ABSTRACT
The first effect of the resurrection and development of commerce and industry was to bring about a renaissance of town life. From the middle of the tenth to the fourteenth century this movement became extraordinarily widespread, and it was then that almost all the towns of Christian Europe were created or reborn. The old Roman cities, usually situated upon the great trade routes, rose in numbers from their ruins. In the shelter of monasteries and strong castles, burgs grew up almost daily; and about 420 towns out of 500 French towns originated in this way. Many were simple manorial centres (villæ) promoted to the dignity of towns, when walls were built up round them; others arose to serve as a refuge for colonization, under the name of villes neuves (new towns), villes franches (free towns), bourgs neufs, sauvetés, and bastides. Such was the intensity of this renaissance that, besides those countries in which urban life had always lingered on, such as Italy and the South of France, almost the whole of the West became covered with cities. Germany possessed as many as 3,000, although the majority of them remained no more than fortified villages or burgs; England possessed 275. The reappearance and extension of this urban life, which had been so shattered during the early Middle Ages, was closely connected with the formation and progress of the industrial and commercial classes.
