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Position:Home>History> Middle Ages? Easy 10 points!?Question: Middle Ages!? Easy 10 points!!? What were the role of towns in the middle ages!. what were the functions!? What did the towns had to offer the people who lived in the community!. We have to write like a paragraph or two for 31 words or pharases and this is one of them!. It is for AP Euro Summer Assignment!.Www@QuestionHome@Com
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Town were centres of trade and commerce!. They were important places where things could be bought that were otherwise unobtainable, like imported goods!. They were places where specialised craftsmen would produce goods of every kind!. They were also important because they were places where a villein (a farmer tied to his land by the manorial system) could obtain freedom!. A medieval slogan was "town air makes one free", refering to the city's guarantee of freedom to those residents who had lived away from a feudal estate for a year and a day without being reclaimed by a lord!. Most people who lived in a town would belong to one of the guilds, which were organizations of peole engaged in specific trades!. The guilds oversaw trading practices and established standards of quality and production!. They provided their members with sick pay, old age pensions, and widows' pensions!. Most guilds admitted women as members as well as men, businesses were often family affairs in those days, and it was quite common for a widow to continue to run a business after her husband had died!. The guilds would put on plays during the course of the year, acting out stories from the Bible, popular plays included the Creation and the Garden of Eden, Noah's Flood, the birth of Christ, the Easter story and the Passion!. In 'The middle Ages: A consice Encyclopedia' h!.R!. Loyn writes: 'Towns and merchants aspired to control of their own affairs at home, but needed and sought protection when they were at large!. Kings and lords disliked the assertiveness of townsmen, but at the same time lords looked to the towns not only for supplies, but also for the tolls and taxes which paid for political protection, and for the loans which traders, unlike farmers, could produce at any season of the year!. Trade, with some industries, maintained the towns; the administration of laws ensured their independence!. In an age in which communities of all kinds were distinguished by their customs, the customs of towns were marked by provision for a relative degree of personal liberty, the free disposition of property, the ready enforcement of contracts, and the recovery of debt!. Sheltered by their walls and defined by their customs, the townsmen lived in distinct but not isolated communities!. Subject to their sovereign lords, tye administered law in their own courts and raised their own taxes!. They founded and patronised churches and chapels, maintained schools and hospitals, roads and bridges!. Noblemen had town houses, and successful townsmen acquired country estates!. The image of the medieval town as walled, compact and closely built is not a misleading one, though the reality was more complex!. The walls and gates served to regulate traffic and facilitate the collection of tolls more often than they defended the town from assault!. There were gardens and orchards inside the walls, and even the largest towns had fields and common ground outside!. These were tokens that the rural community was dominant in medieval, just as the urban community is in modern society!. The towns nevertheless peformed vital functions in concentrating people and skills, and in realizing wealth!. The universities, which displaced monastic houses as centres of learning and became vital to church and state as training-grounds for administrators, were products of the medieval town!.'Www@QuestionHome@Com towns were the source of the factions wealth and trade and wherethey got their manpower for the army from recruiting!. and towns, (especially if made into castles) would serve as crush points for the certain region they were in!. because if an invading army wanted to claim some of your land they couldnt take that certain large area of land without having to lay seige to the town that controlled the region !.!.!.whoever controlled that town or castle, controlled that regionWww@QuestionHome@Com Towns were outside of feudal system!. They were first created as centers of trade!. They then grew as a place to go for goods and services!. Most of the cities that were founded during the middle ages were along rivers for easy travel of goods and people!.Www@QuestionHome@Com Towns in the middle ages were centers of trade, administration and could more or less provide protection for the citizens in times of wars and rebellions!.Www@QuestionHome@Com |