SEM3-Lis y Soly Labour - Laws - in - Western - Europe - 13th-16th

CONTEXTUALIZATIONS
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LABOR LAWS IN WESTERN EUROPE, 13TH–16TH CENTURIES:
PATTERNS OF POLITICAL AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC RATIONALITY
Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly
Since the 1990s, anthropologists, historians, and sociologists studying labor

relations have increasingly emphasized that freedom and unfreedom are
relative notions. They agree that the many middle grounds between free
labor and forced labor need to be situated in specifĳic historical and insti-
tutional contexts, but they difffer regarding both the theoretical aspects of
the issue and in their interpretation of the empirical data concerning free
versus unfree.1 With respect to wage labor, Jan Lucassen has argued that
the crucial question in all cases is whether one is free “to choose one’s
own employer and therefore one’s labour conditions,” and that “in most
historical situations free wage labourers didn’t have, according to their
capacities, a complete free choice of employer.”2 Pre-industrial Europe was
no exception. On the contrary, in various areas west of the Elbe, the ruling
classes tried from the thirteenth century onward to curtail the freedom of
wage dependents as much as possible, based both on economic consider-
ations and on the desire to maintain public order. This restrictive policy,
which fĳigured in labor laws, poor laws, and penal laws, merits special con-
sideration, because proletarianization was a more massive phenomenon
in Western Europe than anywhere else in pre-industrial society.
As early as 1350, one third of English rural households is assumed to
have derived a substantial share of its income from wage labor. In most
other countries, the proportion was probably smaller, and in many cases
wage labor constituted a part-time activity or a stage in the life-cycle.
There were adult men and women who performed wage labor full-time,
1
See esp. Tom Brass and Marcel van der Linden (eds), Free and Unfree Labour: The
Debate Continues (Bern, 1997); Stanley Engerman (ed.), Terms of Labor: Slavery, Freedom,
and Free Labor (Stanford, 1999); Robert J. Steinfeld, Coercion, Contract, and Free Labor in
the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2001); Simon Deakin and Frank Wilkinson, The Law
of the Labour Market: Industrialisation, Employment, and Legal Evolution (Oxford, 2005);
Marcel van der Linden, Workers of the World: Essays toward a Global Labor History (Leiden,
2008), chapters 2–4; Alessandro Stanziani (ed.), Le travail contraint en Asie et en Europe,
XVIIe–XXe siècle (Paris, 2010).
2
Jan Lucassen, “Free and Unfree Labour Before the Twentieth Century: A Brief Over-
view,” in Brass and Van der Linden, Free and Unfree Labour, p. 47.

300 catharina lis and hugo soly
whether as servants living in their employer’s household or as casual

laborers, but far more smallholders, cottagers, and sub-tenants derived
part of their subsistence from selling their labor power. While the size
of the diffferent categories is impossible to determine, the total number
of wage dependents was undoubtedly growing everywhere.3 Employers
were concerned with controlling these workers, who in many cases were
personally free. This was the hardest to do in sparsely populated areas,
where serfdom had never come about (Norway), or where it had virtually
disappeared in the course of the thirteenth century (Sicily and Portugal).
In most countries west of the Elbe, feudal relations were still signifĳicant
around 1300, but a large proportion of the wage dependents consisted of
personally free workers, which meant that individual landlords were not
in a position to subject them to extra-economic coercion. Late-medieval
labor laws need to be considered in this context.
The successive epidemics, commonly designated as the Black Death,
and which felled one third to one half of the European population during
the fourteenth century,4 revealed how important wage labor had become
in many areas west of the Elbe: several governments imposed measures
prohibiting pay raises (as well as price increases in some cases) and/or
restricting the geographic mobility of wage dependents. In a comparative
study of labor laws promulgated in diffferent monarchies and city-states
after the Black Death, Samuel Cohn warns against viewing this legislation
as a universal and uniform reaction to the same problems. He empha-
sizes the great diversity of responses and the absence of a comprehensive
logic: “These legislative acts splintered in a multitude of directions that
to date defy any obvious patterns of economic or political rationality”; in
his view, they are “better understood in the contexts of fear and anxiety
that sprung forth from the Black Death’s new horrors of mass mortality
and destruction.”5 The author rightly argues that no single demographic
or economic model explains the legislative variety, and that the timing
and nature of the measures cannot be attributed to a specifĳic political
3
The rise of wage labor in the countryside in northwest Europe between the eleventh
and fourteenth centuries has not been investigated in great depth. Isaac Joshua, La face
cachée du Moyen Âge (Paris, 1988), pp. 179–241, is the only author who discusses rural social
change from this perspective.
4
Ole J. Benedictow, The Black Death, 1346–1353: The Complete History (Woodbridge,
2004), pp. 380–4, even advances the hypothesis that 60 percent of Europe’s population
died in the epidemic.
5
Samuel Cohn, “After the Black Death: Labour Legislation and Attitudes Towards Labour
in Late-Medieval Western Europe,” Economic History Review, 60 (2007), pp. 457–85.

labor laws in western europe, 13th–16th centuries 301
regime or composition of the ruling elites. He is also right in his assertion

that governments operated in a state of disruption and confusion that
was hardly conducive to coherent actions. Still, we believe that patterns
of socio-economic and political rationality are discernible.
Understanding late-medieval labor laws requires keeping in mind that
the “labor problem” was not identical everywhere and did not manifest
itself in the same manner and with the same intensity everywhere, as
well as that political-institutional options for intervening varied consid-
erably. Not all aspects are within the scope of a brief essay. We will not
discuss the various ways in which producers exploited their workers or
the changing economic fortunes of wage dependents, their relations with
diffferent categories of employers, or their responses to the labor laws.
Instead, we examine how public authorities defĳined the “labor problem,”
to what extent they were able to legislate in this fĳield, and which condi-
tions were necessary to ensure continuity. We consider whose interests
the measures served, and to what extent interventions were promoted
by converging interests or thwarted by divergent ones. Nor should the
rural elites be the sole focus. Sustained enforcement of countrywide labor
laws required a broader social base, which meant that some aspects of
such laws would need to benefĳit wealthy farmers as well. In several areas
urban elites were also important and sometimes even decisive operators.
In short, we devote special attention to political balances of power, to
social diffferentiation within the peasantry, and to the relative autonomy
and economic importance of cities.
Labor laws before the Black Death
Nearly all authors conducting comparative research on the late medieval

crisis have presented the countrywide labor laws promulgated at the time
in many parts of Western Europe as a new phenomenon. We agree that
these laws were a milestone, in that they defĳined wage dependents as a
problem category everywhere, and that forms of labor regulation in many
areas were henceforth complemented by poor relief provisions and penal
measures. High mortality rates alone, however, do not explain why so
many public authorities attempted to mobilize and discipline the labor
force after the Black Death. In various countries measures to this efffect
were taken far earlier, when there was no absolute labor shortage.
Several English agrarian bylaws from the late thirteenth and early
fourteenth centuries that were compulsory for all villagers comprised

measures ordinarily regarded as characteristic of post-plague legisla-

tion. In some places able-bodied wage dependents were prohibited from
moving elsewhere during the harvest season and were obliged to work;
elsewhere customary wages were set for reapers; and in still other places
labor coercion was applied to prohibit the able-bodied from gleaning or
requesting alms, thereby depriving them of alternative sources of income.
The explicit stipulations in some instances that tenants might compete
with lords to recruit wage workers indicates a demand among wealthy
farmers as well.6 This is understandable, because according to the Hun-
dred Rolls of 1279–80, the top 20 percent of all holdings each comprised
at least thirty acres (12 ha).7 Such tenants were able to farm at a scale
sufffĳicient to produce surpluses for the market, take on more land, and
hire servants and casual laborers.8 The problem was that demand for and
supply of casual labor were not synchronous at critical moments. Densely
populated counties such as Essex, for example, were areas of extensive
geographic mobility.9 The ambition of manorial lords and wealthy farm-
ers to mobilize and control labor manifested in measures to regulate
itinerant men and women in search of jobs, suggesting that effforts were
made to restrict the geographic mobility of wage dependents. Between
1272 and 1305 no fewer than 31 royal commissions were formed to cur-
tail “vagrancy,” and a statute from 1331 authorized village constables to
imprison suspected “idlers.”10
England was not the only country where labor regulations were intro-
duced prior to the Black Death. Elsewhere, an absolute labor shortage
6
Warren Ortman Ault, “Some Early Village By-Laws,” English Historical Review, 45
(1930), pp. 208–31, at 211–5, and the book by the same author Open-Field Husbandry and
the Village Community: A Study of Agrarian By-Laws in Medieval England (Philadelphia,
1965), pp. 13–16, 43–6; Elaine Clark, “Medieval Labor Law and English Local Courts,” Ameri-
can Journal of Legal History, 27 (1983), pp. 330–53; Anthony Musson, “New Labour Laws,
New Remedies? Legal Reaction to the Black Death “Crisis,” in Nigel Saul (ed.), Fourteenth
Century England, vol. 1 (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 73–88, at 75–9.
7
Junichi Kanzaka, “Villein Rents in Thirteenth-Century England: An Analysis of the
Hundred Rolls of 1279–80,” Economic History Review, 55 (2002), pp. 593–618, at 599.
8
Bruce M. Campbell, “The Agrarian Problem in the Early Fourteenth Century,” Past
and Present, 188 (2005), pp. 3–70, at 46–7, 67.
9
L.R. Poos, A Rural Society after the Black Death: Essex, 1350–1525 (Cambridge, 1991),
p. 160.
10
Chris Given-Wilson, “Service, Serfdom and English Labour Legislation, 1350–1500,” in
Anne Curry and Elizabeth Matthew (eds), Concepts and Patterns of Service in the Later
Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 21–37, at 29; Elaine Clark, “Institutional and Legal
Responses to Begging in Medieval England,” Social Science History, 26 (2002), pp. 447–73,
at 459.

was not a necessary prerequisite for imposing regulations and control

either. Moreover, several thirteenth-century rulers attempted to regulate
the labor supply and/or terms of employment throughout their kingdoms.
While the socio-economic trends that motivated their legislative initia-
tives are not always clear, the measures demonstrate in any case that only
a strong monarchy could promulgate labor laws that applied throughout
the territory and were implemented efffectively. Another factor determin-
ing whether such laws could be sustained for extended periods was the
stability or instability of the political confĳiguration.
The Constitutions of Melfĳi—also known as the Liber Augustalis—
promulgated in 1231 by Emperor Frederick II for the Kingdom of Sicily
restricted the power of the nobility and placed the cities under the direct
authority of the ruler and his ministers. All freemen and citizens were
henceforth equal before the law. This meant that the vast majority of
the population basically had legal security, as serfdom had all but disap-
peared. As far as labor was concerned, the royal bailifffs were ordered to
set maximum wages for various occupations—mostly artisans, but also
grape-gatherers and reapers—and to issue heavy penalties to those who
demanded or paid higher rates. Both these initiatives were new, as no
earlier examples of such government measures have been identifĳied in
European history.11 What motivated Frederick II is unclear. Did the urban
elites support his measures to curtail the power of the aristocrats, and did
the legislation serve to protect their interests? This seems plausible, as the
erosion of central authority led city councils to control wages and regulate
the labor market independently from the late thirteenth century onward,
especially when the steep population decline after 1311–13 caused a labor
shortage that became far more serious in the 1320s and 1330s. Wages were
capped, and workers were prohibited from abandoning their employer
and migrating.12 During the second half of the fourteenth century, a period
of political fragmentation and economic segmentation, leading feudal
families attempted in vain to reintroduce serfdom. The cities, in turn, con-
tinued to take measures to regulate the local labor market.13
11
Liber Augustalis, trans. James M. Powell (New York, 1971), pp. 133–5; Hermann Dilcher,
Die sizilische Gesetzgebung Kaiser Friedrichs II. Quellen der Constitutionen von Melfĳi und
ihrer Novellen (Cologne and Vienna, 1975), pp. 693, 695–6.
12
Cliffford R. Backman, The Decline and Fall of Medieval Sicily: Politics, Religion and Econ-
omy in the Reign of Frederick III, 1296–1337 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 38, 99–100.
13
Steven R. Epstein, An Island for Itself: Economic Development and Social Change in Late
Medieval Sicily (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 88–91, 330, 373.

The case of Castile reveals how decisive power relationships were for
implementing countrywide labor laws. In 1268, Alfonso X not only pro-
claimed price freezes but also decreed wage ceilings for both urban arti-
sans and rural workers, suggesting that employers already faced a “labor
problem” at the time. This is no surprise, as thousands of Muslim artisans
had left the cities of Andalusia over the preceding decades, and after the
revolt of 1264 the ruler had expelled the Muslims still remaining in the
countryside. While Alfonso’s wage ceilings accommodated complaints
from urban entrepreneurs, the debasement of the coinage and espe-
cially the levying of special taxes greatly irritated urban elites and mid-
dle groups. He moreover incurred the wrath of many noblemen, which
instigated political tensions and conflicts.14 These circumstances ruled out
implementing national wages.
In Norway the strong central authority and the convergence of interests
between the primary social groups made implementation of labor laws
possible. Well before the Black Death, elaborate countrywide labor leg-
islation was introduced, based essentially on coercion, and remained in
efffect for centuries: the law code (Landslov) that King Magnus VI Lagabøte
(“Law-Mender”) promulgated in 1274 throughout the country, including
the Faroe Islands and Shetland. One of the articles prohibited those with
little or no property from leaving their place of residence between Easter
and Michaelmas. His aim was to mobilize the labor of those who were
landless or nearly landless, as since the middle of the century many had
complained that “everybody wants to go trading and no one wants to
work for the farmers.” In 1291 it was stipulated by law that every able-
bodied man and woman who owned no land was required to perform
wage labor.15
The fact that Norway was a unifĳied state, where in the late Middle Ages
the monarchy remained very powerful and the aristocracy comparatively
weak, explains why labor legislation could be implemented. But the ques-
tion remains: why was it enforced for so long? Four factors came into
14
Maria del Carmen Carlé, “El precio de la vida en Castilla del Rey Sabio al Emplazado,”
Cuadernos de Historia de España, 15 (1951), pp. 132–56; James Todesca, “Wages and Cur-
rency in Thirteenth-Century Castile,” Paper presented at the symposium on Wages and
Currency: Global and Historical Comparisons, held on 24–25 May 2002 in Amsterdam and
Leiden.
15
See esp. Sølvi Sogner, “The Legal Status of Servants in Norway from the Seventeenth
tot the Twentieth Century,” in Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux (ed.), Domestic Service and the
Formation of European Identity: Understanding the Globalization of Domestic Work, 16th–
21st Centuries (Bern, 2004), pp. 175–87, at 178.

play. First, land ownership was allodial, i.e. non-feudal: the land belonged
to free and sovereign owners. Second, the—relatively small—population
in the thirteenth century was personally free, both legally and in prac-
tice; serfdom had never been signifĳicant, and slavery no longer existed by
then.16 Third, no manorial system of large-scale farming had come about.
The land held by the elite consisted largely of scattered holdings and even
parts of holdings run by tenant farmers who paid rent; work on the central
farm, often the seat of the owner, was done by servants and casual labor-
ers. Last but not least: social diffferentiation within the peasantry was very
advanced. There was both a top stratum of wealthy farmers and a broad
stratum of cottagers and nearly landless.17 Demand for labor was there-
fore substantial, and wage dependents were the only option, as no other
forms of labor mobilization existed. It was therefore essential that free
wage dependents be prevented from obtaining other sources of income or
migrating to cities, and this was precisely the objective of the legal mea-
sures taken by the Crown. The epidemic of 1362–63 exacerbated the “labor
problem,” not only because of the intrinsic mortality, but also because
many cottagers were now able to lease larger, more viable holdings. The
amendments of 1364 and 1383–84 to the existing laws stipulated that
royal offfĳicials were responsible for the labor supply in the countryside;
in the spring and autumn, they were expected to chase from the cities all
able-bodied men and women lacking adequate means of support and
not yet working the fĳields. In the sixteenth century the labor laws were
tightened: all the unemployed—except for tailors, cobblers, and car-
penters—had to enter the service of farmers for at least half a year;
“servants” were not allowed to trade independently in the countryside
and were required to give three months notice, and “vagrants” were sub-
ject to severe punishment.18
In other Scandinavian countries the population was also fairly small
and personally free in the thirteenth century, and the available evidence
suggests a rise in the number of wage dependents there as well. Still,
no central measures were taken to regulate rural labor in Denmark and
16
Ruth Mazo Karras, Slavery and Society in Medieval Scandinavia (New Haven and Lon-
don, 1988).
17
Knut Helle, “Down to 1536,” in Rolf Danielsen et al. (eds.), Norway: A History from the
Vikings to Our Own Times (Stockholm, 1995), pp. 53–6; Eljas Orrman, “Rural Conditions,”
in Knut Helle (ed.), The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, Vol. I: Prehistory to 1520 (Cam-
bridge, 2003), pp. 299–303, 308–11.
18
Sogner, “The Legal Status,” pp. 178–80.

Sweden. This was attributable to a combination of power relations and

ownership structures. Between 1250 and 1350, Denmark was the scene of
political turmoil and even signs of disintegration, leading the peasantry
to seek protection from noblemen and religious institutions. Unlike in
Norway, the Danish aristocracy controlled much of the land, a mano-
rial system of large-scale farming came about, and the tenanted farms
of the nobility and religious institutions were exempt from royal taxes.
The strong aristocracy, able to exercise power in society independently
from the Crown, devised separate strategies for mobilizing and control-
ling labor. In the century after the Black Death, large Danish landown-
ers increased their authority over their servants and tenant farmers (both
legally and in practice), regulated the mobility of the rural population,
and enserfed the farmers on Sjaelland (Zealand) and the other islands.19
Clearly, some governments promulgated countrywide labor legislation
long before the Black Death, and mobilizing wage labor at conditions that
favoured employers was the main objective. Whenever the interests of
noblemen converged with those of wealthy farmers, the work require-
ment was focused on agriculture (Norway), whereas when the interests of
rulers converged with those of cities, setting wage ceilings was a primary
interest (Sicily and Castile). The implementation of legislation depended
on the presence of a strong monarchy on the one hand and on converg-
ing interests on the other hand. Where rulers faced political oppositions
and conflicts, wage ceilings became impossible to enforce, as the example
of Castile demonstrates. Wherever the aristocracy was unwilling to cede
power and tried to devise a separate labor mobilization strategy, no coun-
trywide labor laws were promulgated (Denmark and Sweden), or they
were short-lived (Sicily). In Norway, both noblemen and wealthy farmers
championed labor legislation targeting the agricultural sector. Economic
and demographic changes had increased the numbers of cottagers and
landless, but the absence of serfdom meant that individual landowners
were unable to exert extra-economic coercion; they had to rely on the
monarchy to do so. Even the aristocracy, who owned comparatively little
land, needed the central government to compel wage dependents through
legislation to offfer their labor power in the countryside. This countrywide
labor legislation therefore survived and was enforced efffectively.
19
Helle, “Down to 1536,” pp. 53, 64, 101; Eljas Orrman, “The Conditions of the Rural
Population (c. 1350–1520),” in Helle, The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, Vol. I, pp. 581–3,
600–2.

Agrarian interests and countrywide labor laws after the Black Death
While Norway after the Black Death continued and reinforced the exist-
ing wage labor policy, several central governments promulgated the fĳirst
national labor laws around that time. In Provence, ruled by the Counts of
Anjou, who were also the Kings of Naples, the ordinance that the Grand
Seneschal Raymond II d’Agoult proclaimed on 5–6 September 1348 was
the very fĳirst attempt in Europe to cap prices and wages following the out-
break of the plague. The action was short-lived, however, for the “war of
the seneschals” prevented the representatives of the House of Anjou from
enforcing the legislation or taking new initiatives.20 The labor laws pro-
mulgated in England, Portugal, and some parts of Central Europe, espe-
cially in Upper Bavaria and Tyrol, on the other hand, remained in force,
essentially serving agrarian interests. The diffference was that the English
and Portuguese kings primarily considered the interests of the aristocracy,
whereas the rulers of Tyrol were more interested in improving the eco-
nomic position of the wealthier farmers. All areas had a powerful central
authority, and the objective was the same everywhere: to control rural
labor, as manifested in comparable legal regulations. English legislation
merits special consideration, however, because it gave rise to government
measures that became increasingly consistent and lasted for centuries,
coinciding with the rise of agrarian capitalism.
As the modalities and enforcement of the Ordinance of Labourers (1349),
the Statute of Labourers (1351), the Statute of Cambridge (1388), and the
subsequent statutes (enacted in the 1440s and 1490s), have been examined
by many authors since the pioneering work by Bertha Haven Putnam,21
we will cover only some of the highlights here.22 Various objectives of
20
Robert Braid, “Et Non Ultra: Politiques royales du travail en Europe occidentale au
XIVe siècle,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 161 (2003), pp. 437–91, here 438, 442–5,
454, 474–9.
21
Bertha Haven Putnam, The Enforcement of the Statutes of Labourers during the First
decade after the Black Death, 1349–1359 (New York, 1908).
22
In addition to the references in notes 6–10, see esp. Simon A.C. Penn and Christopher
Dyer, “Wages and Earnings in Late Medieval England: Evidence from the Enforcement
of the Labour Laws,” Economic History Review, 43 (1990), pp. 356–76; Robert J. Steinfeld,
The Invention of Free Labor: The Employment Relation in English and American Law and
Culture, 1350–1870 (Chapel Hill, 1993), pp. 28–9, 35–6, 53–4; Robert C. Palmer, English Law
in the Age of the Black Death, 1348–1381: A Transformation of Governance and Law (Chapel
Hill, 1993); Chris Given-Wilson, “The Problem of Labour in the Context of English Govern-
ment,” in James Bothwell, P.J.P. Goldberg and W.M. Ormrod (eds), The Problem of Labour in
Fourteenth-Century England (York, 2000), pp. 85–100; A.L. Beier, “A New Serfdom: Labor
Laws, Vagrancy Statutes, and Labor Discipline in England, 1350–1800,” in A.L. Beier and

the English labor laws, such as controlling and inspecting wage-rates and
curtailing labor mobility, derived from local antecedents but henceforth
became applicable countrywide and transgressors were subject to fĳines
and even corporeal punishment. The main objective, however, was new
in its conception: all able-bodied men and women, whether free or unfree,
and younger than sixty, without visible means of subsistence, and lacking
a specifĳic occupation were required to serve anybody who claimed their
labor. What “visible means of subsistence” were depended on how the
authorities defĳined work; activities by cottagers that fĳigured in a multi-
form subsistence base were regarded as useless or even as manifestations
of idleness, whenever they limited the local labor supply. Persons with lit-
tle or no land were forced to accept cheap annual contracts or otherwise
risk being accused of “wandering about idly” or, worse still: being labelled
as vagrants. From 1349, wage dependents were moreover required to work
for rates that applied throughout the country or risk stifff fĳines.
Never before had free persons been required by law to perform wage
labor.23 The law stipulated that recalcitrant workers might be summarily
punished; testimony from two witnesses was sufffĳicient to convict them.
The compulsory labor clause elicited enormous resistance,24 as did the
contract clause, since the law declared anybody departing prior to “com-
pleting the work” to be in breach of contract and therefore punishable.
Employer-employee relationships were formulated exclusively in master-
servant terms, with employment contracts by defĳinition favouring the
master. A.L. Beier has rightly noted that the labor legislation drafted in
England from the mid-fourteenth century onward, entailing a wide range
of coercive measures, “might be considered England’s version of the “sec-
ond serfdom’ that the landed classes of eastern Europe were imposing
around the same time, only in the English experience it was wage labor
that was mandated.”25
English labor laws were indisputably intended primarily to accommo-
date the demand on the part of the aristocracy and the gentry for cheap
Paul Ocobock (eds.), Cast Out: Vagrancy and Homelessness in Global and Historical Per-
spective (Athens, OH, 2008), pp. 35–63; Judith M. Bennett, “Compulsory Service in Late
Medieval England,” Past and Present, 209 (2010), pp. 7–52.
23
For a diffferent view, see Musson, “New Labour Laws,” pp. 76–7 (though he admits
that he is dealing with manorial regulations).
24
See inter alia Nora Kenyon, “Labour Conditions in Essex in the Reign of Richard II,”
in E.M. Carus-Wilson (ed.), Essays in Economic History, II (1962), pp. 91–111; Penn and Dyer,
“Wages,” pp. 366–70.
25
Beier, “A New Serfdom,” p. 56.

and docile labor. After 1349, labor availability became a serious problem,
less because of an absolute labor shortage than because wage dependents
could obtain better material conditions by migrating to areas where wages
were higher. The elite therefore had good reason to restrict the leeway of
cottagers and landless as much as possible. But labor laws also served the
interests of wealthy farmers, even though their objectives did not always
coincide with those of their social superiors. Administrative-legal reforms
enforced the rights of all employers with respect to their employees,
so that lords could no longer claim priority. Indications abound that
wealthy farmers did indeed use this legislation, both to discipline wage
dependents and to sue neighbors for paying excessive wages or stealing
their servants.26
Since many labor law violations were defĳined as refusing to work, and
involuntary unemployment among able-bodied men and women lacking
a means of subsistence was regarded as such as well, labor legislation was
inextricably linked with both the prohibition of begging and prosecution
of vagrancy and with highly restrictive poor relief. The diffferent strands of
legislation continued to coexist and complement one another in the early
modern period. The Statute of Artifĳicers, enacted in 1563, following a mor-
tality crisis in the late 1550s and a rise in nominal wages,27 reafffĳirmed all
fundamental principles set forth in late-medieval laws, elaborated them
in detail, and introduced some innovations: compulsory service, the con-
tract clause, restricted labor mobility, offfĳicial wage rates, attempts to tie
workers to particular occupations and employers, and apprenticeship
clauses (an innovation).28 Fragmentary data for Norfolk suggest that the
enforcement system was comprehensive and relatively efffĳicient.29 In the
sixteenth century, curtailment of vagrancy and selection of the “deserv-
ing” poor—who qualifĳied for support—were provided for in separate laws
26
L.R. Poos, “The Social Context of Statute of Labourers Enforcement,” Law and His-
tory Review, 1 (1983), pp. 27–52; Clark, “Medieval Labor Law”; Penn and Dyer, “Wages,”
p. 359; Given-Wilson, “Service,” pp. 22–3, 27, 30; Jane Whittle, The Development of Agrar-
ian Capitalism: Land and Labour in Norfolk, 1440–1580 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 296–7; Bennett,
“Compulsory Service,” p. 47.
27
Donald Woodward, “The Background to the Statute of Artifĳicers: The Genesis of
Labour Policy, 1558–63,” Economic History Review, 33 (1980), pp. 32–44; John S. Moore,
“Demographic Dimensions of the Mid-Tudor-Crisis,” Sixteenth Century Journal, 41 (2010),
pp. 1039–63.
28
The Statute made it illegal to practise any craft without serving seven years as an
apprentice fĳirst. On these clauses (repealed in 1814), see Margaret Gay Davies, The Enforce-
ment of English Apprenticeship, 1563–1642 (Cambridge, MA, 1956).
29
Whittle, The Development of Agrarian Capitalism, pp. 275–304.

but continued to correlate with the labor laws. The chief objectives of the
Elisabethan poor laws of 1601 were to regulate employment and to disci-
pline the labor force.30
A strong state, growing signifĳicance of wage labor, and convergence of
agrarian interests: Portugal resembled England in these respects. This is
also apparent from the labor laws that the Portuguese monarchy enacted
in 1349 and the years that followed. Both noblemen and wealthy farm-
ers had an interest in regulating rural labor, as the small population of
the country meant that a demographic crisis had serious consequences.
Besides, the majority of rural dwellers was free; serfdom had virtually dis-
appeared during the thirteenth century. Most members of the elite did
not manage their lands directly but divided them into small units that
they leased to tenants, resulting in many areas in a complex patchwork
of minifundia worked by jornaleiros.31 Precisely because mobilizing wage
labor was so important for diffferent social groups, the central government
took measures: wage ceilings were set, jornaleiros were prohibited from
leaving their work on farms and migrating to the cities, and “unauthorized
beggars” were subject to prosecution. A passport system was introduced
to control the comings and goings of farm workers and to distribute labor
as equitably as possible among the landlords.32 The Lei das Sesmarias, pro-
mulgated by King Fernando I in 1375, went much further: not only were
itinerant workers labelled and prosecuted as vagrants, but countrydwell-
ers with property below a specifĳied value were required to remain on the
land, together with their sons and grandsons, and they were forced to
accept low wages. Begging was restricted to those who were weak, elderly,
or infĳirm, i.e. those who were unable to work.33 Whether these measures
produced the efffects envisaged in the long run is doubtful. At any rate,
the strong growth of the cities reveals that migration was impossible to
prevent. In the late fourteenth century, protest movements repeatedly
materialized as well, both in the countryside and in the cities. Eventually,
30
As Richard H. Tawney, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Lawrence
Stone (New York, 1967), p. 47, put it: “Villeinage ceases, but the poor laws begin”. See Beier,
“A New Serfdom”.
31
Anthony R. Disney, A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire from Beginnings
to 1807, vol. 1: Portugal (Cambridge, 2009), p. 98.
32
Antonio Henrique de Oliveira Marques, History of Portugal, Vol. I: From Lusitania
to Empire (New York, 1972), p. 110; Humberto Baquero Moreno, Marginalidade e Conflitos
Sociais em Portugal nos Séculos XIV e XV (Lisbon, 1985), p. 27.
33
Virginia Rau, Sesmarias Medievais Portuguesas (Lisbon, 1982; originally published in
1945); Laurinda Abreu, “Beggars, Vagrants and Romanies: Repression and Persecution in
Portuguese Society (14th–18th Centuries),” Hygiea Internationalis, 6 (2007), pp. 41–66, 44.

general wage rates ceased to apply. The penal laws against begging and
vagrancy, however, remained in efffect and were tightened in the sixteenth
century.34
Labor laws that primarily served agrarian interests were promulgated
in two other areas after the Black Death: Upper Bavaria and Tyrol, which
had the same ruler in the mid-fourteenth century. In 1352 Louis V, Duke
of Bavaria, stated “that we have seen the weakness and the harm which
have been brought about in our land of Upper Bavaria by farmhands and
workers, that every man seeks the highest wage he can secure and will
undertake no cultivation.” Accordingly, he set maximum wages and pro-
vided severe punishment for all violators. He did the same for Tyrol and
stipulated that whoever paid or received higher wages would be fĳined or
imprisoned. In addition, he prohibited domestic servants and casual labor-
ers from migrating to another community, on pain of having all their pos-
sessions seized; they had to continue working for their current employer
at the same rate of pay. Whether the measures benefĳited wealthy farmers
in Upper Bavaria as well is unclear, but they certainly did so in Tyrol. For
political-military and tax-related reasons, the peasantry was protected by
the sovereigns. Nor did they lack political influence: representatives of the
peasantry sat in the Landtagen as a separate estate alongside the aristoc-
racy, the clergy, and the cities.35
Royal interventionism and urban wealth
After the Black Death, rulers in several countries promulgated labor laws
that in theory applied throughout their territory but were intended primar-
ily to enable urban employers to mobilize the labor of wage dependents as
cheaply as possible. The rulers involved had good reasons to pursue such
a policy. Promoting the economic interests of urban elites and middle
groups benefĳited the royal treasury and moreover helped them increase
their control over local politics. In some cases rulers relied on a traditional
34
Disney, A History of Portugal, Vol. 1: Portugal, p. 110; Abreu, “Beggars,” pp. 44–54.
35
Karl Moeser, “Die drei Tiroler Wirtschaftsordnungen aus der Pestzeit des 14. Jahr-
hunderts,” in Ernest Troger and Georg Zwanowetz (eds), Beiträge zur geschichtlichen
Landeskunde Tirols: Festschrift für Franz Huter (Innsbruck, 1959), pp. 253–63; Friedrich
Lütge, “The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries in Social and Economic History,” in Gerald
Strauss (ed.), Pre-Reformation Germany (New York, 1972), pp. 316–79, 349–51; Michael Mit-
terauer, “Die Wirtschaftspolitik der österreichischen Landesfürsten im Spätmittalter und
ihre Auswirkungen auf den Arbeitsmarkt,” in Hermann Kellenbenz (ed.), Wirtschaftspolitik
und Arbeitsmarkt (Vienna, 1974), pp. 15–46, 20–2.

oligarchy and in others on those without privileges, but their measures

were in any case economically benefĳicial to urban employers. In Castile
the labor laws applied in all cities of the kingdom, whereas elsewhere they
catered to a single, major city that was politically and economically very
influential: Barcelona, Paris, and Vienna.
The labor legislation in Castile and Aragon might initially seem to con-
cern the countryside, as both kingdoms were sparsely populated and had
been experiencing migration waves that seriously impacted the agrarian
output in diffferent regions for decades. The outbreak of the plague fur-
ther complicated mobilizing labor. Still, the labor laws that came about
primarily concerned the cities. Why?
In Castile cities exercised a type of “collective lordship,” implying
extensive jurisdictional powers over rural society, and they experienced
rapid economic growth, enabling them to become increasingly important
in politics. For tax-related, economic, and political reasons, the monar-
chy therefore had every interest in controlling the urban centres. The
ordenamientos promulgated by Pedro I in 1351 capped wages. The king did
not take more extensive measures, as following the premature death of
his predecessor, he operated in a complex fĳield of forces, where he soon
clashed with the exceptionally powerful aristocracy. Moreover, he had
to let the city councils adapt wages to reflect the changed local circum-
stances, making a centralized economic policy impossible. After the end
of the civil war in 1369, the efffort was resumed by his successor Enrique
of Trastamura, who ordered that master artisans and urban workers be
controlled, and that wage increases be prevented: all able-bodied people
over twelve without any means of subsistence were required to work
for the legal wage, and unwilling workers were to be flogged.36 Over the
decades that followed, the monarchy promulgated poor laws, stipulating
that anybody was allowed to capture itinerant “beggars” and have them
36
The basic study of the late medieval Spanish labor laws remains Charles Verlinden, “La
grande peste de 1348 en Espagne: contribution à l’étude de ses conséquences économiques
et sociales,” Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 17 (1938), pp. 103–46. See also Adeline
Rucquoi, “Pouvoir royal et oligarchies urbaines d’Alfonso X à Fernando IV de Castille,” in
Genesis medieval del estado moderno: Castilla y Navarra, 1250–1370 (Valladolid, 1987), pp.
173–92; Clara Estow, Pedro the Cruel of Castile, 1350–1369 (Leiden, 1995), pp. 40–57; Isabel
del Val Valdivieso, “Urban growth and Royal Interventionism in Late Medieval Castile,”
Urban History, 24 (1997), pp. 129–40; Teofĳilo F. Ruiz, Spain’s Centuries of Crisis, 1300–1474
(Oxford, 2007), pp. 30–7, Pablo Sánchez León, “Changing Patterns of Urban Conflict in
Late Medieval Castile,” in Christopher Dyer, Peter Coss and Chris Wickham (eds), Rodney
Hilton’s Middle Ages: An Exploration of Historical Themes (Oxford, 2007; Past and Present
Supplement 2), pp. 220–1.

work without pay for a month. Enforcement, however, was left up to the
local councils, and this policy was continued in the fĳifteenth and sixteenth
centuries.37
In Aragon the weak monarchy had to reconcile diffferent and often
conflicting political and economic interests of rural and urban elites in
the three realms of the confederation, thereby excluding broad social sup-
port for labor laws. The ordinance that King Pedro IV proclaimed for the
County of Catalonia in 1349 applied in particular to the port of Barce-
lona, the economic centre of his kingdom, where according to the ruler,
workers were demanding wages that were four or fĳive times what they
had received before the plague. He assigned a commission to investigate
whether their demands were justifĳied. If not, they would have to continue
working for the old rates. He prohibited master artisans from forming
associations to obtain higher wages and threatened violators with cor-
poreal punishment. The next year the king tried to implement this wage
policy in rural areas as well, but in 1352 he had to abandon this efffort.38
The noblemen preferred a strategy that placed them in charge: tightening
seigneurial control. As Paul Freedman has noted: “They combined tight-
ening their hold on tenants with a measure of concessions with regard to
specifĳic obligations.” This inconsistent approach, though efffective in the
short and medium term, was reversed by the peasant revolts in the late
fĳifteenth century.39
After the Black Death, the French rulers were in no position to reg-
ulate economic afffairs adequately throughout the kingdom. In 1328 the
change of dynasty upset the balance of power, and the catastrophic start
of the Hundred Years’ War further heightened political tensions and
deepened regional divisions. The Great Ordinance that John II, surnamed
“the Good,” proclaimed in January 1351 applied only to the part of France
where the king truly exercised power: Paris, the capital and largest city
of France (and of Europe north of the Alps), and the surrounding area
(the Île-de-France), where the domaine royal was situated. In addition to
37
Linda Martz, Poverty and Welfare in Habsburg Spain: The Example of Toledo (Cam-
bridge, 1983), pp. 7–22.
38
Verlinden, “La grande peste”. For the political, social, and economic context in Ara-
gon, see esp. Melanie V. Shirk, “The Black Death in Aragon, 1348–1351,” Journal of Medieval
History, 7 (1981), pp. 357–67.
39
Paul Freedman, The Origin of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia (Cambridge,
1991). See also the interesting comments of Robert Brenner, “The Rises and Declines of
Serfdom in Medieval and Early Modern Europe,” in M.L. Bush (ed.), Serfdom and Slavery.
Studies in Legal Bondage 5 (London and New York, 1999), pp. 247–76, 270–1.

setting ceilings on prices and wages, the ordinance included an exten-

sive series of measures to curtail begging. Unemployed, able-bodied
men and women were required to accept any work offfered to earn their
keep. Both the mendicants and the inhabitants of Paris were prohibited
from giving alms to those capable of working, and this category was very
comprehensive indeed, excluding only the blind, the disabled, and other
“unfortunate persons.” In a new ordinance from November 1354, it was
argued that the merchants deplored the “high cost of workers,” who not
only demanded “unreasonable wages” but moreover worked only when it
suited them. According to the authorities, setting maximum rates of pay
had been pointless, as, contrary to all good customs and practices, many
now refused to work for day wages, unless their employer provided food
as well, whereas others would work only for piecework rates to circum-
vent the legislation, and still others moved to regions where maximum
rates were not enforced. What was more: “Increasing numbers of greedy,
lazy workers spend their time at the tavern, where they indulge in games
and leisure pursuits.” The ordinance listed several occupations for which
those practising them were henceforth required to appear at a set venue
before sunrise, requiring them to accept any job they were offfered at the
offfĳicial daily wage. All those who failed to do so or were caught during
working hours—from sunrise to sunset—casting dice or hanging about a
tavern would be labelled as unwilling to work and punished. The king also
took measures to restrict migrations by rural dwellers, on the one hand
because individual employers in the Paris region could not mobilize legally
free wage dependents through coercion,40 and on the other hand for fear
of disturbances of public order. Migration was strictly prohibited, except
for seasonal workers, and even they were allowed to move on to another
place only if they found no work where they lived. Able-bodied beggars/
vagrants would be imprisoned, exhibited at the stake, and/or branded.41
The ordinance of 1354 essentially applied throughout the kingdom, but
40
On the legal condition of the peasantry in the Paris region, see Guy Fourquin, Les
campagnes de la région parisienne à la fĳin du Moyen Âge (Paris, 1964), pp. 166–8, 189–90.
41
Bronislaw Geremek, Le salariat dans l’artisanat parisien aux XIII e–XV e siècles. Étude
sur le marché de la main d’oeuvre au Moyen Âge (Paris, 1968), pp. 122, 126–42, and the
articles of the same author: “La lutte contre le vagabondage à Paris aux XIVe et XVe siècles,”
in Luigi De Rosa (ed.), Ricerche storiche ed economiche in memoria di Corrado Barbagallo
(Naples, 1970), Vol. 2, pp. 211–36, 230–6, and “Le refus du travail dans la société urbaine du
Bas Moyen Âge,” in Jacqueline Hamesse and Colette Muraille-Samaran (eds), Le travail au
Moyen Âge. Une approche interdisciplinaire. Actes du Colloque international de Louvain-la-
Neuve, 21–23 mai 1987 (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1990), pp. 379–94, 388–9. See also Epstein, Wage
Labor, pp. 233–6, and Françoise Aufffray, Charles V, le Sage (Paris, 1994), pp. 33, 57, 87.

whether it was enforced outside the Île-de-France is doubtful. At any rate,

the French monarchy allowed local councils to decide whether or not to
set wage ceilings to regulate the labor market. This practice continued in
the fĳifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
In Austria the wage policy introduced by Duke Albert II in 1352 afffected
only the citizens of Vienna, as the influence of the central authority was
severely curtailed by aristocratic and ecclesiastical overlords elsewhere in
the territory. It was part of a systematic policy on taxes and economic
afffairs, since the year before the duke had granted the merchants in the
capital new privileges to trade with other countries and control the main
road to Venice. Viticulture and wine trade were the main sources of income
for many residents of the capital, which is why the ordinance primarily
concerned this sector. It remained in efffect for a long time, because the
highly labor-intensive viticulture continued to expand. In the 1350s and
60s new maximum wages were repeatedly proclaimed for vineyard work-
ers, and over the following decades the focus on their activities intensi-
fĳied, as excise duties on wine consumption accounted for a progressively
larger share of tax revenues. In the fĳifteenth century maximum wages
were frequently set for this category of workers. These measures indis-
putably benefĳited the merchants and wealthy master artisans of Vienna,
but they also helped line the cofffers of the central government, enabling
it to strengthen its authority over the capital.42
Urban interests and labor laws
Rulers were not the only ones who took measures after the Black Death
to mobilize the labor of wage dependents and minimize labor costs. In
some parts of Western Europe city councils were especially active in this
respect. Their interventions obviously served the interests of the urban
elites and middle groups, but they varied considerably. Diffferences in any
case existed between (1) city-states in North and Central Italy, where the
labor laws applied primarily to the rural part of their territory, and
(2) politically influential economic centres, which were concentrated
mainly in heavily urbanized regions, such as the Low Countries, the
Rhineland, and Southern Germany.
42
Mitterauer, “Die Wirtschaftspolitik,” pp. 21, 24–5; Peter Csendes and Ferdinand Opll
(eds), Wien: Geschichte einer Stadt von den Anfängen bis zur Ersten Türkenbelagerung
(Vienna, 2001), pp. 123–4, 128, 222–5 (with references to the literature).

Protecting the monopolies and privileges of their wealthy citizens was

of course the main objective of the city-states in North and Central Italy.
While they reacted in various ways to the labor shortage, most drafted
legislation that applied mainly to the rural part of their territory, as small,
competing political entities had ample reason to secure their supply and
tax base. In 1349 Florence subjected farm workers to a series of measures,
of which the general designation left nothing to the imagination: contra
laboratores (against the workers). Their purpose was not merely to obstruct
the mobility of servants and casual labor but also to tie mezzadri (share-
croppers) to the land. Anybody leaving the farm where he worked without
permission would receive a fĳine beyond the means of even the wealthiest
peasant, basically forcing him into exile. In 1355 the punishments became
still more draconian: workers damaging the farm of a Florentine citizen by
neglecting the work on the fĳields or in the vineyards were labelled rebels
and as such liable to be executed. Following the second outbreak of the
plague (in 1362–63), this policy proved untenable and even counterpro-
ductive for both economic and political reasons. The stick made way for
the carrot: between 1364 and 1434 no fewer than 27 laws were adopted “for
the benefĳit of the peasants,” greatly improving conditions for mezzadri
and farm workers. Florence was unique, however, as following the Black
Death laws in the other Italian city states curtailing the mobility of farm
workers and restricting the rights of mezzadri did not threaten offfenders
with very severe punishments. Orvieto and Siena even quickly reversed
their measures, granting tax exemptions to workers arriving in the city or
surrounding villages to promote repopulation of their territories. As for
the policy regarding master artisans and workers in the cities, Florence
once again difffered from the other Italian city-states, but in no case were
attempts made to reduce wages to their pre-plague levels, on the contrary:
they were revised upward.43
In areas where no city-states arose, and where rulers did not promul-
gate labor laws, or where their ordinances went unheeded, the councils of
major economic centres had every reason to take charge. This obviously
required a certain measure of political autonomy and convergence of
local interests. When it became clear that the central authority was not in
a position to enforce wage-rates in Provence, the council in Marseille, the
harbor city where the plague had fĳirst manifested in France, and where
maritime trade continued to decline, engaged in very intensive legislative
43
For an excellent analysis, see Cohn Jr., “After the Black Death,” pp. 465–78.

effforts: between 1348 and 1368 over thirty labor market regulations were
proclaimed, requiring all able-bodied men and women to work, setting
maximum wages, prohibiting casting dice during working hours, and so
on and so forth.44
In urbanized areas, such as the Low Countries, the Rhineland, and
Southern Germany, overlords did not promulgate labor laws, because
they had to consider the divergent economic interests and political power
positions of both aristocratic landowners and urban elites and guild-based
organizations. Noblemen and wealthy farmers ordinarily favoured uni-
form low wages, whereas urban merchants and master artisans by defĳini-
tion attributed great value to the level of skill and consequently regarded
wage diffferentiation as a socio-economic necessity. Further complicating
matters: cities sometimes had common political interests, but they tended
to compete economically, which meant that they rarely synchronized
their labor regulations. Some city councils actively recruited certain cat-
egories of—generally—skilled workers and did not hesitate to offfer them
additional benefĳits to entice them to leave their present place of work.
The attitudes of city councils toward wage labor consequently varied far
more than those of central governments, because of all the factors involved:
the extent of political autonomy, the nature of the urban economy, the
composition of the elite, the local balances of power, and relations with
other cities. Nearly everywhere, however, urban policy consisted of (1) a
very limited selection of economic sectors where wage ceilings applied,
and (2) consensus about the work requirement for able-bodied wage
dependents, in which penal laws against begging and poor relief provi-
sions were crucial.
The earliest labor laws in the Low Countries concerned the wages and
working conditions of urban textile workers. From the late thirteenth cen-
tury (and perhaps even earlier) in the large wool production centres in
the County of Flanders effforts were made to keep master artisans and
wage workers “in their place,” which included manipulation of the fullers’
wages by the drapers.45 In the fĳirst half of the fourteenth century measures
44
Braid, “Et Non Ultra”; Jean-Paul Boyer, “1245–1380: l’éphémère paix du prince,” in Mar-
tin Aurell, Jean-Paul Boyer and Noël Coulet, La Provence au Moyen Âge (Aix-en-Provence,
2005), pp. 254–5, 263–6, 275, 278.
45
Marc Boone, “Social Conflicts in the Cloth Industry of Ypres (late 13th–early 14th
Centuries): The Cockerulle Reconsidered,” in Marc Dewilde, Anton Ervynck and Alexis
Wielemans (eds), Ypres and the Medieval Cloth Industry in Flanders: Archaeological and
Historical Contributions (Zellik, 1998), pp. 147–55.

to regulate the labor market followed in other cities in the Low Coun-
tries. Some magistrates threatened “servants” who left their employer
before completing the work with stifff fĳines. After 1350, such interventions
occurred in far more cities and with increasing frequency, and the penal-
ties for violations rose, especially those concerning breach of contract.46
This was also the case in many large and medium-sized economic centres
in the Rhineland and Southern Germany. The authorities capped wages
for journeymen masons and carpenters, threatened those who refused to
accept this rate or abandoned their employer before completing the job
with a ten-year expulsion, and allowed immigrants to come work in the
city without requiring them to join the masons’ guild. In many cities both
workers demanding wages higher than the offfĳicial rates and employers
who paid them risked fĳines and/or imprisonment. Punishments were also
meted out to those accepting a new and possibly better paid job before
fĳinishing the one they were presently doing, as well as to those regarded
as vagrants declining work offfered by the city council at the fĳixed rate.47
In the sixteenth century city councils in the urbanized regions of North-
west Europe continued to take measures to regulate the local labor market,48
while the higher authorities restricted their effforts to prosecuting and
punishing “idlers.” In 1531 Emperor Charles V ordered the city councils in
the Low Countries to reorganize poor relief provisions immediately based
on uniform principles: all able-bodied men and women were required to
work, begging was strictly prohibited, and all existing relief funds were
to be centralized to enable efffĳicient control. In practice, however, he left
implementation of such a programme to the local authorities—which
fĳifteen or sixteen cities did efffectively.49 In 1561, the Estates of Brabant
proposed setting maximum wages for all categories of wage earners in
the Habsburg Netherlands (the “Seventeen Provinces”). Both nominal
46
J.W. Bosch, “Rechtshistorische aanteekeningen betrefffende de overeenkomst in het
huren van dienstpersoneel,” Themis, 92 (1931), pp. 355–418.
47
See esp. Ernst Kelter, “Das deutsche Wirtschaftsleben des 14. und 15. Jahrhundert im
Schatten der Pestepidemien,” Jahrbuch für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, 165 (1953), pp.
161–208; Rainer Schröder, Zur Arbeitsverfassung des Spätmittelalters. Eine Darstellung mit-
telalterlichen Arbeitsrechts aus der Zeit nach der grossen Pest (Berlin, 1984), pp. 157, 184–5;
Eberhard Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt im Spätmittelalter (Stuttgart, 1988), p. 390.
48
See, for example, Etienne Scholliers, “Vrije en onvrije arbeiders, voornamelijk te
Antwerpen in de 16e eeuw,” Bijdragen voor de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 11 (1956), pp.
285–322. Maximum wages were set both in cities where craft guilds had political input and
in those where they did not. Corporative organizations often set wages on their own.
49
Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly, Poverty and Capitalism in Pre-Industrial Europe (Brigh-
ton, 1982 edn), pp. 87–8.

and real wages had indeed risen sharply because of the mortality of 1558,
the strong economic growth since 1559, and the plummeting prices as a
consequence of abundant harvests. The proposal was debated at length
by the representatives of other provinces and the central government, but
opinions were deeply divided. A bill providing for maximum wages and
designating those refusing to work for the offfĳicial rates as idlers, which
meant imprisonment or being sentenced to the galleys, was not passed
in the end.50 When massive emigration to the North after 1585 instigated
a labor shortage and concurrent wage increases, while the devastation
in rural areas drove prices up sharply, the royal offfĳicials were ordered in
1588 to set wage ceilings and maximum prices in each province. One year
later the central government issued a new ordinance demanding rigid
compliance with offfĳicial rates, achieving little or no efffect, and subse-
quently abandoned the efffort. Labor regulation was once again left to the
local councils.51
Conclusion
In the Central Middle Ages wage labor became increasingly signifĳicant

in many parts of Western Europe. While the prevalence and nature of
wage labor varied considerably from region to region, in the countryside
and cities alike, labor by wage dependents became a progressively larger
share of the total labor output. Increasing intra-rural and rural-urban
mobility promoted the rise of a free labor market, but these dynamics
by no means met the needs of the employers, whether they were feudal
lords or wealthy farmers. In their view, the diffferent forms of wage labor
had in common not only that the employees concerned had to submit to
the authority of an employer but also—and above all—that they could
not dispose freely of their labor power: those who were not economically
independent had no “property in labor” and consequently did not have
50
Charles Verlinden and Jan Craeybeckx, Prijzen- en lonenpolitiek in de Nederlanden in
1561 en 1588–1589. Onuitgegeven adviezen, ontwerpen en ordonnanties (Brussels, 1962), pp.
7–23. See the pertinent remarks of Bas J.P. van Bavel, “Rural Wage Labour in the Sixteenth-
Century Low Countries: An Assessment of the Importance and Nature of Wage Labour in
the Countryside of Holland, Guelders and Flanders,” Continuity and Change, 21 (2006), pp.
37–72, at 66.
51
Verlinden and Craeybeckx, Prijzen- en lonenpolitiek, pp. 23–32; Etienne Scholliers,
Loonarbeid en honger. De levensstandaard in de XV e en XVI e eeuw te Antwerpen (Antwerp,
1960), pp. 144–8, and the article by the same author: “Le pouvoir d’achat dans les Pays-Bas
au XVIe siècle,” in Album Charles Verlinden (Ghent, 1975), pp. 305–30.

the right to deprive others of the use and enjoyment of their labor. The
thirteenth-century countrywide labor laws promulgated in Norway dem-
onstrate that wage dependents were not regarded as “free workers,” even
though they were all personally free. The authorities deprived them of the
right to refuse work, if they had no sources of income, or to migrate and/
or negotiate their wages.
From the mid-fourteenth century, elites everywhere took note of wage
labor and increasingly labelled the phenomenon as “problematic.” After
all, all sources of cheap labor were on the verge of drying up simulta-
neously: the massive death rate enabled smallholders to acquire—addi-
tional—tracts of land, reducing their dependence on wage labor, and
encouraged the landless to migrate to the places with the most favourable
working conditions. In many countries, the public authorities therefore
restricted the leeway of wage dependents as much as possible. Able-
bodied men and women without visible means of subsistence had a duty
to work; if not, they risked being labelled as idlers, beggars, or—still
worse—vagrants. During the Great Revolt of 1381 the rebels demanded
not only that King Richard II free all serfs in England, but also that “no
one be required to serve unless it is of their own free will and according
to free contract,”52 which basically entailed abolishing labor legislation.
The notorious response from the king to a delegation of the rebels that
they were and would remain serfs reflected little insight into the future
of the seigneurial regime, but his subsequent prediction (“you will remain
in bondage, not as before, but incomparably harsher”) was right on target,
as far as wage dependents were concerned. Even though they were not
serfs or tenants burdened with labor services, they were not free to enter
contract relationships as free and equal partners.
Labor legislation of a comparable scope did not come about in all areas
west of the Elbe. Explaining all the spatial variations would require far
more research, but the data available help us discern various patterns.
First, the need for labor laws was not equally great everywhere. In coun-
tries where the feudal forces were strong, and the monarchy was rela-
tively weak, the old strategies of extra-economic coercion persisted for
a long time. This was the case not only in Denmark and Sweden in the
thirteenth century (and afterwards) but also in Catalonia and Scotland
52
Quoted in Kellie Robertson, “Branding and the Technologies of Labor Regulation,” in
Kellie Robertson and Michael Uebel (eds), The Middle Ages at Work: Practicing Labor in
Late Medieval England (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 133–53, here p. 140.

in the late Middle Ages. While the Catalonian aristocracy eventually lost
out, the Scottish magnates managed to obtain power in vast territories
and to control rural labor for centuries without any interference from the
monarchy.53 Second, a strong central authority and convergences of politi-
cal and economic interests were essential conditions for implementing a
countrywide labor legislation that benefĳited both landlords and wealthy
farmers, as the cases of England, Portugal, and Tyrol demonstrate. In these
countries labor legislation served essentially the same purposes: averting
pay increases, restricting the mobility of wage workers, and enforcing
contracts that favoured employers, especially in the countryside. The fact
that only the English government measures were sustained for centu-
ries and were adapted during the early modern period to accommodate
the economic changes is undoubtedly attributable to the rise of agrar-
ian capitalism. Third, countrywide labor legislation came about in several
areas only because the local ruler hoped to derive political, economic,
and/or tax benefĳits from it, which basically meant labor regulation in and
around urban centres—all cities in Castile, but only the most afffluent city
in Aragon (Barcelona), France (Paris), and Austria (Vienna), as the cen-
tral authority had little or no influence elsewhere. Finally, in the most
economically progressive parts of Western Europe the urban elites were
the ones who regulated labor. Italian city-states with fairly vast territo-
ries obviously acted as central governments and focused on rural wage
dependents. In the Low Countries, the Rhineland, and Southern Germany,
rulers and overlords were unable to impose uniform measures to con-
trol labor, but the councils of important economic centres had sufffĳicient
political autonomy to control industrial labor themselves. The absence
of a centrally conceived policy and inter-city rivalry resulted in a wide
variety of—largely discontinuous—measures. Nearly all local authorities,
however, were willing to accommodate the demand from merchant entre-
preneurs and wealthy master artisans to regulate the labor force, as is
clear from the way they used the poor relief system as a direct or indirect
means of labor coercion.
53
T.C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, 1560–1830 (London, 1969), pp. 31–9.


SEM3-Lis y Soly Labour - Laws - in - Western - Europe - 13th-16th

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CONTEXTUALIZATIONS

297-322_Linden-Lucassen_f15.indd 297 3/8/2012 5:22:02 PM

Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly

Since the 1990s, anthropologists, historians, and sociologists studying labor

297-322_Linden-Lucassen_f15.indd 299 3/8/2012 5:22:02 PM

whether as servants living in their employer’s household or as casual

297-322_Linden-Lucassen_f15.indd 300 3/8/2012 5:22:02 PM

regime or composition of the ruling elites. He is also right in his assertion

Labor laws before the Black Death

Nearly all authors conducting comparative research on the late medieval

297-322_Linden-Lucassen_f15.indd 301 3/8/2012 5:22:02 PM

measures ordinarily regarded as characteristic of post-plague legisla-

297-322_Linden-Lucassen_f15.indd 302 3/8/2012 5:22:02 PM

was not a necessary prerequisite for imposing regulations and control

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Sweden. This was attributable to a combination of power relations and

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297-322_Linden-Lucassen_f15.indd 310 3/8/2012 5:22:03 PM

Royal interventionism and urban wealth

297-322_Linden-Lucassen_f15.indd 311 3/8/2012 5:22:03 PM

oligarchy and in others on those without privileges, but their measures

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297-322_Linden-Lucassen_f15.indd 313 3/8/2012 5:22:04 PM

setting ceilings on prices and wages, the ordinance included an exten-

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whether it was enforced outside the Île-de-France is doubtful. At any rate,

Urban interests and labor laws

297-322_Linden-Lucassen_f15.indd 315 3/8/2012 5:22:04 PM

Protecting the monopolies and privileges of their wealthy citizens was

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In the Central Middle Ages wage labor became increasingly signifĳicant

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297-322_Linden-Lucassen_f15.indd 320 3/8/2012 5:22:04 PM

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