ABSTRACT
It appears that a series of good harvests heralded the long-lasting slump of prices in the fifteenth century. The summer of 1375 was hot and dry, ‘and in that year was an abundance of corn and fruit the like of which had not been seen for fourteen years’ (Limburg Chronicle). In Alsace the harvest of 1375 produced more corn than could be used, and so many fruitful years ensued that people ‘grew tired of them’ (Hanauer). The silver value of rye in Nuremberg dropped from 74 grams of silver per 100 kilograms in April 1375 to 33 grams per 100 kilograms in 1376 (Hegel, 1862:256). 1 A few years later (winter 1382–3) it was recorded in the Augsburg Chronicles that ‘corn was cheap in the German lands’. In 1395 the bakers began to make farthing loaves because ‘a pennyworth of bread is too much for one man to eat’. ‘Nothing like it has been seen before’ reported the Alsatian chroniclers (see extracts in Hanauer, 1878:81).
