Introductory

Is it proper to speak of the economic policies of medieval towns? The answer must depend on the definition. If this is overexacting, if we demand both explicit statements by medieval townsmen of their aims and methods, and proof that these were then applied in practice, we strike at the roots of the whole subject; study would then be restricted to such rare congruences as that between the industrial protectionism advocated by Lippo Brandolini in his De comparatione reipublicae and the policy of fifteenth-century Florence. A more liberal and more realistic attitude will allow far greater scope. There is abundant evidence in the preambles to municipal statutes, in the reports of chroniclers, in the arguments used by interested bodies in economic disputes, that principles informed practice. Sometimes the aims and ideas made public were those which really gave coherence to economic activity, sometimes they were a dishonest façade hiding a shabby structure of selfishness and opportunism. Yet the most disingenuous statements of policy have their value; they argue a need to indulge popular belief that certain patterns and principles of economic behaviour were good and useful.

It is reasonable to use another type of evidence—indirect evidence. This consists of the elements of regularity and consistency in urban economic practice. Where there are such regular trends the policy of a town may be considered as less or more ‘conscious’, but policy it is so long as the regularities are genuine and can be referred to probable motives. Medieval townsfolk did not always expound the aims and ideas which underlay their activities—they did not trouble, they would not, they could not; when they did their words may have been lost. Common sense suggests that hidden motives may properly be deduced from known practice.