The velocity of money in the post-plague years accelerated credit flow, but also dependency on labour relations. For instance, in 1359 Bernissio Belloni promised before the tribunal to till the land of the noble Guillaume Vivaud for twelve florins, ten of which were immediately handed over to his creditor Raymond de Montillis, while his wife Hugua served as security for his debt.
1 For instance: 5 October 1359, ADBRM, 355 E 10, fols 65v–66r; 5 November 1350, ADBRM, 355 E 3, fol. 129r. The corpus is replete with similar stories of ploughmen owing money to their masters – current or prospective – or third parties, sometimes even contracting in judicial or prison courtyards labour engagements by means of protracted repayment.
2 Fourteen direct indebtedness cases were found in the contracts, in addition to numerous references to the courthouse where labour arrangements were concluded. In time, spiralling debt considerably mitigated one’s bargaining power: when Guillaume Maximin sold his services to the noble Jacques Létourneau in 1374 he was promised only thirteen florins, minus half the sum his master had paid on his behalf to clear a debt, while the remainder would be paid, as a precaution, only at exit time.
3 June 1374, ADBRM, 391 E 24, fols 33v–34r. Nine years later, Jean Venelle pledged to till the land of François Galli, a local aristocrat, in return for sixteen florins immediately after contracting a debt of fifteen florins with merchant Louis Benedict. The transaction was sealed at the royal court and secured by Jean’s father, also a ploughman, as his legal guarantor.
4 October 1383, ADBRM, 355 E 29, fols 52v–53r. It is precisely in this context that the wage gap narrowed between ploughmen and lesser skilled workers, foreign or local.
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Figure 2.6. Evolution of ploughmen and fieldworkers under contract, 1349–1400. Sources: As for Figure 2.1.
This trend also coincides with landlords already experiencing cash shortages, even insolvency. By the late 1360s the vast majority of labour litigations revolved around servants suing their masters for back pay. Disputes brought by rural workers primarily concerned lesser landowners, but even the wealthiest employers, better equipped to face adversity, had to rely on saleable commodities to obtain cash.
5 Out of 176 lawsuits, 36 cases were initiated by rural workers. When Antoine Bruni accepted work with Antoine de Roques Neuves, he warned the aristocrat that if he failed to receive his second instalment he would walk away – a pre-emptive move copied by others.
6 November 1373, ADBRM, 351 E 32, fol. 185v. For his part, the noble Guillaume Martin had no choice but to sell quantities of his wine when his servant demanded to be paid.
7 October, ADBRM, 3 B 103, fol. 141r. Among other examples: 11 October 1393, AMM, FF 571, fol. 15r; 30 October 1394, AMM, FF 574, fol. 179v.As migrants now flowed into the city at a much higher rate and from farther afield, limited liquidity may further explain wage stabilisation, but also renewed competitive opportunities for outsiders (Figure 2.6).
8 On money supply reduction in the Midi at the end of the fourteenth century: Bourin et al., ‘Les campagnes’, 687 and note 84. According to a well-known contemporary eyewitness in 1392, Francesco Datini’s agent in Provence, ‘Marseille was one of the few places where one could safely harvest and trade’ – and, one might add, make a fair living, even for foreign rural workers.
9 R. Brun, ‘Annales avignonnaises de 1382 à 1410, extraites des Archives Datini’, Mémoires de l’Institut historique de Provence, 12–14 (1935–38), cited in Aurell, Boyer and Coulet, La Provence au Moyen Âge, p. 292. At the time, robber baron Raymond de Turenne spread the practice of pâtis (or ransoms) against villages that were threatened with having their crops burnt: Aurell, Boyer and Coulet, La Provence au Moyen Âge, p. 291. That peasants from Roquevaire, Noves, La Turbie, Vinon or Aubagne could then earn twenty florins and more in pure gold a year, in addition to their board and lodging plus benefits, all conditions no foreigners had secured in the quarter of century following the Black Death, illustrates the shift.
10 July 1380, ADBRM, 355 E 37, fol. 10r; 29 October 1380, ADBRM, 351 E 50, fol. 225r–v; 7 June 1379, ADBRM, 391 E 27, fol. 54v; 27 December 1396, Fonds Mortreuil, BnF, n.a.l., 1344, fols 199v–200r; 6 August 1390, ADBRM, 351 E 62, fol. 24r; 23 July 1393, ADBRM 351 E 92, fol. 41r. Guillaume Piché, the Alpine villager mentioned earlier, is a telling example of migrants’ improved prospects: his ability to gain twenty-one florins in 1384, the support he had found in the community to release him from prison for debt and his renewed contracts within the Martin family, a leading aristocratic household, all speak volumes about his integration in the community since migrating there as a simple farmworker (
brasserius) four years earlier, when he could only gain two-thirds of his current wages.
11 January 1380, ADBRM, 351 E 48, fol. 116v; 17 April 1381, ADBRM, 351 E 52, fol. 19r; 1 October 1384, ADBRM, 3 B 103, fol. 139r. For his part, Antoine Bermond, an agriculturist of foreign origins, had also found in the middle of the 1390s a stable position with the Saint-Jacques family, a noble lineage in the city. In the process, Antoine had steadily increased not only his wages but also his place in society by gaining citizenship, having in all likelihood acquired landed property in order to earn it.
12 Antoine contracted his labour with the Saint-Jacques family at least three times during this period: 6 April 1394, ADBRM, 355 E 79, fol. 5r; 2 July 1395, ADBRM, 355 E 80, fol. 53v; 25 October 1397, ADBRM, 355 E 81, fol. 75r. However, in 1398 he toiled for a wealthy landowner, apothecary Antoine Simon: ADBRM, 351 E 79, fol. 94r–v.