Serving in the spirit of the law

With serfdom having all but disappeared in late medieval Provence, wage labour expanded significantly in the course of the fourteenth century, but the central or municipal governments never concerned themselves with comprehensive labour legislation. The earliest known efforts to regulate salaries at the county level were attempted in the midst of the plague epidemic, in August–September 1348, when the Estates General were convened in the royal capital, Aix, at the call of the seneschal of Provence on behalf of Joanna of Anjou, queen of Naples and countess of Provence. The ordinance, though, was never renewed or implemented, as labour regulations were in practice left to local governments, owing in large part to their administrative efficiency and overall political autonomy.1 The Ordinance of 5–6 September 1348 recognized that where communities already had their own customs and usages (‘juxta ordinationem patrie’), local authorities had jurisdiction over prices and salaries, which compromised its universal enforcement. Furthermore, royal accounts yield no fine collections owing to the violation of the ordinance’s provisions: Robert Braid, ‘“Et non ultra”: politiques royales du travail en Europe occidentale au XIVe siècle’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 161 (2003), 470 (notes 127–8), 473. If, as Braid suggests, municipal governments in Provence established wage and price lists prior to 1348 (at 444), they have left no documented traces. Indeed, in the years following the Black Death, Marseille took matters into its own hands. The city council had seemingly deliberated around wages before 1348, for the earliest reference to ‘salary’ in its deliberation registers dates from December 1325, but this was a misnomer. In reality, what the councillors meant by ‘salary’ was the ‘pricing (called salarium in the minutes) of notarial documents and artisans’ wares, which are mentioned in the law code’.2 ‘Super salariis ipsorum notariorum et omnium aliorum artem mecanicam exercentium, de quibus statuta loquentur’: Marseille, Archives Municipales (hereafter AMM), BB 14, fol. 5r (14 December 1325). While the first deliberation register dates from 1319, the series is interrupted between 1340 and 1348, between 1351 and 1357, between 1368 and 1375 and between 1391 and 1400. However, in the wake of the epidemic outbreak in Marseille and in the ensuing decades, wage control – and especially agricultural wages – gained traction. Yet, when the council met on 6 November 1348 to make the labour of ploughmen accessible to other landowners, no specific wages were stated, only the ‘usual ones’ to be remitted in broad daylight under the penalty of the double, while illicit extra earnings would incur a fine of ten librae.3 The new provision allowed ploughmen to cultivate their own lands on Fridays and Saturdays, while the remainder of the week (Sunday excepted) had to be served on others’ estates: AMM, BB20, fol. 54r. It is only in late January 1349 that, in order to restrain ‘fraudulent manoeuvres by agriculturalists’, daily wage figures were provided according to tasks and gender, and capped at four solidi.4 ‘Super conversatione et augmentatione taxe facte agricolis hominibus cultoribus ve laboratoribus ad evitandum fraudes preconceptas et ad sassiandum [sic] ineffrenatam voluntatem ipsorum’: 25 January 1349, AMM, BB 20, fol. 80v. The ubiquitous term taxa, meaning also ‘tariffs’, refers here to wages. If men could cash up to four solidi in wages, women were limited by law to two solidi, as were male teenagers (garciones), unless the latter knew how to prune vines, in which case they could earn an extra six denarii. Thereafter the municipal government, time and again, attempted to control agricultural labour.5 Renewed injunctions added detail or clarification: for instance, 31 March 1349, AMM, BB 20, fol. 107r; 19 June 1349, AMM, BB 20, fol. 155v; 12–14 December 1365, AMM, BB 25, fols 52v–55v; 25 February 1366, AC, BB 25, fols 79r–80r; 7 September 1378, AMM, BB 27, fol. 250r. While it decried repeatedly the labourers’ injusta salaria,6 For instance, during the 1365 harvest season (‘hoc presenti tempore messium excoriare’) the council allowed men to collect seven solidi per diem and women three solidi and four denarii: 9 June 1365, AMM, BB 24, fol. 205r. The following December, however, in an attempt to limit the workers’ ‘effrenatas et excessivas solutiones’, the government struck a commission to reduce both agricultural workers’ and artisans’ wages to their just value – ‘mercedes eorum reduxisse ad equitatem’: 12–14 December 1365, AMM, BB 25, fol. 52v–55v. Years later, another ‘moderate’ adjustment was also deemed necessary to curb ‘unjust salaries’ demanded by agricultural male and female labourers: 7 September 1378, AMM, BB 27, fol. 250r. a deeper concern was to ensure that Marseille’s landowners had unobstructed access to their workforce.7 In particular, the landed elite wanted the city ploughmen to make their labour available ‘to till the estates about Marseille other than their own farmlands’ (ad cultivandum possessiones locate in Massilie … et conducant ad operandum in possessionibus alienis): 26 November 1348, AMM, BB 20, fols 63v–64r; also, 31 March 1349, AMM, BB 20, fol. 107r; 22 April 1351, AMM, BB 21, fol. 118v; 9 June 1365, AMM, BB 24, fol. 205r–v. But, as with the seneschal of Provence’s Ordinance, there is little evidence for the enforcement of the various injunctions, which, at any rate, never made their way into the city’s statutory law.