After the Black Death: an agriculturalist’s golden age?

Valued assets in the community, ploughmen, who seemingly had had little incentive to enter into formal labour agreements with urban landowners before the Black Death, now sought long-term employment on others’ estates, where they represented 60 per cent of the rural workforce under contract.3 Since the commitment involved was never precisely detailed, it remains unclear whether these annual contracts offered a supplement to ploughmen’s income or the bulk of it. It is worth noting that by December 1365 the city council complained about the glut of wine on the market (Mabilly, Inventaire, pp. 114–15; AMM, BB 25, fols 46r–49r); perhaps small landholders felt the crunch and turned to salaried work to make ends meet. In general, these specialists commanded higher salaries than fieldworkers, plus substantial extras. Such was the fortune of François Bourgogne, whose earnings included twenty-one florins in hard cash and two florins for his companagium – or meat supplement – in addition to 308 litres of wheat, 154 litres of barley and 308 litres of wine.4 May 1377, ADBRM, 355 E 24, fols 22v–23r. These commodities being worth at least twelve florins at the time, François was poised to earn roughly thirty-five florins, with free lodging.5 For punctual references to contemporary grain and wine pricing: Reynaud, Histoire du commerce de Marseille, pp. 756, 765. Though a living wage in fourteenth-century Marseille is a notion that resists all available serial sources, it has been said that, by the turn of the fifteenth century, workers’ daily wages had risen faster than the cost of the wine they cultivated.6 Baratier, ‘Production et exportation du vin’, 244. Anecdotal evidence also reminds us that a ploughman’s income could very well approach that of a legal specialist: in 1352, Barthelémie Laurent negotiated twenty-four florins in salary, a florin short of what was earned not long after by Jean André, the city council notary.7 October 1352, AD, 355 E 5, f. 67r–v; 3 March 1358: Mabilly, Inventaire, p. 81 (AMM, BB 22, fols 150r–152r).

As in the rest of Europe, wage inflation followed the 1348 demographic crisis in Marseille, which correlated with monetary devaluations until the mid-1360s.8 Michaud, Earning Dignity, p. 17. Across Provence: Noël Coulet, Aix-en-Provence. Espace et relations d’une capitale (milieu XIVe s.–milieu XVe siècle), vol. 1 (Aix-en-Provence, 1985), pp. 136–7. In 1338, city ploughman Jacques Sabrini had received 6.5 librae in yearly wages; in 1356, Antoine Catalan, another ploughman, was promised nearly three times that amount – 18 librae – to till the land of his very own brother Pierre; one may assume that, given their family relations, 18 librae (or 12 florins) was then considered a fair rate for ploughmen.9 April 1338, ADBRM, 381 E 60, fol. 11r–v; 14 September 1356, ADBRM, 351 E 647, fols 109v–110v. This spike echoes the local government’s immediate efforts to maintain or curb rising daily agricultural wages.10 See above, note 8. Although these attempts were repeated on several occasions until the end of the century, all but one of these attempts date before 1365, as if wage inflation abated after this date.11 Of the half-dozen resolutions passed by the city council specifically on wages before 1400, five date between 6 November 1348 and 14 December 1365 and the last one is from 1378. It can hardly be coincidental that this legislative flurry slowed down with the stabilization of the local currency – the massiliensis minutum – when, around 1364, it was established at 32 solidi against the Florentine florin of pure gold until 1400. The case of Hugues Barral supports that possibility. Hughes had earned fifteen florins in 1352 and when, in 1366, he accepted twenty-two florins from another landlord, the sum included six florins for his wife’s domestic work at the master’s residence, a rate nearly unchanged for maids from the early 1340s onwards.12 June 1352, ADBRM, 3 B 49, fol. 39r; 28 November 1366, ADBRM, 351 E 28, fol. 241r. Yet, even these conditions were hard to find for foreign ploughmen. In 1361, a couple from the village of Gardanne had been offered together only twelve florins; however, seventeen years later a ploughman from the village of Ste-Réparade proved more fortunate and obtained thirteen florins, plus five florins for his wife’s domestic service, even though this was still four florins short of Hugues Barral’s earnings in 1366.13 September 1361, ADBRM, 355 E 11, fol. 54r–v; 20 February 1378, AD, 355 E 24, fols 131r–132r. The masters who had initiated these three contracts were all legal professionals and, one must assume, very well acquainted with the various wage practices in the labour market.

These last examples illustrate that, after the first two decades following the Black Death, salaries had quickly stabilised around fourteen florins (Figure 2.3).14 It is more than possible that in the agricultural labour market, as in other trades in the city (Michaud, Earning Dignity, p. 93), a consensus was reached about the ‘usual salary’ (consuetum loquerium) at specific junctures (hactenus). Indeed, four out of five rural workers in Marseille earned less than twenty florins throughout the entire period, well below the twenty-four florins and more that ploughmen Barthelémie Laurent and François Bourgogne had been able to negotiate. These professionals belonged to a coterie of established and famed rural workers that only the local elite could afford, and with whom they often repeatedly renewed their association.15 Twenty-two landlords disbursed twenty florins or more for agricultural services. A very good example is offered by landowner Pierre Boniface, the wealthy son of a former syndic (Christian Maurel, ‘Pouvoir royal et pouvoir municipal (XIVe–XVe siècle)’, in Pécout (ed.), Marseille au Moyen Âge, p. 225, note 3), who initiated no fewer than six contracts with rural workers (mostly ploughmen) in the 1370s and 1380s, offering them an average of eighteen florins in hard cash (plus extras), well above the average nominal salary at this time (fourteen florins). In a court case of 1397, a miller and two ploughmen were called as expert witnesses to testify on behalf of a prominent landlord about the yearly salary rate for ploughmen in the city: the miller asserted twenty florins, the ploughmen twenty-two florins: the judge accepted the miller’s cheaper estimate as the rightful rate.16 December 1397, ADBRM, 3 B 580, fol. 51r. Yet, a quarter of century earlier, the city-appointed rectors of the Saint-Esprit hospital had hired a local ploughman to till the fields of the institution for twenty-two florins plus extras: they surely knew the current market price for the best ‘artisans of the land’.17 May 1373, ADBRM, 391 E 23, fol. 30v.

While an aristocracy of ploughmen with close ties with the wealthiest and most powerful of the city reaped the greatest gains, relative wage stagnation remained the lot of the majority of agricultural workers with less social capital and fewer personal connections; this was especially so for unskilled and foreign workers.18 A parallel could be drawn here with the top-tier famuli on English manors at the turn of the fourteenth century, the ‘supervisory personnel, ploughmen, carters, shepherds’, as opposed to the ‘second-tier’ famuli – the vulnerable workers such as women, youths and elderly: Jordan Claridge and John Langdon, ‘The composition of famuli labour on English demesnes, c. 1300’, Agricultural History Review, 63 (2015), 187. In Marseille, however, the term famuli referred to low-skilled, younger dependents in both farming and artisanal households. These agriculturalists found employment with small farmers who could not afford experienced ploughmen to the tune of twenty or twenty-four florins. Artisans and especially ploughmen paid less and employed younger staff, often for shorter periods of time.19 The highest annual salaries ploughmen paid, seventeen and sixteen florins, were to local fellow laboratores: 21 December 1390, ADBRM, 351 E 89, fol. 152r; 21 July 1376, ADBRM, 355 E 21, fols 61v–62r.

There were notable exceptions, though, as profit prompted geographical mobility, especially when proximity to the centre allowed propertied peasants to maintain ownership and control over their own land back home. Jean Barnoyn, a specialised gardener and ploughman from Aix-en-Provence, the royal capital, renewed his contracts with noble Pierre Boniface, who gave him preferential salary rates over his other workers, several times. Although for a while Jean resided in Marseille, he never became a citizen, keeping his roots in his hometown; yet, without permanent relocation, he managed to secure handsome earnings while his wife Alice, a professional wetnurse, found lucrative employment in bourgeois households, earning fifteen florins annually, nearly twice the salary of a maid.20 Villagers from Saint-Marcel and Aubagne who were offered citizenship in Marseille also resisted taking permanent residence in the city, as revealed in a council’s injunction demanding them to do so: 25 February 1366, AMM, BB 25, fols 79r–80r.

On the whole, though, Marseille proved less attractive to foreign ploughmen, who composed only 35 per cent of all skilled rural workers; and lesser earnings were possibly at play, a fate they shared with unskilled workers – among them a majority of migrants (Table 2.4). Leaving one’s homeland to seek salaried work in another community made sense if pushed by necessity, a condition that rarely tipped the negotiation game in favour of the needy. A spirit of adventure interlaced with broken economic opportunities may also have prompted many a ploughman’s younger son, such as Hugues Jean in 1357, an orphan from Venelles – a ghost village by 1400 – to flock to Marseille.21 Baratier, La démographie provençale, pp. 90, 136. Borrowing their fathers’ professional title by virtue of family training, these youngsters, often plague refugees during the 1350s, fetched only around seven florins – a female wage indeed.22 Such as Durand Vénitien, a sixteen-year-old, who self-identified as ‘ploughman’: 5 June 1352, ADBRM, 355 E 6, fol. 7r–v. This alone explains the weaker nominal salaries earned on average by ploughmen than fieldworkers in that decade alone, an anomaly noted in Figure 2.4.

However, in the last quarter of the century, the wage gap between locals and outsiders, ploughmen and fieldworkers, started to close as the migratory flux intensified in the city (Figure 2.5). To explain this evolution, we have to turn to yet another factor that initially advantaged Marseille’s ploughmen above all other agriculturalists: work transacted through credit.23 Drendel, ‘Le crédit dans les archives notariales’. For northern Europe in general: Phillipp Schofield and Thijs Lambrecht (eds), Credit and the Rural Economy in North-western Europe, c. 1200–1850 (Turnhout, 2009). Local custom dictated that employees be paid in three instalments: at the beginning, at the mid-point and at the contract’s end. From the master’s perspective, the first instalment represented a form of loan extended to the worker, who was bound to repay it through his labour at the fourth month mark. Statutory law explicitly made masters first creditors of their employees above all others, a disposition that only surges in contracts after 1348.24 Pernoud, Les statuts municipaux, pp. 198–9 (statute 18, book VI). In court, employers frequently cited the second statute of the fifth book of the municipal code to gain cause against their defaulting servants,25 Pernoud, Les statuts municipaux, p. 165. provided they had not fled town. Such was the case of Antoine Étienne, a city ploughman who absconded on his promise to work for noble Pierre Amel after the latter had allegedly paid at great expense Antoine’s release from prison for debt.26 June–22 December 1397, AMM, FF 580, fols 46v–51v. Another aristocrat, Guillaume Martin, had been more fortunate with a fieldworker from the Alpine village of Saint-Benoît, Guillaume Piché. In the summer of 1384, Piché had walked away at the peak of harvest time (probably to gain higher daily wages on some other landlord’s estates). But by Michaelmas his master had had him arrested and incarcerated until a local ploughman stepped forward to serve as surety, so Guillaume could resume his work for an extra year, the term of his earlier engagement; he also promised the court to give Pierre the twenty-one florins he had been offered in salary – although he had pocketed only seven florins – in addition to sixteen florins for damages and interest: that is, eight florins for each of the two unworked harvest months.27 1–19 October 1384, ADBRM, 3 B 103, fols 139r–142v. This last and hefty penalty, nearly five times Guillaume’s monthly salary, matches the daily wages paid to rural workers over two months of service during harvest in this time period.28 Eight florins coincides roughly with the 6.8 solidi paid to day labourers in addition to their meals, an attractive sum compared to the 1.8 solidi Guillaume received daily according to his yearly contract. Information on the daily wages is provided from contemporary court cases: 15 June 1390, AMM, FF 565, fol. 96r; 6 June 1392, AMM, FF 570, fol. 67r. Perfectly in line with the spirit of the municipal code, these punitive measures were meant to enforce servants’ loyalty towards and dependence on their masters.

Since defection was a major concern among employers, many demanded sureties.29 While nine in twelve lawsuits initiated by landholders concerned a breach of contract, more than 25 per cent of all 160 agreements made with agricultural workers explicitly contained a fidejussor (guarantor) clause. This presupposed a system of warranties resting on personal assets, reputation and social networks.30 Bourin et al., ‘Les campagnes’, 691. This is why masters offered better work conditions to city ploughmen, who, they knew, enjoyed the necessary collateral values through personal relations and, especially, real estate, which foreigners lacked, as goldsmith Robert de Rocha had pointed out in his lawsuit against his migrant employee.31 See above, note 3. Hence, when a jurist hired a city ploughman to work at his bastide in the spring of 1366, the latter accepted the transfer of all his chattels to his master’s urban residence as surety and let him place a lien on his own vineyard.32 May 1366, ADBRM, 351 E 28, fol. 70r–v. Women’s access to real estate property among this professional class through matrimonial endowment also reinforced the position of ploughmen, who relied on their wives, mothers and even mothers-in-law as personal sureties to secure good wages.33 Twenty-three out of forty fidejussores were wives or female relatives. In order to seal his work contract with the noble Guillaume Martin in 1362 Laurent Prosii turned to his wife Baudine, who pledged her city-centre house. The precaution proved wise, as six months later, after Laurent had failed to show up for work, Baudine remitted ten florins to Guillaume as a penalty for her husband’s defection.34 July 1362, ADBRM, 351 E 28, fol. 83r–v.