery (Wallerstein)

• Even though most parts of the Mediterranean maintained their legacy of urbanization

• Among the reasons also the burden of state taxation and the public date

• Also wages fell, prices rose: underconsumption was the ultimate barrier to economic growth

3. Society

• Classes or Orders?- Marxism: priority to economic factors (who did

and who did not control the means of production)

- Opposite camp argues that XVI and XVII century society was much more hierarchical structured in terms of status, orders, and ‘estates’. Orders: clergy, nobility, third estate. This approach was inclined to argue for a more harmonious society

Questions

• Was there a division between Western and Eastern, or Northern and Southern Europe?

• Were the divisions between urban and rural society rigid or fluid?

• How much physical and social mobility was there?• Were there increasing divides between rich and

poor?• What impact came from major changes of the

century (for example the Reformation crisis)?

The bonds of society

• An individual of the XVI century might be bonded in XVI century society in a number of different ways: extended family, village, parish, guild, religious confraternity. Of course might be bonded to a master or lord (work). Less common at the time belonging to a State

Family

• Many family households would have three generations living together

• 10-15% of adult were not married (for financial reasons)

• France-Italy complex of connected living units• About 90% of people lived in rural

communities and villages rather than large towns or cities

Church

• Focal point for social life: religion but also meetings

• With the reformation struggle all institutional churches sought to reinforce parochial loyalty and control (and people spent more time in church)

• A place for education (Sunday school)• Marriage in the church (after the Council of

Trent)

Economic guilds

• Controlling conditions of work and trade

• Protecting an interest group

• In Italy, Spain and the Netherlands might have a religious dimension as well

Social hierarchies

• William Harrison in Descriptions of England (1577) divided “people into 4 sorts”: 1. nobles; 2. citizens and burghers; 3. yeomen in the countryside; 4. day labourers and servants

• In Eastern Europe still existed serfs

• No severe rural riots in the century which can be seen exclusively as class wars of peasants against lords or the monarchy (though it was the major factor)

Town and Cities

• About 3% lived in urban communities of more than 40,000 people

• About 8% in communities of 10,000

• Urban society had a more complex set of relationships

Elites and Status 1

• Existence of a composite ‘nobility’ and ‘aristocracy’ (rule of the best) based on birth, virtue (military valour), competence (counsellor), and education

• Nobility and its associated power was bas based on land ownership, and income from land

Elites and Status 2

• A key consideration for the elite was ‘privilege’.

- positive right to do something: sit in the House of Lords or other chambers; be tried in a special court; carry weapons openly; being vassal of a fief

- or a special exemption: from taxes

Geographical and Social Mobility

• XVI century was significantly mobile:

- seasonal migrations- Wars forced many people to move- Male mobility also produced a female mobility- Student and religious dissidents- Social interchange between country and town

Gender relations

• Spread of printing contributed to debate on gender relationships (there were both misogynist and proto-feminist writings)

• Major restrictions on what legal contracts women could sign in their own right

• First women ‘rulers’: Mary and Elizabeth of England, Mary of Scotland, Catherine de Medici

Women and Work

• Women could help/work with

- artisan production, - farm activities, - typesetters or proof-readers

Women and religion

• Very negative impact of religion

• Protestant considered them both inferior and dangerous (because of their sexual wiles). Circles around Luther fostered misogynist writings

• New religious teaching should keep women in their place at home as obidient wives and dutiful mothers

Control over the poor

• The number of poor increased and they became more dangerous, especially in urban areas

• Begging was banned or severely controlled

• Effect of religious conflicts: reduction of charity in protestant areas. Monasteries and confraternities removed traditional sources of help for the advocacy of salvation by faith alone

Social Control

• At the end of the XVI century urban Western Europe had a better controlled set of social ‘system’

• But poverty on the street or within churches, vagabondage, street gangs, etc. were not eradicated at all. And European-wide food crises of 1590s made them worse

Fears and tensions

• Reformation struggles

• Shift from the intellectual optimism of the humanist-led Renaissance to an anti-Renaissance, where skepticism, doubt, irrationality predominated (for example ‘witchcraft’)

• The century ended with a gloomy depression years of the 1590s-1610s