Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Seventy-three years ago pioneer American medievalist Dana Carlton Munro (1911: 504) delivered a paper in Philadelphia to the American Philosophical Society entitled “The Cost of Living in the Twelfth Century.” He threw down the gauntlet by concluding that
in this paper an attempt has been made to set forth only a few of the facts, merely to indicate the nature and importance of the problem. Every one of the subjects here discussed is susceptible of elaboration, and needs to be worked out in detail for each country of Western Europe and each period in the twelfth century. The material is voluminous…. This field, as a whole, offers a good opportunity for many monographs, and such work is essential before we can understand the economic history of the century which was most important in the advance of western Europe.
This article takes up this challenge with new material on the cost of living in Italy in the twelfth century.
I wish to thank George Harold Robbert, my son, for his technical help with the mathematical relationships, and also to thank my listeners for suggestions following presentation of this material in a more primitive form to the Sixteenth International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in May 1981.