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Editorial Contacts. Offices Worlwide. Course Adoption. Contact Form. It is no exaggeration to say that the intellectuals and theologians of the Middle Ages were firmly committed to a vision of a harmonious and static society, divided into three, mutually dependent segments, that is, those who pray, those who fight, and those who work those who are responsible for communal food production.
However, in the 12thβ13th century, this simple model came under pressure, not least because of the rise of a new class of wealthy burghers and merchants. In the territories inside the limes of the ancient Roman Empire nearly all post-Roman cities coloniae went through a phase of dramatic decline, but the lines of continuity with the past were rarely broken off completely.
In Italy, Southern France, and Catalonia, the legacy of Roman law was alive and well when the universities rediscovered the Justinian Code in the late 12th century. The situation was different in the new states in West Slavic Central Europe, with no existing tradition of Roman urban life. As local and international trade began to pick up from the 11thβ12th century onwards, this part of Europe saw a dynamic growth of new settlements of a proto-urban character.
Unlike the traditional farming settlements, their economy depended on trade often institutionalized in the form of regular market days and artisan production. The restoration of the unity of the realm under a crowned monarch remained a distant objective until the end of the 13th century, when coronation was brought back as a trump card in the political power play. However, the newly restored Kingdom of Poland did not include Silesia, which was divided into numerous principalities whose Piast rulers had become vassals of the King of Bohemia.
