Medieval Market Morality: Life, Law and Ethics in the English Marketplace, 1200–1500 by James Davis (review)

James Davis’s book is an ambitious and important study about the cornerstone of the medieval economy: the marketplace. Davis provides a pleasant and quite instructive lecture about medieval market morality in England over three centuries, from 1200 to 1500. The author writes, “This book will demonstrate the complexity and intimacy of the interrelationship between morals, law and reality” (p. 30). Furthermore, in the aftermath of studies that have demonstrated the “commercialization” of English society, Davis sheds light on the importance and activeness of small markets for the population. He uses a wide range of sources and analyzes them with a discerning eye. He uses literature, for example, to appreciate people’s economic worldview, and he studies manorial courts to analyze the organization of small-town markets. Davis reviews contemporary thinkers’ theories (not limiting himself to English thinkers), and traces the evolution of ideas, also from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Additionally, his introduction provides a useful summary of twentieth-century views about the medieval market.

The author structures the first three parts of his study to examine the extent to which theories constructed by writers, moralists, and religious followers about markets and market actors were in accordance with legislation and material reality. The fourth part of the book compares medieval times with the following centuries, showing attitudes toward market and market traders. The author explains that petty traders were viewed negatively in medieval societies as always prone to deceiving their customers and cheating about the quality of their products.

Using literature to get a truthful picture of mentalities is always a challenge, but Davis compares the intellectual writings to market realities. For example, price and profit are examined from the points of view of literature, interpretations of historians, and legislation—regal and local—and how they were formed and seen in the marketplace, especially in Newmarket, Clare, and Ipswich. The author moves marvelously through the different sermons and other types of literature, which give a glimpse at perspectives on the market’s images and morals. He also analyzes miniatures and pieces of furniture that testify to the commercial life of the time, such as the illustration depicted in a 1427 Piers Plowman ’s manuscript about a merchant’s attires (p. 51) and about the alewife (pp. 106–115). Those depictions feature the general opinions about merchants, petty traders, and commercial relationships, and they fit perfectly with the book’s argument. It has to be noted that women are always a part of the discussion and explanation, making this book a testament to the importance of women in the medieval economy.

Davis also successfully analyzes the issues and concerns that informed the making of market regulations. For example, with the assizes of bread, ale, and wine, the author shows how institutions tried both to protect the consumers (especially the poor) and control the trade of crucial foodstuffs. There was always the will to oblige the bakers to produce breads that poor people could afford, and Davis explains why quantities and prices were regulated. The importance of the post-Black Death period to the economy is included in the analysis, and the author always shows the evolution of concepts, rules, and effective practices. This book is an essay that understands the whole market, and Davis never forgets local markets requirements. For example, when analyzing the regulation of product quality, Davis remarks that while there were strict regulations for textiles, there were lighter ones for the lower-quality products that were largely sold in local markets.

Economic mechanisms, such as price formation and the importance of debts and credits in facilitating commercial relationships, are highlighted as simply the ways the medieval market functioned. The book is a discussion about economic theory and medieval economy, as well as a study that offers more than a glimpse of ordinary people’s lives during the Middle Ages, when they...