Credit and parochial charity in fifteenth-century Bruges
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Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 131–154
www.elsevier.com/locate/jmedhist
Credit and parochial charity in fifteenth-century
Bruges
M. Galvin ∗
National Analysts, Inc., 1835 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103, USA
Abstract
In late medieval Bruges, the poor tables, lay-run parochial charitable institutions that fed
the resident paupers of the parish, obtained regular income by investing gifts and surplus funds
in annuity rents, low-interest loans secured by property. The market in annuity rents provided
an important source of inexpensive long-term credit that the merchant bankers, deposit bankers,
and pawnbrokers of Bruges did not or could not supply, allowing the property owners of
Bruges to draw upon the value of their immovable property without alienating it. Charitable
gifts thus not only fed the poor but also kept capital circulating within the urban economy.
2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Finance; Flanders; Poor tables; Annuity rents
The Flemish city of Bruges, like most cities and towns of any size in medieval
Europe, featured a wide variety of institutions devoted to the assistance of people
defined in some way as ‘poor’. Bruges boasted large hospitals devoted to the poor
and sick, a foundling hospital, leper communities, several small old-age homes, and
houses for poor travellers, all serving clearly defined clienteles.1 One such institution,
unique to the medieval Low Countries and Catalonia, was the poor table or ‘table
of the Holy Spirit’, a lay-run parochial institution responsible for the care of the so-
∗
Tel.: +1-215-496-6800; fax: +1-215-496-6802.
E-mail address: mgalvin@nationalanalysts.com (M. Galvin).
1
For an overview of the charitable institutions of Bruges, see Griet Maréchal, De sociale en politieke
gebondenheid van het Brugse hospitaalwezen in de Middeleeuwen (Standen en Landen 73, Kortrijk-
Heule, 1978).
0304-4181/02/$ - see front matter 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 3 0 4 - 4 1 8 1 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 0 5 - 2132 M. Galvin / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 131–154
called ‘shame-faced house-poor’.2 These paupers, known as scamele huusweken in
Dutch, povres honteux in French, and pauperi verecundi in Latin, were generally
workers and their families who through age, infirmity, or the death of the family
breadwinner had fallen into poverty.3 The recipients of assistance from the poor
tables were thus not vagabonds or beggars, but householders and wage workers with
insufficient income to provide for all of their own needs. Seven poor tables aided
the poor of fifteenth-century Bruges, one for each of the five entirely urban parishes
(the parishes of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw [Our Lady], Sint Salvator [St. Saviour], Sint
Gillis [St. Giles], Sint Jacob [St. James], and Sint Walburga [St. Walburga]) and
two for parishes partially within the city walls (Sint Kruis [Holy Cross] and Sint
Kateline [St. Catherine]). These institutions were fairly selective in offering aid to
the poor: in the fifteenth century the five poor tables from the urban parishes typically
offered regular assistance to about 180 paupers, representing perhaps 700–900 people
(assuming that they were heads of households) in a city with a population of perhaps
38,000.4 The poor tables served a doubly-targeted group of paupers: a select group
of a select group.
2
For a general overview of the history of the poor tables in the Low Countries, see M.-J. Tits-Dieuaide,
‘Les tables des pauvres dans les anciennes principautés belges au moyen âge’, Tijdschrift voor geschied-
enis 88 (1975), 562–583. The poor tables of several Flemish and Brabantine cities have been the subject
of individual studies: for Bruges, see P. Van Zeir, ‘De inrichting van de Armendissen van de oude Brugse
stadsparochies vóór 1526’, Annales de la Société d’Emulation de Bruges 97 (1960), 104–153, and ‘De
armenzorg te Brugge’, Biekorf 61 (1960), 357–378, especially 363–374; for Ghent, see G. De Messe-
maeker-De Wilde, ‘De parochiale armenzorg te Gent in de late middeleeuwen’, Annales de la Société
Belge pour l’Histoire des Hôpitaux 18 (1980), 47–58; for Brussels, see Ch. De Geest, ‘Les distributions
aux pauvres assurées par la paroisse Sainte-Gudule à Bruxelles au XVe siècle’, Annales de la Société
Belge pour l’Histoire des Hôpitaux 7 (1969), 41–84, and Claire Dickstein-Bernard, ‘Paupérisme et secours
aux pauvres à Bruxelles au XVe siècle’, Revue belge de philologie et histoire 55 (1977), 390–415; for
Leuven, see M.-J. Tits-Dieuaide, ‘L’assistance aux pauvres à Louvain au XVe siècle’, in: Hommage au
Professeur Paul Bonenfant (Brussels, 1965), 421–439; for Mechelen, see J. Withof, ‘De ‘Tafels van den
Heiligen Geest’ te Mechelen’, Handelingen van den Mechelschen Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren en
Kunst 32 (1927), 85–134 and 33 (1928), 35–89, and W. Blockmans, ‘Armenzorg en levensstandard te
Mechelen vóór de hervorming van de openbare onderstand (1545)’, Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring
van Oudheidkunde, Letteren en Kunst van Mechelen 79 (1975), 141–173. For a short introduction to the
poor tables of Catalonia, see James William Brodman, Charity and welfare. Hospitals and the poor in
medieval Catalonia (Philadelphia, 1998), 18–21.
3
Van Zeir, ‘De inrichting van de Armendissen’, 134–141 and Tits-Dieuaide, ‘Les tables des pauvres’,
582. The term ‘shame-faced poor’ could simply mean the deserving poor. For a study of the evolution
of this term, which was commonly used in medieval Europe, see Giovanni Ricci, ‘Naissance du pauvre
honteux. Entre l’histoire des idées et l’histoire sociale’, Annales. Économies, sociétés, civilisations 38
(1983), 158–177. The term ‘house-poor’ (Hausarmen) was used in Germany to describe paupers who
lived in their own houses and who did not beg publicly. This term could be used to describe people who
had fallen into poverty through misfortune or people who worked but earned insufficient wages to support
their families. See Erich Maschke, ‘Die Unterschichten der mittelalterlichen Städte Deutschlands’, in: Die
Stadt des Mittelalters, ed. Carl Haase (Wege der Forschung 245, Darmstadt, 1973), 436–439.
4
This estimate is based on the number of prebendaries in the typical regular distribution of each of
the five urban poor tables of Bruges. Regular distributions by the poor table of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw parish
typically had 30 prebends (Bruges, Archief Openbaar Centrum voor Maatschappelijk Welzijn (hereafter
OCMW), fonds dis Onze-Lieve-Vrouw 178, f.3r); those by the poor table of Sint Salvator parish typically
had 50 prebends until 1447 and 40 thereafter (Bruges, Archief OCMW, fonds dis Sint Salvators 1–3 andM. Galvin / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 131–154 133
Each poor table distributed food to the poor throughout the year, usually once or
twice weekly and on important feast days.5 Distributions generally consisted of
between 30 and 60 portions, or prebends, of bread, meat or fish, and sometimes
wine, cheese, eggs, or peas. Paupers might also receive gifts of clothing, shoes, and
sometimes fuel from the poor tables, particularly during winter. The poor tables also
buried the poor and administered anniversary masses endowed by their benefactors,
but the care of the ‘shame-faced house poor’ was their primary duty. The poor tables
therefore met a particular social goal: the support of impoverished, yet respectable,
men and women and their families.
In order to fulfil this charitable task, the poor tables required substantial resources.
In 1476–1477, for example, the poor table of the parish of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw spent
the equivalent of the annual income of about 12 or 13 master construction workers
on distributions.6 The poor table of the parish of Sint Salvator spent smaller, but
still significant, sums.7 The alms that the poor tables received could not meet these
needs. Such income, received either from testamentary bequests or alms boxes in
the churches, never contributed more than 6% of the annual income of the two poor
tables for which extensive series of accounts survive (the poor tables of the parishes
of Sint Salvator and Onze-Lieve-Vrouw). Usually, alms accounted for about 0.5–
6–7, accounts 1402–1451 and 1470–1477); and those by the poor table of Sint Jacob parish typically had
30 prebends in the mid-fifteenth century (Bruges, Rijksarchief, fonds Sint Jacobskerk oud archief 887, f.
10r–13r, a calendar of distributions dated 1463). The archives of the other two poor tables, those of Sint
Gillis parish and Sint Walburga parish, give no indication of how many prebends were distributed weekly,
but I assume that the number of prebends was similar to that in the other three parishes. On the population
of medieval Bruges, see Walter Prevenier, ‘La démographie des villes du comté de Flandre aux XIVe et
XVe siècles. Etat de la question. Essai d’interprétation’, Revue du Nord 65 (1983), 256, estimated that
the population of Bruges was between about 37,000 and 46,000 people in 1340, and was probably closer
to the latter figure than the former. Raymond van Uytven, ‘Stages of economic decline. Late medieval
Bruges’, in: Peasants and townsmen in medieval Europe. Studia in honorem Adriaan Verhulst, ed. Jean-
Marie Duvosquel and Erik Thoen (Gent, 1995), 263, notes that reliable population estimates for Bruges
in the fifteenth century are lacking, but cites the estimate of A. Janssens, ‘Het Brugse bevolkingsantaal
in 1477’, in: Van middeleeuwen tot heden. Bladeren door Brugse kunst en geschiedenis (Bruges, 1983),
29–35, of 42,000 Brugeois in 1477, ‘advanced … as a result of an intricate arithmetical exercise’, as
evidence that ‘the decline of Bruges cannot have been that alarming at the time [the late 1470s]’.
5
Bruges, Archief OCMW, fonds dis Sint Salvators 179 and 181, fonds dis Onze-Lieve-Vrouw 178
and 180, and fonds dis Sint Walburga 31; Bruges, Rijksarchief, fonds Sint Jacobskerk oud archief 887.
6
Bruges, Archief OCMW, fonds dis Onze-Lieve-Vrouw 7, accounts 1476, f. 30v. The fiscal year of
the poor tables began on the feast of St. John the Baptist (June 24), except for the poor table of Sint
Jacob parish, which began in October. The daily wage of a master mason or master carpenter in Bruges
in the mid-fifteenth century was 12 s. parisis per day in summer and 10 s. parisis per day in winter;
these figures, and all subsequent wage information, are taken from Jean-Pierre Sosson, Les travaux publics
de la ville de Bruges XIVe-Xve siècles. Les matériaux. Les hommes (Crédit Communal de Belgique,
Collection Histoire Pro Civitate, série in-8°, 48, Brussels, 1977), Annexes 27 (Carpenters, fifteenth
century) and 31 (Masons, fifteenth century). I have assumed a working year of 250–275 days.
7
In 1476–1477, this poor table spent £716 14 s. parisis on distributions to the poor, equivalent to
1194.5 days of work for a master carpenter at the summer rate (Bruges, Archief OCMW, fonds dis Sint
Salvators 7, accounts 1476).134 M. Galvin / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 131–154
2.5% of the poor tables’ income.8 The cash alms given to the poor tables were not
insignificant in real terms: the average yearly sum which the poor table of Onze-
Lieve-Vrouw parish received in the 1420s, 1430s, and 1440s was roughly equivalent
to the amount of money needed for five or six distributions. Nonetheless, while alms
and small bequests provided a means by which parishioners could participate in the
funding of the poor table and thereby support their poor neighbours, the sums of
money which they dropped into the alms boxes or left in their wills were far from
sufficient to meet the obligations of the poor tables.
Instead, the poor tables relied on income from various types of property to support
the poor. The poor tables owned both permanent and repurchasable annuity rents,
annual payments secured by and attached to individual pieces of real property. Most
of the annuity rents owned by the poor tables of Bruges were secured by properties
within the city.9 The poor tables also held cens payments, or quitrents, for various
parcels of land both inside and outside the city. These payments, which had orig-
inated as a recognition of lordship over particular pieces of land, had become finan-
cially and juridically equivalent to annuity rents by the fourteenth century, and the
poor tables did not account for them separately from annuity rents.10 Each poor table
also owned annuity rents payable in wheat. When these were paid in kind, they
provided the main ingredient for the bread that was distributed to the poor, although
the people or institutions responsible for the payment of these wheat-rents often paid
them in specie.11 In the first three-quarters of the fifteenth century, regular income
from these sources typically accounted for more than 80% of the annual income of
the poor table of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw parish and for more than 70% of the annual
income of the poor table of Sint Salvator parish.12 The bulk of this income consisted
8
These figures are taken from Bruges, Archief OCMW, dis Onze-Lieve-Vrouw 1–5 (accounts 1417–
1419, 1423–1429, 1432–1436, 1438–1440, 1442–1446, 1450, 1453–1455) and dis Sint Salvators 1–3 and
6–12 (accounts 1402–1430, 1438, 1442–1451, 1470–1476).
9
I have translated the middle Netherlandish term renten as ‘annuity rents’, using the terminology of
David Nicholas, The metamorphosis of a medieval city. Ghent in the age of the Arteveldes, 1302–1390
(Lincoln, NE, 1987). These were not rents in the normal English sense of the word, but rather annual
payments secured by and attached to individual pieces of property that were unrelated to tenancy.
10
Guillaume Des Marez, Étude sur la propriété foncière dans les villes du Moyen-Age, et spécialement
en Flandre (Universite de Gand. Recueil de travaux publiés par la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres 20,
Ghent and Paris, 1898), 305–307 and 328; Philippe Godding, Le droit foncier à Bruxelles au moyen âge
(Brussels, 1960), 197; and Philippe Godding, Le droit privé dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux du 12e au
18e siècle, Academie Royale de Belgique. Mémoires de la classe des lettres, Collection in-4°-2e serie
14.1 (Bruxelles, 1987), 173.
11
These wheat rents originated in a gift made in 1300 by the physician master Jan van Uutkerke, his
daughter Adelise, and her husband Lamsin vanden Moenekine to the ‘shame-faced poor’ of the city of
Bruges. This gift was noted in the city accounts of Bruges in a section listing charters sealed with the
city seal. See C. Wyffels and J. de Smet, De rekeningen van de stad Brugge (1280–1319). Eerste deel
(1280–1302) (Brussels, 1965), vol. 1, 999. This gift was evidently managed by the hospital of the Holy
Spirit, which after the emergence of the poor tables in the early fourteenth century was responsible for
distributing the wheat rents among the city’s poor tables, as noted in a charter issued by the master and
brotherhood of the hospital of the Holy Spirit and Potterie, dated November 2, 1348 (Bruges, Archief
OCMW, fonds dis Onze-Lieve-Vrouw, charter 34a).
12
See the sources in note 8.M. Galvin / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 131–154 135
of annuity rents that were secured by property in the city of Bruges as well as in
neighbouring cities such as Sluis and Damme. These revenues provided about three-
fourths of the potential regular income of the poor table of Sint Salvator parish and
more than 90% of the potential regular income of the poor table of Onze-Lieve-
Vrouw parish.13
This dependence on permanent income from annuity rents and other kinds of real
property was typical of poor tables in the Low Countries and elsewhere. The poor
tables of Ghent and Mechelen relied heavily on urban annuity rents and quitrents.
Indeed, quitrents appear to have been the primary source of income for the poor
tables of Mechelen in the fifteenth century.14 Likewise, the poor tables of Brussels
and Louvain received most of their income from regular sources, although in-kind
income apparently occupied a greater share of the income of the poor tables in
Brabant than it did in Flanders.15 In early fifteenth century Barcelona, the plats dels
pobres received only symbolic income from alms, deriving much of their revenues
from censales or censos (equivalent to annuity rents), lease-payments for property
they owned, and public obligations issued by the Kingdom of Majorca, the Gen-
eralitat of Catalonia, or the City of Barcelona, usually paying between 5 and 10%
per year.16
As we will see, the dependence of the poor tables of Bruges, and other institutions
like them, on annuity rents deeply involved them in local credit markets. In order
to provide services to the poor, they needed to secure a steady income for themselves,
a steady income which usually took the form of real estate loans. Gifts large and
small to the poor tables were thus not removed from economic circulation, but were
instead injected back into the economy. Such charities, therefore, provided an
important source of medium- and long-term credit secured by immovable property.
It has long been known that charitable institutions, in the early and high middle
ages as well as later, served as important sources of credit, but the involvement of
the poor tables and institutions like them in the market for real estate loans has not,
to my knowledge, been studied in any detail.17 Before doing so, we must first con-
13
The share of the actual income that was received is impossible to determine given the accounting
practices of the poor tables. The financial officers of the poor tables, the receivers, listed the various
payments that were owed to the poor tables, added them together to provide the sum of potential income,
and then listed the sum that was actually received.
14
See James Allen Smith, ‘Through the eye of the needle. Charity and charitable institutions in medieval
Ghent’ (PhD dissertation, Brown University, 1976), 69–70, and Withof, ‘De “Tafels van den Heiligen
Geest”’, 125–130.
15
See Dickstein-Bernard, ‘Paupérisme et secours aux pauvres’, 403–405; Tits-Dieuaide, ‘L’assistance
aux pauvres à Louvain’, 423–424. The difference between in-kind revenues in Flanders and Brabant is
noted by Tits-Dieuaide, ‘Les tables des pauvres’, 573.
16
Brodman, Charity and welfare, 20–21.
17
On charitable and religious institutions as sources of credit in the high middle ages, see R. Génestal,
Le rôle des monastères comme établissements de crédit étudié en Normandie, du XIe à la fin du XIIIe
siècle (Paris, 1901), and Hans van Werveke, ‘Le mort-gage et son rôle économique en Flandre et en
Lotharingie’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 8 (1929), 53–91. Tits-Dieuaide, ‘Les tables des
pauvres’, 571, noted that the poor tables could be institutions of credit not just for individuals but also
for communities, and she suggested that a study of the financial function of the poor tables might give
us some idea of the credit market for people of low or middling wealth.136 M. Galvin / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 131–154
sider how the poor tables, as lending institutions, fit into the system of credit in late
medieval Bruges.
1. Credit markets in late medieval Bruges
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Bruges was one of the most important
economic centres in Europe. The third largest city north of the Alps (only Paris and
Ghent were larger), Bruges was perhaps the most important international market in
northern Europe, serving as a meeting-place for merchants engaged in trade in the
Baltic, along the Atlantic coast, and between the north of Europe and Italy. Hundreds
of foreign merchants resided in Bruges, including merchants of the German Hanse,
northern Italians, Catalans, Castilians, Portuguese, Scots, and Englishmen.18
The presence of such a large community of foreign merchants and the importance
of trade in medieval Bruges gave the city an economic diversity that few of its
neighbours had. To be sure, Bruges, like its neighbours Ypres and Ghent, had a long
tradition of cloth manufacturing, and the cloth industry remained an important source
of employment throughout the later middle ages. Bruges, however, was far less
dependent on cloth production than were Ypres and Ghent. In the mid-fourteenth
century, at least 60% of the working population of Ghent was involved in textile
manufacturing, and the percentage was still higher in Ypres. In contrast, only about
25–37% of the working population of Bruges was directly involved in the textile
industry. The rest were split between international trade and production and services
for the local market. By the fifteenth century, these last two sectors had become still
more important as a source of employment. Bruges thus had a relatively balanced
economy, focused nearly equally on the textile industry, international trade, and the
local market.19 Indeed, the presence of international merchants in Bruges helped
ensure the continuing viability of the local market, providing employment not just
for Brugeois who were directly or indirectly involved in trade (such as the brokers
and innkeepers, who housed foreign merchants and often provided financial services
for them, or the coopers, whose products were used in shipping) but also for pro-
ducers of luxury goods (silversmiths, furriers, and to a lesser extent tailors, leather-
workers, shoemakers, and the like) who found a ready market in the community of
wealthy foreigners.20
18
The best general surveys of the history of medieval Bruges are J.A. van Houtte, De geschiedenis
van Brugge (Tielt, 1982) and Marc Ryckaert, Andre Vandewalle, Jan D’Hondt, Noël Geirnaert, and Ludo
Vandamme, Brugge: de geschiedenis van een Europese stad (Tielt, 1999). For a brief summary of the
place of Bruges in the network of medieval trade, see Wim Blockmans and Walter Prevenier, The prom-
ised lands. The Low Countries under Burgundian rule, 1369–1530, trans. Elizabeth Fackelman, ed.
Edward Peters (Philadelphia, 1998), 163–167.
19
Walter Prevenier, ‘Bevolkingscijfers en professionele strukturen der bevolking van Gent en Brugge
in de 14de eeuw’, in: Album Charles Verlinden (Gent, 1975), 292–303.
20
Ryckaert et al., Brugge, 70–72. See also Wim Blockmans, ‘Die Niederlande vor und nach 1400:
eine Gesellschaft in der Krise?’ in: Europa 1400. Die Krise des Spätmittelalters, ed. Ferdinand Seibt and
Winfried Eberhard (Stuttgart, 1984), 125.M. Galvin / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 131–154 137
Like all businessmen, these prosperous artisans and retailers would undoubtedly
have needed capital to invest in their business. As residents of Bruges, they had
broader opportunities to obtain this capital than did businessmen in other Flemish
or northern European cities. The presence of resident international merchants and
the position of Bruges as the hub of trade in the North made it one of the early
centres of banking in northern Europe. The full range of banking services available
in medieval Europe was present in Bruges, the only city in northwestern Europe
where this was the case.21 Historians of banking and credit in medieval Europe have
identified three major types of banking and credit activity: the merchant bankers,
largely Italian, who extended commercial credit via bills of exchange; the deposit-
bankers and money-changers, who developed systems of book transfers and provided
credit through overdrafts and direct investment of reserves; and the pawnbrokers,
who extended credit at high rates of interest on the security of personal possessions.22
Each of these credit institutions had a specific clientele, ranging from the inter-
national merchants who dealt with the merchant bankers to the ordinary men and
women who formed the pawnbrokers’ customer base.
Even in Bruges, one of the few cities where all of these institutions were to be
found in the later middle ages, merchant bankers, deposit bankers, and pawnbrokers
provided relatively limited and specific types of credit. The type of exchange trans-
actions in which merchant bankers specialized, involving the extension of credit for
long-distance trade, would have been of little use to small businessmen such as
furriers, weavers, bakers, or tailors who produced goods for the local market or for
export. Deposit banks were a more likely source of capital for such men. Although
deposit banking was hardly widespread in medieval Europe, such banks were to be
found in commercially sophisticated areas such as northern Italy, Catalonia, and
Bruges.23 Even at the height of deposit banking in Bruges, though, bank accounts
were not that widespread: there were at most 15 deposit banks at any one time for
a city of 35,000–45,000, and probably no more than 10% of households in Bruges
21
Blockmans and Prevenier, The promised lands, 166. The classic study on banking in Bruges remains
Raymond de Roover’s, Money, banking and credit in mediaeval Bruges (Cambridge, 1948).
22
Robert S. Lopez, ‘The dawn of medieval banking’, in: The dawn of modern banking (New Haven
and London, 1979), 6–7. Lopez cites Raymond de Roover, ‘The organization of trade’, Cambridge econ-
omic history of Europe (Cambridge, 1963), vol. 3, 42–118. For more recent summaries of medieval credit
activity, see N.J.G. Pounds, An economic history of medieval Europe, 2nd edn. (London and New York,
1994), 408–417, and, from the point of view of the medieval businessman, Edwin S. Hunt and James M.
Murray, A history of business in medieval Europe, 1200–1550 (Cambridge, 1999), 204–218.
23
See, for example, De Roover, Money, banking, and credit, on Bruges; Richard Goldthwaite, ‘Local
banking in Renaissance Florence’, Journal of European economic history 14 (1985), 5–55, on Florence;
Reinhold C. Mueller, The Venetian money market. Banks, panics, and the public debt, 1200–1500
(Baltimore and London, 1997), on Venice; Thomas W. Blomquist, ‘The dawn of banking in an Italian
commune. Thirteenth century Lucca’, in The dawn of modern banking, 53–75, on Lucca; and Abbott
Payson Usher, The early history of deposit banking in Mediterranean Europe, vol. 1 (Harvard Economic
Studies 75, Cambridge, MA, 1943), and Manuel Riu, ‘Banking and society in late medieval and early
modern Aragon’, in: The dawn of modern banking, 131–167, on Catalonia.138 M. Galvin / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 131–154
even had access to a bank account.24 Moreover, the number of deposit banks (and
their importance in the local economy) declined during the fifteenth century, even
though the economy of Bruges continued to flourish.25 Deposit bankers did play an
important role in financing industrial enterprises, particularly cloth production, and,
on occasion, provided funds for producers of luxury goods such as furriers and silver-
smiths.26 But apart from such investment, the ordinary way in which deposit bankers
extended credit was through the use of overdrafts, which of course were only avail-
able to the relatively few Brugeois who had deposit accounts. According to Raymond
de Roover, ordinary craftsmen (other than the rich masters in the luxury trades) did
not have recourse to overdrafts, and presumably had to turn to the pawnbrokers.
People seeking small (or large) short-term consumption loans could easily pawn their
possessions, but the pawnbrokers were hardly a source of inexpensive medium- and
long-term credit. They charged exorbitant rates of interest (usually around 40% per
annum), making them an undesirable source of credit for business purposes, as busi-
ness profits and returns on investments were generally lower than this.27
Although merchant banking, deposit banking, and pawnbroking are the most thor-
oughly studied medieval sources of credit, other credit markets were available, in
Bruges and elsewhere in Europe. Innkeepers and brokers played an important finan-
cial role in fourteenth and fifteenth-century Bruges, offering credit and deposit ser-
vices, but they dealt with international merchants, particularly the Germans, and not
with local businessmen.28 In fifteenth-century Florence and Tuscany, small busi-
nessmen and others seeking credit could turn to Jewish moneylenders, who sup-
plemented their pawnbroking monopoly (theirs since 1437) with extensive business-
related loans, as well as to deposit bankers.29 In contemporary Bruges, however,
24
De Roover, Money, banking and credit, 185, and Walter Prevenier and Wim Blockmans, The Bur-
gundian Netherlands (Cambridge, 1986), 125. Extrapolating from the surviving records of the fourteenth
century Bruges bankers, Willem Ruweel and Colard de Marke, Prevenier and Blockmans estimate that
between 1 and 2.6% of the inhabitants of Bruges had bank accounts in the mid-fourteenth century,
depending on the proportion of citizens with multiple accounts and foreigners with accounts. De Roover,
Money, banking, and credit, 252, suggested that one of every 35–40 Brugeois had a bank account. Most
of them, if the account book of Colard de Marke is an accurate guide, were merchants, brokers, drapers,
high-end retailers (mercers, furriers, silversmiths, and the like) and rentiers.
25
De Roover, Money, banking and credit, 175 and 256. The economy of Bruges in the fifteenth century
and the question of its decline has been the subject of numerous studies. The continued prosperity of
Bruges until the 1480s was emphasized by Raymond van Uytven, ‘Stages of economic decline’, 259–
269. See also J.A. van Houtte, ‘The rise and decline of the market of Bruges’, Economic history review,
2nd ser., 19 (1966), 29–47, and W. Brulez, ‘Bruges and Antwerp in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries:
an antithesis?’ Acta Historia Neerlandicae 6 (1973), 1–26.
26
James Murray, ‘Cloth, banking, and finance in medieval Bruges’, in: Textiles of the Low Countries
in European economic history, ed. Erik Aerts and John H. Munro (Studies in Social and Economic History
19, Leuven, 1990), 24–31, and De Roover, Money, banking, and credit, 295–310.
27
De Roover, Money, banking, and credit, 126–127 and 302–304.
28
J.A. van Houtte, ‘Makelaars en waarden te Brugge van de 13e tot de 16e eeuw’, Bijdragen voor de
geschiedenis der Nederlanden 5 (1950), 181–182.
29
Maristella Botticini, ‘A tale of ‘benevolent’ governments. Private credit markets, public finance, and
the role of Jewish lenders in medieval and Renaissance Italy’, Journal of economic history 60 (2000),
164–189, especially 168–179.M. Galvin / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 131–154 139
these options were not available: Jewish moneylenders do not appear to have settled
in Bruges, and, as we have seen, the scale of deposit banking in Bruges declined in
the fifteenth century.30 It is, of course, entirely possible that small businessmen could
have borrowed from friends or acquaintances; such loans would have left few traces
in the archives. Lending of this sort appears to have been fairly common in early
fifteenth-century Florence.31
Annuity rents, available in Bruges as elsewhere in late medieval Europe, provided
an important source of secure medium- and long-term credit, allowing borrowers to
borrow against the value of immovable property. As we have seen, a sale of an
annuity rent was an agreement to pay a fixed sum per year in return for the purchase
price: in our terms, sellers of annuity rents agreed to make a yearly payment (or
sometimes two payments) equivalent to the annual interest on the price of the
annuity. These rents were secured by a piece of property, which would be forfeited
to the buyer of the rent in the event of non-payment of the loan.32
Annuity rents (in middle Netherlandish, renten or erfrenten) could either be perma-
nent (eeuwelike renten) or redeemable (losrenten) by the return of the capital used
to purchase the annuity rent, usually a sum between 10 and 20 times the annual
payment.33 Annuity rents were not considered to be usurious as long as the ‘lender’
(=purchaser) did not have the right to reclaim the capital at any time.34 Martin V
had declared the use of credit instruments such as annuity rents that were redeemable
by the borrower (=seller) to be licit in 1425, and Calixtus III confirmed their legality
30
For the decline of deposit banking in fifteenth-century Bruges, see De Roover, Money, banking, and
credit, 175 and 339–341. According to Jean Stengers, Les Juifs dans les Pays-Bas au moyen age
(Académie Royale de Belgique, Classe des Lettres et des Sciences Morales et Politiques, Mémoires,
collection in-8°, 45 fasc. 2, Brussels, Palais des Académies, 1950), 11 and 15, there is no evidence of
Jewish settlement in Flanders during the middle ages, although small Jewish communities did exist else-
where in the Low Countries along the commercial axis between Cologne and Bruges.
31
Botticini, ‘A tale’, 169–170. Such loans are commonly found, for example, in the records of the
Florentine catasto of 1427. In the absence of analogous records for Bruges, it is difficult to determine
the extent of the market in private loans.
32
On annuity rents, see Bernard Schnapper, Les rentes au XVIe siècle. Histoire d’un instrument de
crédit. (Affaires et Gens d’affaires 12, Paris, 1957); Rolf Sprandel, ‘Der Städtische Rentenmarkt in
Nordwestdeutschland im Spätmittelalter’, in: Öffentliche Finanzen im späten Mittelalter und in der ersten
Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Hermann Kellenbenz (Forschungen zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte
16, Stuttgart, 1971), 14–23; Winfried Trusen, ‘Zum Rentenkauf im Spätmittelalter’, in: Festschrift für
Hermann Heimpel (Göttingen, 1972), vol. 2, 140–158; Hans-Peter Baum, ‘Annuities in late medieval
Hanse towns,’ Business History Review 59 (1985), 24–48; Usher, The early history of deposit banking,
139–173; and J.H. Kernkamp, Vijftiende-eeuwse rentebrieven van Noord-Nederlandse steden (Groningen,
1961), especially 5–15. On annuity rents in Flanders, see Des Marez, Étude sur la propriété foncière,
305–352. For the Flemish city of Ghent in the late fifteenth century, see Marc Boone, Machteld Dumon,
and Birgit Reusens, Immobiliënmarkt, fiscaliteit en sociale ongelijkheid te Gent, 1483–1503 (Standen en
Landen 78, Kortrijk-Heule, 1981), 73–86 and 210–218. For general remarks on the southern Low Coun-
tries, with particular attention to Brussels, see Godding, Le droit foncier, 193–222.
33
Godding, Le droit privé, 174–175.
34
Des Marez, Étude sur la propriété foncière, 338–339.140 M. Galvin / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 131–154
in 1455.35 These might be considered as sales of the fruits of a property, as the
original annuity rents probably were, and thus they were licit for the purposes of
canon law.36
The rate at which redeemable annuity rents were purchased was specified in the
charter by which the annuity rent was constituted. These rates were expressed in
terms of the relationship between the purchase price of the rent and its face value.
These rates (expressed in the document, e.g. as a penny for 15 pence) are thus
equivalent to annual rates of interest with the yearly annuity rent payment rep-
resenting that year’s interest on the principal. A price of 1 penny for 15 pence would
thus mean that the yearly payment would be one-fifteenth of the purchase price,
making the annuity rent equivalent to a loan at interest of 6.67%. (These annuity
rents differ from the loans with which we are familiar in that payments were not
applied to the principal.) Rates were fixed by the conditions of the market and by
ecclesiastical sanction: in 1452, Pope Nicholas V had stated in a letter to the king
of Aragon that an annuity rent was acceptable as long as it was sold at a price
equivalent to no more than a 10% rate of interest.37
By the last third of the fifteenth century, redeemable annuity rents had become
standard, and all other forms of annuity rents had become obsolete. In 1466, because
of the difficulty that property owners had in maintaining their property and paying
annuity rents, Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy decreed that all quitrents and
permanent annuity rents in Bruges be repurchasable, at a rate of 20 times the annual
payment if they were constituted after 2 February 1436 (n.s.), and at a rate of 24
times the annual payment if they were constituted before then. Moreover, all such
permanent annuity rents would be repurchasable at 24 times the annual payment
after a period of 30 years after the constitution of the annuity rent had elapsed.
Certain categories of quitrents or permanent annuity rents, including those which
had been given as alms to religious or charitable institutions, were excluded from
35
Extravag. 3.5.1 and 3.5.2. Neither decretal gives the rationale behind the approval; they simply
describe the practice, noting that many people had doubted that these were licit transactions. This doubt
threatened the financial viability of the church, as numerous prebends, chaplaincies, and other ecclesiasti-
cal positions were supported by the income from these instruments. See also Godding, Le droit foncier,
220–221, who notes that clauses obliging redemption after a specified length of time were considered
illicit.
36
Des Marez, Etude sur la propriété foncière, 338–339. This exception, called venditio fructus, was
one of 13 types of exceptions to usury listed by Hostiensis; see John T. Gilchrist, The church and economic
activity in the middle ages (New York, 1969), 67. See also John T. Noonan, The scholastic analysis of
usury (Cambridge, MA, 1957), 155–160. The propriety of the temporary, repurchasable annuity was
apparently the subject of some debate among theologians and canonists, although in general no one
condemned it intrinsically. See Noonan, Scholastic analysis, 161. Canonists also justified annuity rents
in other ways. According to Baum, ‘Annuities’, 29–31, two late fourteenth century Viennese canonists
justified annuity rents as follows: (1) a thing (the real estate) and not a person (the borrower) was liable
for payments; (2) annuity rents involve risk, as the property by which the annuity was secured could be
destroyed; and (3) the purchaser of an annuity rent bought only the right to receive payments rather than
interest payments themselves.
37
Noonan, Scholastic analysis, 160–161, citing the bull Sollicitudo, reprinted in Summa bularii
(Lyons, 1621).M. Galvin / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 131–154 141
this decree. All annuity rents sold after the decree was promulgated were to be
repurchasable at market rates.38 A similar practice had been in effect in Brussels
since 1436, although quitrents were only redeemable when they exceeded a cer-
tain amount.39
The market in annuity rents brought together institutions or individuals who had
available capital, often religious or charitable institutions, with people seeking capital
for whatever purpose.40 This market fulfilled several functions in the economy of
the late medieval Low Countries. It provided inexpensive capital in cities which,
unlike Bruges, did not have a well-developed banking system. For example, in Ghent,
a large industrial city but not a centre of international trade, annuity rents could
provide capital for people who needed money to invest in business or who needed
emergency funds.41 The sale of annuity rents also was an important source of income
for city governments in the late medieval Low Countries, including the government
of Bruges, and elsewhere: they would sell annuity rents secured by the regular
income of the city, in an instrument roughly equivalent to a modern municipal
bond.42 They were commonly bought by people or corporations wishing to ensure
a safe and steady income, including churches, charitable institutions, and widows
or guardians of orphans.43 They were a less attractive investment opportunity for
pawnbrokers or deposit bankers, presumably because of their relatively low rates of
return and because they could not be liquidated by the buyer, making them an unat-
tractive investment for those who required liquidity.44 In theory, the seller (i.e. the
borrower) never had to redeem the annuity rent, and could continue to make yearly
payments indefinitely.
These characteristics of annuity rents would have been less problematic for insti-
tutions seeking a stable income, and indeed it appears that corporations, both secular
and religious, were quite active in the market for annuity rents. The craft guilds of
Liège, for example, often used their surplus to buy annuity rents, and these rents
38
Des Marez, Etude sur la propriété foncière, 352. The decree is published in L. Gilliodts-Van Severen,
Coutumes de la ville de Bruges (Recueil des anciennes coutumes de la Belgique, Bruxelles, 1887), vol.
2, 65–67, proclamation dated May 13, 1466.
39
Godding, Le droit privé, 185.
40
Godding, Le droit foncier, 220–221. The way in which the market actually worked is a mystery;
presumably brokers were involved, although there is no indication of this in the sources used for this
study. Brokers in fourteenth and fifteenth century Bruges were active in the real estate market generally,
according to J.A. van Houtte, ‘Makelaars en waarden’, 19, although this was not the most important part
of their business as long as Bruges remained a vibrant market for movable goods.
41
Nicholas, Metamorphosis, 213–222.
42
Van Houtte, De geschiedenis van Brugge, 339–340; Hans Van Werveke, De Gentsche stadsfinanciën
in de middeleeuwen (Academie Royale de Belgique, Classe des Lettres et des Sciences Morales et Poli-
tiques, Mémoires, collection in 8°, 35, Brussels, 1934), 286–290; Sprandel, ‘Der städtische Rentenmarkt’,
19; Kernkamp, Vijftiende-eeuwse rentebrieven, 5–6.
43
Boone, Dumon, and Reusens, Immobiliënmarkt, 213–214.
44
De Roover, Money, banking and credit, 137 and 314.142 M. Galvin / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 131–154
provided much of their yearly income.45 Charitable institutions such as the poor
tables also were active in the annuity rent market. Their need for regular and secure
income made them ideal buyers of annuity rents. The poor tables’ activity in the
market for annuity rents during the first three-quarters of the fifteenth century reveals
a great deal not only about the mechanisms and scope of this market, but also the
connection between credit and charity in the final period of Bruges’ medieval pros-
perity, before political turmoil and economic change sent the city’s economy into
decline.
2. The poor tables and annuity rents
Because regular sources of revenue such as annuity rents and lease-payments on
land provided the lion’s share of the poor tables’ income, it was extremely important
for them to reinvest any surplus they might have, for this was the most obvious way
in which their regular income could grow. For example, the poor table of Sint Salv-
ator parish purchased land and/or annuity rents every year from 1415 to 1420.46
Generally, though, such investment did not occur every year, for the surplus from
an individual year was usually insufficient to purchase annuity rents or other property
by itself. Usually, a surplus would be accumulated over several years and would
then be reinvested. The poor tables also had funds available for investment as a
result of large-scale gifts earmarked to endow a distribution in the donor’s honour
or memory. The availability of these funds had little to do with the financial manage-
ment of the poor tables: only one of the annuity rents purchased by the poor table
of Sint Salvator parish between 1415 and 1420 was funded by a large-scale gift, but
the frequent investment of the poor tables of the parishes of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw and
Sint Salvator in the mid-fifteenth century consisted almost entirely of funds donated
to these poor tables for the express purpose of endowing a distribution, as both of
these poor tables regularly had operating deficits in this period.47
Once the management of a poor table decided to invest its surplus or its donations,
it had several options, of which the purchase of annuity rents proved to be the safest.
In the 1330s, the poor tables of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw and Sint Salvator parish deposited
funds with the city government as ‘orphan money’, as did another poor table, the
poor table of the Mariabrug (or St. Mary’s bridge), an independent poor table which
vanished by the beginning of the fifteenth century. The practice of depositing ‘orphan
money’ with the city government does not appear to have continued after the mid-
45
Pascale Lambrechts, ‘Les associations de métiers. Approche de leurs finances à la lumière des statuts
et des documents comptables’, in: Finances publiques et finances privées au bas moyen âge. Actes du
colloque tenu à Gand les 5 et 6 mai 1995, ed. Marc Boone and Walter Prevenier (Studies in the Urban
Social, Economic and Political History of the Medieval and Modern Low Countries 4, Leuven and Apel-
doorn, 1996), 197–198.
46
Bruges, Archief OCMW, dis Sint Salvators 1, accounts 1415–1420.
47
Bruges, Archief OCMW, fonds dis Onze-Lieve-Vrouw 5 (accounts 1453–1455) and fonds dis Sint
Salvators 3 (accounts 1442–1451).M. Galvin / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 131–154 143
fourteenth century. In any event, ‘orphan money’ was certainly not the safest avail-
able vehicle for investment, as the city government made no provision for the event-
ual return of ‘orphan money’ and payments eventually ceased.48 The purchase of
houses or parcels of land, in contrast, was a more reliable investment. This property
was then leased out. (There is no indication that any of the poor tables of Bruges
ever exploited their land-holdings directly). Such investment, however, came at a
cost, as the accounts of the poor tables testify. The poor tables’ receivers
(ontvangers), their financial officers, spent significant time and money on mainte-
nance and legal costs associated with real property.49 The purchase of annuity rents,
in contrast, offered stable income with lower administrative costs.50 In the fifteenth
century, redeemable annuity rents, which, as we have seen, had become the standard
form of the annuity rent by that time, provided the bulk of the poor tables’ invest-
ments.
The surviving evidence allows for only a partial reconstruction of the activity of
the poor tables in the annuity rent market. Several kinds of sources that relate to
purchases of annuity rents have survived: property registers or renteboeken, charters,
and accounts. The few extant registers containing lists of annuity rents neither date
the constitution, transfer, or redemption of a given annuity rent nor provide the price
at which an annuity rent was purchased or redeemed.51 Numerous charters by which
annuity rents were constituted have survived, but these usually do not mention the
price at which the annuity rent was purchased, and they do not always make clear
48
For the role of ‘orphan money’ in the finances of the Bruges city government in the fourteenth
century, see J. Marechal, ‘Het weezengeld in de Brugse stadsfinanciën van de middeleeuwen’, Annales
de la Société d’Émulation de Bruges 82 (1939), 1–41.
49
The accounts of the poor table of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw parish from the 1450s, 1460s, and 1470s are
filled with entries for expenditures on property maintenance and legal costs. I do not mean to suggest,
however, that the poor tables ceased to purchase real property; the accounts from the third-quarter of the
fifteenth century mention several such purchases.
50
The poor tables could buy both new and already existing annuity rents. A sale of a permanent annuity
rent allowed holders of these rents to convert their yearly income into a fixed sum. From the fiscal point
of view of the poor tables, there was no difference between a newly constituted annuity rent and one
which already existed. It is impossible to know just how often the poor tables purchased existing annuity
rents, because many charters commemorating such transactions have not survived, and those that have
survived often give no indication that they were sales rather than donations. A charter was not required
to prove title to an annuity rent or any other piece of property, according to Godding, Le droit privé,
182. A note of the annuity rent in a register of property was often sufficient to prove legal ownership.
Moreover, since the charters that have survived never mention the purchase price of such annuity rents,
there is no way to know the shape of the market in existing rents. It appears that purchase of already
constituted (permanent) rents became rare by the beginning of the fifteenth century, probably because
permanent annuity rents began to be replaced by redeemable annuity rents, and possibly also because
there were fewer permanent annuity rents available for purchase, as charitable institutions and religious
organizations had accumulated many of them through gift or sale in the preceding century.
51
These registers were designed to provide the masters and receivers of the poor tables with information
about the extent of the poor tables’ holdings, to list the people responsible for paying annuity rents and
quitrents to the poor tables, and to prove ownership of these revenues. For these purposes, the price,
seller, and date of purchase of the annuity rents were irrelevant.144 M. Galvin / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 131–154
whether the annuity rent in question was purchased or donated.52 The surviving
accounts kept by the poor tables are the most useful sources for tracking the course
of the market in annuity rents, as they usually mention the purchaser and price of
annuity rents bought within a given fiscal year. These have survived only sporadi-
cally, and reasonably complete series of accounts are available only for the two
richest poor tables (those of the parishes of Sint Salvator and Onze-Lieve-Vrouw,
which were, incidentally, the two oldest parishes in the city) for the fifteenth century.
The best evidence we have for the activity of any of the poor tables of Bruges in
the annuity rent market comes from two sets of extraordinary accounts (i.e., accounts
of unusual income and expenses), one kept by the masters of the poor table of Sint
Salvator parish beginning in 1466, in the wake of the proclamation regarding annuity
rents issued in that same year, and one kept by the receiver of the poor table of
Onze-Lieve-Vrouw parish from 1470 to 1476 and attached to the ordinary accounts
for 1475. These accounts listed purchases of land, houses, and annuity rents (with
the rates at which they were purchased) as well as redemptions of existing annuity
rents and sales of other property.
3. The extent of charitable lending
The accounts usually contain about 3–5 entries of each sort (purchases and
redemptions) per year, indicating that the scale of the credit operations of these poor
tables was relatively limited. Given the existence of three other poor tables and
numerous other charitable institutions, though, the market in ‘institutional’ annuity
rents must have been fairly substantial. Moreover, even a single sale could involve
a significant sum of money. For example, in 1466, the poor table of Sint Salvator
parish purchased an annuity rent of £18 parisis for £324 parisis, or at a rate of 5.5%,
from a man named Pieter de Taeye, who then redeemed the rent the following year.53
The value of this annuity rent was not insignificant: a master carpenter in the Bruges
of the 1460s, working 275 days per year, could expect to earn about £165 parisis
per year.54
The poor table of Sint Salvator parish appears to have been much more active in
the market in annuity rents than the poor table in the neighbouring parish of Onze-
Lieve-Vrouw. The poor table of Sint Salvator parish purchased annuity rents in 16
of the 29 years between 1402 and 1430 and in eight of the 10 years between 1442
and 1451, whereas the poor table of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw parish purchased annuity
52
Charters were designed only to prove title to a particular revenue or piece of property. The holder
of a charter only needed to prove that a transaction had taken place. Therefore, the nature of a property
transaction was juridically unimportant, and charters did not usually mention whether the property in
question was donated or sold. See Godding, Le droit privé, 452–453.
53
In the later middle ages, Flanders used two moneys of account: the pound parisis, not to be confused
with the French pound of Paris, and the pound groten or the pound of Flemish groats. Each groat was
equivalent to 1 s. parisis, and thus £1 groten was equivalent in value to £12 parisis.
54
Sosson, Les travaux publics, Annexe 27.M. Galvin / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 131–154 145
rents only twice between 1422 and 1446 (the accounts for 1430, 1431, 1437, and
1441 have not survived). The poor table of Sint Salvator parish, according to its
surviving accounts, typically purchased one or two annuity rents in each year when
it was active in the market. The purchase price of these rents varied widely, ranging
from as low as £36 parisis to as high as £672 parisis, although typically prices
ranged from £60 parisis to £240 parisis or so, the equivalent of 120–480 days’ wages
of a master carpenter.55
4. Interest rates
The price of redeemable annuity rents purchased by the poor tables of Bruges
ranged from 10 times the annual payment to 24 times the annual payment (thus
interest rates ranged from 4.2 to 10% per year). The rates were higher at the begin-
ning of the century than in the middle: they fell from as high as 10% before 1430
to 5.56% in the late 1460s and 1470s (see Table 1).56 There is a broad correlation
between these rates and the prosperity of the economy of Bruges and of Flanders:
the early fifteenth century was a difficult time for the southern Low Countries,
whereas the 1440s, 1450s, and early 1460s were prosperous times for Flanders gener-
Table 1
Rates for annuity rents bought by the poor table of Sint Salvator parish, 1407–1474
Years Equivalent interest rate (%)
1407 4.55–5
1415 8.33
1416 10
1417 9.09
1418–1422 10
1426 7.14
1427 10
1428 8.33
1430 10
1438 5.56–10
1443–1448 6.67
1451 5
1466–1474 5.56
Sources: Bruges, Archief OCMW, fonds dis Sint Salvator 1–3 (accounts 1402–1430, 1438, 1442–1451)
and 5 (extraordinary accounts 1467–1510).
55
The rent sold for £672 parisis was sold in 1426–1427 at a rate of 7.14% (1:14) to Clays vander
Buerse, a member of an important family of brokers and politicians which gave its name to the Bruges
exchange, or Beurs, and ultimately to all continental exchanges. The price of this rent represents the
equivalent of 1344 days’ wages for a master carpenter, or about 5 years of work!
56
Exceptions to these trends tended to be very wealthy people who generally received lower rates (i.e.
the purchase price represented a higher multiple of the yearly payment).146 M. Galvin / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 131–154
ally and Bruges in particular.57 This was also a period of monetary stability in the
Burgundian Netherlands, as Philip the Good did not change the silver content of his
coinage from 1433 to 1466. The decline in rates, however, appears to be a general
feature of the northern European market in annuity rents, as rates in the German
market followed a similar pattern.58
The rate of interest on annuity rents does not appear to be linked to the amount
that the poor table of Sint Salvator invested in a given year, which varied widely
from year to year depending on the ability of rent-payers to redeem their rents, the
size of donations to the poor tables, and the yearly surplus. This is not to suggest,
however, that the prevailing rates of annuity rents had no connection to the poor
tables’ finances. Obviously, higher rates (i.e. lower ratios between purchase price
and yearly payment) were more favourable for the poor tables, as a yearly payment
of £12 parisis, which typically cost £120 parisis in the 1410s and 1420s, would
have cost £180 parisis in the 1440s and £216 parisis in the 1470s. Movement in
the annuity rent market thus had important consequences for the fiscal health of the
poor tables. Given the general decline in rates during the course of the fifteenth
century, it is not surprising that the poor table of Sint Salvator parish generally had
yearly operating surpluses in the first three decades of the fifteenth century, when
the poor table’s income could grow more easily due to the investment of surpluses
and gifts at high rates of interest, and yearly operating deficits in the 1440s, when
rates were lower and a fixed increment of income was thus more expensive.
5. The frequency of repayment
It is difficult, on the basis of the surviving evidence, to determine how often
annuity rents bought by the poor tables were redeemed. Even though we can track
certain poor tables’ purchases of annuity rents during certain periods of time (such
as the activity of the poor table of Sint Salvator parish in the first three decades of
the fifteenth century, or the poor tables of Sint Salvator and Onze-Lieve-Vrouw
parishes in the early 1470s), redemptions may certainly have occurred in years for
which the accounts have disappeared. The surviving evidence does indicate that
redemptions were fairly frequent, often occurring within a few years after the rents
were constituted. Of the 22 annuity rents which the poor table of Sint Salvator parish
purchased between the fiscal years 1415 and 1430, at least nine were repurchased
after intervals ranging from 2 to 13 years. The typical interval between sale and
redemption appears to have been 3 or 4 years.59 The rents bought by this poor table
were apparently redeemed less frequently later in the century—only four of the 29
rents that were bought between 1466 and 1476 were redeemed within that period—
but rents nonetheless continued to be redeemed.
57
Real wages in Bruges tended to rise from about 1440 to about 1470, according to Blockmans, ‘Die
Niederlande vor und nach 1400’, 122.
58
Trusen, ‘Zum Rentenkauf’, 157.
59
Bruges, Archief OCMW, fonds dis Sint Salvators 1 (accounts 1415–1430) and 2 (accounts 1438).You can also read
