The lettres de foire of Ypres (second half XIIIth century)
Windows into the commercial culture of a late medieval industrial giant
p. 133-152
Résumé
The Flemish city of Ypres left a collection of credit records from the second half of the XIIIth century that is considerably richer than any from the north of Europe before the later XVth century, even the XVIth. One of the most important of the industrial and commercial powerhouses of the late medieval southern Low Countries, Ypres was renowned as producer of high-quality drapery and as the site of one of the five Flemish fairs linked to those of Champagne. Although Ypres was completely destroyed during WW I, the substance of more than 7,000 of the original records (all in the form of chirographs) are available to us, either in transcription or as summaries compiled before the war. Most treat loans taken by Yprois either from foreign creditors or from fellow citizens, thus providing a precious window into the socioeconomic structure of the city – and by implication that of similar cities of the day – as well as a fuller understanding of the diplomatic procedures used to register and secure debt in that heavily urbanized region.
La ville flamande d’Ypres a laissé une collection de lettres de crédit de la deuxième moitié du XIIIe siècle considérablement plus riche que toute autre ville du nord de l’Europe avant la fin du XVe et même du XVIe siècle. Un des plus importants centres industriels et commerciaux des anciens Pays-Bas au bas Moyen Âge, Ypres était renommée pour sa production de draps de haute qualité et comme l’endroit où se tenait une des cinq foires de Flandre, liées avec celles de Champagne. Même si Ypres fut presque totalement détruite durant la première guerre mondiale, le contenu de plus de 7 000 de ces lettres (toutes des chirographes) nous est connu, soit grâce à des transcriptions soit par des résumés compilés avant la guerre. La plupart ont pour objet des emprunts contractés par des habitants d’Ypres envers des créditeurs étrangers ou envers des concitoyens. Ces lettres nous procurent donc une précieuse ouverture sur les structures socio-économiques de cette ville – et par extension sur celles de villes similaires de l’époque – ainsi qu’une meilleure compréhension des procédures diplomatiques utilisées pour enregistrer et garantir les dettes dans cette région fortement urbanisée.
Texte intégral
Introduction
1The Flemish city of Ypres left us what is for the north of Europe a rare collection of documents recording credit arrangements in the second half of the XIIIth century. During that period, the county of Flanders, which then included a part of the present-day département du Nord in France as well as the provinces of east and west Flanders in Belgium, was the most urbanized of Europe and second only to northern Italy for the degree of commercialization. The main cities of the county were industrial or commercial powerhouses, especially, Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres. Thanks to their economic importance, they had acquired a significant amount of political independence. With only some supervision or inference from their lord, the count, they made their own laws, elected their own aldermen, scabini, échevins or schepenen as they were called, and created a distinctly urban culture1. With a population of about 30,000 at the time, Ypres was smaller than Ghent and Bruges, but in the north of Europe, outside of Flanders, only Paris, London, and maybe Cologne were larger and after Ghent Ypres was the most important industrial center of the north2.
2Ypres was famous for its cloth – above all the high value luxury cloth made of England’s finest wools, a bolt of which cost about € 63 to € 135 thousand in today’s currency3. Its cloth hall was the biggest in Europe, in fact the biggest ever known on the continent. There Europeans came in droves to buy the luxury cloth made in the city, which was sold throughout Europe, as well as volumes of lower quality cloth made with regional wools, most of which were shipped to southern markets4.
3During the First World War, the city of Ypres was completely destroyed and with it the cloth hall and the city archives; the hall, and the city, have since been rebuilt in an effort to reproduce the medieval city as it was thought to have been5. Before 1914 more than 7,000 original chirographs and charters of the XIIIth and XIVth century, many of them records of obligations and commercial transactions, were kept in the former city archives. These documents did not survive the bombings as such, except for a few single documents, one that the famous Belgian historian Henri Pirenne had taken home in 1913. In 1922 he published an article about it6. The other one was kept by Ypres’ first archivist J.-J. Lambin in his own collection and is now to be found in the episcopal archives in Bruges7.
4The texts, and even in a few cases the image, of the documents under scrutiny here survived the destruction of the city in two forms: either as full transcriptions made before the war (almost 300) and edited in publications by Guillaume Des Marez, a student of Pirenne8, or as summaries taken by him and published by Carlos Wyffels in 1991 (about 5,500), as well as a few pictures published in the Album belge de diplomatique in 1909 and in Des Marez, La lettre de foire9. A few more chirographs were edited by Georges Espinas and Henri Pirenne in 1920, based on Des Marez’s notes10. Arthur Merghelinck’s manuscript notes on the Ypres chirographs are also available11. These records have traditionally been described as fair letters or lettres de foire because most, but not all, recorded debts presumably contracted in Ypres, one of the five Flemish fair towns and a member of the London Hansa of cloth-making cities, and expected to be paid back at one of the (other) fairs12. The Flemish fairs operated on an annual cycle that was coordinated with the nearby Champagne and Brie fairs so that merchants traveled from one to another throughout the course of the year, thus rendering the region always « in fair » as it was said.
5These are precious documents, for we have almost nothing of the kind from the north of Europe until the late XVth, even XVIth century. In contrast to the south where a robust notarial system was in place, in the north much was done by unwritten custom or by agreements recorded privately by important merchants and sometimes by more ordinary citizens. In the late XIIIth century, even well into the XIVth, few cities in the north officially registered private loan agreements or the like, or the records that were kept have rarely survived. The Ypres evidence provides access to exactly the kind of information we are missing. Although, as we shall see, this is not a complete picture of the city’s credit networks, the chirographs provided by Des Marez are nevertheless extremely valuable because they expose the social structure of Ypres precisely at a crucial moment in the political history of urbanized Flanders.
The diplomatic features of the chirographs
6The technical and formal features of these records are thus important not only for the study of urban diplomatics; they also reveal a great deal about the city’s sociopolitical history. Indeed, that is a principal reason why at least since the 9th congress of the Commission internationale de diplomatique in Ghent in 1998 scholars of urban diplomatics have been so interested in such documents13. The chirographs issued on the authority of the aldermen of Ypres are records of juridiction gracieuse or voluntary jurisdiction. The private agreements, mostly between merchants, were written down by freelance or city clerks and validated by échevins, who kept one part of the charte-partie in the city archives for security. Unlike the garde des foires de Champagne et de Brie who used a special seal to validate their charters and who held registers of the written agreements, the aldermen of Ypres did not use a seal to validate their lettres de foire; instead they relied on the device of the cyrographum and did not otherwise keep track of the agreements they signed14.
External characteristics
7The original documents themselves were − insofar we can judge from the few pictures we have (fig. 1-3) – in the form of double or triple chirographs on parchment, which is typical for the records of voluntary jurisdiction kept by aldermen in the French-Flemish border region during that age15. The devices have a serrated (coupées en dents de scie) or ondulated cut. In the middle of the XIIIth century the text of these devices was variable16, but by the second half of that century cyrographvm seems to have become the norm17. The term used in the document itself was chartre partie. One part of the chirograph was kept in the city archives; the other went to the lender and, if the chirograph was in three parts, the middle was deposited in the aldermen’s archives, while the two other parts were given to the lenders; the borrower received no copy18. The script was a gothic cursive minuscule, except for two examples we know of (diplomatic minuscule) in 125319. The ink seems to have been brown, the line marks are still visible. The format was variable in the middle of the century, but later on the chirographs must have been normally chartae non transversae20. The variability of these characteristics reflects the fact that until the last quarter of the XIIIth century city clerks and scribes were not always involved in the making of these charters; rather, they were written privately, by merchants and their clerks although under the supervision of the aldermen. According to Des Marez, from 1271 on, notarial marks of the city clerks appear on the reverse side of the document, thus identifying them, not private clerks or their employers, as the material authors of the chirographs21. It is thus evident that urban authorities became more involved in the production of the chirographs and, hence, in the business of the fair and in the financial instruments generated by the fair.
Fig. 1 – Chirograph of 1253. Bruges, Episcopal Archives, Y 10.
Fig. 2 – Chirographs Ypres of 1250 (A) and 1253 (C). F, which shows the name of the creditor, and the notarial mark on the verso of the chirograph.
Fig. 3 – Lettre de foire of 1252 (see here note 25).
Internal characteristics
8The records are notitiae, made to commit a juridical action, an agreement between parties, to writing; they have an objective form; the authors responsible for the instrumentum, the aldermen of Ypres are mentioned only in a subscription formula22. Mentions hors teneur (extra sigillum notes) are the name of the creditor (s) (bearers) on the back of the documents: « C’est N », meaning this belongs to N.23, and from 1270 onwards sometimes a notarial mark of the clerk in charge can be found24.
9Almost all chirographs are written in the Picardese variant of French25. These chirographs adhered to certain rhetorical format, as illustrated below by one such document from 27 October 1271.
Sachent tou chil ki sunt et ki avenir sunt et ki cheste presente chartre partie verront et orront ke Philipes de Nueveglise, bourgois d’Ypre, doit a Nicolas Craminc, borgois d’Ypre, 40 s. d’esterl (ins) a lui u a son commandement ki cheste presente chartre partie aportera. Et de ches deniers avant nommés li doit il paier 13 s. et 4 d. d’esterl (ins) al loiage de le fieste de Leigny, le prochain que nous atendons avenir, et 13 s. et 4 d. d’esterl (ins) al loiage de Bar venant aprés, et 13 s. et 4 d. d’esterl (ins) al loiage de le fieste de Prouvins de mai venant aprés. De chou sunt plege, cascuns pour le tout, Gilles li Debbre et Robers li Wale, bourgois d’Ypres. A cheste counissanche furent eschevin d’Ypre, Pieres de Lo et Watiers li Vilains. Çou fu fait en l’an del Incarnation Nostre Seignor Ihesu Crist M CC et LXXI el mois d’octobre le nuit saint Simon et Jude.
[In dorso]: Ch’est Nicole Craminc26.
10The diplomatic style or dictamen contained the following elements: a general address, a dispositio with clauses, non-autograph subscriptions of the aldermen who were in fact the authors of record, and the date formula in the Easter style that followed the liturgical calendar.
- General address: Sachent tou chil ki sunt et ki avenir sunt et ki cheste presente chartre partie verront et orront (or variant).
- Dispositio: X. (name of the debtor) doit a Y. (name of the creditor) Z. (amount and currency) a lui u a son commandement ki cheste presente chartre partie aportera (or variant).
- Clauses of the dispositio: due terms (how much, when, where); merchandise involved (rarely); guarantors (plèges), eventually solidarity (in the vast majority of cases); submission to a jurisdiction: always la loi d’Ypres.
- Subscriptions of the authors of the instrumentum: A cheste counissanche furent eschevin d’Ypre + the names of the échevins involved.
- Date: Ce fut fait en l’an de l’Incarnation mil CC… el mois de … le jour… (liturgical calendar). The clauses of the dispositive part contain very precise terminology in order to avoid any ambiguity. Lenders were expected to use the lettre obligatoire as their debt instrument, a material proof of credit, thus not the bill of exchange that the Italians were already beginning to use in international trade27.
What are the Ypres chirographs in a diplomatic sense?
11In their majority the Ypres chirographs were notitiae of acknowledgement of debts (IOU or lettres obligatoires) drawn up by the aldermen of Ypres with a clause of submission to the jurisdiction of the city28. This very important clause subjected lenders and borrowers alike to the laws of Ypres, a significant expression of the city’s power, for it meant that all participants: Italians, English, Germans, etc., had recourse only to Ypres’s courts, Ypres’s methods of debt settlement, Ypres’s methods of pursuing bad debts, and so on. Many of the chirographs also contained a clause allowing the debt to be collected by a representative of the lender29. This was the beginning of the endorsement clause that later would allow lenders to turn their credit instrument over to another person (i.e., to sell it), but in this period that was still not possible.
The actors of the instrumenta
12The fact that the agreement was officially witnessed by and registered by the city’s aldermen gave it even more power. Armed with this document, a creditor did not have to go through the laborious process of debt collection prescribed by local custom, he could just quickly seize assets30. In addition, creditors also had protections born of custom. The most important and most commonly used was the « joint and several obligation », expressed by the phrase chacun pour le tout. With this phrase a group of borrowers pledged themselves individually for the entire loan, not just a portion of it.
13Alone this information drawn from the chirograph’s formal properties tells us a great deal about Ypres’s legal culture and its status as a locus of international trade. To do business in Ypres was to submit to its law and to the commercial vernacular of the region. Significantly, this information calls into question a lot of previous scholarship about the history of banking and credit that has credited the Italians and their bill of exchange with setting the technical standards for credit relations fueling long-distance commerce.
In what sense are the chirographs of Ypres Lettres de foire?
14Although this collection of chirographs has been labeled lettres de foire, it is not clear all the documents were, in fact, recording debts incurred at the fair or scheduled to be paid at one of the Flemish fairs or the neighboring fairs of Champagne and Brie; nor were all necessarily contracted to pay for goods acquired at the fair. To be sure, the majority of the chirographs specify that the debt be repaid at a fair date and it is reasonable to assume that most of these debts were incurred as goods were purchased at the fair (some of the contracts do indeed make it clear that materials for cloth production had been acquired at the fair). Nevertheless, almost half of the chirographs specify a date not related to a fair (Noël, Pâques, Saint Rémi, for example); others do not specify a particular date (in these cases the information simply seems to having been missing from the chirograph or not recorded in the notes taken by Des Marez); and many others indicate that the debt is past due (le jour est passé). Nevertheless, the fact that the chirographs were written in the common language of the merchants who visited these fairs (Picardese French, which was used even by the Italians, English, and Germans) and used even in chirographs involving only Yprois citizens, who were almost certainly Flemish-speaking, strongly suggests that the fair functioned as a key site for arranging loans of many types and that the document designed for use in the business of the fair had come to be accepted for documenting many kinds of loans, both by the citizenry and foreigners.
The social history imbedded in the chirographs
15The chirographs provide as rich information regarding the social structure of Ypres and its relationship to the charged political history of the city, indeed of other textile cities in this age. More specifically, the evidence drawn from these documents shifts attention away from the rich merchants, foreign and local. Previous historians have concentrated their attention on these actors because of their wealth and the size of their loans. In doing so, they have perpetuated a story about the sociopolitical structure of Ypres that goes back to the days of the great Belgian medievalist Henri Pirenne, who died in 193531. According to that interpretation, the men who governed Ypres, all from about 30 rich families who controlled the bank of aldermen and traded offices among their family members, controlled the cloth industry and in effect commercial life in the city32. They either came from merchant families or were themselves merchants who bought wool from Italian and English merchants who imported it to the continent, put the wool out to dependent artisans who manufactured the cloth, and sold the cloth in the Ypres cloth hall or in other fair towns. Historians have labeled these men patricians, thus marking them as a special kind of elite distinguished not just by wealth and lifestyle but also by control of the political, legal and fiscal apparatus of the city. According to this interpretation, artisans and other producers were, in turn, on the way to proletarianization33.
16As this interpretation of this period’s sociopolitical history has it, the radical polarization of society in Ypres, and in fact in most of the cloth-producing cities of the region, led to long decades of revolts that famously marked the political history of this region. Eventually the revolts forced the end of exclusively patrician rule and allowed both artisans and « new men », that is men who had risen from artisanal ranks or newly joined the citizenry, to share in rule34.
17Many of the documents on which this study is based, the so-called fair letters, seem to set the stage for exactly this history of political upheaval. They display a rigidly hierarchical society dominated by a handful of rich merchants who dealt with Italian and English importers of wool, who traded with rich merchants from Lübeck, Cologne and other German cities, and who dealt with other importers from cities like La Rochelle. We also see them lending money to Yprois residents of a different social class, many of them identified as artisans, especially textile artisans.
18But the chirographs in fact also display a much more complex social structure.
19An overview of the some 4,000 records now in a database built with information taken from the chirographs – that is all the loans made between 1251 and 1286 (ca 75 % of the entire collection) – allows us to question the traditional historiography.
Table I – All loans, all creditors and debtors, 1251-1286.
20Although in terms of the value of loans made, foreigners constituted a slight majority, they were a distinct minority in terms of the number of loans made. The majority of loans (73 %) were in fact made by Yprois, not foreigners, although the loans they made were on average significantly smaller than those made by foreigners.
21Among the foreigners, however, there were meaningful differences in the size of their loans and the people to whom they made them. A sample of important lenders from Italy and the south of France, by far the most important of the lenders in the records from Ypres, is particularly revealing.
Table II – Lenders from Italy and southern France.
22Although the 5 groups of lenders on this table made only 3 % of the loans, they accounted for 15 % of the volume in terms of value. The Yprois borrowing from the Italians were a very elite group, just as historians have previously described.
23The social profile of borrowers from the English and the Germans is similar to the Italians and southern French merchants, as is the size of the loans extended by the foreigners: although accounting for only 1 % of the loans, these lenders accounted for 8 % of the total value of credits extended.
Table III – Lenders from Germany and England.
24In contrast, the creditors from Flanders and northern France, on average, made much smaller loans but they made more of them, accounting for 17 % of the total value of loans.
Table IV – Lenders from Flanders and northern France.
25A close look at one of the lenders from northern France, indeed the most important in terms of the number of loans made, helps expose the character of the credit network formed between Yprois and lenders from this region.
Table V – Lenders from Saint-Quentin.
26Among the 100 different individuals who borrowed from Saint-Quentin merchants only 3 belonged to aldermen families and only 2 or 3 were from big merchant families. In fact, among the 100 borrowers, most were apparently smaller entrepreneurs. A great many of the borrowers were identified as artisans; in contrast there were no named artisans among the borrowers from the Italians, southern French or German lenders. The amount borrowed in these cases differs as dramatically from the debts to Italians; here the average loan was less than 3,000 d. sterling, while the average loan made by an Italian was 19,000 d. sterling.
27One of the many interesting facts to emerge from a study of all these foreign lenders as a group is that there were a lot of them, even if we treat the many members of the merchant companies like the Frescobaldi as a single lender. They also had a lot of individual borrowers.
Table VI – Foreign lenders to Yprois.
28In fact, of the 916 loans made by identified foreigners, there were 584 individual names (counting members of a merchant company as a single lender), and there were 629 individual borrowers. It is thus evident that this credit market was by no means dominated by a few merchants or merchant companies; nor did only a small number of Yprois have access to these funds. Clearly, however, the credit market registered by these sources was segmented; different lenders from abroad had different kinds of borrowers and provided different kinds of goods. But segmented as it was, it was deep reaching down into the artisanal class and presumably beyond, to simple householders.
29What we might characterize as the internal credit market in Ypres – that formed exclusively by Yprois lending to Yprois – was even broader and deeper.
Table VII – Yprois lenders to Yprois borrowers.
30Among the some 2,000 individual lenders about 4 % were identified as artisans and among the some 2,000 debtors to these creditors 12 % were named artisans. These are, it is important to emphasize, absolute minimum numbers for the occupational status of lenders or borrowers was only rarely provided in the chirographs. Given the average size of the loan made by Yprois and the size of both the debtor and creditor population, it is, however, fair to assume that the majority of both the lenders and borrowers were artisans and retailers working in independent shops with enough assets or a good enough reputation to be able to borrow.
31By putting this data about the size of the creditor and debtor population of Yprois in demographic context, we gain an even clearer picture of the social and economic structure of Ypres. All told, about 3,800 different names of Yprois men appear in these records, either as borrower or lender, between 1266 and 1286; thus about 25 % of the adult males that would have lived in the city during that 20-year period. This is a huge number, much larger than would have been expected in a city where patricians and other important merchants dominated not only the import and export market as well as the production of cloth itself but also the credit markets tied to this industry. Note too that although the average amount of the loan made by an Yprois was small in comparison to the loans made by the Italians or taken by the richest Yprois, the 1,414 pennies sterling loaned or borrowed by the average Yprois was far from negligible. It equaled about 3 years’ labor by a skilled artisan. Thus, these borrowers came from a well-established, propertied sector of Ypres’ population; they were not struggling wageworkers.
32In this regard it is interesting to note how few women appear in these records. Although as other scholars have shown that women in cities like Ypres were active participants in neighborhood credit relations, borrowing and lending small sums for consumption needs and regularly pawning household goods with Italian or Jewish lenders, only about 5 % of the borrowers and lenders in these sources were women, and most were widows or were acting with a husband or other family member35. This was, it seems, a male network, reserved for propertied men.
33This evidence compels us to reconsider the city’s and the region’s sociopolitical history and indeed the labor and economic history of the period. It displays an artisanal and householder class of Yprois able to borrow in international markets to provision their own shops and households, able to lend to one another, and to make use of the city’s powerful institutional structure to secure their loans and gain easy means for pursuit of bad debts. Since these men were not impoverished artisans on the brink of proletarianization, the revolts of the late XIIIth century that broke out among men from the drapery must thus be understood as a struggle for political participation, more direct access to the raw materials they used to make cloth, and the ability to sell their wares directly to merchants from other cities rather than through the big merchants who had heretofore controlled the wool trade and blocked them from the cloth hall. To be sure the revolts of the late XIIIth and XIVth century in Flanders, revolts which had analogues in the XIVth century Rhineland and Italy, reflected social tensions born of economic pressures36, but they reflected more artisan self-consciousness about traditional rights of self-governance derived from entrepreneurial status than the outrage of a dispossessed working class.
Notes de bas de page
1 A recent overview of the political importance of cities in medieval Flanders: J. Dumolyn, The vengeance of the commune: signs systems of popular politics in medieval Bruges, in H. R. Oliva Herrer et al. (coord.), La Comunidad medieval como esféra publica, Sevilla, 2014, p. 251-289, esp. p. 256-262.
2 For the most recent review of the evidence available concerning the population of Flemish cities during this period, see W. Prevenier, La démographie des villes du comté de Flandre aux XIVe et XVe siècles. État de question. Essai d’interprétation, in Revue du Nord, 65/257, 1983, p. 255-275.
3 For example, a ray of Ypres (25 meters long × 5 meters wide) was sold at Provins in 1294 for 331 sous tournois, that is 3,972 deniers tournois or the equivalent of 993 pennies sterling. The wages of a skilled workman (a mason) in that period (in England) averaged about 3 pennies sterling a day; thus, it would have required that worker 331 days of work, about 1.38 years, to earn enough for that cloth. In 2012, a skilled worker in the building trades in the United States earned about US $ 60,000 (counting benefits the wages rose to US $ 80,000 or, for 1.38 years of work US $ 110,000. For this cloth price (and others), see P. Chorley, The cloth exports of Flanders and Northern France during the thirteenth century: a luxury trade?, in The economic history review, n.s., 40/3,1987, p. 349-379, esp. p. 355. For wages, see J. H. Munro, The Phelps Brown and Shelia Hopkins ‘Basket of consumables’: commodity prices and craftsmen’s wages in southern England, 1264-1700; revised by Id.: see on-line <https://www.economics.utoronto.ca/wwwfiles/archives/munro5/ResearchData.html>. At the end of the XIIIth century a gros tournois was worth about 12 deniers tournois or 3 pennies sterling. For these exchange rates, see G. Des Marez, La lettre de foire à Ypres au XIIIe siècle: contribution à l’étude des papiers de crédit, Brussels, 1900-1901 (Académie royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique. Collection in-8°, 60) and P. Spufford, Handbook of medieval exchange, London, 1986.
4 For more detail regarding the range of the market for Yprois cloth in this period, see P. Chorley, The cloth exports of Flanders… cit.; Id., The Ypres cloth industry 1200-1350: the pattern of change in output and demand, in M. Dewilde, A. Ervynck, A. Wielemans (ed.), Ypres and the medieval cloth industry in Flanders/ Ieper en de middeleeuwse lakennijverheid in Vlaanderen, Asse-Zellik, 1998, p. 111- 121; S. Abraham-Thisse, ‘Kostel Ypersch, gemeyn Ypersch’: les draps d’Ypres en Europe du Nord et de l’Est (XIIe et XIVe siècles), ibid., p. 125-147.
5 See D. Dendooven, J. Dewilde, The reconstruction of Ieper: a walk through history, Sint-Niklaas, 1999.
6 H. Pirenne, Un conflit entre le magistrat yprois et les gardes des foires de Champagne en 1309-1310, avec le texte de la seule charte sauvée de l’incendie des archives d’Ypres, in Bulletin de la Commission royale d’histoire, 86, 1922, p. 1-10. This document – not a lettre de foire but a record of the settlement of a commercial conflict – is signed in dorso n. CCLXXVII, as signaled in the inventory of the Ypres archives by I. Diegerick, Inventaire analytique et chronologique des chartes et documents appartenant aux archives de la ville d’Ypres, 1, Bruges, 1853, p. 221. It was part of the archives of Pirenne given by his son Jacques to the Archives générales du royaume in 1939. The charter was restituted to his rightful owner, the city archives of Ypres, in 2014. We are grateful to archivist general Karel Velle for its information.
7 This other « survivor », a chirograph of 1253, was found by Egied Strubbe in 1934 in the episcopal archives in Bruges: E. Strubbe, Un chirographe d’Ypres de 1253 conservé et inédit, in Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 13, 1934, p. 763-766. See ill. 1.
8 About Guillaume Des Marez, see H. Pirenne, Notice sur Guillaume Des Marez, Brussels, 1933 (Annuaire de l’Académie), esp. p. 18-22 on his works on Ypres (with a complete bibliography); C. Billen and M. Boone, Pirenne in Brussels before 1930: Guillaume Des Marez and the relationship between a master and his student, in Revue belge d’histoire contemporaine, 41/3-4, 2011, p. 459-485.
9 C. Wyffels, Analyses de reconnaissances de dettes passées devant les échevins d’Ypres, éditées selon le manuscrit de (†) Guillaume Des Marez, Brussels, 1991 (Commission royale d’histoire) provides the data used in the present essay. The chirographs published in summary form in this volume are based both on Des Marez’s notes and on chirographs treating debt contracts that were transcribed and published before the war. Also see G. Des Marez, La lettre de foire à Ypres… cit., with facsimiles of four chirographs; Id., L’apprentissage à Ypres à la fin du XIIIe siècle. Contribution à l’étude des origines corporatives en Flandre, in Revue du Nord, 2, 1911, p. 1-48, esp. 40-48; Id., Le droit privé à Ypres au XIIIe siècle, in Bulletin de la Commission royale pour la publication des anciennes lois et ordonnances de Belgique, 12, 1927, p. 210-460; H. Pirenne, Album belge de diplomatique: recueil de fac-similés pour servir à l’étude de la diplomatique des provinces belges au Moyen Âge, Brussels, 1909, 1, pl. XXX A-F. The chirographs published by Wyffels in summary form are based both on Des Marez’s notes and on published chirographs in transcription that treat debt contracts.
10 H. Pirenne and G. Espinas, Recueil de documents relatifs à l’histoire drapière en Flandre. Première partie: des origines à l’époque bourguignonne. III. (La Gorgue-Ypres), Bruxelles, 1920 (Commission royale d’Histoire), n. 841-844, 846, 848, 853 were not included by Des Marez in his publications.
11 A. Merghelynck, ‘Vade-mecum’ pratique et utile de connaissances historiques et indicateur nobiliaire et patricien de ces contrées [Tournai, 1897], Brussels, Royal Library, Fonds Merghelynck, n. 990; see K. Papin, Zoekgids voor het fonds Merghelynck. Vijf genealogische vormingsavonden, Ypres, 1997. On the works of Arthur Merghelynck, see J. Tollebeek, De historische wereld van Arthur Merghelynck. Over het « familiale verleden » van de negentiende-eeuwse adel, in E. O. G. Haitsma Mulier, L. H. Maas and J. Vogel (eds.), Het beeld in de spiegel. Historiografische verkenningen. Liber amicorum voor Piet Blaas, Hilversum, 2000, p. 227-244; P. Trio, De archivaris Merghelynck. Het fonds Merghelynck in de Koninklijke Bibliotheek te Brussel, in A. Morisse (ed.), Arthur Merghelynck (1853- 1908): passies van een edelman, Veurne, 2008, p. 87-111.
12 It is not, however, certain, that all the contracts were arranged at the Ypres fair itself; clerks, even city clerks, accompanied Yprois merchants on their errands: G. Des Marez, La lettre de foire… cit., p. 14-15. For more on the Ypres fair see H. Coppejans-Desmedt, Handel en handelaars op de Vlaamse jaarmarkten in de tweede helft van de XIIIde eeuw, in H. Coppejans et al. (ed.), Album Carlos Wyffels, Brussels, 1987, p. 69-88. For the terms lettres de foire and lettres obligatoires: G. Des Marez, La lettre de foire… . cit., p. 9. C. Wyffels (Analyses de reconnaissances de dettes… cit.), do not use the term lettre de foire, but, instead, lettres obligatoires and reconnaisances de dettes. S. de Valeriola, ‘Et ce en defaloient de cest paiement… ’. La protection contre le risque de défaut à Ypres au XIIIe siècle, Master en histoire, finalité approfondie, Université catholique de Louvain, 2017. An article from this study is to appear in the Bulletin de la Commission royale d’Histoire of 2019 with an online edition of the Yprois chirographs (XIIIth century) in Diplomata Belgica. Les sources diplomatiques des Pays-Bas méridionaux au Moyen Âge, dir. Th.de Hemptinne et al., Bruxelles (Commission royale d’Histoire), depuis 2015 < www.diplomata-belgica.be>. According to the author, only 40 % of the chirographs are lettres de foire. In confirmation of this point, also see M. C. Howell, Un réseau de crédit à Ypres au XIIIe siècle. Les reconnaissances de dettes de 1249-1291, in Crédit en ville au Moyen Âge, special issue of Histoire urbaine, 51, 2018, p. 19-41. And for further discussion of the significance of these sources for social and political history of the period, see Ead., Credit networks and political actors in late medieval Ypres (forthcoming, Past and Present).
13 W. Prevenier, Th. de Hemptinne (eds.), La diplomatique urbaine en Europe au Moyen Âge. Actes du congrès de la Commission internationale de diplomatique, Gand, 25-29 août 1998, Louvain-Apeldoorn, 2000 (Studies in urban, social, economic and political history of the medieval and modern Low Countries, 9). On the Low Countries: W. Prevenier, Urban chanceries in the Low Countries from the twelfth to the fourteenth century: the European Context, in J. R. Veenstra, R. Suntrup (eds.), Stadt, Kanzlei und Kultur/City, Chancery and Culture, Münster-Groningen, 2004, p. 1-11; Th. de Hemptinne, W. Prevenier, Les actes urbains, témoins d’une conscience identitaire et instruments de décision politique et de contrôle social en Flandre, à Gand en particulier, aux XIVe et XVe siècles, in Les mots de l’identité urbaine à la fin du Moyen Âge, special issue of Histoire urbaine, 35, 2012, p. 13-30. A recent overview of administrative writings in the area under scrutiny here, also in an urban context: P. Bertrand, Les écritures ordinaires. Sociologie d’un temps de révolution documentaire (entre royaume de France et empire, 1250-1350), Paris, 2015, p. 259-272, 328-355. More in general: M. H. da Cruz Coelho, Writing in the urban world, in História (Saõ Paulo), 34, 2015, p. 16- 34. See also references to recent literature in notes 15 and 27 below.
14 One of the involved aldermen was entrusted with the part of the chirograph that went in the city archives. Generally, on the administration of the Champagne fairs, especially on the profits of seal rights, fines etc., see F. Bourquelot, Études sur les foires de Champagne, sur la nature, l’étendue et les règles du commerce qui s’y faisait aux XIIe, XIIIe et XIVe siècles, in Mémoires présentés par divers savants de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 2e série, Antiquités de la France, 2, 1865 (anastatic reproduction: Brionne [France], Le Portulan, s. d. [1970]), p. 176, 195-197, 210-218, 234-240, 245-247. On the use of seals (since 1247) by the gardes des foires de Champagne et de Brie see J.-M. Yante: Usages et tarification du sceau des foires de Champagne (XIIIe-XIVe siècles), in C. de Moreau de Gerbehaye, A. Vanrie (eds.), Marques d’authenticité et sigillographie. Recueil d’articles publiés en hommage à René Laurent, Brussels, 2006 (Archives et bibliothèques de Belgique, Numéro spécial, 79), p. 101-111. On the use of registers: R.-H. Bautier, Les registres des foires de Champagne. À propos d’un feuillet récemment découvert, in Bulletin philologique et historique, années 1942 et 1943 (but published only in 1945), p. 157-188, reprinted in Id., Sur l’histoire économique de la France médiévale: la route, le fleuve, la foire, Aldershot, 1991, VIII.
15 On chirographs, also called indentures, in general O. Guyotjeannin, J. Pycke, B.-M. Tock, Diplomatique médiévale, Turnhout, 1993, p. 92 (high Middle Ages); M. M. Cárcel Ortí (ed.), Vocabulaire international de la diplomatique, Valencia, 1994, n. 44, p. 30. On chirographs as diplomatic format of charters issued by city magistrates in this area (late Middle Ages), see: H. Nelis, Le chirographe en Flandre, en Brabant et aux Pays-Bas, du XIVe au XVIIe siècle, in Annales de l’Académie d’archéologie, 77, 1930, p. 379-393; R. Jacob, Du chirographe à l’acte notarié: l’instrument de la paix privée dans les villes du Nord, du 13e au 16e siècle, in Le Gnomon. Revue internationale d’histoire du notariat, 95-96, 1994, p. 17-28; J.-L. Chassel, Chirographes, sceaux et notaires. Remarques sur l’usage des formes mixtes dans les actes des XIIe et XIIIe siècles, in C. de Moreau de Gerbehaye, A. Vanrie (eds.), Marques d’authenticité… cit., p. 59-66; S. Hamel, La justice dans une ville du nord du royaume de France au Moyen Âge. Étude sur la pratique judiciaire à Saint-Quentin (fin XIe-début XVe siècle), Turnhout, 2012, p. 201-221; Th. Brunner, Douai, une ville dans la révolution de l’écrit du XIIIe siècle (unedited PhD thesis), Université de Strasbourg, 2014, esp. p. 536-566, and pictures in the Annexes, p. 123-133; see also his Vocabulaire de la pratique chirographique, in Annexe A.2, p. 19-22. We are grateful to Thomas Brunner who has given us permission to consult his thesis. On the use of chirographs in Hainaut (Mons) in the same context as in Ypres: D. Kusman, Shylock reconsidéré dans le comté de Hainaut: une intéressante affaire d’usure en 1319-1320, in F. Chantinne, P. Charruadas, Ph. Sosnowska (eds.), Trulla et cartae. De la culture matérielle aux sources écrites. Liber discipulorum et amicorum in honorem Michel de Waha, Brussels (2015), p. 313-340 (316-317, 319-321, 339). See also the forthcoming ChironN-project by P. Bertrand (UCL) and J.-F. Nieus (UNamur) on the chirographs of Nivelles: Les chirographes de Nivelles: gouverner une ville par l’écrit. On the use of chirographs but also on urban diplomatics in the Low Countries in general: M. Boone, ‘Estre le bien commun et general d’icelle preferé au bien privé et particulier’. Vrijwillige rechtspraak, stedelijke identiteit en stedelijke diplomatiek, in H. Brand, J. Benders, R. Nip (eds.), Stedelijk verleden in veelvoud. Opstellen over laatmiddeleeuwse stadsgeschiedenis in de Nederlanden voor Dick de Boer, Hilversum, 2011, p. 196-211. On English chirographs: J. E. Sayers, The land of chirograph, writ and seal: the absence of graphic symbols in English documents, in P. Rück (ed.), Graphische Symbole in mittelalterlichen Urkunden. Beiträge zur diplomatischen Semiotik, Sigmaringen, 1996, p. 533-548, esp. p. 535-537.
16 For example: Deus Noster (fig. 2 C), and Pax vobis on the twin of this chirograph, also of September 1253, from the same hand, with a partition of debts and another due date (fig. 1, Y 10 in the episcopal archives of Bruges). Furthermore G. Des Marez (La lettre de foire… cit., p. 8) mentions devices with letters of the alphabet and, in the case of a triple chirograph, even the first letter of the name of people involved (p. 11, and facsimile of a chirograph of 9 January 1250, here fig. 2 A).
17 Ibid., p. 8.
18 Ibid., p. 11. Although this assertion by Dez Marez seems to be refuted by one example in 1250, where the first letter of the name of lender and borrower are to be seen in de device of a tripartite chirograph, see here fig. 2 A.
19 A general overview of the extant literature on handwriting of administrative (high and late) medieval documents: M. H. Smith, Les gothiques documentaires: un carrefour dans l’histoire de l’écriture latine, in Archiv für Diplomatik Schriftgeschichte Siegel-und Wappenkunde, 50, 2004, p. 417-465, esp. p. 438-465. Also see J. W. J. Burgers, Palaeography and diplomatics. The script of the charters in the Netherlands during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in Quaerendo, 38, 2008, p. 9-31. For the diplomatic minuscule here (1253, one hand), see fig. 1, and 2 C.
20 This means that the phrase was written on the short side of the sheet of parchment. On chartae transversae: M. M. Cárcel Ortí (ed.), Vocabulaire… cit., n. 140c, p. 46.
21 G. Des Marez, Les seings manuels des scribes yprois au XIIIe siècle, in Compte rendu des séances de la Commission royale d’histoire ou recueil de ses bulletins, 5e série, 9, 1899, p. 631-646. See also, here, fig. 2 F.
22 On notitiae, see M. M. Cárcel Ortí, Vocabulaire… cit., n. 387, p. 96; n. 168, p. 52. The most common formula is (a variant of): « A cheste counissanche furent eschevin d’Ypre, N. et N.» with at least the names of two aldermen.
23 For example, fig. 2 F: « C’est Boise Angoisense et a ses companions ».
24 See fig. 2 F.
25 On the use of French in medieval Flanders, especially Ypres, see G. Des Marez, Note sur l’emploi de la langue française à Ypres, in G. Kurth (ed.), La frontière linguistique en Belgique et dans le nord de la France, 2, Brussels, 1898, p. 107-128; W. Prevenier, Th. de Hemptinne, La Flandre au Moyen Âge, un pays de trilinguisme administratif, in O. Guyotjeannin (ed.), La langue des actes. Actes du XIe congrès international de diplomatique, Troyes, 2003, Paris, 2004 (on-line: <http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/document174.html>). On the use of vernacular in medieval administrative documents in general: Th. Brunner, Le passage aux langues vernaculaires dans les actes de la pratique en Occident, in Le Moyen Âge, 115, 2009, p. 29-72. On the use of the Picardese variant of French: S. Lusignan, Essai d’histoire sociolinguistique: le français picard au Moyen Âge, Paris, 2012. G. Des Marez, La lettre de foire… cit., p. 8-9, mentions four chirographs in Middle Dutch, only one of these (April 1252) is a lettre de foire; also see facsimile in Idem, and here fig. 3, where we can see a mixed use of Dutch and Latin.
26 C. Wyffels, Analyses de reconnaissances de dettes… cit., n. D, p. 492.
27 For discussion of the usage of the IOU or lettre obligatoire during the period in the southern Low Countries and England, see G. Des Marez, La lettre de foire… cit., p. 24-29. According to Des Marez, it was only around 1500 that the Yprois magistrate abandoned the chirograph, replacing it with registers: see, in particular, ibid., p. 10. In general, on the instrumenta of private agreements: R.-H. Bautier, L’authentification des actes privés dans la France médiévale. Notariat public et juridiction gracieuse, in Id., Chartes, sceaux et chancelleries. Études de diplomatique et de sigillographie médiévales, I, Paris, 1990 (Mémoires et documents de l’École des chartes, 34/1), p. 269-340, esp. p. 304-315. On voluntary jurisdiction records in the Low Countries and especially on the (political) significance of the transition between chirographs, sealed charters (ad causas seal) and registers, see M. Boone, ‘Estre le bien commun’… cit., p. 196-211, on Ypres, p. 206-207, on Ghent, p. 207-210. On voluntary jurisdiction records by the magistrate of Douai, where the aldermen systematically used chirographs for all kinds of negotia from 1224 onwards, see Th. Brunner, Douai, une ville dans la révolution… cit., p. 475-737; on Saint-Quentin, another fair town commercially particularly well connected with Ypres (see below, Tables IV and V), where chirographs were used by the town’s authorities between 1213 and the middle of the XVIth century, see S. Hamel, La justice dans une ville… cit., p. 201-221 (204).
28 « Que sa dette ne requerra par autre loi ke par loi de le vile d’Ypres » . See the same clauses by the gardes des foires de Champagne et de Brie in their own lettres de foire: F. Bourquelot, Études sur les foires de Champagne… cit., 1, p. 77-78. On the submission clause, see M. M. Cárcel Ortí (ed.), Vocabulaire… cit., n. 235, p. 63.
29 « A paier a lui ou a son commandement ki cette charte partie apportera » . See G. Des Marez, La lettre de foire… cit., p. 34-39, for his discussion of this clause.
30 For an explanation of these procedures in the southern Low Countries, see Ph. Godding, Le droit privé dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux du 12e au 18e siècle, Brussels, 1987 (Académie royale de Belgique. Mémoires de la classe de Lettres. Collection in-4°, 2e série, 14/1), Cinquième partie, Les obligations, in particular see L’inexécution des obligations. Regarding the order in which goods were seized to redeem debts, Godding explains that in the southern Low Countries, until the XVIth century creditors were expected to begin with movables, turning to immovables only when the movables were insufficient. More generally, at the beginning of late Middle Ages, creditors could arrange for the debtor to be imprisoned before the seizure of movables was underway; by the XIIth century however, urban authorities were allowing seizure of movables to precede imprisonment. Holders of a reconnaisance de dette signed/witnessed by the aldermen were expected to follow the same order in pursuing bad debts.
31 See, in particular, H. Pirenne, The stages in the social history of capitalism, in The american historical review, 19, 1914, p. 494-515; Id., Economic and social history of medieval Europe, London, 1953. Also see G. Espinas, La vie urbaine de Douai au Moyen Âge, 4 vol., Paris, 1913; Id., La draperie dans la Flandre française au Moyen Âge, 2 vol., Paris, 1923.
32 For the patriciate of Ypres, see S. Fecheyr, Het Stadspatriciaat te Ieper in de 13e eeuw, in Jaarboek van het XXXVIe Congres van de Federatie van de kringen voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde van België te Gent. II. Handelingen van de maatschappij voor geschiedenis en oudheidkunde, Gent, 1956, p. 197- 204. Also see P. Trio, De bestuursinstellingen van de stad Ieper, in W. Prevenier and B. Augustyn, De gewestelijke en lokale overheidsinstellingen in Vlaanderen tot 1795, Brussels, 1997 (Studia. Archives générales du Royaume, 72), p. 332- 362. J. Dumolyn, Later medieval and early modern urban elites: social categories and social dynamics, in M. Asenjo-González (ed.), Urban elites and aristocratic behaviour in the spanish kingdoms at the end of the Middle Ages, Turnhout, 2013 (Studies in european urban history, 1100-1800, 27), p. 3-18 provides a recent summary of the historical literature regarding the medieval urban patriciate.
33 See, for example, H. Laurent, Un grand commerce d’exportation au Moyen Âge. La draperie des Pays-Bas en France et dans les pays méditerranéens (XIIe-XVe siècle), Paris, 1936, p. 122 ff. Another specialist has written of the tyrannical power ( « tyrannieke heerschappij ») exercised by the patricians due to the combination of economic and political hegemony they enjoyed: J. Demey, De Vlaamse ondernemer in de middeleeuwse nijverheid. De Ieperse drapiers en ‘upsetters’ op het einde der XIIIe en in de XIVe eeuw, in Bijdragen voor de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 4, 1949, p. 1-15, esp. p. 2.
34 34For the history of the Cokerulle and other revolts of this period, see G. Doudelez, La révolution communale de 1280 à Ypres (II), in Revue des questions historiques, 66, 1938, p. 3-28; Id., La révolution communale de 1280 à Ypres (III), ibid., 67, 1939, p. 21-71; Id., La révolution de 1280 à Ypres, in Prisma van de geschiedenis van Ieper. Een bundel historische opstellen, Ypres, 1974, p. 188-294; G. Des Marez, Les luttes sociales en Flandre au Moyen Âge, in Revue de l’Université de Bruxelles, 5, 1899-1900, p. 646-666, 781-798; G. Fourquin, Les soulèvements populaires au Moyen Âge, Paris, 1972; D. Nicholas, Town and countryside: social, economic and political tensions in fourteenth-century Flanders, Bruges, 1971 (RUG: Werken uitgegeven door de Faculteit van de Letteren en Wijsbegeerte, 152); H. Pirenne, Les villes et les institutions urbaines, 2 vol., Paris, 1939; E. Vandenpeerenboom, Du mouvement communal à Ypres. Esquisse historique 1271-1348, in Ypriana: notices, études, notes et documents sur Ypres, 4, 1880; M. Boone, Social conflicts in the cloth industry of Ypres (late 13th-early 14th centuries): the Cockerulle reconsidered, in M. Dewilde, A. Ervynck, A. Wielemans (eds.), Ypres and the medieval cloth industry in Flanders… cit., p. 147-157. Also see J. Dumolyn, J. Haemers, Patterns of urban rebellion in medieval Flanders, in Journal of medieval history, 31, 2005, p. 361-399. For information on the participation of the « commons » in urban politics of the age in this region, see J. Dumolyn, The vengeance of the commune… cit., p. 251-289.
35 For women as creditors in late medieval Ghent see D. Nicholas, The domestic life of a medieval city: women, children and the family in fourteenth-century Ghent, Lincoln (Nebraska), 1985, and S. Hutton, Women and economic activities in late medieval Ghent, New York, 2011; for Bruges see J. Murray, Bruges: cradle of capitalism, 1280-1390, New York, 2005. More generally on the subject of women in local credit markets see W. C. Jordan, Women and credit in pre-industrial and developing societies, Philadelphia, 1991.
36 E. Coornaert, Draperies rurales, draperies urbaines: l’évolution de l’industrie flamande au Moyen Âge et au XVIe siècle, in Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 28, 1950, p. 60-96; H. Van Werveke, De Koopman-ondernemer en de ondernemer in de Vlaamsche lakennijverheid van de middeleeuwen, Antwerp, 1946 (Mededeelingen van de koninklijke Vlaamsche Academie voor wetwnschappen, letteren en schoone kunsten van België. Klasse der Letteren, Jaarg. VIII, 4); A. Derville, Les draperies flamandes et artésiennes vers 1250-1350: quelques considérations critiques et problématiques, in Revue du Nord, 54, 1972, p. 353-370; P. Chorley, The cloth exports of Flanders and northern France… cit.; Id., The Ypres cloth industry 1200-1350… cit.; J. H. Munro, Textiles, towns and trade. Essays in the economic history of late-medieval England and the Low Countries, Aldershot, 1994, esp. VIII, Industrial transformation in the north-west European textile trades, c. 1290- c. 1340: economic progress or economic crisis?
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