2. MARKET TIMETABLES: THEIR CONTEXT AND REGULATION

The context in which time constraints were imposed on the buying and selling of staple foodstuffs is very important. The specific circumstances within Liège affected the way the markets were arranged,Footnote ¹⁶ as did the changing relations between the various bodies competing within those markets. The town underwent considerable upheaval during the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when most of the legislation affecting the management of the market was issued. The important role of the clergy in any decision-making process in Liège has to be emphasised. The bishop of Liège, who would eventually hold powers equivalent to those of a count, ruled the principality of Liège, with the town of that name as its capital. At the end of the twelfth century the town housed Saint-Lambert,Footnote ¹⁷ one of the biggest cathedrals in the German Empire, as well as seven collegiate churches and two Benedictine abbeys. Further monasteries were built during, and after, the thirteenth century. Until the end of the twelfth century, the prince-bishopFootnote ¹⁸ and the cathedral church held the reins of power.Footnote ¹⁹ Theoretically the church had to share its administrative powers within the town with lower jurisdictions, notably the aldermen, but, at least initially, the bishop chose the 14 aldermen, the scabini, from amongst the town's wealthy families. Previous prosopographical studies have shown that these families’ influence was of long standing.Footnote ²⁰ Many, originally of a modest status, gained their influence and economic power between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries in the service of the clergy. Some earned considerable profit from the sale of cloth or wine while others were professional merchants or craftsmen and, later, noble families from the town's rural hinterland who established themselves in the city between 1300 and 1350. These wealthy families consolidated their position by inter-marrying and taking control of many of the town's political and legal institutions such as the court of aldermen. The scabini wanted to reduce the privileges held by the clergy in fiscal and judicial matters,Footnote ²¹ as these often allowed the clerics to escape both from the aldermen's jurisdiction and from any taxes which had to be raised to maintain the town's fortifications and infrastructure. The struggle for power between the scabini and the clergy would trigger many conflicts during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The balance of power was further altered during the thirteenth century as new groups and institutions appeared. From around 1200, a new council of jurati was formed, drawn from the same economic and social milieu as the scabini. This new body was chaired by two burgomasters, or magistri, and came to play an increasing role in the administration of the city.Footnote ²² Around 1288 craft guilds appeared. Reconsideration of the influence of the guilds in Flanders and Brussels has recently been undertaken, and it would be interesting and useful to do the same for Liège.Footnote ²³ The guilds played an important political role from the beginning of the fourteenth century. The jurati had traditionally been appointed from amongst the aldermen and ‘patrician’ families but, in 1303, the guilds obtained the right to choose half of the jurati and one of the burgomasters. In this they were supported by most of the cathedral chapter, who saw them as an ally against the aldermen in the disputes over taxation. This new balance of power riled the nobles and aldermen and, in 1312, they took up arms against the guilds. Backed by the clergy, the guildsmen responded with ferocity: 200 patricians were burned in the Church of Saint-Martin (this episode has been called the ‘Mal Saint-Martin’). For the next 20 years the guilds built up political momentum in Liège until, from 1313 onwards, any citizen wishing to become one of the jurati had to be a member of a guild. This rule was abolished around 1330 as the patrician families regained political influence and it was agreed that the burgomasters and jurati should be chosen equally from amongst the ‘patricians’, the craftsmen and lower-status merchants. Under this new order the guilds and their leaders lost their political standing, the latter being forced to submit any regulations that they wished to pass to the bishop, the aldermen and the city council for approval. In 1343 the balance of power tipped once again, when the bishop decreed that the appointment of the burgomasters should be shared between the patricians and the guilds and restored the authority of those leading the guilds. Five decades later, in 1384, it was once again made mandatory that a man wishing to sit on the city council had to be a guild member, just as in 1303. This state of affairs lasted for another 30 years. Throughout most of the fifteenth century the bishops of Liège ruled on behalf of successive Dukes of Burgundy and were prey to constant infighting. In 1408, the guilds were suppressed once more, only to be re-established in the 1420s, albeit under strict controls.Footnote ²⁴ Thus, while at certain times the guilds held the balance of power within the town, it cannot be assumed that Liège was a ‘democratic’ city where the guilds had a decisive hold over political matters.

After 1380, it is possible to construct prosopographical lists for Liège. Many of the burgomasters came from the families which had, in the thirteenth century, provided most of the aldermen. It would appear that some ‘dynasties’ took control of the guilds in order to further their influence over the city's politics. In this they were aided by the form and membership of Liège's guilds, which were hierarchically structured, with few masters. From the end of the fourteenth century, in some guilds, ordinary members lost their political rights or were asked to pay large sums for admission. In addition, certain guilds were more influential than others: the clothiers and iron-workers were the most important and provided many representatives to sit on the city's political bodies. In contrast, none of the guilds dealing with food had any significant influence in the running of the city, a situation which proves to be of importance for the study of their (rather insignificant) political weight in the issuing of regulations for the food market. Two further points are relevant to the fortunes of the guilds. First, the clergy, when pressured by those with different political interests, varied their stance depending on the specific issue involved. From the beginning of the thirteenth century, the clergy started to dissociate themselves from the bishop. In fiscal issues, which were much debated at the time, they tended to support the guilds against the aldermen and the bishop, at least until the 1320s. Thereafter they distanced themselves from the guilds and were more likely to back the bishop. Second, the fact that the strength of the bishop's response to any opposition underwent considerable fluctuations has to be underlined. In the early years of the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, the bishops were sufficiently powerful to renege on concessions to which previous, weaker bishops had agreed.

3. THE REGULATION OF PERIODS OF SALE AND THE BALANCE OF POWER

The clergy dominated the provisioning of Liège and, as the chroniclers note, this offered the city a substantial advantage.Footnote ²⁵ It was surrounded by the rich soils of Hesbaye and differed from the city of Ghent, which held an estimated 50,000 people around 1300 but was situated in a rather less favourable environment.Footnote ²⁶ Although Ghent was the main centre of the cereal market in Flanders, this meant it had to buy in all other forms of provision and its ability to do so was very much dependent on fluctuations in the grain market. In comparison, the urban community in Liège enjoyed relative food security. According to historians the city had a population of between 10,000 and 15,000 at the beginning of the fourteenth century, rising to about 20,000 at the end of the fifteenth century.Footnote ²⁷ Around 1300, about 47,934 hectolitres (hl) of hulled spelt were harvested each year from the estates of the cathedral and the seven collegiate churches.Footnote ²⁸ It has been estimated that 3.65 hl of such cereals were needed to feed a person for one year in the fifteenth century.Footnote ²⁹ The quantity of grain yielded by the church estates should thus have been able to feed around 13,132 people. Other cereals and the spelt harvested by the bishop, who had his own large estate, or by the other abbeys and lay owners are not included in these calculations. Liège was thus highly dependent upon the church and its wealthy clerics, but even they could not always fulfil the town's needs, and periods of dearth were not unknown.Footnote ³⁰ In such crisis periods, cereal had to be imported from Flanders, Champagne, Holland or Zeeland; this is a crucial factor when trying to understand the development of legislation in the town.

The first systematic regulations imposed on the market for food in the cityFootnote ³¹ appear in a charter from the end of the twelfth century which was authorised by the bishop, Albert de Cuyck.Footnote ³² In the thirteenth century, further decrees laid out the ‘policy’ of the market, regulated the prices of vital foodstuffs, controlled weights and measures, and provided quality control.Footnote ³³ An examination of the nature of these documents and of the circumstances of their origins would exceed the purpose of this article. The Appendix lists only those decrees which included specifications concerning the length of periods of sale, plus one or two others which are relevant to our arguments. The Appendix also provides a few contextual details for each of the documents listed.

Despite Liège's turbulent history there was not always a direct link between political upheaval and the institution of regulations, so not all the decrees listed in the Appendix were connected to their political context. Some of those listed, such as those of 1332 and 1369, dealt with specific goods, while others were designed to bring greater precision to existing regulations. Of course, the internal distribution of power in the city can be seen reflected in some of the administrative and legislative decisions taken. Even a regulation dealing with one individual product could, under specific political circumstances, serve to diminish the privileges enjoyed by one particular group or another within the city. A purely political explanation for the regulations would certainly, however, be wide of the mark. That said, the two most important regulations listed, those of 1196/1198 and 1317, which laid down the overall architecture of the organisation of the urban food market, were both issued in the immediate aftermath of tensions between competing powers and severe food crises.Footnote ³⁴ Albert de Cuyck's charter provided the foundations upon which the subsequent documents rested, while the Lettre des Vénaux of 1317 displayed many features of later texts, which were mostly ‘confirmations’ of previous regulations or included only small modifications or amplifications of the latter. Both documents show concern for the provisioning of the city, but they also laid down particular rules which created privileges for certain social groups.

The contents of Albert de Cuyck's ‘charter’ are only known from a later confirmation of 1208 issued by Philip of Swaben, so the date of the original charter is a matter of some debate.Footnote ³⁵ Albert wrested the bishopric from his competitors after a fierce political struggle. His reign was short, lasting from 1196 to 1200, and he was in too weak a position to deal with contentious issues. As bishop he found himself in opposition to the urban elite, starting a long series of conflicts that continued into the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, largely as a result of the patricians’ continued attempts to introduce taxes on staple, everyday goods. The years 1195–1197 also saw severe food crises in Liège and Flemish rye had to be imported to feed the city.Footnote ³⁶ One-third of de Cuyck's charter dealt with economic matters and, amongst many other issues, it laid down regulations on the weight and price of bread and the sale of wine (assisia).

In 1317,Footnote ³⁷ the Lettre des Vénaux laid out the first systematic regulation of the food market in Liège, after another period of tension.Footnote ³⁸ In the wake of the Mal Saint-Martin in 1312 (see above), the patricians had been stripped of political power. The following year a war started between two patrician families, the Awans and the Waroux, the latter being backed by the bishop, Adolphe. The conflict heightened the economic tensions caused by the heavy rains that would trigger the great European famine of 1316; the result was a ‘truce’Footnote ³⁹ after a military and economic tragedy, as the countryside was wasted by war, in times of climatic and economic tension. The Awans and Waroux declared a truce in 1316 and the following year the Lettre des Vénaux was issued. The latter goes into more sophisticated detail than de Cuyck's charter with regards to the appearance of goods, when and for how long they should be put on public display, and the length of the time period in which they could be sold. The 1316–1317 famine, like that of 1196, was amongst the most severe encountered in western medieval history, and it is hard not to link this to the scrupulous care given in the Lettre to the description of the rights and duties of the clergy, the bishop and the townspeople within Liège's food market.

The regulations of 1414, 1416, 1424 and 1487 were of a different nature. They were not imposed in response to a food crisis. The first two were issued just after the bishop crushed his opponents and erased any municipal representation by creating temporary administrative institutions which he controlled himself. By 1424 the old political system had been restored and new regulations were issued. The regulations of 1487 came in a period when Liège was trying to reconstruct itself. Indeed, it had been destroyed in 1468 by the Duke of Burgundy Charles the Bold, after the town's repeated uprisings – and after Charles the Bold's death in 1477, when it recovered autonomy. Despite their differences with regard to both their goals and the context in which they were issued, the four texts share certain characteristics. The regulations they laid out were intended to shape the food market for the ‘common good’ (commun profit) with the alleged aim of providing access to food for every strata of society; les grands, moiens et petis.Footnote ⁴⁰ Compared with the documents of 1317 and 1196/1198 these later texts were not ground-breaking, but they did make slight adaptions or were more precise in enumerating the kinds of poultry, shellfish or fish whose sale was to be regulated.Footnote ⁴¹ They can be seen as a means of restoring social and economic peace to the city; they were broad in scope and dealt with many important public issues, not just the food market.

One can question how the new regulations were applied in practice. This issue will be considered below, although it is difficult to elucidate, given the lack of sources. It would appear that each successive set of regulations remained in force, governing practices without a break, until the next set was issued. It also seems that the controls put in place were effective, but that many flaws and frauds, along with misuse by more advantaged groups and individuals, altered their daily application.

Although the authority of the bishop fluctuated during the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, he remained an important figure when it came to legislation. Up until the 1250s, and during the fifteenth century, many of the documents laying out the regulations carried the bishop's name. In the intervening years the bishops’ authority waned and the aldermen or the city council asserted more authority over the way the market was to be run. They and the clergy were then named as the parties issuing the regulations.Footnote ⁴² In the fifteenth century, the texts regained a more autocratic tone, as successive bishops took up the political reins once again.Footnote ⁴³ Although the prince-bishops were once again named as the sole authors of the regulations, it is noticeable that they took great care to show that they were addressing problems in the general interest.Footnote ⁴⁴

The four fifteenth-century texts stressed that market transactions were to be conducted openly, and stipulated that the townspeople should have priority in the selling or buying of goods. The regulations ensured that exchanges would take place during ‘honest times’, so that neither buyers nor sellers could use darkness to cover illicit behaviour. The legislation was also intended to control the periods during which buying and selling could take place so as to avoid any large clandestine purchases and speculation on foodstuffs. It is open to question, however, whether the texts were primarily designed to favour the entire urban population by guaranteeing access to cheap, widely available food. Although some points of the regulations were designed to achieve this goal, this was not true in all cases. Which particular categories of people were guaranteed access to food as consumers and which were given privileged entry to the food market as sellers is still not well understood.

Particular legislation placed limits on who could sell their goods on the market in Liège; selected individuals or groups were granted specific periods during which they could enjoy a monopoly on the sale of goods. In two such cases it is obvious that the bishop and the canons of the cathedral were the favoured parties. Albert de Cuyck's charter mentioned that the bishop was to have periods of monopoly when he alone was able to sell wine, dried meats and cereals.Footnote ⁴⁵ Only the bishop could sell wine at Easter, for example. The period around Easter tended to see economic tension in the wine market, lying as it did midway between the sale of the wine harvested the previous October and the arrival of the new vintage the following autumn.Footnote ⁴⁶ Once Lent was over, wine consumption increased, and his monopoly meant that the bishop now had an excellent opportunity to sell his stocks. Moreover, medieval wine quickly turned sour and was less appreciated once it had been kept for a few months, so his privilege allowed the bishop to clear his cellars and obtain the best return on his wine. Being able to sell dried meat before Lent, when meat was more expensive but was not proscribed as it would be during Lent, gave the bishops further advantage. In August 1304, bishop Thibaut de Bar obtained the right to extend the period of his monopoly to include a second time slot during the month of June. It is likely that the bishop de Bar sought to have a monopoly on the sale of cereals around the feast of Saint-John the Baptist, on 24 June, as this fell in the period of higher prices which preceded the arrival on the market of the crops harvested later in the summer.Footnote ⁴⁷

Their periods of monopoly allowed the bishops to sell their goods when they were highly sought after, and to dispose of remaining stocks at a relatively good price. Léon Zylbergeld has suggested that, as their monopolies involved the sale of large stocks of goods, the bishops actually used them as a means of lowering the market price of particular goods which would otherwise have become inflated.Footnote ⁴⁸ Even if this was the bishop's goal, the efficiency with which this strategy would have operated is questionable. The bishops’ monopoly also served to remove all the grain supplied by the churches from the market. In total this amounted to a rather larger quantity of grain than the bishop alone could put on the market. The bishops’ periods of monopoly also meant that the cathedral officers, the ‘ministeriales’, did not have to sell smaller quantities of goods regularly throughout the year. In short, these arrangements meant that the bishop could dispose of any surpluses as well as a significant share of his current stock, while making a large amount of money in a short space of time. The three points in the year designated for these monopolies in Albert de Cuyck's charter – before Lent, 40 days later, and at the beginning of the summer – offered the bishop the opportunity to earn resources and create capital during the less productive parts of the year. Periods such as midsummer and autumn, when he did not have a monopoly on the sale of goods, were probably more propitious for the general populace to make cash by selling fresh goods on a regular basis. It seems that the bishop's monopoly was of greater advantage to him and more detrimental to other participants in the market, such as the wine- or meat-sellers, than it was a tool intended to lower prices. In the 1198 charter, the bishop's monopoly was limited to his own personal production of meat, wine and crops, which highlighted the abuses which might arise from his monopoly. In 1304, the then bishop allowed the city council to revoke a temporary extension of his privileges, and reintroduce the previous organisation of the monopoly on sales, as laid out in Albert de Cuyck's charter.Footnote ⁴⁹ In fact, an exception was made that year, the bishop being allowed a second period of monopoly in which to sell his wine, a favour for which he was probably very grateful, as he had just been installed as prince-bishop and would have had to find a considerable amount of money to cover the costs he had incurred. He may have sought this concession from the council as compensation for the reorganisation introduced the previous year, which saw members of the council being drawn from among both representatives of the guilds and members of the ‘patricianate’. Later in the fourteenth century, a compilation of judicial decisions referred to the prince-bishop's monopoly during the three periods mentioned by de Cuyck, but stated that in order to enjoy these, he had had to first explicitly express his intention of taking advantage of them.Footnote ⁵⁰

The legislation also favoured other clergymen in the city, who were also granted privileged positions as sellers in the food market. From 1317 onwards, the canons of the cathedral of Saint-Lambert were given a monopoly on sales before prime – that is before six o'clock in the morning – throughout the year, apart from the periods when the bishop held his monopolies.Footnote ⁵¹ No other church enjoyed a similar advantage, not even the secondary chapters linked to the cathedral.

Contextual reasons explain why this privilege was unique to Saint-Lambert. The year 1317 lay within a period of economic tension.Footnote ⁵² In 1297, 20 years before, bishop Hugues de Chalon (1296–1301) had drastically altered the value of the coins he was minting; his new pennies (denarii) had half the value of the old ones. This move had a negative impact on those landowners who received rent from their tenants in cash. The churches were especially exposed as they rented many parcels of land for customary, rather than market, rents (census). The rich landowners tried to adopt their own conversion rate between the old denarius and the new one, charging their debtors more than two new denarii for each old one. Around 1297, the city's aldermen instituted a compromise, fixing the conversion rate to favour debtors, who had to pay 8 new denarii for each gros tournois (a unit of currency), rather than the 16 denarii, which was the true reflection of the deflation. The churches experienced a drastic loss of income and this worsened in the years which followed, particularly after 1313. They reacted by multiplying the number of their leasehold contracts, which allowed them to adapt the rents to the real value of money, or by asking for payments in kind.Footnote ⁵³ It is possible, as the monopoly enjoyed by the cathedral was set up at this time, that this was another tool to balance their financial difficulties. The 1317 regulation was also adopted in the aftermath of the political events of 1316, including the adoption of the Paix de Fexhe, the document underpinning the truce between the Awans and the Waroux.Footnote ⁵⁴ The cathedral chapter played a pivotal role in drawing up of the terms of the truce: the cathedral was to act as the final referee in the case of any disagreement between the citizens and the bishop's officers. This put the cathedral in a strong political position, and the economic regulations of 1317 reflect this. Neither the 1316 Paix, nor the 1317 charter, extended the political and economic advantages awarded to the cathedral to the other churches, and in subsequent years the clergy from the latter frequently banded together to defend their interests against those of the cathedral.Footnote ⁵⁵ It is remarkable that, in the aftermath of a famine, the cathedral chapter was granted the privilege of being the only body allowed to sell grain before prime. This serves to reinforce just how strong the political position of the chapter had become after the events of 1316. However, it also rather detracts from the notion that the 1317 regulations were drawn up for the common good.

The legislation which granted advantages to certain ecclesiastical sellers also contained regulations affecting particular categories of buyers. Furthermore, a distinction needs to be made between the points within the regulations which favoured the buying of staple goods and guaranteed the continuous provisioning of the entire city, and the points which favoured the supply of more expensive items to the wealthy or powerful.

Albert de Cuyck's 1317 charter stated that if a butcher was to buy a beast for slaughter in the period between 11 November and Christmas, and a resident of the town asked him to sell it before it had been killed, he had to resell it at the same price for which he had acquired it. The regulation did allow that in certain circumstances the butcher might raise the resale price by one penny (denarius) as a compensation for his efforts, but this was an insignificant increase as it was the price paid for just four loaves of spelt bread, according to the charter.Footnote ⁵⁶ The seasonality of the meat market was a crucial factor in medieval society. Because of the cost of feeding cattle in stables, beasts were slaughtered at the beginning of November, which was known as ‘the slaughtering month’. In Liège, as well as in many other places in Europe, including England, a mass slaughter took place on the feast of Saint-Martin (11 November).Footnote ⁵⁷ This meant that there were vast amounts of meat for sale in November, reducing the price, but thereafter there was a scarcity of fresh meat. One might suspect, therefore, that Albert de Cuyck's edict referring to butchers did not aim to give advantages to average- or lower-income customers, as only the churches or wealthy lay consumers would have been able to afford the purchase of an entire, live beast, even if it were cheaper in the weeks before Christmas.

Similar conclusions may be drawn from the two directives setting out regulations on the import of foreign wines and salt in 1332 and 1369, respectively, both of which were reaffirmed in 1416 and reinforced in 1424.Footnote ⁵⁸ Liège and the Huy area produced their own, less expensive, wines, but there were two sets of legislation referring to imported wine: one for wine carried by road and another for that brought by water, whether from northern or southern France, Alsace, or from more remote places via Antwerp or Damme.Footnote ⁵⁹ Strict periods were prescribed, during which the goods had to be displayed publicly and sale was forbidden, the intention being to allow the quantity and quality of the goods on offer to be estimated while also avoiding either clandestine or bulk buying, especially by wine merchants or tavern keepers. The documents outlined how the unloading of goods was to be managed and gave precise details of the periods of sale allowed under the regulations. Previous texts, such as the 1317 Lettre des Vénaux, had already assigned particular places for the sale of goods, but the later documents were more specific, laying out the details of a designated area to which those transporting or selling salt or wine were to be restricted. Such persons were instructed to stay on the far bank of the river for three days and were not permitted to cross the bridge into the city or to pass through the city wall. In addition, the wine for sale was not to be tasted before prime, as this had to be undertaken in the presence of appointed agents. Foreign wines, especially those from the Moselle and the Rhine, had been available in Liège for a long time but imports underwent a boom in the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries and it was in this context that these regulations were adopted. In 1330, wine prices were particularly high in northern Europe, as a result of poor climatic conditions.Footnote ⁶⁰ From this period onward, for reasons which are unclear, wine merchants lost their political standing in Liège, and they disappear from all documents relating to political matters in the city. It was a propitious moment for the bishop and other guilds to lessen their privileges.Footnote ⁶¹ The aim of the 1332 Lettre des Viniers was to give all the town's retail wine merchants equal access to the supply of imported wine, by preventing massive unseen purchases being made during the night or outside the city.Footnote ⁶² Wine was also an important, much disputed source of fiscal incomes. In the town of Mézières, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the taxes on wine provided as much as 72–91 per cent of municipal income, and other figures also confirm the importance of wine, especially imported wine, as the principal good on which taxes could be raised.Footnote ⁶³ Between 1330 and 1332, taxes were imposed on all wine brought into Liège in order to raise a fine of 32,000 pounds to be paid to the bishop, but the tax on foreign wines was twice as heavy. For centuries, no efficient control had been exerted on the trade in wine, but transportation costs made it an expensive product, despite the high volumes involved.Footnote ⁶⁴ An increasing need was felt, however, to prevent clandestine buying as this was associated with the avoidance of tax. In a period which saw an upsurge in wine imports the regulations contained in the Lettre des Viniers thus prevented speculation on an important product which was prized by high-status consumers, and also helped to place closer controls on fiscal incomes. Through its more precise delineation of the wholesale and retail markets and of the fiscal issues involved, the Lettre illustrates how the market could be adapted by using both public space and time as variables of control.

Further regulations point to similar motives, once again reflecting the need to protect the interests of high-status consumers. Albert de Cuyck's charterFootnote ⁶⁵ forbade the sale of poultry, venison, dried or fresh meat and fish to professionals (caupones), before nona, the ninth hour of the day or three in the afternoon. During the proscribed period only clergymen or the cives were allowed to purchase these goods. While, in this context, the word ‘cives’ might be interpreted to denote the ‘urban dwellers’ or ‘townspeople’ in general, this was not in fact the case. Albert de Cuyck's charter stated that the price of wine and the tax on it had to be determined by the clerics and cives together. Cives is therefore most likely to refer to members of the pre-eminent families holding judicial authority, such as the aldermen. This assumption is confirmed by the mention of clientes civium, which strongly suggests that cives were not the undifferentiated mass of people living inside the town. The numerous clientes civium were a precious ally for the ‘patrician’ lineages in the struggles which divided the town, offering political ‘back up’ in their disputes with the clergy.Footnote ⁶⁶Ministri ecclesiarum and servientes clericorum were their ecclesiastical counterparts, half way between the clientes, lay people working for the religious institutions, and the ‘domestics’ who worked for individual clergymen. Since the beginning of the twelfth century, the ministri ecclesiarum and servientes clericorum had enjoyed personal freedoms in both fiscal and judicial matters, much to the annoyance of the civil authorities. The clientes civium, ministri ecclesiarum and servientes clericorum all provided services but enjoyed certain advantages in return. For a low-status man in the city, one way to gain access to foodstuffs was to participate in a relationship of ‘vertical solidarity’, which provided him with a form of ‘entitlement’ to deliveries of food.Footnote ⁶⁷ In return, he would provide some form of service. Should the handouts distributed be understood in modern terms as a ‘salary’, implying that the payment received was proportional to the value of the labour performed? Or was the work undertaken limited in nature or simply symbolic? If the latter was the case, then the food distributed was not just the consequence of an economic relationship, but reflected the richer protagonists’ need to win and maintain a political and social ascendency within the town. In this scenario those distributing the food embodied the image of the socially powerful, across western cities and beyond, as protecting and feeding the poorest people.Footnote ⁶⁸ It is, however, doubtful that Albert de Cuyck's charter sought to grant the rich and powerful privileged access to the food market. Rather, the servientes or clientes would have bought goods on behalf of their masters, who then distributed the food to them in return. The range of products referred to in the charter range from easily available cheese or dried meats to more expensive poultry or venison, and herring which, at the end of the twelfth century, would still have been a luxury product.Footnote ⁶⁹ The regulations set out in de Cuyck's charter suggest that it was trying to strike a compromise between the competing civilian and clerical forces, with both factions being granted privileged consumer status.

Although the regulations laid down remained in force, the practices they delineated evolved over time. In 1317, the end of the time period during which there were restrictions on who could buy eggs, cheese, poultry or venison was designed to coincide with the conclusion of the great mass in the cathedral, because of the latter's symbolic prominence and its position right next to the corn market known as the ‘Modium’.Footnote ⁷⁰ It is notable that the measures of 1317 did not target any particular social group; they were implemented for ‘le common profit’, to benefit the entire population of the City, in the wake of the Paix de Fexhe. Nevertheless, some political bodies, and the cathedral chapter in particular, took advantage of the regulations to enhance their advantages as sellers and the edicts of 1317 had to be updated and reissued in 1355, 1424, 1478 and 1487.Footnote ⁷¹

Was Liège unique in regulating when particular goods could be sold, and placing limits on who could buy and sell them? Special market timetables are encountered elsewhere, with particular days restricted to local customers. In Lille, for example, during the famine period of 1437–1438, cereals could not be sold to people from out of town for two days a week and merchants were only allowed to buy cereals after 4 p.m. In Mons, transactions with outsiders were also forbidden for two days each week and legislation was adopted which forbade the townspeople to sell cereals to the inhabitants of those neighbouring areas which did not send their cereals to the market in Mons. Similar arrangements were also put in place in Namur, part of the diocese of Liège, after 1424, and there are many other examples of such legislation.Footnote ⁷² This type of regulation discriminated between the interests of urban dwellers, ‘outsiders’, middlemen, who bought up farm products in bulk to resell them, and forestallers, who bought up foodstuffs already on the market in massive quantities, before selling them, hopefully for a profit. The three last groups were seen as a danger to the community, particularly in times of crisis; and regulations to curb their activities are commonly found in medieval urban legislation, in order to ensure that members of the community had as much equal access as possible to basic goods such as cereals. Certain of the medieval texts from Liège contain examples of such legislation, for instance the rules to protect the community from the potentially adverse effects of large purchases of grain made by bakers or millers.

Similar strategies have been identified by Davis in the English town of Bristol, where again particular time constraints were imposed upon market activities.Footnote ⁷³ Purchases before daylight were forbidden, and different time periods were allotted to particular activities within the market; some were assigned to the sole use of local customers, others to merchants making wholesale purchases, the changeover being marked by the tolling of the church bells. In most cases, all market products were affected, but sometimes only certain products or types of market activity had constraints placed on them. Stabel has pointed out that goods which were of crucial importance to the textile economy of Flemish cities, such as wool, were subject to similar legislation.Footnote ⁷⁴ While each of the documents laying out the various regulations in Liège are similar in tone and have common objectives, they were – at least at the beginning of the thirteenth century – unusual in the way they favoured elite customers. This tone would later vanish, thanks to the involvement of the guilds in the political life of the city at the beginning of the fourteenth century.

There were particular instances where the regulations set out a market timetable which offered distinct advantages to the clergy as sellers of goods. As discussed above, the bishop and the cathedral canons were both granted periods of monopoly. Of course, in an era when rampant commercialisation was challenging Christian ethics, many churchmen chose to reflect upon ‘medieval market morality’.Footnote ⁷⁵ Scholars, such as Pierre le Chantre, Pierre de Courson, Henri de Gand, Gilles de Lessines and Pierre Olivi, considered the problem of price formation and discussed the definition of a ‘fair price’.Footnote ⁷⁶ The writings of Godefroid de Fontaines, a canon from Liège, and the Dominican Gilles de Lessines, who hailed from the neighbouring region of Hainaut, are representative of these works.Footnote ⁷⁷ As Liège was a city full of clerics and religious schools which were home to many learned scholars, these issues were no doubt debated within its walls, but it is not easy to prove a direct link between these arguments and the legislation being enacted in the town.

Similar regulations were issued in Metz, another ecclesiastical centre, with many connections to Liège. The prince-bishops in both towns enjoyed similar monopolies, and only the canons of the cathedral in Metz were permitted to sell their wine during the eight days of the annual fair.Footnote ⁷⁸ One thus suspects that such arrangements were a feature of cathedral towns, where the clerics were able to gain substantial advantages in the market place because of their position.

This article has highlighted the way that regulations could be written to offer certain advantages to particular individuals or groups offering goods for sale within a town, such as the bishop of Liège and the lay canons from the cathedral, or to favour higher-status customers when it came to the purchase of expensive products. It would be too simplistic to think that all regulations were laid out in order to protect specific interests, however. Many were formulated to meet other objectives, one example being the rule which prohibited the sale of crops too early in the morning. This promoted equal access to food, encouraged transactions to be made in public, and avoided the threats posed by both middlemen and speculators. Other policies also benefitted the whole community: the setting of the seasonal price of products such as grain or wine (assisia), for instance, and the capping of the maximum price at which goods could be sold at 125 per cent of the market price. The price of the ‘standard’ loaf was also fixed, although the weight of the loaf was allowed to fluctuate in order to compensate for variations in the price of cereals.Footnote ⁷⁹

As a rule, the legislators tried to arbitrate between competing interests; this can be seen in the ways that different guilds had their activities regulated. The bakers and brewers had their access to the cereal market limited in 1317; they were forbidden to buy early in the day, or in large quantities. Their relations with the millers were also regulated, although disputes could arise. In 1547, for example, there was a dispute over the rate of payment the millers were charging to grind grain.Footnote ⁸⁰ Later in the sixteenth century, the rules became more stringent, banning members of the bakers’ and brewers’ guilds from the market place and limiting the amount of grain which could be purchased by members of their families.Footnote ⁸¹ Innkeepers were also subject to regulation, as there was a risk that they might buy wine in secret. The butchers had limits placed on the profits they could make, and on the number of beasts they could purchase in one transaction. The most interesting development can be seen in the regulations of 1370, where it was stated that it was no longer mandatory that someone wishing to sell food ‘of vital importance’ in the marketplace had to belong to one of the town's guilds, suggesting that such membership previously had been mandatory for some unknown length of time in the period since guilds had first appeared in the 1280s. The new regulation was to apply even in the case of non-essential commodities. The city council had decided on this course of action at a time when the old patrician families were using their influence and money to gain control over the guilds and, interestingly, the 1370 document mentions opposition to the urban guilds as being common in Liège and elsewhere. Given that the regulations laid out in the charter were unfavourable to the guilds specialising in various aspects of the trade in foodstuffs, this gives some indication of the weak political standing of these guilds; their members seldom held positions of political responsibility, although the wine merchants bucked this trend. The content of the 1370 charter was not exceptional. As Stabel has observed, guilds are seldom observed to have had a complete monopoly on the markets in other cities within the Low Countries. In Liège the guilds accepted the loss of the mandatory membership requirement in return for monetary compensation.Footnote ⁸² In fact, there were already many non-guild sellers of grain operating within the city. Thus in 1370, after the decades following 1315–1317 and the Black Death, when Liège was trying to recover, an upsurge in grain prices had been noted in the neighbouring area, around Mainz, and, as the security of the city's food provisions were at stake, the decision makers had taken the view that some non-guild members should be allowed to bring supplies into the market, even if some of the less influential guilds lost their market advantage.

The only guild with a monopoly on the sale of food was that of the fishmongers. People from around the Liège area were forced to sell any fish they caught in the local river source to the city's fishmongers, but this ruling did not extend to fish brought in from outside the region or from the sea.Footnote ⁸³ Often, when two or more guilds were involved in the sale of the same product, this could trigger conflict. The fishmongers, for instance, were annoyed that the butchers could sell dried fish during Lent. The butchers, in turn, were in dispute with the winemakers who were allowed to sell meat. On occasion, regulations were put in place to ensure that all members of a guild would have the same opportunities. The Lettre des Viniers, for example, while taking the interests of individual consumers into consideration, was primarily intended to ensure that all wine-retailers in the city had equal access to imported foreign wine. This type of regulation is hardly unexpected, and was also applied to other goods, such as wool, in many Flemish cities, as Stabel has noted.Footnote ⁸⁴

The guilds’ control of the market waxed or waned depending on political circumstances. Their role was mostly one of quality control and they also had to ensure that transactions were legal, these tasks offering some remuneration for the officers who had to check the goods that were for sale. This was a classical feature of medieval market organisation. Most of the time, however, the regulations were enforced by the aldermen and the mayor, both of them the bishop's officers, assisted by the city council, if circumstances warranted it.

Unfortunately, because the archive of the aldermen's records has been lost, we cannot check how efficient the regulations were at controlling the market. This is an important question: Davis has noted similar legislation in England too, but expressed doubts as to its efficiency, and Stabel has pointed out that the legislation in Flanders had many flaws.Footnote ⁸⁵ Historians can only glimpse the situation in Liège. Many of the documents justified the imposition of regulations by lamenting the fraud being perpetrated and stating that the new rules were designed to prevent these. Often, the fines offenders would have to pay were set out; for example, in 1317, the fine for speculation on grain was set at three times the fine for fraud involving other products; 21 solidi rather than 7 solidi. The severity of the fine for speculation has to be connected to the great mortality afflicting western Europe around this time. Later documents reflect the interventions by whoever held the political power to enforce legislation, whether this was the bishop or the aldermen, which led to conflict with the guilds, particularly with the millers and bakers, who often considered the legislation imposed to be unrealistic and removed from everyday practices.Footnote ⁸⁶ As the guilds were partially involved in the day-to-day policing of the food trade, they had a conflict of interest when it came to the suppression of fraud; and they were not above suspecting the aldermen of corruption. The guilds also suspected that the aldermen were limiting the access they, the guilds, had to the foodstuffs they worked with and suspected that this may have been having an indirect effect on the market.Footnote ⁸⁷ In the early modern period, those who controlled the food market had a bad reputation and were often depicted as cheats. There were regular outbreaks of protest against perceived injustices in the sixteenth century, and the bakers and millers were on the receiving end of violence during the food crises of the seventeenth century. However, it should not be concluded that control over the market had failed completely. Control by legal means was only one method of ensuring that the regulations were enforced; social control would also have played a major role in a middle-sized town such as Liège, where reputation, the open exchange of goods and trust were thought to be as efficient as repression when it came to promoting fair trade.