• 1 I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Flemish Research Foundation FWO for the project ‘Shock (...)
• 2 Campbell 2016.

11In his recent The great rransition, Bruce Campbell provides a powerful argument for the existence of a profound rupture between the ‘enabling environment’ of the Medieval Warm Period, and the more challenging Little Ice Age Conditions.2 Once again, the 14^th century becomes the century of shocks and systemic transition, with the 1348 Black Death as the most disruptive episode, though still an episode which is profoundly embedded in a broader context of environmental instability and societal vulnerability. Confronted with the ‘wrath of nature’, 14^th century European society might occur rather vulnerable and powerless. Nevertheless, people continuously reacted, adapted and co-produced environmental shocks and challenges, and the diversity in reactions to the great shocks of the 14^th century might reveal part of the causal mechanisms behind them.

• 3 Sen 1981.
• 4 P. Slavin argues that during the Great Famine of 1315-1317 years of heavy rainfall went hand in ha (...)
• 5 O’Grada 2009; Hoyle 2010; Campbell 2010.

2The debate concerning the cause of food crises mainly revolves around the Sen-inspired Food Entitlement Decline (FED) versus the Food Availability Decline (FAD).3 In the former regard, famines are mainly a problem of social allocation, wherein lower social groups lose their entitlement of (or access to) food at the benefit of higher social group during dearth periods. This would mean that famines are socially produced.4 Other authors, focussing on the latter, attribute a significant role to short-term weather anomalies, and the co-production of (food) disasters by both endogenous and exogenous factors.5

• 6 Clabaut 2006, p. 40; Mestayer 1987, p. 47.
• 7 Bigwood 1906, p. 397-460; Tits-Dieuaide 1975, p. 143-166; Nicholas 1987, p. 242.

3Elaborating on the debate between famine as FED or FAD, this article investigates the grain market in the Flemish cities during the food shocks of the period labelled as the Great Transition by B. Campbell: 1330-1370. It will do so using newly constructed price series of wheat, which hitherto were only available from 1348 onwards. My focus lies with the cities of Bruges and Ghent in the north of the county, Lille and Douai in the south (Walloon Flanders) and Cambrai just outside of Flanders. As test-cases, they all had a different agricultural hinterland, a different degree of political power and a different connection to international and regional grain markets. From the late thirteenth century onwards, Douai and Lille witnessed a gradual economic shift from cloth-centred trade hubs into more diversified urban economies, with a focus on grain and wine.6 Bruges shifted from centre focussed on textile industry and trade towards a focus on luxurious goods. As for their position in trade networks, the more southern Douai and Cambrai counted as natural points of distribution for the Northern-French grain, Ghent struggled to establish its staple rights on the Scheldt grain trade, and Bruges had to compensate a difficult connection to the river system by imports over sea.7

• 8 For the Bruges hospitals of St. John and Our Lady ter Potterie prices have been scrutinized for th (...)
• 9 This dataset has been gathered and is being processed by the research project Shock Cities (2016-2 (...)
• 10 Derville 1999.

6Data for a new price series for the fourteenth century in the county of Flanders is scarce, especially in contrast with the manorial account scrolls that are abundant for England during this period. Nonetheless, work has already been done on prices and wages from 1350 onwards.8 With the integration of both the scattered available data which have already been published and new archival data which have never been processed, a new dataset had been constructed in order to test the impact of different shocks on grain prices.9 For the Low Countries, the accounts of hospitals and ecclesiastical landowners are particularly rewarding. The requirements of staff and residents required the acquisition of large amounts of food. Furthermore, they are more representative for the rank and file of the general urban population than for instance the consumption of aristocratic households.10 These accounts are supplemented by those of urban monasteries and collegiate churches, catering for a smaller and more upscale number of consumers. The fact that this research is bound to use these kind of sources due to the lack of any other has to be stressed. A comparison with any lay landowner, which could have resulted in different conclusions, is therefore impossible.

• 11 A recent extensive overview of medieval Bruges in its social, economic and political aspects has b (...)
• 12 Verhulst 1974.
• 13 Stabel 1997, p. 137.
• 14 Stabel et. al. 2018.
• 15 During business season, there are estimates of around thousand foreigners present in the city, com (...)
• 16 OAB, Rekeningen Sint-Janshospitaal, nrs. 2-55. The price data starts in 1280, with a hiatus for th (...)
• 17 Maréchal 2016, p. 61-63.
• 18 Verhulst 1965. These rent-prices have been used for calculating the money-values for the revenues (...)
• 19 The hospital of Our Lady of the Potterie has preserved some accounts for the period 1342-1355: OAB (...)
• 20 A staple right was a medieval right which required merchants to unload their goods they were trans (...)
• 21 Deblonde-Cottenier et. al. 1973. These prices have been double checked in the original sources tha (...)
• 22 The church of Our Lady in Sint-Pieters-te-Gent (1355-1367) and the collegiate churches of St. Jame (...)

7The northern-Flemish city of Bruges, connected to the sea (and the international) trade through the Zwin inlet, was a major economic player in the medieval southern Low Countries.11 From the 11^th century onwards the textile industry in the city developed significantly based upon the influx of English and Scottish wool.12 Following the 12^th century agrarian expansion, a huge demographic expansion was set in Bruges.13 In the 13^th and the 14^th century, the industry converted from a textile-centre towards a diversified pallet specializing in luxury products and confection.14 The commercial capital that was present here made sure that the city was connected to the international markets by sea and by land, which is important for the supply and the marketing of grain from different directions.15 For the hospital of St. John, the largest hospital located in Bruges, an extensive series of sources have been conserved.16 Its patrimony was under the control of two wardens appointed by the city magistrate, and it could house a maximum of about 150 destitute travellers, pilgrims and sick merchants.17 For a large part, they provided in their own agricultural products, exploiting and renting out a lot of its properties in the surrounding area of coastal Flanders. Unfortunately, the accounts do not include a list of people to which grain was sold, but they are useful nonetheless for their early price data. Additionally, the rent-prices of different types of grain according to the Acta Capituli of the collegiate church of St. Donatian have been scrutinized and published by A. Verhulst from 1348 onwards.18 This church was one of the larger secular collegiate churches in the Netherlands and became a cathedral following the installation of the bishopric of Bruges in 1559. Both of these larger series are supplemented with smaller account series to obtain a larger picture for the Bruges area.19 The second northern-Flemish city is Ghent, the largest city of the medieval Low Countries, which had an important textile industry. Ghent also held a staple right for the grain trade over the river Scheldt, which flowed through the city.20 Conserved reliable account series for the study of food prices are rather scarce for this city. Preserved accounts from the abbeys of St. Peter and St. Bavo – by far the largest landowners in the county – are rare for the 14th century.21 They have been supplemented by price data derived from the archives of poor tables of different collegiate churches, of which the church of St. Nicholas was the most rewarding.22

• 23 After the Battle of Mons-en-Pévèle in 1304, where the French King sought revenge for the defeat in (...)
• 24 Dehaisnes 1869, p. 9. Due to the absence of sources as a result of the destruction of the city in (...)
• 25 Nicholas 1997, p. 224. Georges Espinas even claimed that Douai knew no equal concerning its demogr (...)
• 26 Sivéry 1984, p. 22; Espinas 1940, p. 111.
• 27 ADN, Archives Hospitalières (AH): VI, E7-11. These start in 1285 and keep going until the end of t (...)
• 28 Derville 1999, p. 91-93.
• 29 These transactions are listed in detail in the accounts, including the product, quantity, price, t (...)
• 30 ADN, série 16 G: Chapitre Saint-Pierre, 1316-30; 1384-6; 1423-5; 1443-4; 1704-24; 1753-69; 1812-4; (...)

8Lille and Douai, as the Southern-Flemish representatives, have a more rewarding state of 14^th century fiscal sources. Both cities are situated at the southern border of the county. They were yielded as warranty for a large part of the 14^th century to the French king after the Franco-Flemish wars, but returned under the rule of the Flemish count in 1369.23 Along with Bruges, Ghent and Ypres, both cities were part of the cinq bonnes villes de Flandres and thus had an important role within the county.24 Economically, the southern-Flemish cities are seen as the first cities within the county with a flourishing textile-industry, starting its development in the early 13^th century, with Douai as its outspoken leading city.25 This stagnated in the second part of the 13^th century due to competition from Normandy and the rivalry between the French and the English King, causing countless trade blockades hampering the high-quality wool influx from England and Scotland.26 Through the Deûle and Scarpe rivers, both cities were linked with the northern regions of the county, which enabled a cheap way of transporting goods over long distances. As for the sources, first of all there are the conserved detailed account scrolls from the hospital of St. John the Evangelist, founded in 1214 between the church and the gate of St. Sauveur in Lille, from where it derives its name.27 Just like the hospital of St. John in Bruges, this hospital took care of the poor and diseased within the city and from outside of its walls. Its capacity lay around 100 bodies at the end of the 13^th century to 50-70 at the middle of the 14^th century.28 Likewise, they used their farming grounds for their own provisioning, as well as a source of cash income, by selling a lot of the grains that were produced.29 Some accounts originating from the collegiate church of St. Peter, founded in 1066, add some scattered price data for the 14^th century, even though they are scattered amongst the different ‘offices’ linked to the collegiate church.30

• 31 ADN, série 1 G: Chapitre Saint-Amé, 813; 1282-7; 1288-1334; 2141-73. These accounts dateback to 13 (...)
• 32 Rouche 1985, p. 61-63.
• 33 AMD, 2NC 1296-7, 1336-8. Its oldest account only dates back to 1329, but from 1350 onwards these a (...)
• 34 Rouche 1985, p. 68.
• 35 Scrutinized in Mestayer 1963. This price series was double checked in ADN, série 30 H: Notre-Dame (...)
• 36 Rouche 1985, p. 66.

9For Douai, the largest dataset had been collected from the archives of the collegiate church of St. Amé.31 This collegiate has its origin around 950, and is the most important church in Douai, next to the collegiate church of St. Peter.32 St. Amé possessed huge amounts of land, in and around Douai, divided across the different ‘offices’ linked to the church. Therefore, comparable to the collegiate of St. Peter in Lille, the dataset from St. Amé contains grain prices derived from the accounts of those different ‘offices’, which acted independently from each other. A second large landowner located in Douai that produced accounts including grain prices is the hospital of Wetz.33 This hospital was founded in 1245 and was maintained by a community of around 20 to 30 beguines at the end of the 14^th century.34 The rental book of the abbey Notre-Dame des Prés is another excellent source for this city.35 This Cistercian abbey was founded in the early 13^th century and had vast amounts of lands at their disposal, of which they gathered their food supplies and agricultural marketing goods.36

• 37 Neveux 1980.
• 38 For more information regarding the history of Cambrai and the Cambrésis, Trenard 1982.
• 39 ADN, série 4 G: Chapitre Notre-Dame, 813-8; 6840-60. Almost all information regarding grain transa (...)
• 40 ADN, série 6 G: Chapitre Sainte-Croix, 618; 622-6; 700-1; 765-7; 773; 813; 815 – série 7 G: Chapit (...)
• 41 ADN, série 172 H: l’hôpital Saint-Julien, 53-63. Unfortunately, this series only starts in 1318 an (...)

10Cambrai is the last city that is involved in this study. As a natural point of distribution of the northern-French grain produced on the rich plains of the Cambrésis, this city was economically linked to Flanders through the Scheldt river system that reached Ghent further downstream.37 As a Stift, the territories enclosing Cambrai were under the secular and ecclesiastical authority of the bishop of Cambrai, who in turn was under the authority of the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.38 Due to the political differences but economic links to Flanders, this makes the comparison with the other four cities worthwhile. As well as the other cities, the textile-industry played a huge role in Cambrai. The hinterland was more diversified and evolved differently throughout the later middle ages, but the grain production throughout the region retained its important status. Information about the grain price and the grain market mainly stems from the rich archives of the collegiate church of Our Lady, which was linked to the cathedral. Large parts of the Cambrésis were the property of this collegiate, divided in the same way as for St. Peter in Lille and St. Amé in Douai over different ‘offices’ linked to the collegiate.39 Accounts from other collegiate churches provide further price data, albeit fragmented over the century.40 The hospital of St. Julian, founded in the 11^th century, is another large landowner that produced detailed accounts which are fit for this study.41 The hospital exploited a part of its own properties, but also gathered rents, tithes and leases-in-kind. A huge part of their cash income thus depended on the sale of different agricultural products.

• 42 Concerning the monetary systems in Flanders: the classification of Libra-Solidus-Denarius is in us (...)

12In the context of this paper, grain prices and grain transactions are used to compare activity on the grain market in periods of death and in periods of low prices. I have merged the prices for wheat from the different landlords described above in the same city to produce representative local price series. All prices are first of all converted to the Flemish pound groat and afterwards to grams of silver per hectolitre. Coin debasement was extremely frequent in this period and was an important part of the economic warfare between neighbouring principalities, often with a highly disruptive effect on the economy.42

• 43 Because of the nature of the sources, where the start and end date differs for some of the account (...)
• 44 An interquartile mean is the average of the period of 6 years prior and 6 years after the harvest (...)

14The price series converted to silver not only corrects the violent upward movement of the grain price and clearly shows a series of price spikes, with the one in 1342 as the most severe in four out of five cities. In Ghent, this peak failed to reach the same level as for the other cities, which is remarkable. Apart from that, the peaks of 1351 and 1360 also stand out. In order to shed light on the short term behaviour of grain prices during this period, it is necessary to outline the difference between dearth years and normal years and how the selection of the so-called crisis periods was concluded. Most of the time, food crises had a regional impact, but in some cases crises were more locally embedded, which could have had an isolated influence on the grain price of a single or larger landowner(s). To outline the regional crises, I have calculated the yearly averages of the price of wheat for harvest years using the monthly averages on the one hand and the yearly averages on the other.43 There is substantially more data available concerning grain transactions with references to exact dates for the southern-Flemish large landowners, nevertheless all price series composed using the sources described above have been included to identify periods of dearth. 44

• 45 Blockmans 1980.

15Subsequently, I have calculated the relative deviation of the average wheat price for a harvest year – for both series: the one based on annual means, the other on monthly means – with its respective interquartile mean, which is shown in the graph above. The harshest price shocks that occurred in this period stand out immediately. The series that was calculated with the monthly means is more trustworthy and therefore I am focussing thereupon. First of all, during the period in between 1339 and 1342, three out of four years knew a relative rise between 60% and 80%. In the years after the outbreak of the Black Death on the European continent, the wheat price is also rising significantly in the Flemish cities. During the harvest years of 1349-1350 and 1351-1352 it hovered around 60%. A third clear peak is situated a decade later, during another plague outbreak that probably hit the Low Countries even harder than the initial one in 1348.45 The deviation of the wheat price during the harvest year 1360-1361 is not less than 68%. In the last decade, smaller peaks are visible for the harvest years 1363-1364 and 1367-1368. A final, smaller peak is situated at the end of the studied period, in the year 1369-1370, with a deviation of 37%. Using this dichotomy between high price periods and low price periods, I will analyse the grain market developed by these large landowners and the possible presence of preferential trade during dearth years.

• 46 The debate between formalism and substantivism has been formulated by Karl Polanyi. The formalist (...)

16Analysing the grain market with the available data is possible by comparing the frequency and the size of grain transactions that were closed by the large landowners during dearth periods with high prices on the one hand and low price periods on the other. A reorientation towards smaller sales during dearth years would testify to a kind of ‘substantive economy’ by the landlords in question.46 The sale of these smaller quantities to an increasing group of buyers – therefore not directly consumers – would suggest that less of the grain was used to hoard large profits and more was used to provide the urban population with a sufficient amount of grain during high price periods. An opposite strategy was to indulge in speculation in order to maximise the profit from grain sales. This would mean that landlords hoarded and withheld large stocks of grain from the market and only sold larger quantities when the price was high enough. This could have hampered the capability of urban populations to recover from any exogenous shocks. Alternatively, it could have been the case that no adaptations were made and the relative share of transactions during non-crisis years remained unchanged during crisis years.

• 47 Sufficient data is delivered by the accounts of the hospital of St. Sauveur in Lille and the colle (...)

17The frequency tables in appendix A to C illustrate the distribution of quantities sold per transactions by the studied landlords.47 The hospital of St. Sauveur closed almost half (49,13%) of their wheat transactions in the range of quantities between 10 and 20 hectolitres over the entire period. This matches with the share of the total quantity that was sold: 52,58%. Only 4,56% of the transactions involved quantities of 30 hectolitres or above. This hospital was clearly focussing on selling lower quantities to more buyers. Looking for adaptations during dearth years, this more or less remained equal with 42,86% of transactions closed within the range of 10-20 hectolitres, responsible for the sale of 49,55% of the wheat sold during those dearth years. In normal years, this was slightly higher: 55,80% of transactions located in that same bracket, responsible for 55,31% of the wheat sold during non-crisis years. Therefore, this landowner did not shift or adapt its selling strategy for wheat during high price peak periods or low ones, for that matter.

• 48 Ogilvie 2011, p. 427-432.
• 49 Slavin 2014, p. 24-34.

20By barely adapting their grain transactions, these large landowners do not seem to engage in a form of preferential trade. The notion of preferential trade implies that a landowner only trades with people they trust or that owned some kind of trustworthy reputation. This could also be labelled as a shift from ‘generalized trust’ to ‘particularized trust’, wherein the former is a tendency to engage transaction with any person indiscriminately and the latter tend to be limited to a specific group of people of known social and geographical attributes and affiliation, based on a personal network of trust and reputation.48 For instance, p. Slavin states that during the Great Famine of 1315-1317 preferential trade was present in England and went hand in hand with a decline of the market supervision.49 By discriminating outsiders and the weak elements of society, this commercial pattern could have intensified the level of hunger and amongst the urban population during famine years or hampered any recovery from these dearth years. However, one should be aware not to confuse low prices caused by preferential trade with any charity or poor relief during crisis years, especially by ecclesiastical landlords. The presence of preferential trade should become clear by comparing grain transactions recorded in accounts where the names of buyers were repeatedly indicated. Unfortunately, this is not always the case for this period, probably because a lot of the grain stocks were (re)sold to local tenants.

• 50 The accounts for the hospital of St. Sauveur in Lille, the abbey of Notre-Dame des Prés and the ho (...)

21Another way to compare the economic strategies in order to resolve the question if there was any preferential trade is to search for any sign of speculation. By comparing the total amount of cash (or silver) that was earned through the sale of grain by these large landowners during crisis and non-crisis years, it should become clear if one profited from speculation. This has been calculated for five large landowners in test-case periods of non-crisis years and dearth periods.50

• 51 St. Sauveur combined both objectives: guaranteeing a cash influx (on avg. 60% of their total incom (...)

22Since harvest failures not necessarily correlated with high grain prices, a lot of cash could be gained by selling large stocks of wheat and oats during years with high prices and ‘normal’ harvests. As a result, apart from the abbey Notre-Dame des Prés, where sales generally decreased from the 1330’s onwards, all of the large landowners accomplished their largest profit during – or one year prior or after – dearth years. In the years after the disrupting Black Death, St. Sauveur and Wetz both realized huge profits in 1350, just like St. Julian in 1352. Both in 1350 and 1352 the cash profits for Notre-Dame des Prés also climbed to significant heights, although in another order of magnitude of the ones they got in (and probably before) the 1330’s. In 1360, the amount of silver that was earned through the sale of wheat and oats peaked again for the hospital of Wetz and the collegiate church of Our Lady. The next year this also occurred for the hospital of St. Julian. I will not argue that this is conclusive evidence of consciously speculating by these landowners. First of all, they made sure their own food provisioning was secured, especially during challenging years of weak grain harvests.51 However, the surplus of these sales still produced nice returns in cash. Moreover, these sales did not always occur during the peak of the grain prices, but the year before or after, when prices were (still) high and the harvest was again reasonable, except in 1360. It has to be stressed that these numbers are only the result of a preliminary research and this has to be confirmed by further analysis of the Flemish grain market in both periods of ‘dearth’ and ‘normal’ prices, including the identity of the traders and the seasonality of the market.

• 52 A detailed study of the grain prices gathered from the accounts from all the landlords mentioned i (...)

23All over Europe, the 14^th century was a period of shocks and high volatility on the grain market. In Flanders, and many neighbouring regions, a strong upward movement of nominal grain prices in the post-1330 period, triggered by aggressive coin debasements complicated the recurrent price shocks. A newly constructed price series for cities in the south of Flanders (and neighbouring Cambrai) combined with existing price data for Bruges and Ghent, enables a detailed analysis of a co-evolution with several factors such as climate, war events, epidemics and coin depreciation. The price series for the five studied cities are also remarkably parallel to each other, hinting at a possible high level of market integration. This makes any exceptions all the more interesting – for instance the apparent low price of corn in Ghent in 1342 versus the high prices in the other four cities.52