Social mobility and the Middle Ages

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Notwithstanding its relevance, social mobility has not been at the forefront of the agenda for historians of the Middle Ages. The first part of this paper deals with the reasons for this lack of interest, highlighting the role of historical models such as the French ' feudal revolution', the neo-Malthusian interpretations, the English commercialisation model and the great narrative of Italian medieval merchants. The second part assesses the extent to which this lack of interest has been challenged by conceptions of social space and social mobility developed in recent decades by sociologists and anthropologists. Therefore, it is really important to indicate the gaps in our understanding, and to clarify research questions, technical problems and methods. The paper examines the constitutive elements of social identities, the plurality of social ladders, and the channels of social mobility. It touches upon the performative role of learned representations, and upon the constraints imposed upon human agency by family practices and genre. It underlines the importance of studying the mobility inside social groups, and argues that we must distinguish between two different types of medieval social mobility : autogenous social mobility, and endogenous or conflictual social mobility.

Multigenerational Transmission of Wealth: Florence, 1403–1480

“…For example, our estimated rank-rank wealth correlation falls within the range between 0.4 and 0.5, whereas that found by Adermon et al (2018) for the 20th century Sweden goes from 0.3 to 0.4, depending on the specification. These results suggest that 14th-and 15th-century urban areas, such as Florence, represented a concrete opportunity for social mobility (Lopez, 1976;Padgett, 2010): this is in line with the views of historians who have abandoned the myth that the Middle Ages was a socially immobile world (Carocci, 2011;Goldthwaite, 1980).…”

“…The fact that Florence at that time was not an immobile society, as one might expect, has been noted by historians and social scientists alike (Lopez, 1976;Padgett, 2010), contributing to abandoning the myth of the Middle Ages as a socially immobile world (Carocci, 2011;Goldthwaite, 1980).…”

Data-Based Runes Macrostudies. On the Bryggen Runic Inscriptions

“…Could the Bergen inscriptions be evidence for the emergence of a merchant class in Norwegian society, one that gained enough wealth and influence that their idionyms then also appear frequently in the diplomas? The social mobility of merchants and their families, which increasingly allows them to not only gain monetary wealth, but also landed property (for example Loveluck 2013: chapters 12-14;Carocci 2011), results in them also being part of the transactions many of the diplomas attest, which in turn presents a plausible explanation for why their idionyms appear in runic inscriptions and diplomas, and appear with high frequencies in the latter.…”

“…Since it is rather difficult to properly pinpoint who would have belonged to that part of society and which social status they would have held in the eyes of their contemporaries, "social status" in here is also fairly vaguely defined -a problem impossible to avoid on account of the lack of studies analysing the potential social status of those mentioned in the diplomas. It is generally accepted that from the 10th/11th century onwards merchants gained not only in wealth, but also in political influence and social status to the point where they were regarded as a distinct social group (for example Loveluck 2013;Hirschmann 2016;Carocci 2011). It is tempting to consider the runic inscriptions as evidence of this or more precisely: as indicators for the upwards social mobility of merchants.…”