The emergence of cities became possible when peasants began to produce enough agricultural products to feed not only themselves, but also others. By this time, some people could already choose another, more profitable occupation, for example, handicraft production. Craftsmen settled where they could profitably sell their products - near the ruins of former Roman cities, feudal estates, monasteries, and fortresses; important routes, river crossings, bays, bays. First, cities appeared in Italy (Venice, Genoa, etc.), later - in Southern France (Marseille, Arles, Toulouse, etc.), and subsequently - in the north of France, the Netherlands, England.
The inhabitants of the cities (the Germans called them burghers, the French - bourgeois, the Italians - popolanov) were mainly artisans, merchants, sailors, barbers, etc.
The city was located so that it was convenient to surround it with a protective wall, and also so that the local landscape itself served as protection for the settlement. The first medieval cities were surrounded by an earthen rampart and a wooden fence. The city, like a feudal castle, could be entered through a drawbridge and narrow gates, which were tightly locked at night. City houses with sloping red roofs were located very close to each other and were predominantly made of wood. City houses did not have numbering; they were replaced by identification marks - bas-reliefs of religious subjects, sculptural portraits of the owners. The main architectural decoration of the medieval city was the cathedral, the bell tower of which reflected the time and also informed the townspeople about a fire, an enemy attack or an outbreak of epidemic.
Land in medieval Europe was divided among feudal lords, and cities were considered their property. The feudal lord tried to get as much income as possible from the citizens. This prompted citizens to start fighting for self-government of cities, or, as they said then, for the commune. The communal movement took different forms. In a number of cases, townspeople bought certain liberties and privileges from the lord. They carefully recorded these concessions from the feudal lord in city documents - charters. Often townspeople must take up arms to gain partial independence. Residents of commune cities elected their own magistrate (city government body), had their own court, their own military forces, their own finances, they themselves set the amount of the tax and collected it. Thanks to the communal movement in medieval Europe, the rule according to which everyone who lived in a city for a year and one day became a free person forever.
However, the communal movement did not win everywhere. Some cities were content with limited self-government (Paris, London). In Germany in the 13th century. The so-called Magdeburg Law appeared - the right of the citizens of the city of Magdeburg to choose their administration and court, which subsequently became widespread in the cities of Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus.
In most cities, the main method of producing a variety of products was crafts - small-scale production of certain products using manual labor. The technique of the craft developed slowly. But thanks to their vast experience and dexterity in manual labor, artisans achieved perfection in their craft.
Craftsmen united into professional organizations - workshops. After all, together it was more convenient to defend against the arbitrariness of the lords and, most importantly, competitors who arrived from other cities.
Workshops arose simultaneously with the emergence of cities, i.e. in the X-XII centuries. Each guild master worked in his own workshop and used his own tools. Along with the master, apprentices worked - the master's main assistants, who already mastered the craft. Having collected the required amount of money, the apprentice could become a master and open his own workshop. To do this, it is necessary to make the best example of the product from expensive material - a masterpiece.
The craftsmen were guided by the workshop charter - rules binding on all members of the workshop, which required that all craftsmen produce high-quality items according to a certain pattern.
With the emergence of cities in Europe in the XI-XV centuries. Domestic and foreign trade revived.
Sometimes cities united into trade unions, the most powerful of which became in the 13th-14th centuries. Hansa. Transit trade predominated in Europe (goods imported from other countries were sold). The East traded mainly in luxury goods, spices, wine, and grain; West - fabrics, gold, silver, weapons.
Salt, furs, wool, fabrics, wax, wood, iron, etc. were transported by the Baltic and North Seas.
Each country had its own currency. Money had to be exchanged. For this purpose, a separate profession arose - they changed. They also transferred sums of money for a fee, thereby starting credit operations and usury. Credit activities, that is, the provision of loans, were carried out by special banking offices. The first such organizations arose in Lombardy (Northern Italy), therefore, in the Middle Ages, bankers and moneylenders were called Lombards (from this name also comes modern word"pawnshop").
Introduction Page 3
Genesis of the city in the Middle Ages. Page 4-6
Cities of Rus'. Page 7-12
Cities of Western Europe. Pages 13-17
Similarities and differences between the cities of Rus' and Western Europe. Pages 18-19
Conclusion. Page 20
Bibliography. Page 21
INTRODUCTION
My work is dedicated to medieval cities.
Contacts are actively developing in the modern city various peoples. And in the past, during the era of feudalism, the city was the center of ethnocultural processes, an active participant in the formation folk culture in all its diversity. There was, perhaps, not a single significant area of folk culture to which the townspeople did not make a contribution. But if the role of the city and the urban population in the development of the spiritual culture of the people has long been recognized by researchers, then the material culture of the townspeople until recently was not yet studied enough by ethnographers to make such generalizations in this area. At the same time, the material culture of the city is an integral part of folk culture.
In my work I set several tasks:
1. Determine the place of the city in feudal society, its essence.
2. Determine the prerequisites for the formation of a feudal city.
3. Study the development of the city in the Middle Ages, its role in economic, social and political processes.
This work is intended to reveal a broader idea of the population, appearance and features of the medieval city, on the basis of which the cities and metropolises familiar to us exist. As an example, the cities of Rus' and Western Europe are considered.
GENESIS OF THE CITY IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
There are common features of all cities of all times:
1. Multifunctionality: (trade and craft center, cultural center, spiritual and religious center, fortress).
2. There is no agricultural production in cities.
3. Concentration of two types of activities (craft and trade).
4. Administrative center.
A feudal city is a specific settlement with a relatively high population density, a fortified settlement with special rights and legal privileges, concentrating not agrarian production, but social functions associated with small-scale commodity production and the market.
Features of a feudal city :
1. Corporate organization of production.
2. Corporate social structure(rights, responsibilities, privileges).
3. Regulation of production.
4. Small production.
5. A certain system of privileges (the rights of residents or freedom), the right to have an army in the city, self-government bodies.
6. Close connection with land, land ownership, seigneury (especially at the first stage - the city arises on the land of the feudal lord).
7. Certain duties, taxes.
8. Part of the population consists of feudal lords who own land.
9. The top of the city acquires land in the district.
Medieval city- a higher stage of development of settlements compared to previous stages of pre-medieval eras.
Prerequisites and factors for the formation of a medieval city:
The prerequisites for the formation of a medieval city were progress in agriculture: productivity, specialization, and the release of part of the population from agricultural activities. Demographic factors in the formation of the city: raw materials base, growing demand among the agricultural population for artisan goods.
The formation of a feudal estate ensures:
1. labor intensification
2. organization of work
3. promotes specialization
4. development of handicraft production – population outflow.
Formation of social and political structure feudal society:
Development of the state (administrative apparatus).
The formation of a class of feudal lords interested in the city (labor organization, weapons, luxury goods, blacksmithing, shipbuilding, trade, fleet, money circulation).
Conditions that ensure the emergence of cities:
Social division of labor.
Development of commodity circulation.
A stimulating factor is the presence of urban centers that come from a previous time: an ancient or barbarian city.
The level of development of crafts and trade (the emergence of professional artisans working for the market; the development of near and far trade, the creation of merchant corporations (guilds)).
Formation of the city.
How does it arise? The question is controversial. In the history of mankind there have been diverse forms of city formation. There are various theories by authors different countries on the founding of cities:
· Romanesque theory (based on ancient cities) – Italy.
· Burg theory (locks) – Germany.
· patrimonial theory – Germany.
· Market theory– Germany, England.
· Trade concept (foreign trade) – Netherlands.
The city did not arise suddenly. The process of city formation is a long process. The transformation of an early city into a medieval one occurs mainly in Europe in the 11th century. .
The cities had a complex social composition: feudal lords, “slaves”, and clergy (churches), a free trading population, artisans - a complex complex of both free and dependent, and those who had not yet received freedom.
Gradually, the entire urban population turned into a single class - Burgeuses - residents of the city.
CITIES OF Rus'.
Education of cities.
A consequence of the successes of the eastern trade of the Slavs, which began in the 7th century, was the emergence of the most ancient trading cities in Rus'. The Tale of Bygone Years does not remember the beginning of the Russian land, when these cities arose: Kyiv, Lyubech, Chernigov, Novgorod, Rostov. At the moment from which she begins her story about Rus', most of these cities, if not all of them, apparently were already significant settlements. A quick glance at the geographical location of these cities is enough to see that they were created by successes foreign trade Rus'. Most of them stretched out in a long chain along the main river route “from the Varangians to the Greeks” (Volkhov-Dnepr). Only a few cities: Pereyaslavl on Trubezh, Chernigov on the Desna, Rostov in the upper Volga region, moved east from this, so to speak, operational basis of Russian trade, indicating its flank direction to the Azov and Caspian Seas.
The emergence of these large trading cities was the completion of a complex economic process, which began among the Slavs in their new places of residence. The Eastern Slavs settled along the Dnieper in solitary fortified courtyards. With the development of trade in these one-yard farms, prefabricated trading points arose, places of industrial exchange where trappers and beekeepers came together to trade. Such collection points were called graveyards. Of these large markets and our ancient cities grew along the Greco-Varangian trade route. These cities served as trading centers and main storage points for the industrial districts that formed around them.
The Tale of Bygone Years identifies the first local political form that formed in Rus' around the half of the 9th century: this is an urban region, i.e., a trading district governed by a fortified city, which at the same time served as an industrial center for this district. The formation of this first political form in Rus' was accompanied in other places by the emergence of another, secondary and also local form, the Varangian principality. From the union of the Varangian principalities and the city regions that retained their independence, a third form emerged, which began in Rus': it was the Grand Duchy of Kiev. Kyiv served primarily as the country's defensive outpost against the steppe and as a central trading post for Russian trade.
A city like Novgorod was formed from several settlements or settlements, which at first were independent, and then merged into one large urban community.
Medieval settlements can be divided according to the occupation of the inhabitants into rural-type settlements, associated mainly with agriculture, and urban-type settlements, mainly crafts and trade. But the names of the types of settlements did not correspond to modern ones: villages with defensive fortifications were called cities, and unfortified villages had other names. Settlements of the rural type predominated - peasant villages along with rural estates of feudal lords. The land of the peasant community extended for many tens of miles. The administrative, commercial and religious center of the community was the churchyard - a village in which the estates of representatives of the community administration, a church with the courtyards of the clergy and a cemetery were grouped near the trading area, but there were few estates of ordinary peasants who mostly lived in villages.
In the center, in the north of European Russia, a different process was going on: from the 15th to the 16th centuries. Small craft and trading settlements without fortifications arose (on the Novgorod lands - “rows”). In the 17th century the process continued, settlements of this kind were called uncultivated settlements, and as they grew, they were renamed posads, but were not called cities.
Population.
The bulk of the population of the old cities were “townsman people” engaged in crafts and small trade, and various types of military personnel - “service people”. In large cities, especially in Moscow, merchants were prominent groups different categories, clergy and others. Secular and ecclesiastical feudal lords had estates in the cities, and the central estates of monasteries were often located here.
The quantitative relationships between the main groups of the urban population were different in different cities. For example, in Moscow there were relatively more representatives of the feudal classes and various civil servants than in other cities. Foreigners living in Moscow were predominantly of Western European origin; there were about 600 thousand inhabitants. In addition to the Russians, there were many Greeks, Persians, Germans, and Turks, but there were no Jews at all, because they were not tolerated throughout the state.
In general, foreigners noticed that the population in cities was much smaller than one might expect, judging by the number of buildings. This stemmed from the importance of the city in the Moscow state: it was, first of all, a fenced place in which the surrounding population sought refuge during an enemy invasion. To satisfy this need, which so often arose from the circumstances in which the state was formed, cities had to have big sizes, rather than what was needed to accommodate their permanent population.
Appearance of cities.
All Russian cities were similar to each other at first glance. In the middle is the city itself, that is, a fortress, very rarely stone, usually wooden; in another city, the city foreman made an earthen rampart. In the city there is a cathedral church, a retreat or a hut where the governor sits; lip hut for criminal cases; a government cellar or barn where gunpowder or cannon treasury was stored; jail; saint's courtyard; voivode's court; the siege yards of neighboring landowners and patrimonial owners, into which they move during an enemy invasion. Behind the wall is a posad, there is a large square where on trading days there are stalls with bread and all sorts of goods. On the square there is a zemstvo hut - the center of secular government, a guest house, customs, a merchant's courtyard, a horse hut; Then there are the courtyards of tax people: “in the courtyard there is a hut, and a bathhouse with a dressing room. Among the courtyards with a simple structure, huts, and cages one can see churches, some made of stone, but mostly wooden. At the churches there were almshouses, or houses for the poor brethren. Near each church there was a cemetery, at the end of the city there was a wretched house where the bodies of executed criminals were buried.
Almost all foreigners who have written about the Moscow state tell us more or less detailed news about its capital. Moscow is the best city in the state, deserves to be the capital and will never lose its primacy.
The city itself is almost entirely wooden and very spacious, but from a distance it seems even more spacious, because almost every house has a large garden and courtyard, in addition, on the edge of the city, the buildings of blacksmiths and other craftsmen stretch in long rows, between these buildings there are also vast fields and meadows.
The city spread widely over mostly flat terrain, not contained by any boundaries: neither a ditch, nor walls, nor any other fortifications.
In the first half of the 16th century, there were few stone houses, churches and monasteries in the settlement; even in the Kremlin there were houses and churches for the most part wooden; The Archangel and Assumption Cathedrals were stone churches. There were only three stone houses. The houses were not very large and quite spacious inside, separated from each other by long fences and fences, behind which the residents kept livestock.
The first place after the capital in the 16th century belonged to Novgorod the Great. Lannoy found him still as he was in best time of his life and describes its external appearance this way: “The city is unusually vast, located on a beautiful plain, surrounded by forests, but is fenced with poor walls consisting of wicker and earth, although the towers on them are stone. On the bank of the river flowing through the city there is a fortress in which the main church of St. Sofia."
Foreigners talk about the enormous wealth of Novgorod, which was the result of its extensive trade. Foreigners do not provide much information about the appearance in the 16th century. According to Jovius, Novgorod was famous for its countless buildings: it had many rich and magnificent monasteries, and elegantly decorated churches. The buildings, however, are almost all wooden. The British reported that it significantly exceeded the vastness of Moscow.
The Novgorod Kremlin had an almost circular appearance and was surrounded by high walls with towers; except for the cathedral and the buildings next to it, in which the archbishop and the clergy lived, there was almost nothing in it. Posevin has no more than 20 thousand inhabitants in Novgorod in peacetime.
Pskov, the younger brother of Novgorod, in the 16th century still retained great importance in the Moscow state. At the end of this century, it especially became known to foreigners thanks to the famous siege of it by Batory and was considered the first fortress in the state. Lannoy says that it is very well fortified with stone walls with towers and has a very large castle, which no foreigner dared to enter, otherwise they would be subject to death. Ulfeld was told in Pskov that this city has 300 churches and 150 monasteries; Both of them are almost all made of stone. According to the description of Wunderer, who visited Pskov in 1589, the city was very crowded, many foreign merchants and artisans lived here. At home ordinary people in Pskov they were mostly wooden and surrounded by fences, fences, trees and vegetable gardens; above the gate of each house hung a cast or painted image.
In the 17th century, Pskov still retained a significant size, but up close it presented a pitiful appearance: the houses were still almost all wooden, and the walls, although stone, had bad towers, the streets were unclean and unpaved, except for the main one, which faced the shopping area , it was paved along the laid logs.
CITIES OF WESTERN EUROPE.
The role of the city in medieval Western European civilization.
The city played a major role in the structure and development of Western European civilization in the Middle Ages. Approximately from the 9th-11th centuries, the process of mass urbanization began, the formation of an urban system, which would be completed by the 12-13th centuries. The western medieval city absorbed some traditions of the ancient polis (primarily in terms of its autonomy) and at the same time differed significantly from it, i.e. .To. immediately began to socially separate from the village.
Cities were part of the feudal system, so the townspeople, being vassals of some lord (feudal lord, monastery, king), were forced to pay rent in money or goods, arbitrary exactions, were often forced into corvée, and fell into personal dependence. All this was compatible with urban activities and lifestyle. The result was communal movements that aimed to get rid of the abuses of the lord, to achieve freedom of market activity and personal freedom for the townspeople. The most comprehensive set of privileges that cities received included:
1. Self-government, i.e. political independence;
2. Legal autonomy;
3. The right to dispose of taxes or most of them;
4. Market law, monopolies in the field of trade and a number of crafts;
5. The right to adjacent lands and the urban area (usually within a 3-mile radius); it should be noted that many cities themselves assumed the position of lord in relation to the surrounding territory;
6. Separation from everyone who was not a resident of a given city;
7. jurisdiction of its own court and subordination of its administration.
The CITY-commune not only ensured personal freedom for the common people (“the air of the mountains makes the air free”) - republican forms of government arose in it, and this was an innovation and a great asset for a monarchical feudal society. The city became the center, the engine of small-scale commodity production - trade, crafts, money circulation. The city established the existence and significance of small and medium-sized property, based not on the ownership of land, but on personal labor and commodity exchange. The city became the center, the focus of wage labor and new categories of labor - administrative, intellectual, service, etc.
Cities were also sources of free-thinking and love of freedom; the type of enterprising, enterprising person - the future bourgeois - was formed in them.
It was the cities, from the point of view of many historians, that gave the unique originality of Western European civilization.
Population of Western European cities .
Most Western European cities were small in size. Cities such as Florence, Milan, Venice, Genoa, Paris, which had more than 50 thousand inhabitants in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, were considered giants. The vast majority of cities had no more than 2 thousand inhabitants, or even less. 60% of the total urban population of Europe lived in small towns (up to a thousand or less people).
The urban population consisted of heterogeneous elements: merchants; from free and unfree artisans, dependent on the feudal lord, lord of the city; from the vassals of the city lord, from his servants who performed various administrative duties.
The craft and trading population of the cities was replenished from year to year with thousands of peasants who fled from their lords in order to become residents of the free city. Migration of people from village to city and between cities played a decisive role in the urban development of medieval Europe. Due to the high mortality rate associated with unfavorable living conditions, wars, and political instability, not a single city could maintain its population using internal resources and was entirely dependent on the influx of new residents from the rural area.
Not every city resident was a burgher. To become a full-fledged citizen of the city, one had to initially own a plot of land, and later - at least part of a house. Finally, a special fee had to be paid.
Outside the burghers stood the poor and beggars living on alms. Non-burghers also included people who were in the service of the burghers, as well as apprentices, clerks, people in the city service and day laborers.
Poverty was a temporary condition that people sought to overcome, and begging was a profession. They were doing it for a long time. Local beggars were firmly part of the structure of urban society. In Augsburg in 1475 they were subject to taxation. Beggars created their own corporations.
But the burghers themselves were not socially homogeneous. It split into two main groups: the patriciate and the masters. The patriciate (noble townspeople) held in their hands the city government - the city council and the court. They represented the city in its relations with other cities, princes, bishops, and royalty. The main place among the urban patricians was occupied by large landowners and merchants, as well as wealthy families of artisans and masters.
Traders united in guilds, and trade, as well as craft activities, was strictly regulated by special decrees of city councils and guilds. Their goal was to prevent competition and limit trade to meeting the immediate needs and needs of the population of the city and surrounding area.
Appearance of Western European cities.
The medieval city lacked the clear layout familiar to our eyes that the Roman city knew: it has neither wide squares with public buildings, nor wide paved streets with porticoes on both sides. In the medieval city, houses were crowded along narrow and crooked streets. The width of the streets, as a rule, did not exceed 7-8 meters. For example, this is what the important highway that led to Notre Dame Cathedral looked like. There were streets and alleys even narrower - no more than 2 meters and even 1 meter wide. One of the streets of ancient Brussels is still called “one-man street”: two people there could no longer separate.
Already from the 12th century, instructions from city authorities appeared on the rules for building houses and maintaining a neat appearance of streets. Since the end of the 13th century, a “service for maintaining beauty” was established in Florence, Seena, and Pisa. Those homeowners who violated the regulations regarding the appearance of their houses were subject to heavy fines.
The first information about city pavements comes from Paris in the 12th century: every citizen had to ensure that the street in front of his house was paved. By the 14th century, the streets of the largest French cities had pavements. But this was not the case in all European cities. In wealthy Augsburg, there were no pavements until the 15th century, as well as sidewalks. Often, townspeople resorted to stilts, without which it was impossible to get along the dirty street.
City houses were surrounded by a fence or a blank wall. The windows were narrow, closed with shutters.
Only from the 14th century did stone construction spread in cities. First, stone churches appeared, then the houses of noble persons and public buildings; then - the estates of such artisans who used ovens and forges: bakers, blacksmiths, pharmacists. But in general, stone houses of townspeople were rare.
Fires are the scourge of a medieval city. The desire to avoid them played, in a certain sense, a role in the spread of stone buildings in cities. Thus, in Lübeck, after two large fires in the mid-13th century, the city council adopted a resolution in 1276 so that henceforth houses would be built of stone. The city council of Nuremberg recommended building houses from brick and clay in its decrees of 1329-1335.
City fortifications were a complex system of structures. The walls were reinforced with numerous towers, and a drawbridge guarded by guards was thrown across the moat. The fortress walls are the subject of tireless concern of the townspeople; a city tax was levied to maintain them in order. They were vitally necessary for the city, because... There was constant danger from the Normans, a feudal neighbor, or even just gangs of robbers.
The walls are not only protection, but also a symbol of the city’s independence. The right to erect them was obtained in a long and brutal struggle with the feudal lord, the lord of the city, on whose lands the city was formed. This right was granted by the kings along with the privilege of the townspeople to administer their own justice and collect customs and market duties in their favor. And one of the most severe punishments that disobedient townspeople could be subjected to was the destruction of the walls of their city.
SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN THE CITIES OF Rus' AND WESTERN EUROPE.
The cities of Western Europe and Rus' had similarities:
1. Multifunctionality (the city is an administrative, economic, spiritual, religious and cultural center).
2. There is no agricultural production in cities (but early stage cities were part of the feudal system, so the townspeople in Western Europe, being vassals of some lord, were forced to pay rent in money or goods, and arbitrary exactions. The result of this was communal movements that aimed to get rid of the abuses of the lord and achieve personal freedom for the townspeople).
3. Two main types of activity were concentrated in cities: trade and craft.
Differences between the cities of Rus' and Western Europe:
1. In Western Europe, crafts developed more intensively. Thanks to the role that cities played in the life of medieval European civilization, it can be called not just an agrarian, but an agrarian-craft civilization.
2. There were no agreements between feudal lords and cities in Rus', whereas in Western Europe this was common.
3. Russian cities differed from Western European ones in appearance: Russian cities were mostly wooden, while Western European cities were built with stone and brick buildings already from the 13th-14th centuries.
4. Self-government of cities in Western Europe in the Middle Ages was more advanced than in Russia.
It would be in vain to search in a Russian medieval city for those basic features that we are accustomed to connect with the concept of a European city as a center in which the commercial and industrial population of a well-known district is concentrated. In the Moscow state, as a predominantly agricultural country, where primitive industry predominated to such an extent, and crafts were so poorly developed, very few cities fit in any way under the concept of a city in the European sense. The rest generally only differed from the surrounding villages in that they were fenced and large in size, but the majority of their population engaged in the same occupations as the surrounding villagers.
In the future, I want to continue working on this topic and study more deeply issues related to spiritual, religious and cultural life cities of Western Europe and Rus'.
CONCLUSION.
At all times, cities have been the centers of the economic, political and spiritual life of the people, and have been the main engines of progress. Cities did not arise suddenly; the process of their formation was long.
The medieval city stood out so much from the rest of the world that it resembled a “civilization within a civilization.” Nature does not know cities where everything is man-made: houses, cathedrals, city walls, water pipes, stained glass windows, pavements... Here, like nowhere else, the transformative will, mind and hand of man is felt. In the city, man-made habitats prevail over natural ones.
The city is a meeting place for people of different nationalities, beliefs, and cultures. It is open to connections with the outside world: for trade, science, art, exchange of experience. People of dozens of professions and occupations lived in the cities: artisans and traders, scientists and students, guards and officials, homeowners and day laborers, feudal lords and their servants... feudal lords and clergy who moved to the cities, and fugitive peasants found themselves in the whirlpool of city life and were influenced by the world of money and profit, became familiar with the habits and lifestyle of the townspeople.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, the former centers of the medieval world - the castle and the monastery - gave way to cities. The city became the center of small-scale commodity production - trade, crafts, and money circulation. The city established the existence and significance of small and medium-sized property, based not on the ownership of land, but on personal labor and commodity exchange. The city became the center, the focus of wage labor and new categories of labor - administrative, intellectual, service and others.
From the point of view of many historians, it was cities that gave the unique originality of Western European civilization.
LITERATURE
1. Badak A. N., Voynich I. E., Volchek N. V. World history in 24 volumes. –M., 1999.
2. City in the medieval civilization of Western Europe. The phenomenon of medieval urbanism. – M., 1999.
3. City life in medieval Europe. – M., 1987.
4. Goff J. L. Another Middle Ages. – M., 2000.
5. Klyuchevsky V. O.. Russian history. A complete course of lectures in three volumes. Book 1. - M., 1993.
6. Klyuchevsky V. O. Tales of foreigners about the Moscow State. – M., 1991.
7. Rabinovich M. T. Essays on the material culture of the Russian feudal city. – M., 1987.
8. Sakharov A. M. Essays on Russian culture of the 17th century - M., 1979.
9. Solovyov S. M. Readings and stories on the history of Russia - M., 1989.
10. Stoklitskaya G. M. Main problems of the history of a medieval city. – M., 1960.
Europe is famous for its abundance of beautiful medieval cities, usually well preserved. Many of them, in particular European capitals, are well known to tourists. However, in the Old World there are also a large number of small ancient towns, less “promoted”, but no less interesting. They may seem especially attractive to tourist photographers, for example, to those who are mastering the art of shooting with quadcopters. A large assortment of high-quality and variously priced drones is presented on the website: https://brrc.ru/catalog/kvadrokoptery/.
The most famous medieval town in Belgium is undoubtedly Bruges, often called the “Venice of the North” due to its abundance of canals. The history of Bruges dates back to 1128, and today its old center is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In addition to meeting the locals architectural monuments and boating along the canals, tourists have fun tasting various varieties beer and chocolate.
The small Belgian town of Dinan is less famous, but no less picturesque. In a city with only 14,000 inhabitants, tourists will be interested in medieval architecture, as well as landscapes - the Mosa River embankment and the surrounding cliffs framing the town.
The city of Bled in Slovenia is one of the most picturesque corners of this country. It is located on the shores of Lake Bled of the same name and is famous for its castles and temples. The best panoramas of the area are obtained when shooting from quadcopters.
In Germany there are many interesting places, which have preserved their medieval architecture. Thus, Regensburg, founded almost two thousand years ago, is one of the oldest cities in the country. The main attraction is the perfectly preserved medieval center with a cathedral, bridge and Gothic-style buildings.
The real kingdom of half-timbered wood is called german city Freudenberg, located in North Rhine-Westphalia. In the old center there are many black and white half-timbered houses standing in orderly rows, this view is business card Freudenberg.
Swiss Gruyere is not only the name of one of the most famous varieties of cheese, but also a historical city in the canton of Fribourg. Here you can see remarkable ancient buildings and a medieval castle. Another small Swiss town recommended for visiting by anyone interested in beautiful medieval buildings is Murren in the canton of Bern. It is located at an altitude of 1650 m in the Lauterbrunnen Valley, surrounded by three of the most famous Swiss peaks - Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau. There are always a lot of tourists here, the number of which exceeds the number of local residents (450 people) by several times.
In the UK it is very difficult to single out the most interesting medieval towns, but it is worth mentioning Bibury - “the most beautiful village in England”, sung by the poet William Morris, and famous for its 14th century buildings, as well as the small village of Castle Combe in Wiltshire, named one of the most attractive British settlements by The Times.
France is also rich in small medieval towns, among which a special place is occupied by Collioure with a picturesque castle, the ancient church of Notre Dame des Anges and an ancient lighthouse, as well as Josselin - a fabulous town in the Brittany region, with an equally impressive castle built in 1008.
San Gimignano in Tuscany (Italy) is a medieval walled city. Here tourists will be interested in the old center with a cathedral and many ancient towers, included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1990. The town of Funes in the Italian Tyrol is not spoiled by tourists, so it is suitable for those who are looking for not only beautiful scenery in Europe, but also privacy. Local species Even experienced landscape photographers will be pleased.
IN northern Europe worthy of a visit Reine - a village in Norway, which has more than once occupied the top positions in the rankings of the most beautiful places of this country. Reine, founded in 1793 as a port, is located on the Lofoten Islands, surrounded by picturesque mountains.
The emergence of the city is a phenomenon of the era of developed feudalism. Indeed, if in the early Middle Ages in Europe there were only a few dozen (at best, several hundred) more or less large settlements of the urban, or more precisely, pre-urban type, then by the end of the 15th century. There were approximately 10 thousand different cities on the continent. The medieval city arose as a result of the process of separation of crafts from agriculture. We will not dwell on all aspects of this problem here, but will consider only its geographical aspect.
Some medieval cities were territorially connected with former Roman cities; this applies to Italian, French, Spanish, partly English and German cities. The motives for choosing their location were very diverse: geographical factors played a role here (for example, many northern Italian cities - Verona, Brescia, Vicenza, etc. - arose in places where mountain valleys merged with the plain; others - in convenient places on the sea coast or along rivers - Naples, Pavia, etc.), military considerations (this is how most of the Roman centers of Rhine Germany and North-Eastern Gaul arose); many cities were founded on the sites of former settlements of tribes conquered by Rome (Nantes - Namnetes, Angers - Adekavs, Poitiers - Pictons, Autun - Aedui, etc.). However, the connection of the medieval city to the location of the former Roman center was not always direct. Many Roman cities that flourished in ancient times later fell into decline, or even ceased to exist altogether; on the contrary, many minor settlements of antiquity in the Middle Ages turned into large urban centers. Often a medieval city grew up not on the site of a Roman settlement, but next to it or even at some distance from it. Such, for example, was the fate of Saint Albany (Roman Verulamium) in England, the French Autun, Clermont-Ferrand, Beaucaire, Metz, Verdun, Narbonne and many other cities. Even in Italy itself, medieval cities sometimes did not coincide territorially with ancient ones (Ravenna, for example). In some cases, the very name of the Roman center in the Middle Ages changed to a new one - Lutetia became Paris, Argentorata became Strasbourg, Augustobona became Troyes, etc.
These topographical shifts were, as a rule, based on the political events of the transition from antiquity, pogroms and destruction of barbarian conquests. But, perhaps more importantly, the cities lost their previous economic role and acquired new functions, becoming church and monastic centers, residences of large magnates and kings, etc.; this could not but affect their topography. Therefore, even maintaining a territorial connection with the city of the Roman era, the settlements early Middle Ages actually ceased to be cities. Thus, in the Carolingian era in France, the cities that had the greatest weight and importance were the residences of archbishops (Lyon, Reims, Tours, etc.); from 120 cities in Germany in the 11th century. 40 were episcopal, 20 were located near large monasteries, and the remaining 60 were centers of large feudal estates (including 12 of them royal residences).
The emergence of cities between the Elbe and Neman rivers
The process of the emergence of a feudal city as a center of craft and trade in the masses dates back to the era of the developed Middle Ages, although in some places cities appeared several centuries earlier - these are the Mediterranean ports of Amalfi, Gaeta, Bari, Genoa, Venice, Palermo, Marseille and some others, successfully used in the 9th-10th centuries. weakening of Arab and Byzantine influence in the southern trading region. Some trade and craft centers not related to maritime trade are also emerging; such a city in the 10th century. in Northern Italy Pavia became, located at the confluence of the Ticino and the Po and at the crossroads of the routes from the Alps to the Apennines; The fact that it was the traditional capital of the Lombard kingdom also played a significant role in its rise. Ravenna was a major city - the center of Byzantine rule in Italy.
In the XI-XII centuries. the cities of North-Eastern France, Rhineland Germany, Flanders, Central, Eastern and Southern England, Central and Northern Italy are created and receive certain political rights; somewhat later, cities appeared in other areas of the continent. In Germany, for example (later the Empire), the territorial picture of the emergence of cities looked like this. Until the 13th century. almost all the cities of the country were located west of the Elbe and along the Upper Danube, practically without crossing the Lubeck - Vienna line. The bulk of the cities that arose in the 13th century were already located between the Elbe and Oder rivers; separate groups of them were concentrated in Northern Bohemia, Silesia, in the upper and lower reaches of the Vistula. And only in the XIV century. cities filled almost the entire territory of Central Europe, west of the Koenigsberg - Krakow line. In the 15th century, only a few cities (several dozen in total) were founded between the Elbe and the Vistula; the vast majority of them already existed by this time. In other countries, this process was completed even earlier: in England, for example, the vast majority of medieval urban centers have been known since the 13th century.
When cities arose on the site of former villages, this was often reflected in their names; such cities in Germany were cities with “rural” endings in “ingen”, “heim”, “dorf”, “hausen” (Tübingen, Waldorf, Mühlhausen, etc.). The factors that contributed to the transformation of a former settlement into a city or the emergence of a new urban center were very diverse. Military-political circumstances (the need for a fortress, patronage from the local lord), and socio-economic motives (for example, the existence of a traditional market, a transshipment point for goods, etc.) could play a role here. Geographical factors played a major role in the process of the emergence of a medieval city: convenient terrain, rivers, intersection of land roads; sea bays often not only contributed to the transformation of a pre-urban settlement into a city, but also played an extremely important role in this. The exceptionally favorable location of Pavia has already been mentioned above; Similar circumstances played a role in the rise of Milan, Frankfurt am Main, Boulogne, Coventry, the Champagne cities and many other cities. Toponymy provides interesting data on the role of geographical factors in the emergence of early cities. Thus, the connection of the initial settlement with a bridge, crossing, ford is indicated by numerous names like “bridge”, “brück”, “pont”, “furt”, etc.: Cambridge, Pontause, Frankfurt, Oxford, Innsbruck, Bruges, Saarbrücken and so on. Cities with names like Brunswick, as a rule, were associated with the sea coast or rivers: the element “vik”, “vich” in Scandinavian place names means bay, bay, mouth. The location of the city was determined by many other factors, for example, the presence of a market in the settlement itself or near it, the existence of a fortified place where residents could take refuge in the event of a military threat, the proximity of trade routes and convenience of communications, the political situation in the region, relations with the local feudal lord etc. As the history of the largest urban centers of medieval Europe shows, it was the combination of many factors that played a role in their rise. favorable factors, including, of course, the convenience of the location.
The topography of medieval cities was extremely diverse and reflected the peculiarities of the emergence, location and development of each of them. At the same time, any of the cities had elements common to all: a market, a cathedral, a fortified center (burg, city, castle), palace-fortresses of large magnates living in the city, the building of city government (town hall, signoria, etc. .) and, finally, city walls, often encircling it several times as the city grows. Inside these walls, the city was a bizarre tangle of narrow streets and alleys, chaotically scattered buildings, located without any system. Outside the city walls there were suburban craft estates and villages, vegetable gardens and arable plots of townspeople, common meadows, forests and pastures; however, often different types of these lands were included in the city walls.
Systematizing medieval cities according to their topography is practically impossible due to their diversity; however, some types and principles of city construction can still be imagined.
In Italy, some cities preserved in the Middle Ages not only the ancient core, but even its largest buildings (for example, Rome, Verona); in some cases, the coincidence of the layout of individual areas of the city is striking, even to the point of the literal coincidence of a number of blocks and streets (Turin, Piacenza, Verona, Pavia). Of course, the medieval city went beyond the city limits of antiquity, but it grew precisely around the former Roman core - the arena, the forum, the remains of the city walls, and new buildings were often erected on the site, cleared of old ones, and even from old material. Already by the 13th century. the bulk of Italian cities have completely acquired a medieval appearance; Only a few basilicas have survived from Roman antiquity, and even then not everywhere. Subsequently, new wall belts were erected, the area of the city expanded, but in general its layout remained unchanged. Many northern Italian cities were built according to the following plan. In the center of the city there was a square overlooked by the Signoria (Palace of Justice, etc.), and the cathedral was located nearby. Due to lack of space, the market was initially moved outside the city walls, but as the city expanded, it found itself inside them. In addition to the periodic market (fair), cities had entire neighborhoods and streets where workshops and shops of artisans of various specialties were traditionally located. Tower fortresses of the largest feudal families rose above the city buildings; after the establishment of signories in Italian cities, castles of tyrants were erected in many of them. An integral part of most Italian cities were stone bridges: due to the small size of most Italian rivers, cities were located on both sides of the river, which was often the case already in antiquity.
Thus, we can make some topographical connection between the Italian medieval and ancient cities. Things were different on the continent. During the late Empire, due to barbarian conquests, Roman settlements in Gaul and Germany were surrounded by walls, but the area contained within these walls was extremely small. Thus, in Trier, which at one time was the official capital of part of the Empire, it amounted to only 7 hectares, in Cologne and Mainz - from 2 to 2.5 hectares, and in the vast majority of other cities it did not exceed a fraction of a hectare (Dijon - 0.3 hectares, Paris and Amiens - 0.2 hectares). In addition, these walls were soon either demolished by the besiegers, or dismantled for construction material by the residents themselves. Therefore, even in cases where the former Roman settlements fully or partially used for settlement (as the residence of a bishop, for example), they could not significantly influence the layout and structure of the city that arose in this place.
Medieval Magdeburg (c. 1250):
1 - cathedral and burg of the Ottonian era; 2 - castle of the Carolingian era; 3 - castle of the local count; 4 - buildings of the 11th - first half of the 12th century; 5 - craft and trading settlement and market; 6 - buildings of the second half of the 12th century; 7 - buildings of the first half of the 13th century.
Medieval Meissen:
1 - ancient burg; 2 - trading settlement (ca. 1000); 3 - churches and monasteries; 4 - fortified palaces and towers of the nobility; 5 - areas built up before the 14th century; 6 - areas of later development
Let us dwell on one type of medieval city planning, the most common in Germany. We will talk about the so-called “multi-core” version of the city. As mentioned above, most European cities combined several factors that contributed to their emergence and development: the presence of a pre-urban settlement, a market, a fortified place, and favorable terrain conditions. These elements represented a kind of “nucleus” of the emerging city; their unification created the city as such. Naturally, the relative position of the “nuclei” in different places was different, therefore the topography of the emerging cities was varied; however, the principles of their construction were the same. A few examples.
Medieval Magdeburg was based on four “cores”: rural settlement, which has long existed on this site, and the Carolingian castle located next to it, the residence of the Saxon dukes; a cathedral with a burg from Ottonian times; castle of local counts; finally, a craft and trading settlement with a market, lying between Carolingian and Ottonian fortifications near a convenient ford across the Elbe. In the XII-XIII centuries. these components merged together and were surrounded by a common wall; by 1250 they had taken the form shown in the diagram.
Plan of the fortified city of Palmanova
Meissen arose in a similar way, but the main role in its fate was played by a burg, a trade and craft colony and a Slavic settlement located on this site for a long time. As in other cities, Meissen had many churches (including the cathedral), monasteries, fortified houses - castles of feudal lords and patricians, but they did not influence the original layout and somewhat later joined the established city center.
This type of city is most typical for the area between the Rhine and Elbe rivers, i.e. for early Germanic cities. Later, as cities emerged in the lands inhabited by the Slavs, the type of fortress city, which had a more orderly layout, became more and more widespread. Cities with the same purpose were common in Western Europe - these were the bastides of Southwestern France and Eastern Brittany, the supporting fortresses of the Spanish Reconquista (Avila, Segovia), border fortresses in particularly dangerous directions (Palmanova, La Valletta, Brest). All of them arose for defensive or military colonization purposes; and this influenced their location and layout: as a rule, they occupied dominant, key positions, their internal structure was more orderly and subordinated to the convenience of defense. Such, for example, is the city of Palmanova, which arose in the 15th-16th centuries. as a supporting fortress in the east of the Venetian “terraferma”.
As a rule, cities were very crowded - the floors of buildings overhung the streets, the streets themselves were so narrow that a cart could not always pass through them. The city walls of even large cities at that time contained within their boundaries only a few hundred hectares of area; Thus, Paris in the 13th century. occupied about 380 hectares, London in the 14th century. - about 290 hectares, Florence before the Black Death - a little more than 500 hectares, Nuremberg in the 15th century. - about 140 hectares, etc.; the area of the vast majority of medieval cities did not exceed several tens of hectares (Toulon, for example, in the 13th century had an area of only 18 hectares). In this cramped space there was located a population that was significant by that scale; in the same London according to the tax lists of 1377-1381. there were about 35 thousand inhabitants i.e. its average population density exceeded 120 people per hectare. The population density of other cities also fluctuated within the same framework: Paris - about 160 people (XIII century), Padua - about 120 people (XIV century), Barcelona - about 100 people (XIV century). In general, the population density of medieval cities in Western Europe was only in some cases inferior to modern ones, and most often exceeded it (in modern Belgium, for example, settlements with a density of more than 300 people per sq. km, i.e. 3 people per hectare, are considered cities).
At the same time, the population of the feudal city was small. Several thousand or even hundreds of people lived in most of the cities of Western Europe. According to the same tax lists 1377-1381. in England, besides London, only York had over 10 thousand inhabitants; five cities (Bristol, Plymouth, Coventry, Norwich and Lincoln) had from 5 to 10 thousand people and another 11 cities - from 3 to 5 thousand; In total, there were up to 250-300 cities in the country at that time. In the Holy Roman Empire at the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th centuries. there were about 3,000 urban centers, the largest of which were the imperial cities. Of the approximately 200 imperial cities, no more than 15 had a population of over 10 thousand each; Thus, the overwhelming majority of German cities were small towns. The largest cities in the Empire were: in the 11th-12th centuries - Regensburg (about 25 thousand), Cologne (about 20 thousand), Strasbourg (about 15 thousand); later, the importance and size of Regensburg decrease and it is replaced by new centers - Nuremberg, Magdeburg, Hamburg, Lubeck, Prague. Subsequently, the growth rate of cities falls: in 1370-1470. lost 15-20% of the population. At the end of the 15th century. the most important cities were Cologne (over 30 thousand), Prague (about 30 thousand), Nuremberg and Hamburg (about 25 thousand).
The most “urbanized” territories of medieval Europe were the Italian and Flemish-Brabantian lands: as already mentioned, in the first, in some places, almost half of the population lived in cities, in the second - about 2/3. The largest cities of Flanders - Ypres, Ghent and Bruges - in the 14th century. numbered up to 25-35 thousand people. In Italy, the size of the cities was large: here over a dozen centers had about 35-40 thousand inhabitants - Verona, Padua, Bologna, Siena, Palermo, Naples, Rome, etc. The largest cities in Italy were Milan, Florence, Genoa and Venice, numbering from 50 to 100 thousand people; even several decades after the Black Death, the population of Florence exceeded 55, and Venice - 65 thousand inhabitants. On the continent, Paris alone could compare with these cities; According to some sources, its population grew at the following rates: at the end of the 12th century. - about 25 thousand people, at the end of the 13th century. - about 50 thousand, before the Black Death - about 80 thousand, at the end of the 15th century - about 150 thousand people (it is possible that these figures are overestimated). The bulk of French cities could not be compared with Paris - small market towns also prevailed here, numbering hundreds, at best thousands, of inhabitants.
Medieval Paris.
City walls: 1 - Cité (III century AD); 2 - beginning of the 12th century; 3 - the time of Philip II (ca. 1200); 4 - Charles V (1360-1370); 5 - extensions from the era of Louis XIII (c. 1630-1640); 6 - additions from the times of the last Valois (second half of the 16th century); 7 - city border approx. 1780
I - Notre Dame Cathedral; II - Monastery of St. Martina; III - Monastery of St. Genevieve; IV - Mon. Saint-Germain des Pres; V - Mon. St. Antoine; VI - Louvre; VII - Place de la Concorde; VIII - Champs Elysees; IX - Fields of Mars
Thus, by the 16th century. all Western European countries turned out to be covered with a dense network of several thousand diverse trade and craft settlements, most often small, which were places of lively trade exchange with the agricultural region. Against this background, only occasionally did more stand out big cities- centers of significant development of crafts, almost always associated with international trade, but their number did not exceed several dozen, or at best hundreds.
The cities of Muslim Spain occupy a special place on the map of medieval cities. Their development began earlier than cities on the continent, and already in the 11th-12th centuries. they have reached a high level. Their sizes were also incomparable; so, according to some data, for example, in Arab Cordoba at the beginning of the 13th century. the number of inhabitants exceeded 100 thousand people. As a result of the Reconquista, the fate of cities in the Pyrenees changed, and in the XIV-XV centuries. they no longer differ from other European cities in their craft and trade development or size.
The decisive point in the transition of European countries from early feudal society to the established system of feudal relations is the 11th century. Characteristic feature developed feudalism was the emergence and flourishing of cities as centers of craft and trade, centers of commodity production. Medieval cities had a huge impact on the economy of the village and contributed to the growth of productive forces in agriculture.
In Western Europe, medieval cities first appeared in Italy (Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Naples, Amalfi, etc.), as well as in the south of France (Marseille, Arles, Narbonne and Montpellier), since here, starting from the 9th century. the development of feudal relations led to a significant increase in productive forces and the separation of crafts from agriculture.
In Eastern Europe, the oldest cities that early began to play the role of centers of craft and trade were Kyiv, Chernigov, Smolensk, Polotsk and Novgorod. Already in the X-XI centuries. Kyiv was a very significant craft and shopping center and amazed his contemporaries with his magnificence. He was called a rival of Constantinople. According to contemporaries, by the beginning of the 11th century. There were 8 markets in Kyiv.
Novgorod was also a big and rich holy fool at this time. The streets of Novgorod were paved with wooden pavements already in the 11th century. In Novgorod in the XI-XII centuries. There was also a water supply: water flowed through hollowed out wooden pipes. This was one of the earliest urban aqueducts in medieval Europe.
Cities ancient Rus' in the X-XI centuries. already had extensive trade relations with many regions and countries of the East and West - with the Volga region, the Caucasus, Byzantium, Central Asia, Iran, Arab countries, the Mediterranean, Slavic Pomerania, Scandinavia, the Baltic states, as well as with the countries of Central and Western Europe - the Czech Republic, Moravia , Poland, Hungary and Germany. A particularly important role in international trade from the beginning of the 10th century. Novgorod played. The successes of Russian cities in the development of crafts were significant (especially in metal processing and the manufacture of weapons, in jewelry, etc.).
Prague was a significant center of crafts and trade in Europe. The famous Arab traveler geographer Ibrahim ibn Yaqub, who visited the Czech Republic in the middle of the 10th century, wrote about Prague that it “is the richest of cities in trade.”
Medieval cities were very different in their appearance from modern cities. They were usually surrounded by high walls - wooden, often stone, with towers and massive gates, as well as deep ditches for protection from attacks by feudal lords and enemy invasions. Residents of the city - artisans and merchants - carried out guard duty and formed the city's military militia. The walls surrounding the medieval city became cramped over time and did not accommodate all the city buildings. Around the walls, city suburbs gradually arose - settlements, inhabited mainly by artisans, and artisans of the same specialty usually lived on the same street. This is how streets arose - blacksmith shops, weapons shops, carpentry shops, weaving shops, etc. The suburbs, in turn, were surrounded by a new ring of walls and fortifications.
The size of European cities was very small. As a rule, cities were small and cramped and numbered only from one to three to five thousand inhabitants. Only very large cities had a population of several tens of thousands of people.
7. Cities of Europe during the Renaissance. Cities of Italy.
On the eve of the great geographical discoveries, the largest cities in Europe were the cities of Italy, which developed on the main routes of eastern trade. Venice had the largest fleet, a developed industry associated with extensive trade operations. The importance of Florence, Europe's largest center of the cloth industry, trade and financial activity, learning and the arts, was exceptionally great. The second center of eastern trade after Venice was Genoa, which had numerous strongholds on its traditional routes, including in very remote places. Milan was an important center for the production of weapons, silk and cloth industries. Naples was one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean. The pan-European significance of Rome was determined by the special role of the Catholic Church. Italian cities, which developed on transit trade, were not interested in political unity. In architecture, Gothic cathedrals, stone structures, town halls and palaces are being replaced by clear, calm, harmonious solutions focused on scale and proportions human body. Architects return to the ancient order, trying to restore its tectonic significance, revealing the true design of the structure, turn to the centric composition of church buildings with a domed top, widely use arcades and arched window openings, strive for calm, rhythmic balanced horizontal divisions, a strict, geometrically correct form of buildings , mathematical accuracy of proportions. In the 16th century in Italy, a complex and lush Baroque style was established, in which Catholic Church surrounded itself with an aura of power, luxury, splendor, and Protestants were doomed to the simplicity of bare churches, freed from unnecessary decorations and decor. In city planning, there is a desire for rectilinear street perspectives, such as the oval square in front of St. Peter's Cathedral. Transitional from the Renaissance to the Baroque is the relatively small trapezoidal Capitol Square built by Michelangelo with the Palazzo Senatori in the center and the flanking buildings of the Palazzo Conservatory and the Capitoline Museum and numerous ancient sculptures with allegorical subjects. Calm silhouettes of low three- and five-story houses, bridges, jewelry shops. In Rome, the largest temples, numerous ensembles and palaces are being built, and new highways are being laid. After the great geographical discoveries, the position of Italian cities changed dramatically under the influence of the shift in trade routes to Atlantic Ocean, this was most clearly manifested in the fate of Venice - the strongest maritime and colonial power with the largest fleet in Europe, enormous wealth, unique government organization. After 1587, Venice's commercial importance rapidly declined.
8) Medieval cities of the East. The term “Middle Ages” is used to designate the period in the history of the Eastern countries of the first seventeen centuries of the new era. The natural upper limit of the period is considered to be the 16th – early 17th centuries, when the East became the object of European trade and colonial expansion, which interrupted the course of development characteristic of Asian and North African countries.
Geographically, the Medieval East covers the territory North Africa, Near and Middle East, Central and Central Asia, India, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia and Far East.
The transition to the Middle Ages in the East in some cases was carried out on the basis of already existing political entities (for example, Byzantium, Sasanian Iran, Kushano-Gupta India), in others it was accompanied by social upheavals, as was the case in China, and almost everywhere the processes were accelerated thanks to participation of “barbarian” nomadic tribes in them. During this period, hitherto unknown peoples such as Arabs, Seljuk Turks, and Mongols appeared and rose to prominence in the historical arena during this period. New religions were born and civilizations arose on their basis.
The countries of the East in the Middle Ages were connected with Europe. Byzantium remained the bearer of the traditions of Greco-Roman culture. The Arab conquest of Spain and the Crusaders' campaigns in the East contributed to the interaction of cultures. However, for the countries of South Asia and the Far East, acquaintance with Europeans took place only in the 15th-16th centuries.
The formation of medieval societies of the East was characterized by the growth of productive forces - iron tools spread, artificial irrigation expanded and irrigation technology was improved; the leading trend of the historical process both in the East and in Europe was the establishment of feudal relations. Different results of development in the East and West by the end of the 20th century. were determined by the lesser degree of its dynamism.
Among the factors causing the “lag” of eastern societies, the following stand out: the preservation, along with the feudal structure, of primitive communal and slave relations that were extremely slowly disintegrating; the stability of communal forms of living, which restrained the differentiation of the peasantry; predominance state property and power over private land ownership and the private power of feudal lords; the undivided power of the feudal lords over the city, weakening the anti-feudal aspirations of the townspeople.
Re-odization of the history of the medieval East. Taking into account these features and based on the idea of the degree of maturity of feudal relations in the history of the East, the following stages are distinguished:
I-VI centuries AD – transitional period of the emergence of feudalism;
VII-X centuries – the period of early feudal relations with its inherent process of naturalization of the economy and the decline of ancient cities;
XI-XII centuries – pre-Mongol period, the beginning of the heyday of feudalism, the formation of the estate-corporate system of life, cultural takeoff;
XIII centuries - the time of the Mongol conquest, which interrupted the development of feudal society and reversed some of them;
XIV-XVI centuries – the post-Mongol period, which is characterized by a slowdown in social development and the conservation of a despotic form of power.
9. Cities of Spain and Portugal. In the first half of the 16th century. P, then I-powerful states of Europe. Their colonial empires are huge. Lisbon and Seville are the greatest ports and cities in Europe. Lisbon in the early 15th century. was a provincial capital of a small, impoverished country, but after discoveries and conquests in Africa, Asia, L. America and the emergence in the late 15th-16th centuries. huge colonial empire of Portugal a short time becomes one of the richest powers in Europe, and Lis. One of the largest European Capitals (here the wealth of the East is unloaded for distribution throughout the world). Seville, located on the river. Guadalquivir, per floor. 16th century surpasses all major European countries in terms of trade turnover. ports. The Spanish kings granted the city a monopoly on colonial trade, valid from the 15th century to the 18th century. The capital of the Spanish city, located in Toledo in 1561, was transferred to Madrid, which at that time numbered barely 20 thousand. Seville was more suitable for the role of the capital than Madrid, and this is one of the reasons for the early loss of Spain's possessions, but this is quite controversial thought. The enormous wealth flowing into Is. (note also applies to P) did not lead to the development of its economy. The royal authorities began to direct their huge incomes to the maintenance of the court and the construction of luxurious palaces.
In the development of Spanish cities there are historical layers of different eras, a mixture of architectural styles. Is. Cities, usually located on hills, inherited from the Middle Ages an extremely intricate network of streets rising to the gates of the fortress walls: only in some places regularly planned squares were cut into this medieval network (for example, Plaza Mayor in Madtida). From the Moors (Arabs and Berbers) not only buildings in the Moorish style were preserved, but also the traditions of decorativeness and splendor of buildings. Moorish architects combined Muslim traditions with Gothic (Mudejar)
10. Cities of England, France, Germany in the 17th – early 20th centuries.
In the second half of the 17th century. takes a leading position in European trade and in the struggle for colonies England. The role of England as the first industrial, commercial, financial and colonial power in the world radically changed the economic and geographical position of its capital, London, and contributed to the development of intensive urbanization processes in the country. Before the great geographical discoveries, London was one of the largest, but far from the largest cities in Europe. But with the opening of new trade routes across the Atlantic, London found itself at the center of Europe's vast northwestern front facing the ocean. What was important for London was its position at natural junctions, from which river and land routes diverged into the interior of the country. London is located on the Thames, England's largest navigable river, connected to the entire country by an extensive system of tributaries and canals.
The historical core of London is the City, the famous “square mile” at London Bridge, surrounded by walls in the times of the Roman Londonium and later in the era of Shakespeare, when London was not yet a very large medieval city. Along with London, the largest concentrations of industrial cities were formed in England after the industrial revolution. (Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Newcastle, Sheffield)
France occupied a special place on the European political scene back in the Middle Ages. It was the most populous country in Europe. After the Great French Revolution of 1789, France, having ceded economic primacy to England, remained one of the leading world powers. In the person of Paris, France created a city of world significance - the largest center of science, culture, art and the center of monopoly capital. The main stages of the development of Paris: 1. the historical core of Paris - the Ile de la Cité 2. medieval Paris of the 17th century. 3. Paris 18th century limited by external boulevards connecting the squares Charles de Gaulle, La Villette, Nation, Italy laid on the site of the demolished city walls of the late 18th century 4. Paris 19th century within the boundaries of the “boulevards of marshals”
Germany. For a long time, conditions for the development of large cities did not exist in Central Europe; a dense network of relatively small urban settlements, inherited from the Middle Ages, remained, only some of which reached a more or less significant size. Economic ties between different parts of Germany were very weak and did not create the prerequisites for the development of large cities. Urbanization processes in Germany intensified sharply only in the second half and especially at the end of the 19th century. The nature and features of these processes can be illustrated by the example of Berlin. In 1850-1900 Berlin's population increased 5 times to 2.7 million people. The city's development is rapidly expanding. Several zones are emerging, differing in the nature of development: 1. capitalist business center of the city with a large concentration of government agencies, palaces, banks, hotels, and commercial establishments. 2. the so-called “Wilhelm Ring” with densely built-up blocks of barracks houses, with a regulated height of 20m and extremely small sizes of palace-wells, surrounded by the rear facades of houses. 3. external zone, which includes, on the one hand, large industrial enterprises and workers' enterprises and, on the other, the Koral residence and bourgeois suburbs with cottage buildings among lakes and forest parks.
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