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Constance
Classen, "The Sensuous City: Urban Sensations
From the Middle Ages Medieval City Life It's morning in a medieval city. The sun is rising over orchards and fields and narrow, winding streets of houses. Roosters are crowing, church bells are ringing. Cows and sheep are being led to pasture outside the city walls. Housewives and maidservants are out in the fresh air fetching water from the well. One of the most distinctive features of the medieval city from a twenty-first-century perspective is its rural character. Medieval cities were in many ways less like what we usually think of as cities and more like populous rural villages enclosed by walls. Indeed the rural experience was the characteristic experience of life in the middle ages, not only because of the semi-rural character of cities, but because most people lived in the countryside during that period. In the modern world, the sensory life of the countryside has provided an often romanticized but much less often actually experienced alternative to the sensations of urban life. In the middle ages the sensations of the countryside were normative, even within cities. Yet, if many of the sensory characteristics of the medieval city were also those of the country village, the greater population and density of the city made urban sensations much more intense than those of the countryside.1 Along with the noise of cows and sheep and horses from many stable yards, there was the din of the blacksmiths' hammers -- which last led one exasperated medieval householder to complain that
Sooty smoked smiths, smattered with smoke, The crowing of roosters was accompanied by the barking of a city's worth of dogs, perhaps excited by the presence of wandering beggars, as in the old nursery rhyme:
Hark, hark, There were also specifically urban sounds, the clatter of hooves and the scrape of cart wheels on cobblestones, the calls of street vendors during the day and of watchmen during the night. Songs were everywhere to be heard, from merchants advertising their wares to housewives singing as they swept the floor, and from travelers brightening their journey with a song to workers singing the traditional songs of their craft to the rhythm of their movements. The scents of the city were, on the whole, similar to those of the farm, but stronger because of the increased number and density of humans and animals and the rudimentary methods of waste disposal. Pigs were of great help in this regard for, wandering through the city, they helped clean the streets of the refuse and offal which collected there. Ravens were also highly useful urban scavengers, a fact which led to them being protected by law in pre-modern England. Human waste, collected in underground pits, was regularly removed from the city and employed as fertilizer in nearby farms. Though it often stank, therefore, the medieval city did have an ecologically-sound method of recycling its waste products (virtually all of which were organic).3 In the larger cities, practitioners of different trades occupied specific streets, as evidenced in street names such as Bread Street, Fish Street or Milk Street. Each of these streets would have its own distinctive scent. The worst smelling parts of town were the districts occupied by the butchers and tanners. The stench produced by these dealers in flesh and skin was so great that even hardnosed medieval city dwellers found it hard to bear. Countering such foul odours, however, were the fragrant aromas of urban orchards and meadows, of the gardens which lay at the back of houses and of the incense and aromatic woods which were burnt inside homes.4 The textures of the medieval city came from its use of natural materials. The poor conditions of roads and the difficulty of bringing building materials from distant sites meant that buildings were constructed out of the materials at hand, whether stone or timber, brick or wattle (interwoven twigs). Not only were cities integrated into their natural landscapes, therefore, they also had a distinctive look and feel from one region to another. Central city streets were paved with stones but most streets were of dirt. This made them muddy and sticky on wet days and rutted and dusty on dry. (Dirt streets also provided a ready supply of stones for boys to throw -- perhaps at the beggars that excited the dogs). Due to the narrowness of the streets, pedestrians sometimes had to press against the walls to let horsemen pass by. The sharp, clean angle between wall and street (or sidewalk) that we are used to seeing in modern city centres was uncommon in the middle ages. It was often difficult, in fact, to tell where a building stopped and a street began, for an older house, with weeds sprouting from its crannies, might seem to be slowly crumbling into the street, which was itself a crumbly combination of dirt and pebbles and refuse. For a modern urbanite accustomed to spacious streets, imposing monuments and towering buildings glittering with glass, the early medieval city would not appear visually impressive. Aside from church spires reaching up to heaven, buildings were low. Shaded by the overhanging stories of houses, streets were dark. Houses themselves were dark; glass being too expensive to use for windowpanes most windows were kept small to keep out the wind and rain. (The original meaning of 'window' is 'wind-eye'.) Unlike in the modern city, little writing was on view, for few people could read. There were no street signs nor store names nor advertising posters. Shop signs, which hung over the streets, were simple and easily recognized -- a loaf of bread for a bakery, bloody bandages wrapped around a staff for a barber-surgeon (a medieval emblem which lives on in the modern red and white striped barber's pole). The most important buildings, the cathedral and the town hall, were situated at the centre of the city. Adorned with statues and stained glass and soaring above the surrounding buildings, the cathedral was the most imposing sight in the medieval city, the edifice to which all eyes turned. The visual interest of the medieval city, however, lay not so much in its architecture as in the activity which occurred within its walls. If the rural character of the medieval city might surprise a twenty-first century city dweller, even more surprising would be the range of activities which took place out of doors. Clothes were washed outside, and often food was cooked outside as well. Baths were taken in public bath houses and in certain cities one might see whole families running naked through the street to a nearby bath house. In good weather many workers went outside to work to take advantage of the light and fresh air. Shops were open fronted stalls which folded up at night. In the marketplace goods of every kind -- velvets and linens, shining copper pots, baskets of glowing vegetables and fruits -- were arrayed for sale. The public spaces of medieval city were, hence, the site of many activities which is modernity would customarily be performed out of public view indoors. The medieval city, furthermore, frequently changed its guise. With certain exceptions, most modern western cities are more or less the same every day of the year. They have the rhythm and regularity of a machine. By contrast, fairs and festivals transformed medieval cities into sites of pageantry and commotion and involved virtually all of the inhabitants. Fairs brought products, people and news from the world outside to isolated medieval communities. On fair days, jugglers, acrobats and minstrels entertained on street corners, foreigners with strange tongues and clothes exhibited exotic wares and the air was filled with scents of cooking and spices. On major feast days processions carrying richly-jewelled icons wound their way through streets hung with tapestries to the church. Incense was burnt and music rang out from trumpets and drums as wave after wave of participants marched by -- clergy in their vestments, soldiers in bright uniforms, members of different craft guilds -- goldsmiths, tailors, bakers, carpenters.... On a grimmer note, the medieval city was also frequently transformed by wars and epidemics, fire, floods and famines. During the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) in the fourteenth century, cities reeked of death and of smoke as bonfires were lit in the streets to ward off infectious air. City dwellers fled to the countryside or holed up in their houses with stockpiles of food. As a result of the plague over one-third of Europe's population died and cities which had been bursting their bounds found themselves empty and desolate, with land to spare and few to work it. The sensory life of the medieval city, significantly, did not just consist of a collection of sensory stimuli -- bells and smells -- but of a whole complex of beliefs and practices involving the senses. In the middle ages sounds and odours were believed to be actual forces, capable of communicating health or illness, sanctity or sin. The ringing of church bells was not just thought to mark the time or summon people to church, it was also believed to purify the air and chase away evil spirits. Similarly, foul smells were not just considered unpleasant, they were thought to carry disease and even to harbor demons. The worst stench of all was that of the Devil, who reeked of corruption. Angels and saints, by contrast, were redolent with fragrant, life-giving odours of sanctity. The medievals packed sensations with meaning and power and, in part because of this and in part because of their agricultural, non-literate lifestyle, they relied much more than modern peoples on their senses of smell and hearing and touch.5 The Rise of the Modern City Morning in an eighteenth-century city was a very different experience from morning in a medieval city. As John Gay describes it in his poem of 1706, "The Art of Walking the Streets of London":
Now industry awakes her busy sons, There is no mention of church bells here or of roosters crowing. Instead we have the newspaper vendor calling out the latest news, the bustle of shops opening and coaches rolling through the streets. It is not the church, nor the agricultural round which calls the sleeping citizens to their duties, but "industry." However much cities have changed in the last three-hundred years, this is one feature of city life with which urban dwellers can still identify today. In the sixteenth-century the majority of Europeans still lived in the country rather than the city. However, the tide was turning, and as cities expanded many characteristic traits of modern urban life emerged. As cities grew, their orchards, gardens and fields were built over with houses and workplaces. When space within the city was unavailable, urban development extended into the countryside. City dwellers, consequently, had less and less experience of rural life. At the same time city air became increasingly polluted. Already in the middle ages firewood was growing scarce in places and cities were beginning to make use of coal. The Black Death had temporarily reversed this trend. Forests had sprung up on uncultivated fields providing firewood once more, but, as the population grew and forests disappeared, many cities again became reliant on coal for fuel. At first the odour of coal-smoke was considered so offensive that in sixteenth-century England ladies would not enter a room where coal had been burnt, nor eat food tainted with its scent. Even Queen Elizabeth found herself "greatly grieved and annoyed with the taste and smoke" of coal. However, the growing shortage of other forms of fuel led to coal being increasingly adopted for domestic use.7 By the mid-seventeenth century in London, coal use was common and the scent of its smoke had come to seem an almost natural part of city life. A London-dweller in a seventeenth-century play is said to miss the "wholesome smell" of coal when away from his native city. However, not everyone was happy with the situation. In 1661 the early environmentalist John Evelyn wrote a book entitled Fumifugium in which he describes London as cloaked in such a cloud of coal smoke that it has "a resemblance of hell upon earth." Evelyn recommended (without effect) that noxious industries be removed from the city and London be encircled with a green belt of aromatic plants.8 In order to accommodate more people on smaller areas of land city buildings grew upwards. While still malodorous with refuse, streets grew wider to accommodate wagons and coaches. Flat paving stones replaced bumpy cobblestones. In the sixteenth-century glass windows became cheap and fashionable, changing the look of the city. The greater number and size of windows made possible by glass panes increased the amount of light within buildings, allowing more work to be undertaken indoors. City dwellers were also encouraged to remain indoors by improvements in the design of chimneys which reduced the amount of smoke in house interiors. The Renaissance was an exciting period of discovery and change and this was reflected in urban life. The invention of the printing press and the increased literacy of the population meant that printed sheets with news and commentaries began to circulate in the city. As new worlds were discovered overseas, Europeans heard travellers' tales of other lands and were introduced to strange new foods such as tomatoes and corn. At the same time as overseas explorations stimulated the senses -- and ambitions -- of Europeans, however, the Protestant Reformation was having a sobering effect on sensory life. The gaudy, colourful clothing beloved of the medievals, the rich foods, the spicy perfumes, the public spectacles, appeared too worldly to the more austere reformers. The church, especially, according to the Reformation ideal, was to be purified of sensory excess and transformed into a simple site for hearing the Word of God. Also in the Renaissance, were the roots of the modern scientific understanding of the world. According to this new model, sensory phenomenon such as colours, odours and sounds were simply the by-products of physical forces and not meaningful in themselves. It was in the eighteenth century, however, that a modern urban aesthetic really developed. During the eye-minded age of the Enlightenment medieval urban design seemed too dark, closed-in and sinuous. What was desired instead were wide, bright thoroughfares with open vistas, "promenades" where one could see and be seen. Similarly, while the classic medieval garden was a walled enclosure within which scents and sounds were heightened but vistas limited, the ideal Enlightenment garden was a park, in which scents and sounds were dispersed but the eye could wander unobstructed. In the eighteenth century, formally laid-out parks became a key element in urban centres.9 While medieval city life had partaken of a communal nature, as exemplified by the participation of people from all walks of life in the religious procession, the eighteenth-century city seemed rather to be a conglomeration of strangers. This change of social ambiance as well as the improved quality of housing helps explain why the range of activities undertaken outdoors in public view diminished considerably in modernity. At the same time there arose a new sense of personal privacy. Village life, where everyone knew everyone else's business, now seemed too intrusive to most urbanites who craved the anonymity of the crowd. A frequently noted characteristic of the modern city was the accelerated pace of life: "all are in a hurry, running up and down, with cloudy Looks and busy Faces", one traveller to Bristol noted. In his novel Humphrey Clinker, Tobias Smollet describes the bustle of an eighteenth-century city street: "everywhere rambling, riding, rolling, rushing, jostling, mixing, bouncing, cracking, and crashing, in one vile ferment." Here street life was anticipating the new era of industrialism with its crowded, bustling factories and its emphasis on the quick and constant production of goods. It was in the eighteenth century, indeed, that vagrancy and loitering became public offences.10 Though no more than a general outline can be given here, the experience of the modern city -- and, indeed, of any city -- was not uniform. It varied considerably according to a person's age, gender, class, ethnicity and interests. The city at night, furthermore, was a very different place from the daytime city and attracted a different range of people. As noted above, moreover, it is not just the city that changes over time, but the way in which people perceive it and interact with it. In contrast to the habits of earlier eras, for example, in modernity it becomes less and less common for adults to sit or squat on the ground. Actions which were once common, such as rolling on the ground in laughter or putting an ear to the ground to catch distant sounds, fade into mere figures of speech which are never actually performed. This change in custom produces a corresponding change in the tactile experience of the environment. By late modernity most city dwellers do not even walk very much anymore. As late as the nineteenth century, in contrast, most people still walked to work -- though their workplace might be three or four miles away. Such lengthy, daily walks would give one a much more intimate sense of the environment than is possible with a car or bus ride. Hence one's sense of the city comes not just from its physical features, but from one's own social location and practices.11 One of the dominant forces at play in the design of modern cities was the concern for public order. In the nineteenth-century public order within urban areas was promoted through increased visual surveillance. It was not only policemen or officials who participated in this surveillance, but ordinary middle-class citizens. It was generally believed that the potentially subversive "lower orders" would improve their behaviour if they knew they were being watched. One way in which the increased visibility of the populace was accomplished was through street lighting. During most of the nineteenth century gas lamps were used for this purpose, but by the end of the century electric light was transforming city streets into spectacular "white ways." Another way in which urban visibility and thereby social control was enhanced was through the construction of wide, bright, straight streets. (While many rows of nineteenth-century tenement housing were as dark and closed-in as any medieval lane, this was far from the ideal.) It is no coincidence that the European city that went the furthest in straightening out its convoluted city core, Paris, was also a city which had been repeatedly shaken by popular revolts and riots. The way rioters could set up barricades in narrow medieval streets, the way they could hurl down rocks on soldiers from the rooftops above, the way they disappeared from view around twisting corners, made it evident that broad, straight streets would greatly forward social control. A broad street would be difficult to barricade and a straight street would provide no hiding places. A clear sight line also meant a clear line of fire. The man who undertook the work of transforming Paris's centre was Baron Haussmann, prefect of the Seine under Emperor Napoleon III (nephew of Napoleon I). In his memoirs Haussmann recalled his dislike of the medieval city centre. He was frustrated at being unable to go directly from one point to another, he was disgusted by the foul odours from filthy gutters, and he was annoyed to find the perspective of a street closed off by a perfumer's shop. When given his chance, therefore, Haussmann, in his own words, "disembowelled" the old city and eliminated the stench of antiquated medievalism and working-class subversion. The wide, straight boulevards he created in the gutted space offered majestic vistas terminating in monumental structures such as the Arc de Triomphe. Along the boulevards were expensive new houses. There need be no more fear of rumblings from the city's belly. According to Marx, "Haussmann razed Paris to make a place for the Paris of the sightseer."12 In the modern city new palaces of commerce and industry challenged the old dominance of church steeples. (The first skyscrapers appeared at the end of the nineteenth century.) Department stores provided an orderly, bourgeois and privately-owned alternative to the chaotic promiscuity of the public marketplace. The senses themselves were increasingly ordered and differentiated with the rise of separate locations to see works of art, to hear music, and to dine -- activities which had been merged together in the medieval feast. As for the sense of smell, it was now thought to be rather frivolous and perfume use became a private, feminine affair. By the end of the nineteenth-century even the city streets had been cleansed of smell with the institution of regular garbage collection and the construction of underground sewage systems.13 The urban traffic which had seemed heavy enough in the eighteenth century became very congested in the nineteenth. Everyone in the middle classes aspired to own a carriage, not only as a matter of convenience but because the carriage was a crucial sign of superior social rank (a connotation which remains today in the term "carriage-trade"). The traffic congestion was partially eased by the entrance of trams and trains into the nineteenth-century city. These new means of transportation added a whole new sensory dimension to urban life. Racing along at thirty miles an hour, train passengers felt as though they were being swept away in a whirlwind. As one train traveller wrote: Riding in an open and shaking carriage so elevated was at first somewhat startling. Dragged along backwards by the snorting engine with such rapidity, under thundering bridges, over lofty viaducts, and through long dark tunnels filled with smoke and steam! By and by, however, we became accustomed even to this.14 The changes wrought by railways can hardly be overestimated -- One of Thackeray's characters exclaims that "We who lived before railways ... are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark."15 Whole areas of cities were demolished to make room for railway stations, engine sheds and station hotels. The London station of Euston, for example, was built over a dairy-producing district of cow-sheds. However this did not mean that local residents would no longer be provided with milk, for the train, with its milk-run, could bring in fresh milk from the countryside. In fact, by transporting goods quickly over long distances, the train allowed for and encouraged the increased separation of rural and urban activities. The condition of roads was also improving in the nineteenth-century. Experiments with different ways of surfacing roads were made and by the end of the century asphalt pavement had become common in city streets. Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of Little House on the Prairie, described her first experience of asphalt on entering the American city of Topeka in 1894: In the very midst of the city, the ground was covered by some dark stuff that silenced all the wheels and muffled the sound of hoofs. It was like tar, but Papa was sure it was not tar, and it was something like rubber, but it could not be rubber because rubber costs too much. We saw ladies all in silks and carrying ruffled parasols, walking with their escorts across the street. Their heels dented the street and, while we watched, these dents slowly filled up and smoothed themselves out.16 The new road surface was a sign that the modern city was becoming smoother, cleaner, and more efficient, and at the same time, perhaps, losing some of its human touch. It was also a sign of the new city to come. Laura rode over the new pavement in a horse-drawn wagon. The dark, mysterious substance which spread over streets and roads, however, would literally pave the way for the twentieth-century city of the automobile. -------------------------------------------------- Notes 1. On the sensory life of the medieval city see Lewis Mumford, The City in History (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World), 293-99. 2. Peter Brimblecombe, The Big Smoke: A History of Air Pollution in London Since Medieval Times (London: Methuen, 1987), 13. 3. Mumford, 291-293. 4. For a history of urban scents see Constance Classen, David Howes and Anthony Synnott, Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell (London: Routledge, 1994). 5. Constance Classen, The Color of Angels: Cosmology, Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination (London: Routledge, 1998), chapters 1 & 2. 6. John Gay, Court Poems (London: J. Roberts, 1716). 7. Brimblecombe, 30. 8. Brimblecombe, 21, 47 9. Constance Classen, "The Senses," in Encyclopedia of European Social History: Volume 4, ed. P. Stearns (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001) 360-362. 10. Penelope J. Corfield. "Walking the City Streets: The Urban Odyssey in Eighteenth-Century England," Journal of Urban History, 16:2, 1990, 143. 11. See David Howes, "Skinscapes: Embodiment, Culture and Environment," in The Book of Touch, ed. C. Classen (Oxford: Berg, 2005). 12. David P. Jordan, "Baron Haussmann and Modern Paris," American Scholar, 61:1 (January 1, 1992) 1-8. See also Mumford, 369-370. 13. The features of medieval life were by no means completely obliterated in the eighteen-hundreds. For instance, as late as the middle of the century pigs were still foraging in the streets of many major cities, such as New York. Smaller cities, particularly in more rural and isolated regions, long retained medieval traits. Nineteenth-century English travellers to Southern Europe, for example, frequently commented on the almost medieval nature of town life there. See Augustus Hare, Wanderings in Spain (London: s.n., 1878). 14. Christopher Hibbert, Daily Life in Victorian England (New York: American Heritage Publishing, 1975) 82. 15. Hibbert, 84. 16. "The History of Asphalt," www.hotmix.org/history.php. See also Laura Ingalls Wilder, On the Way Home: The Diary of a Trip from South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri in 1894 (New York: HarperCollins, 1962), 51 |