ABSTRACT
Ever since the brief economic renaissance of the Carolingian age had proved abortive, the predominance of natural or domanial economy had grown steadily firmer. During the first two centuries of the feudal age, a movable or money economy, which has its source in commerce, possessed only an infinitesimal importance. The rôle of money was very small, and it was the land and its produce which constituted wealth. Economic life had become, as it were, stationary in this purely agricultural society, enclosed in the rigid framework of the landed aristocracy. Feudal government was designed rather to hamper than to assist commercial activity. Moreover, the public opinion of all classes misunderstood the r61e of trade, and continued to look upon the trader as a parasite, a speculator, a usurer, and movable wealth as the fruit of fraud and rapine, but not of labour. Moreover, the conditions of economy on the great domain left only a limited field of action to commerce. Each group produced almost everything necessary for life, and trade took place only in a small number of natural or manufactured commodities, which arose from an excess of production, and were exchanged on the spot, usually for ready money, and often by the primitive method of barter. A man would trade a horse for a sack of corn, a piece of cloth for a measure of salt, a pound of pepper for a pair of boots. The only markets known were local, held in the gateway of a castle or monastery, or on the outskirts of a neighbouring town. Insecurity, anarchy, the multiplicity of seigniorial monopolies and tolls, the scarcity and difficulty of means of transport, the chaotic diversity of weights and measures and moneys, the scarcity of the currency, and the imperfection of instruments of credit were all obstacles to the circulation of merchandise.
