"Prices of Weapons and Armour in the Early Middile Ages"

[LCJr]

http://www.keesn.nl/price/en1_intro.htm

I found this little article interesting.  Anyone know of any other similar articles?

 

[italiano]

Very interesting, but it would be helpful to have an idea of incomes of the times.

This is still the equivalent of one to three cows. So a sword was not a weapon that every simple peasant could afford.

True, but even if a peasant could afford a weapon doesn't mean they should buy one. A sword would be a silly investment for someone who isn't trained to use it and would be better off spending the money on something else - like three cows.

 

[quiet420]

*YOINK*

I bought a sword, and now your cows are mine too.

(don't bother protesting, I have a sword, that makes me a higher class peasant than you.)

 

[MidnightWolf]

neat.  during the 15thc there was a, not a law but a common sense saying (sorry cant remember who it was) that said something to the effect like "don't give a soldier a sword, he'll just use it for cutting wood" heheeh thats why when they called for men they gave them a bow, jack(cloth armour) and a sallet.

 

[LCJr]

Good point Zaro, not much use without incomes to compare them to.  So I've found these two articles that cover prices and wages.

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article251.asp

The second one is specific to the HYW but they don't list their sources so take it with a large grain of salt.

http://www.hyw.com/Books/History/Money__I.htm

 

[Jurand]

Interesting articles, but to be completely honest these figures (both the costs and the incomes) seem to me a bit irrelevant as in the case of Middle Ages it's difficult to talk about monetary economy... Money rarely exchanged hands, so it's in fact easier to talk about swords costing thirty cows rather than a set amount of pounds or whatever... Not to mention the fact that what made pound a pound varied greatly from period to period (also, shaving off edges of coins was a popular pasttime among monied classes). Just my two cents...
- Jurand

 

[Cirdan]

Actually, money did frequently change hands. Obviously when you see someone talking about paying five hundred pounds they weren't necessarily carrying it around with them, but the money would be handed over at some point--one of the big reasons for inventing the letter of credit was the weight of money, so instead of actually paying someone directly you'd have your respective bankers handle it. As evidence that, even among the lower classes, money was inf requent use, i'd put forwards the colloquial appelations of strong and weak currencies--'white' and 'black' money, respectively. This refers to the aspect of silver coins: when the currency was greatly devalued, the ammount of actual silver would be greatly reduced so that the coin would be dark in colour; whereas strong currency, with a high silver content, would be light-coloured and shiny.

 

[Jurand]

Actually as far as letters of credit are concerned, I am not 100% sure, but I was under an impression that they became widely used as late as in the 15th century. The practice was initiated by Italian bankers apparently. (Interestingly at an earlier point Templars actually get involved in this sort of thing, but to much lesser extent.) Otherwise, I disagree that money physically exchanged hands. I would rather say that commodities were assigned monetary value and then exchanged... Perhaps if we were to talk about higher classes only, then we could perhaps talk about some sort of monetary economy, but if we are talking about peasants as well (who constituted a majority of medieval society) it's hard to claim that. Later in history, with the advent of the "putting out system" (basically merchants outsourcing labor into the countryside to avoid the control of the guilds), peasants do get to have physical money, but that doesn't really happen until Late Middle Ages. 

 

[allthesedamnnamesaretaken]

Now, this is a little off topic, and from a wiki source, but this artile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destrier states that in the 7th century, a destrier was worth 12 times more than a cow, and 7 times more than a courser.

So, given assuming the same ratio for M&B's ~750 denar price for a 1 cattle, a destrier/warhorse should be worth 9000 denars, and coursers worth 1285 denars.

 

[Cirdan]

Actually as far as letters of credit are concerned, I am not 100% sure, but I was under an impression that they became widely used as late as in the 15th century. The practice was initiated by Italian bankers apparently. (Interestingly at an earlier point Templars actually get involved in this sort of thing, but to much lesser extent.) Otherwise, I disagree that money physically exchanged hands. I would rather say that commodities were assigned monetary value and then exchanged... Perhaps if we were to talk about higher classes only, then we could perhaps talk about some sort of monetary economy, but if we are talking about peasants as well (who constituted a majority of medieval society) it's hard to claim that. Later in history, with the advent of the "putting out system" (basically merchants outsourcing labor into the countryside to avoid the control of the guilds), peasants do get to have physical money, but that doesn't really happen until Late Middle Ages.   

Well, peasants did probably come into the moneyed later than townspeople. But by the 13th century, we have peasants purchasing their obligations back from the lords (i.e. agreeing to pay X ammount of hard currency instead of doing Y days of labour) and the lords relying on paid labourers to exploit their reserve lands, rather on feudal obligations. That's pretty much the latest date for the economy becoming fully monetary. Although you're right, it is fairly late in the Middle Ages; but it's still at a time where established industrial cities dominate the market for processed goods (noteably textiles, the sector that was most affected by the rise of rural and small-town industry). The most likely reason for the greater distribution of money at this time is its devaluation; coins are worth less and are more common, so they become more practical for small transactions.

 

[MidnightWolf]

what u want is this "Making a Living in the Middle Ages: The people of Britain, 850-1520" and "Standards  of Living in the Middle Ages: Social change in England c. 1200-1520." both by Christopher Dyer.  I have them on my bookshelf.  I admit I haven't gotten to read them cover to cover yet, but skimming thew it was nice.

 

[Jurand]

Yep, I agree with you here Cirdan – the advent of free peasant workers did much to thrust them into monied economy. One of the numerous positive changes brought about the Black Death. Didn’t work too well for them in the long run though.

 

[Cirdan]

Actually, in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death, there probably was a regression in moneyed transactions. Hyperinflation tends to do that.

EDIT: sorry for the originally laconic reply. What I meant was that, in the aftermath of the Black Death, there was a severe shortage of labour causing wages to skyrocket. Of course, this meant production prices were soaring as well and led to a situation of hyperinflation, where money was rapidly losing its value. Under such circumstances, it becomes easyer (and preferable for all involved) if wages, insofar as is possible, are paid in kind rather than in money, since the value of goods will remain relatively stable, while that of money will not.

 

[Jurand]

Actually, in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death, there probably was a regression in moneyed transactions. Hyperinflation tends to do that.

EDIT: sorry for the originally laconic reply. What I meant was that, in the aftermath of the Black Death, there was a severe shortage of labour causing wages to skyrocket. Of course, this meant production prices were soaring as well and led to a situation of hyperinflation, where money was rapidly losing its value. Under such circumstances, it becomes easyer (and preferable for all involved) if wages, insofar as is possible, are paid in kind rather than in money, since the value of goods will remain relatively stable, while that of money will not.

Personally I hate to involve myself in discussions on economy (terms deflation and inflation do scare me), but let me emphasize that I've never said that the move of peasants into the wage economy was particularly beneficial for them in the long run. Still somehow it did happen and I can assure you that people did not forgo their rents and become free laborers just because someone would give them more to eat. In fact, assuming that hyperinflation happened right after the Black Death, peasants would more likely stay on their land and subsist rather than seek their fortunes elsewhere. Now, since a good portion of their population did move, we may as well wonder: where exactly? Some of them went into the cities and these in fact got hit by hyperinflation the most. Some still rented themselves out as agricultural workers (which is somewhat ironic if you think about it). These agricultural workers may have been renumerated in kind, as you said. Still, it remains true that an equally large portion of that group did get renumerated in wages (my point exactly).

Finally, as far as hyperinflation is concerned, I did a quick research on the matter, skimmed over a few articles and all seem to be in agreement about three points:
1. It did happen.
2. Its effects were cushioned by the rising wages.
3. It did not last more than 30 years (in England).
What this adds up to is: even if the necessities indeed did become more expensive, people had means to pay for them. Moreover, immediatelly following the Plague and the demographic slump we have all reasons to believe that agriculture operated well above subsistance levels, which is demonstrated by a relative absence of famines at that time.
- Jurand

 

[maw]

prolly a better way to value an item would be the amount of time (labor-days/labor-hours) it took to make it. i'd imagine it would take about the same amount of time to make the same item anywhere in an area during that era.  i would guess as technology progressesed, or as the creator became more profeicient becoiming an 'expert' in making the item (sword, cloth, candle, whatever) the item would be more-or-less valued by what the maker wanted levelled against supply-and-demand.

its interesting the article starts out with some comments of exchanging a sword for a number of cows, or a village... if there were a time that to possess an iron sword to defend a village wascritical, then the sword would be worth 30 cows, but if the village never needed a defense, the sword prolly had considerably less value, right?

plus, swords don't make swords. cows make more cows. and you can't eat a sword.... if i had a lot of cows and didn't want any more, or just wanted to ditch my excess (believing not that the sword held a lot of value, but rather that the cows had little value) i might make a trade as described. last.... the value of a cow, or silver, or whatever in england wouldn't have any relation to the price of the cow in the levant. or other items - provoking trade. maw

 

[Jurand]

prolly a better way to value an item would be the amount of time (labor-days/labor-hours) it took to make it. i'd imagine it would take about the same amount of time to make the same item anywhere in an area during that era.  i would guess as technology progressesed, or as the creator became more profeicient becoiming an 'expert' in making the item (sword, cloth, candle, whatever) the item would be more-or-less valued by what the maker wanted levelled against supply-and-demand.

its interesting the article starts out with some comments of exchanging a sword for a number of cows, or a village... if there were a time that to possess an iron sword to defend a village wascritical, then the sword would be worth 30 cows, but if the village never needed a defense, the sword prolly had considerably less value, right?

plus, swords don't make swords. cows make more cows. and you can't eat a sword.... if i had a lot of cows and didn't want any more, or just wanted to ditch my excess (believing not that the sword held a lot of value, but rather that the cows had little value) i might make a trade as described. last.... the value of a cow, or silver, or whatever in england wouldn't have any relation to the price of the cow in the levant. or other items - provoking trade. maw

Interesting comment - yet the above would be only true if peasants themselves bought swords... Truth is it was in the lord's best interest to buy swords (and generally arm himself) rather than let his subjects do it. After all to protect the peasants was his raison d'etre - without it he would be simply unnecessary. As far as the price he would pay for them, I think these might fluctuate somewhat, but would be otherwise rather stiffly regulated by local guilds.
- Jurand

 

[Cirdan]

Personally I hate to involve myself in discussions on economy (terms deflation and inflation do scare me), but let me emphasize that I've never said that the move of peasants into the wage economy was particularly beneficial for them in the long run. Still somehow it did happen and I can assure you that people did not forgo their rents and become free laborers just because someone would give them more to eat. In fact, assuming that hyperinflation happened right after the Black Death, peasants would more likely stay on their land and subsist rather than seek their fortunes elsewhere. Now, since a good portion of their population did move, we may as well wonder: where exactly? Some of them went into the cities and these in fact got hit by hyperinflation the most. Some still rented themselves out as agricultural workers (which is somewhat ironic if you think about it). These agricultural workers may have been renumerated in kind, as you said. Still, it remains true that an equally large portion of that group did get renumerated in wages (my point exactly).

Finally, as far as hyperinflation is concerned, I did a quick research on the matter, skimmed over a few articles and all seem to be in agreement about three points:
1. It did happen.
2. Its effects were cushioned by the rising wages.
3. It did not last more than 30 years (in England).
What this adds up to is: even if the necessities indeed did become more expensive, people had means to pay for them. Moreover, immediatelly following the Plague and the demographic slump we have all reasons to believe that agriculture operated well above subsistance levels, which is demonstrated by a relative absence of famines at that time.
- Jurand

We have two disagreements here: firstly, you appear to believe that the move of the peasants into the moneyed economy occurred in the aftermath of the Black Plague. I hold this to have occur ed between fifty and hundred years previously (in Western Europe) at the latest. This conclusion I base both on the appearance of contracts replacing feudal obligations with monetary payments, and on the increased importance of monetary policy--this indicates that rents were indeed being perceived in money.

Secondly, you seem (no offence here) to have difficulty in grasping the effects of hyperinflation. Inflation is not, in itself, good or bad for the economy. It is a statistical consequence of an economy's evolution, measured by the overall rise of prices in monetary units. That's in theory--actually calculating the rate of inflation is extremely difficult. In fact, most statisticians will tel you that you cannot gauge inflation with perfect accuracy, so all numerical rates you see nowadays are more or less accurate estimates, based on ponderated averages of a sample of products. In an expanding economy (the exception would be if an economy has perfectly even wealth distribution, in that case positive inflation would not be a sign of health), you will have a positive but moderate inflation. When inflation becomes negative (i.e. a situation of deflation, or prices falling across the board, occurs), it is generally a consequence of a collapse in demand leading to a recession--the Great Depression is an example of this. The other extreme is hyperinflation--this is also a bad sign, since it often translates a collapse of supply. There's another cause of hyperinflation, which is purely political (the government is emitting to much money in a bid to avoid bankruptcy) and is often 'ironed out' by economists who calculate prices in terms of PPP (purchasing power parity).

Of course, that was a massively oversimplistic summary of inflation, but it's helpful given what you'll find in modern pop economics, not to mention the 'inflation=bad' paradigm that has unfortunately been popularised. Of course, inflation does not affect all groups equally, and since the first time a government had the idea of paying its debts by issuing coins in which the pure silver was alloyed with a greater amount base metals, thus inadvertently inventing monetary policy, there has been an anti-inflation lobby. What's important is to remember these people are defending their own immediate interests--inflation, as I've previously stated, is not inherently bad or good, nor is it a major factor in the economy--it is a consequence, and IMO it's not worth messing with far more important things in order to implement an inflation-centric policy.

Back to the Black Plague; it killed approximately one-third of the population of affected areas. Previously, there had been bad harvests and famines (a contributing factor to the epidemic). This led to a major shortage of manpower, especially since the lower classes (the labour pool) were far more affected than the upper classes (the employers, who had the means to isolate themselves effectively). It also led to a fall in the demand for basic commodities, which in turn impacted the demand for raw materials, particularly agricultural produce. Moreover, agriculture is somewhat 'special' because it depends not only on capital goods (livestock, ploughs,etc) and labour, but also on an utterly immobile natural resource, land; and in this case, it should be remembered also that rural areas were globally less hit by the Plague than urban centres. The result was skyrocketing wages in the depopulated cities while agricultural prices remained in relative stagnation, and of course, despite their much higher wages workers were not more productive; as a result money rapidly lost value against manufactured goods, causing hyperinflation which was unevenly distributed over different sectors of production. Many of peasants then immigrated to the cities because of the high wages.

Errr...no time now, will complete this post tomorrow.

Edit: post resumed.

Besides the attraction of wages that were seen as very high when compared to agricultural prices, peasants also had to deal with the effects of hyperinflation of the manufactured goods they needed, noteably such implements as iron ploughs which went form being a major investment to simply unaffordable for many peasants, including those that were comparatively well-off. Moreover, lords and rich peasants were unable to compete with urban employers, accelerating the movement towards the cities. This is part of an economy's natural response to the crisis, rebalancing supply and demand, but it sucks for the people who are actually caught in it. In the cities, of course, the new immigrants found that everything was not all rosy--sure, they at least were spared housing problems ("just take that house over there, no-one's claimed it since the enitre family died of the Plague last year"), but while the wages were high, so were prices, so they really weren't much better off. Needless to say , the aristocracy were definately not happy at hyperinflation stripping away their income (or, more accurately, their income's actual worth), and they wieghed in to get governments to step in and regulate wages; the problem is that you can't stop a crime where everyone connives, so royal ordnances published in countries like france were largely ignored. Overall it was a situation with hardly any winners.

EDIT2: I seem to have forgotten what I was trying to sya initially.

 

[SharpFish]

Interesting comment - yet the above would be only true if peasants themselves bought swords... Truth is it was in the lord's best interest to buy swords (and generally arm himself) rather than let his subjects do it. After all to protect the peasants was his raison d'etre - without it he would be simply unnecessary. As far as the price he would pay for them, I think these might fluctuate somewhat, but would be otherwise rather stiffly regulated by local guilds.
- Jurand

Remember that "peasants" in this case includes all non-nobles, including merchants who were richer than many nobles.  And they certainly did purchase arms and armour, and were often obliged to do so as part of guild duties.  The townsmen of Flanders had no difficulty in repeatedly producing armies that were at least adequately armed.  The idea that the lord exists to "protect" the peasantry is all very well, and what they themselves might have argued, but in reality they more often simply exploited the peasantry and left them to their own devices during war.  Feudal lords "kept the peace" by their own lights, but they were not a police force and many private citizens were armed against bandits and simple robbery, both in the towns and on the roads.

 

[NecroBones]

It's also worth noting that the medieval period was a lot more industrialized than people tend to think at first glance, especially with regards to steel. High quality iron deposits weren't everywhere (many of them had too much sulfur content, which impedes absorption of carbon, making for brittle steel), so the smelting industry would spring up around locations where good quality iron was to be found.

Sword blanks were frequently made on-site and exported to locations where the actually cutlery would take place. These sword blanks had a fairly consistent value if they were made from good iron, and were sometimes used in a manner similar to traveler's checks. They were bulky enough to not be worth much to thieves, but retained value for trade when traveling to other regions/countries.

 

[Cirdan]

Interesting comment - yet the above would be only true if peasants themselves bought swords... Truth is it was in the lord's best interest to buy swords (and generally arm himself) rather than let his subjects do it. After all to protect the peasants was his raison d'etre - without it he would be simply unnecessary. As far as the price he would pay for them, I think these might fluctuate somewhat, but would be otherwise rather stiffly regulated by local guilds.
- Jurand

Remember that "peasants" in this case includes all non-nobles, including merchants who were richer than many nobles.  And they certainly did purchase arms and armour, and were often obliged to do so as part of guild duties.  The townsmen of Flanders had no difficulty in repeatedly producing armies that were at least adequately armed.  The idea that the lord exists to "protect" the peasantry is all very well, and what they themselves might have argued, but in reality they more often simply exploited the peasantry and left them to their own devices during war.  Feudal lords "kept the peace" by their own lights, but they were not a police force and many private citizens were armed against bandits and simple robbery, both in the towns and on the roads.

No, 'peasants' means rural commoners. Burghers are not peasants. Besides, burghers rarely used swords. The favourite weapon of most town militias during the high middle ages was the crossbow, their signature weapon at the time of Bouvines. For melee, they tended to favour polearms or other big, heavy weapons requiring only moderate skill. They also tended to be under-armoured compared to the knights and their professional men-at-arms.