[p. 133] The growing Literacy in the Towns of the County of Holland and Zeeland

In the former county of Holland and Zeeland — broadly speaking the territory of the current provinces North Holland, South Holland and Zeeland in the Netherlands — the development of towns started quite late in comparison to some other regions, especially in comparison to Flanders. At the beginning of the thirteenth century there are only two, maybe three settlements of urban character, Middelburg, Dordrecht and probably Leiden. During that century their number grows quickly to twenty by the end of it1. For this early period the diplomatics of most of those towns can hardly be investigated because of a lack of sufficient sources. Apart from the towns just mentioned investigations must rely mainly on the charters of the towns of Zierikzee, Delft and Haarlem.

Of the six towns mentioned the charters dating from the thirteenth and the first quarter of the fourteenth century have recently been well studied. For some years now dr. Jaap Kruisheer has investigated the drafting and writing of the charters consisting of the by-laws of the towns in this county2. The doctoral [p. 134] thesis of dr. Jan Burgers deals with the palaeography in this region in the thirteenth century, and therefore he pays attention to the writing activities in the towns as well3. My dissertation contains a diplomatic study of the charters produced in four towns and five monasteries in Holland and Zeeland during the thirteenth and the first quarter of the fourteenth century4. However, on the period after 1325 there has hardly been any modern study published5. Thus the creation of the municipal clerk’s offices is quite well investigated, but the following process of expansion, resulting in a massive amount of documents, in professionalization of the clerks and in a growing efficiency, has hardly been studied.

In the thirteenth and the first quarter of the fourteenth century the society of the county of Holland and Zeeland underwent dramatic changes. The population grew rapidly, the economy and trade increased in scale6. As already mentioned a lot of new urban settlements came into being. The use of writing, in the previous period largely restricted to the world of the monasteries, expanded. At the end of the twelfth century the practice of writing was almost completely restricted to the two great monasteries, the abbeys of Egmond and of Middelburg. At the end of the thirteenth century a count’s chancery had been established, the important towns had created clerk’s offices, while the use of writing was even found in the circle of the nobility7.

[p. 135] Although a lot of investigating is still to be done, it is possible, with some caution, to sketch the outlines of the process of the growing use of writing in the towns of Holland and Zeeland.

This process started in the second half of the thirteenth century. The following phases can be distinguished. In the first stage the townsmen took part in the drafting of their own by-laws. Middelburg and probably Leiden as well reached that phase at the end of the twelfth century ; in the other towns this phenomenon occurred at some point in the first half of the thirteenth century8. The writing of a privilege containing those laws, however, was still left to a scribe from elsewhere. So in 1245 the inhabitants of Haarlem asked a monk from the abbey of Egmond, which was not too far away, to do the writing for them9.

In a second stage the townsmen made use of a local hand to produce some writing for them. For instance, in the sixties of the thirteenth century the priest of the main church of Dordrecht wrote some charters at the request of the inhabitants10. Only thereafter, as of the end of the seventies, clerk’s offices came into being. Their creation coincides with the rise of charters issued in the name of two or more aldermen and confirmed with their personal seals11. In these aldermen’s charters all sorts of deeds made by private persons were laid [p. 136] down in writing12. It was the demand for this kind of charter, concerning voluntary jurisdiction, which gave the final impetus to the creation of the clerk’s offices in the towns, which thereafter grew to maturity without any hindrance by competition from other offices13. Dordrecht, which appointed a clerk at least in 1277, led the way ; Haarlem, Delft, Leiden, Zierikzee and Middelburg followed some years or some decades later14. In all those towns the production of the clerk’s offices consisted almost completely of charters issued and sealed by individual aldermen. These charters mainly have come down to us thanks to their preservation in the archives of ecclesiastical institutions15.

This relatively late and quite hesitant start was followed by a rapid growth. Quite soon in many towns the number of clerks was increased. In [p. 137] Dordrecht in 1325, there were already four scribes working in the administration of the town. The proceedings of the urban governments were more and more laid down in writing, which led to a growing and constantly more varying series of documents : accounts, bylaws, registers. In this development Dordrecht led the way as well : accounts were made up in this town as of 128316. The strong increase in the production of documents urged a growing professionalization of the clerks and an increasing efficiency of the offices. Those phenomena can be seen clearly in the uniformization of the charters, which formed the bulk of the production. The handwriting became more and more to look alike17, and this applies for the other exterior features of the charters as well. In the charters produced in all the municipal secretaries we can see, for instance, the growing use of goatskin as writing material, the emergence of the practice of making creases in the parchment as margin lines, the broadening of the margins, especially those on the left side, the growing use of parchment tags instead of laces, the growing application of sealing on a tongue, the growing number of sealers and the emergence of counter seals and secret seals and seals ad causas18. In most of the towns the charters were no longer issued in Latin but in the vernacular19. The structure of the texts of the charters became more plain, [p. 138] especially those on voluntary jurisdiction20. The date is mostly according to the church calendar, only the turn of the year differs between towns and periods21.

Diplomatists were until recently mainly interested in the institutional and political aspects of the growing use of written documents. The social and cultural-historical dimensions of this process were to a high degree ignored22. A weird paradox occurred : on the one hand on almost all levels of the historical science the process of growing literacy became a popular field of study23, while on the other hand diplomatists showed an inclination not to take such investigations very seriously. We considered them as modish, or maybe we didn’t dare to enter such a broad field of investigation, being aware of the fact that in many respects our knowledge of the charters is still quite limited. However, this attitude has recently changed24. Correctly in my point of view, [p. 139] because diplomatists in particular will be able to contribute to this kind of study to a large extent.

I give an example. Excepting Den Bosch25, in none of the Dutch towns has such a considerable quantity of charters been handed down to us that, only considering their number, we dare to suggest the existence of a clerk’s office. From the town of Haarlem only thirteen charters issued by their aldermen have come down to us. Still, taking into consideration a much greater number of such charters dating from the first quarter of the fourteenth century, we can conclude that in the late eighties of the thirteenth century such an office in Haarlem had come into being. As of 1294 it was already manned by two clerks. The appearance of fixed customs in the drafting, writing and issuing of charters shows the very existence of this office and its clerks26. In other words, our knowledge of the growing literacy in Haarlem is purely founded on diplomatic investigations.

I’m aware of the fact that the concept “literacy” has a very broad sense. I will restrict myself here to one aspect of this notion, that is to say, to the cultural change which is hidden behind the increasing number of charters which were issued as of the second half of the thirteenth century.

I have already indicated when this process of change started and how it developed. We must, however, also ask the question how deeply writing really penetrated into the urban societies. Did the municipal offices supply their services to every citizen who wanted to make use of them, or did they do their writing only for the sake of the aldermen and their families, and was the clerk’s office in that way used as a means of exercising power in favour of a small group of the political upper layer ? In other words : what did the writing-down of all kinds of agreements really mean for the medieval townsmen ? Did they take notice of the most important passages and were they themselves conscious of the value of the document, or was it just a new ritual — in their eyes at least — added to the various rituals which already belonged to a legal act ? If the latter was the case, we can speak of growing literacy in the sense that a growing number of townsmen were confronted by writing, but we can hardly speak of a profound cultural change.

It is quite obscure which meaning we have to give to the first writing activities in the towns, that is to say, to the contribution of the inhabitants to the [p. 140] drafting of their own by-laws27. We can imagine that the initiative was taken by the small group of townsmen which had part in the government. Power-political considerations seem not unfamiliar to the writing down of the rules and the regulations in a society where writing is hardly in use. On the other hand, it is by no means impossible that a group of townsmen who did not attain office, took the initiative in order to get some control over and influence on the government. It would be premature to answer this question now ; we need some more study to do so in this case. But, whether we must speak of increasing the exercise of power or of limiting it, in both cases the interested parties chose writing to achieve their aims. We may conclude that at that time the use of writing had already penetrated the upper layer of the urban societies, and even more the consciousness of its importance. In most of the towns the small demand for written documents, which was generated in this way, did not lead to the creation of a clerk’s office. As we have already stated, this phenomenon occurred a little later, just at the moment when an increasing number of aldermen’s charters was issued. The strong growth of their number and the quick increase of the staff of the new offices can hardly be explained if those documents were only produced for the benefit of the small upper layer of the urban societies. Their quick and great success shows indisputably the profound change of the urban culture.

Their overwhelming success also means that the inhabitants must have been aware of the value of those documents. It is not surprising that the beginning of the process of literacy in secular society manifests itself in an increase of issued charters, items of evidence. Mrs. drs. Geertrui Van Synghel pointed out the legal aid individuals could get by recording their agreements before the aldermen of ’s-Hertogenbosch28. So the charters issued by the aldermen concerning voluntary jurisdiction gave the individual inhabitants of the towns, confronted with a more complicated society than before, the possibility to record their agreements with legal security. The flourishing of the economy and of trade in Holland and Zeeland shows therefore a direct relationship with the process of growing literacy. It can be no coincidence that in Dordrecht the [p. 141] creation of a clerk’s office occurred at the moment that the town, according to archaeological evidence, expanded rapidly29.

The significance of written evidence was not only recognized by the townsmen. In ’s-Hertogenbosch many individuals from the rural settlements around the town appeared before the town’s aldermen to have records made of their deeds30. We have some indication that the towns of Holland and Zeeland had the same attraction to their environments. The phenomenon that individuals from the countryside were prepared to travel to a town just to have their agreements recorded there, is — once more — a significant piece of evidence for the hypothesis that at that time for them a charter is much more than a symbol.

The question whether those individuals read those documents or had them read and if necessary had them translated, is a different one. Looking at the great number of charters which were issued, there are two possibilities : either in the first quarter of the fourteenth century the population must already have reached a quite high level of literacy or it must have had great confidence in the aldermen and their clerks. It is obvious that the latter seems to me the case. Maybe on this point there has not been so much change since those days. Also nowadays, in this very literate society, only a few take the pains of reading a mortgage deed from the beginning to the end. Most people confine themselves to an understanding of the most important data. Nowadays individuals still have an unfaltering confidence in the public figure who puts agreements into writing in an appropriate form. The thirteenth century saw the birth of this confidence in the aldermen and their clerks. It must have been a matter of a self-strengthening effect by which the increasing demand for charters issued by the aldermen gradually made those charters into reliable pieces of evidence. We may assume that at the beginning of this process such charters had mainly been issued for the benefit of the members of the government and their relatives. Soon the use of such written documents was adopted by other layers of society. In that phase individuals with a very low level of literacy and even the illiterate asked the town’s clerk to draft and write such charters for them. The speed with which this process developed — it took only a few decades — can be explained by the fact that in these regions the developments occurred relatively late.

[p. 142] Also outside the clerk’s offices the use of writing grew in urban societies. Institutions inside the town walls and even individuals employed their own clerks31. At the end of the thirteenth century it is mentioned that several towns had schoolmasters32. We may assume that at that time the upper layer went to school and probably learned some reading and writing. Diplomatic investigation supports this hypothesis. At the end of the thirteenth century one of the aldermen of Dordrecht wrote accounts, charters and regulations, applying the vernacular as well as Latin33.

The changes in society complicated the ruling of the towns and so increased the need for written documents. The creation of clerk’s offices must have strengthened bureaucratic tendencies. A group arose for whom reading and writing were part of their profession, and that group grew steadily. In most of the towns at the beginning of the fourteenth century several clerks were employed34.

The thirteenth century shows the beginnings of the penetration of literacy in the towns of Holland and Zeeland. We saw that the whole upper layer of society, both inside and outside the towns, rapidly came in contact with writing. The growing literacy was shown not to have been a process controlled by the government. It was the need of individuals, in a society of growing complexity, to record their agreements in a secure manner which paved the way for the creation of clerk’s offices in the towns. So the demand for it came out of society itself.