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Economic Life of Early Middle Ages |
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The most conspicuous feature of the economic life of the early Middle Ages, or Dark Ages (c. AD 500 AD 1100) is a virtual absence of money and of the characteristic features of a money economy economic specialization, long distance trade, commercial towns. Instead, the early medieval economy was rural and locally self sufficient, and society as a whole was correspondingly "rusticated." This rustication appears vividly in our (relatively few) pictures of the Dark Ages. A striking example is the description of court life in Einhard's biography of Charlemagne (Einhard 45 52). The court life of medieval Europe's greatest king is surprisingly simple, compared to later high medieval royal courts. Charlemagne lives similarly to an ordinary minor Frankish noble. Most of all, his court is ever wandering; the Frankish economy cannot command the resources to maintain even this modest royal establishment year round at any single site such as Aachen. Instead, King and retinue must endlessly "progress" from estate to estate. Yet this was in a part of the world that had previously belonged to the sophisticated money economy of classical antiquity, and which soon (in Italy by AD 1100) would itself take the lead in commercial and financial development. In the pages that follow we will trace the decline of money in the early Middle Ages, and its revival as the period drew to a close. The lives of two Gaulish literary notables of around AD 500 and AD
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ne of the fundamental reforms of Charlemagne regarded the coinage; the Carolingians introduced the silver based system of the Middle Ages (Hodges 110 11), which survived until a few years ago in Britain's pounds, shillings, and pence. This represented at once an attempt to revive a market economy by providing a more available coinage, and an admission that the Western European economy of ca. 700 800 was incapable of supporting a gold coinage that could circulate in Mediterranean trade as well (Bloch 188).
Yet the Carolingian coinage was also of limited application. The renaissance of trade was short lived, cut off in the period of chaos that followed for a century on Charlemagne's death. Emporia of long distance trade which had flourished, relatively speaking, in the earlier Dark Age centuries now went into decline. In Belgium (later one of the first areas to revive) we find fortified houses prototype castles by the late ninth century (Hodges 189). Political and social fragmentation reached a maximum. The Vikings brought havoc to regions near the coast or major rivers.
Classical gold coinage had failed as a medium to tie Europe together economically, so, evidently, had Carolingian silver. The future of the West as a
Category: Economics - E
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Dark Age, Dark Ages, Hegira Bloch, Gregory Tours, Ages Hodges, High Medieval Europe, Venetian Florentine, Western European, Middle Ages, Byzantines McNeill, money economy, dark ages, middle ages, upper class, classical antiquity, fiduciary money, gold coins, financial system, long distance trade, western european, money middle ages, lived social world, western european economy, re emergence money economy, money economy ,
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