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1 results

  • (b) - Urban society

  • from 1 - Social change in the thirteenth century
  • David Abulafia, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    21 October 1999, pp 26-37

  • Summary

    The line between urban and rural society, the small town and the big village, is a fine one and traditionally depends on whether or not a majority of the population supported itself other than by fishing, farming or tending herds. The principal theme of thirteenth-century urban society is the challenge of population growth, perhaps the most decisive changes in urban society reflect what responses were made to the problems of growth. The concept of urban citizenship was as yet a hazy notion, but in places where the city was the state, being a citizen conferred advantages. The political and economic freedom was an ambiguous benefit to half of urban society: women. Urban society offered some single women new opportunities, either through religious experimentation or the burgeoning wage economy, to live in ways not completely shaped by men. Widows were in the best position to take advantage of all this, but poor women remained the most desperate members of urban society.