Medieval city of women? Feminists in 14th-century Bruges

We got used to the vision of the Middle Ages as an era in which only men mattered. Women - it would seem - remained in the background, excluded, oppressed and deprived of independence. Meanwhile, it was women who shook one of the main financial centers of Europe at that time ...

In Dutch Bruges - not without reason dubbed the medieval "cradle of capitalism" - a society emerged ahead of the rest of the continent by a good several hundred years. Not only was it a market remarkably similar to today's one (banks, exchange offices, international trade), but also advanced gender equality .

Women were allowed to inherit property on their own, run businesses, and deal with large amounts of money. Ladies not only had such rights, but also eagerly used them and ... to a large extent wiped out men's business .

From the markets …

Let's start at the bottom of the social ladder. Women reigned supreme, for example, in Bruges marketplaces. James M. Murray, author of Bruges. The cradle of capitalism ", he wrote that it was they who had an almost complete monopoly on retail food trade in the city.

Indeed, in 1304, they rented 55 out of 60 stalls in one of the city's main markets (in the so-called Cheese Hall). Similarly, out of 93 Lenten stalls in the years 1305-1306, 83 were owned by women.

Medieval women in the marketplace… There were many more in Bruges!

Such a proportion (9 to 1 for the ladies!) May surprise you, but there were a lot of women at trade fairs all over Europe. However, he was not where work was associated with prestige, expertise and big money. Except Bruges, of course! The inhabitants of this city dealt with almost every possible thing.

Bilingual phrasebooks from 1369 for foreign visitors (yes, such books already existed in the Middle Ages!) Mentioned, among others, seamstresses, spinners, carding machines and parchment sellers. Other sources also mention the owner of a large wine shop or a lady who trades internationally in nails, paper and spices.

Even in the lucrative cloth business, men have failed to oust women, as has happened all over Europe. In Bruges, next to the guild clothmakers ( mester ) there were also ... champions ( mestrigghe ). Unheard of anywhere else. The specific examples say even more. 222 women and only 184 men took part in one of the great textile contracts, carried out in the years 1366-1370.

The women of Bruges were active not only in the craftsmanship but also in the financial world. A painting by Quentin Metsys entitled "The Banker with his Wife" from 1514.

… by big business

It is still only the tip of the iceberg. Women dominated not only in the craft and retail trade, but also ... banking. It seems that they most often ran companies providing illegal, high-interest loans .

In some urban families, all women dealt with this faculty, despite the fact that it required high education and a flair for risk. Women ran pawnshops, but also money exchange offices and taverns providing financial services for merchants.

Bruges is at… here.

Importantly, they weren't any figureheads! On the contrary: it often happened that the husband officially headed a given exchange office or private bank, but it was the wife who did all the real work . For example, a certain Małgorza Ruweel, the wife of the currency exchange owner Willem Ruweel, exercised impressive control over the business.

As James M. Murray writes, she was the one who performed most of the daily duties in the exchange office - she traded coins with other bankers and settled bills periodically with them to balance transfers between their banks.

The duties of another financier, Mrs. Rapesaert, were even greater, because when her husband went to work in Ghent for several years at the count's order, she took over the running of the exchange office. She did it in her own name and with no help from anyone.

She was by no means an exception, because overall, Brugian women dealt with such highly technical issues as, among others, coin and bullion sample analysis, account reconciliation, personnel management, and brokerage. Some of the businesses they run have entangled all of Europe with their tentacles. For example, when in 1372 a peculiar investment fund belonging to Edele de Rudevorde went bankrupt, there was a serious international crisis in relations between Bruges and the merchant Hansa.

… all the way to prostitution

Finally, it would be appropriate to mention the practice inherent in women - prostitution. In this area, too, Bruges was an absolute sensation. For centuries, the model of prostitution functioning has basically remained the same:it is practiced by women, but it is controlled (and profitable) by men above all.

This was never the case in Bruges, although at the beginning of the fourteenth century the "women's market" was still relatively diverse - about half of the brothels and other sinful places were owned by men. Later, however, women… drove them completely out of this market .

Twenty years of expansion of "woman's" businesses in the period of the greatest prosperity were enough, and only 20% of the lucrative segment of services remained in the hands of the ugliest sex. Thus, at a time when in many countries women were deprived of any independence, a city was created where women could not only run any possible enterprise, but even a tryst house.

Alfonski, brothels, bank bosses, financial sharks, black market moneylenders… nothing was impossible in Bruges. Today it is fair to say that the women of that time achieved much of what suffragists and feminists fought for 600-700 years later.

Source:

Trivia is the essence of our website. Short materials devoted to interesting anecdotes, surprising details from the past, strange news from the old press. Reading that will take you no more than 3 minutes, based on single sources. This particular material is based on:

• James M. Murray, Bruges:The Cradle of Capitalism , Polish Scientific Publishers PWN 2011.