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Accommodating plague in medieval Marseille

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Daniel Lord Smail
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Continuity and Change , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , May 1996 , pp. 11 - 41
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

ENDNOTES

1 For the account see the ‘Breve chronicon clerici anonymi’, in de Smet, J.-J., Corpus chronicorum Flandriae, vol. 3(Brussels, 1855), 14–15.Google Scholar

2 On this see Bean, J. M. W., ‘The Black Death: the crisis and its social and economic consequences’, in Williman, Danieled., The Black Death: the impact of the fourteenth-century plague (Binghamton, New York, 1982), 25.Google Scholar

3 Biraben, Jean-Noël, Les hommes et la peste en France et dans les pays européens et méditerranéens, vol. 1 (Paris and the Hague, 1975), 230–40.Google Scholar

4 Boccaccio, Giovanni, The Decameron, trans. McWilliam, G. H. (London, 1972), 50–8.Google ScholarThe Black Death: a turning point in history?, edited by Bowsky, William M., (New York, 1971) contains two vignettes taken from the chronicles of Agnolo di Tura del Grasso and Jean de Venette; see pp. 13–18.Google ScholarSee also the well-known chronicle of Matteo Villani, in Croniche di Giovanni, Matteo e Filippo Villani, vol. 2 (Trieste, 1857–1858), 7–10.Google Scholar

5 E.g. Villani, Matteo, Croniche, vol. 2, p. 9Google Scholar, col. 1: ‘Tra gl'infedeli cominciò questa inumanità crudele, che le madri e' padri abbandonavano i figliuoli, e i figliuoli le madri e' padri, e l'uno fratello l'altro e gli altri conguinti…’. These were common literary tropes found in many plague chronicles. Coulton's, G. G.The Black Death (New York, 1932), 75–88, provides a useful survey that takes the accounts literally.Google Scholar

6 See, among others, Gasquet, Francis Aidan, The great pestilence (A.D. 1348–9), now commonly known as the Black Death (London, 1893)Google Scholar; Thompson, James Westfall, ‘The aftermath of the Black Death and the aftermath of the Great War’, The American Journal of Sociology 26 (1921), 565–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Bowsky ed., The Black Death; and Coulton, , The Black Death.Google Scholar There has never been a consensus on the subject, however. Höniger, Robert, Der schwarze Tod in Deutschland: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden, 1973 [1882])Google Scholar, minimized the impact of the plague on political and commercial affairs, as did Charles Creighton in A history of epidemics in Britain (Cambridge, 1891).Google ScholarThe collection of articles in Bowsky, ed., The Black DeathGoogle Scholar, debates the issue. See also Herlihy, David, Medieval and Renaissance Pistoia (New Haven, 1967), 111Google Scholar, where he argues that the plague struck hardest against the poor and the young, sparing the economically, socially, and politically active part of the population and thus permitting continuity of institutions. Calvi, Giulia (Histories of a plague year: the social and the imaginary in baroque Florence, trans. Biocca, Dario and Ragan, Bryant T. Jr., (Berkeley, 1989),)Google Scholar undermines the assumption that people smitten with plague were typically abandoned by their families.

7 Gasquet, , The great pestilence, 217Google Scholar. Elsewhere he writes of ‘a wound deep in the social body’ (p. xvi). As Gasquet explains in the introduction (p. xvi), his own account was written in part to challenge the more moderate history provided by Creighton in A history of epidemics; see pp. 139‐40, where Creighton remarks that in England the dead were buried expeditiously, vacancies among the clergy were filled swiftly, and manor courts continued to meet and transact business.

8 This position is presented most effectively by the sociologist James Westfall Thompson in ‘The aftermath of the Black Death’.Google Scholar

9 The supposition of a March or April height accords well with the observations of Emery, R. W.in ‘The Black Death of 1348 in Perpignan’, Speculum 42(1967), 611–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Elisabeth Carpentier used the evidence of chronicles and council deliberations to argue that the Black Death reached its height in Orvieto during the month of July, although deaths were mounting in May and June; see Une ville devant lapeste: Orvieto et la Peste Noire de 1348 (Paris, 1962), 121–22.Google Scholar Herlihy and Klapisch give evidence showing that the plague in Florence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was a summer phenomenon, particularly serious in the month of July; see Herlihy, David and Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane, Les toscans et leurs families: une étude du catasto florentin de 1427 (Paris, 1978), 192.Google Scholar

11 Twenty-two registers are extant for the years 1318 to 1400. Each of them generally covered a year's worth of business from the autumn of one year to the autumn of the next.Google Scholar

12 The vicar, nominated by the Angevin crown in Naples, was the chief administrative officer of the city.Google Scholar

13 Département des Bouches-du-Rhone, Ville de Marseille, Inventaire sommaire des archives communales antérieures à 1790 (hereafter Inventaire), série BB, vol. 1 (Marseille, 1909), 47.Google Scholar

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid., 55.

16 Bowsky, William M., ‘The impact of the Black Death upon Sienese government and society’, Speculum 39 (1964), 19–34; Carpentier, Une ville devant la peste, 122 and following.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

17 See the casebook of the notary Peire Giraut, Marseille, France, Archives Départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône (hereafter ADBR) 381E 77, fos. 22r–33v.Google Scholar

18 Archives Municipals de la Ville de Marseille (hereafter AM) FF166, fos. 6v–11v.Google Scholar

19 These are the casebooks of Jacme Aycart, Peire Giraut, and Guilhem Johan, respectively ADBR 355E 1, ADBR 381E 77, and AM 1 II 61.Google Scholar

20 ADBR 355E 1, fo. 114r.Google Scholar

21 ADBR 38IE 77, fos. 29v–30v.Google Scholar

22 ADBR IIIB 48, fo. 272v.Google Scholar

23 Ibid., fo. 279r.

24 AM FF166 (a cartulary of public proclamations drawn up in the name of the vicar Guilhem Feraut), fos. 6v–llv.Google Scholar

25 These figures were computed by dividing the total number of extant notarial acts by the number of ‘notary-months’, or months when a notary was known to have written at least one act. In 1348, for example, three notaries were active for a total of 34 months (2 months are missing from one notary's series of casebooks). They produced 356 acts. Each notary, therefore, averaged 10.47 acts per month.

26 ADBR 355E 292, fos. 48r–50v, 10 April 1348.

27 In Marseille at this time, a husband had no legal grounds for claiming all or even part of his wife's dowry upon her death.

28 Croniche di Giovanni, Matteo e Filippo Villani, vol. 2, p. 10Google Scholar, col. 1. Matteo commented also on quarrels and riots over legacies and successions. After citing this passage, Coulton remarked, ‘To quote from other chroniclers would be simply to repeat Villani's words, for all are here unanimous. The plague was followed by a severe moral and economic crisis: a few men were sobered and looked far ahead, but the majority slackened in self-control.’ See Coulton, , The Black Death, 100.Google Scholar

29 ADBR 355E 285, fo. 20r.

30 ADBR IIIB 48, fos. 219v-220r.

31 ADBR IIIB 48, fo. 266r.

32 Ibid., fo. 272v.

33 Boccaccio, , The Decameron, 54–5.Google Scholar

34 Coulton, , The Black Death, 83–4.Google Scholar

35 See Wrigley, E. A., Population and history (New York, 1969), 62–3Google Scholar, and Herlihy, and Klapisch, , Les toscans et lews families, 454Google Scholar and following. In Medieval and Renaissance Pistoia, 104, Herlihy remarks that a combined famine and pestilence of 1339–1340 in Pistoia carried off a quarter of the population, according to one chronicler. Marseille suffered a serious famine in 1323; see Lesage, Georges, Marseille Angevine (Paris, 1950), 146–48.Google Scholar

36 As suggested by the leading demographer of Provence, Edouard Baratier, in his Histoire de Marseille (Toulouse, 1973), 102.Google Scholar

37 Over the period from 1337 to 1347, the average price for agricultural real estate on the market was 50.7 pounds, compared to the period 1349–1362, when the average was 30.1 pounds. (Here and below, I have translated the Latin libri, solidi, and denarii as ‘pounds’, ‘shillings’, and ‘pence’. On Marseille's currency, see Rolland, H., Monnaies des comtes de Provence, XIIe–XVe siècles (Paris, 1956).)Google Scholar

38 ADBR B 1940–1942.Google Scholar

39 ADBR 5G 112 and 5G 114.Google Scholar

40 The gross numbers provided in this and subsequent figures can be deceptive, given the haphazard survival of notarial casebooks. As Figure 2 reveals, a greater-than-average number of casebooks has survived for the years 1341, 1342, and 1354, exaggerating the figures for those years. By the same token, only five months' worth of acts have survived for the year 1339, and the years 1337, 1344–1346, 1351, and 1356–1357 are also underrepresented. Comparisons drawn across the year 1348, however, are not greatly affected: an average of 25.45 months were covered per year by extant notarial casebooks over the years 1337–1347, compared to 26.64 for the years 1349–1362.

41 Baratier, , Histoire de Marseille, 102.Google Scholar

42 There is little evidence to suggest that the market in property in Marseille was dominated by transfers between relatives. Contrast Gérard Delille, ‘Dots des filles et circulation des biens dans Les Pouilles aux XVIe–XVIIe siècles’, Málanges de I'école française de Rome. Moyen âge, temps modernes 95 (1983), 211–23.Google Scholar

43 ADBR 1HD–H3, fo. 15v.Google Scholar

44 This contract, also called an accaptum in Provence, was similar to a sale. In such transactions, one person, the lord or dominus, sold perpetual ownership of a piece of property to someone else, owner or emphiteote, in exchange for a down-payment (the accaptum) and an annual rent (the census). The rights to property held by emphiteotes were much closer to freehold or outright ownership than to leasehold. Emphiteotes held unlimited tenure in their property and their right to sell and profit from capital improvements was almost unlimited. Some emphiteotes in Marseille were able to reduce the size of their annual rent by buying it back at the rate of one pound per shilling of rent. Purchases made under the terms of emphiteusis counted toward the urban investment necessary to migrants to achieve citizen status.

45 Ibid., fos. 42v, 43r, 43v, 50v, 51v, 61r, 62v.

46 Ibid., fos. 16v, 39v.

47 ADBR 355E 6, fo. 141v.

48 Ibid., fos. 16r, 45r, 53v, 60v, 65r.

49 Ibid., fos. 46v, 52v, 57r, 61v.

50 ADBR 355E 2, fo. 72r, 14 08 1349.Google Scholar

51 ADBR 355E 3, fo. 158v, 8 12 1350.Google Scholar

52 ADBR 355E 10, fo. 41r, 30 08 1359.Google Scholar

53 ADBR 355E 3, fo. 216r–v, 19 04 1360.Google Scholar

56 ADBR 355 E7, fos. 31v–32r, 12 09 1354.Google Scholar

57 Inventaire, 50 and 91–2.Google Scholar

58 Lesage, , Marseille angevine, 164.Google Scholar

59 The inventory was included in a lawsuit in ADBR IIIB 48, fos. 223r–226v.

60 A phenomenon also noted by Herlihy, and Klapisch, , Les toscans et lews families, 195–6.Google Scholar

61 ADBR 355E 1, fos. 112r–114r.Google Scholar

62 The increase in ‘local’ apprenticeships after the plague is an interesting phenomenon. One of the striking features of these acts is that the new apprentices were almost always handed over by people other than their fathers. This suggests that fathers, if alive, usually found ways to bring their sons into a trade (presumably the father's trade) without the need of a written act of apprenticeship. Accordingly, the increase in apprenticeships for local boys (and some girls) following the Black Death was an adaptation to the greater-than-usual absence of fathers able to bring their children along in their own profession.

63 Two acts of citizenship can be found in a notarial register of the notary Peire Giraut, AM 1 II 60, fo. 6r–v, 19 March 1344, and fo. 14r, 4 December 1343 (sic).