Towns, guilds, technology and money

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Better farming produced a food surplus and trade routes revived, so people could gather in towns to make and sell goods rather than farm.

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A written document from a lord or king granting a town special legal rights, such as markets and self-government.

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A runaway serf who lived in a chartered town for a year and a day often became a legally free person.

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A craft guild grouped everyone in one trade, such as bakers or weavers; a merchant guild grouped the traders who bought and sold goods, and was often the richest group in town.

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Production (who could make goods), prices, quality of work, and apprenticeship (training and entry to the trade).

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Apprentice (a young trainee living with a master), journeyman (a trained worker paid by the day), and master (a full guild member with a workshop, after making a 'masterpiece').

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The heavy plough, the horse collar, watermills and windmills, and the three-field system.

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Land was split in three, with one field for a winter crop, one for a spring crop, and one resting, so two-thirds was farmed each year instead of one-half.

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Bills of exchange let a merchant pay in one city and collect the money in another; letters of credit were documents from a banker promising the holder was good for a sum, like an early cheque.

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Usury is charging interest on a loan, which the Christian Church condemned as a sin, so Christians officially could not run open banks.

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It banned usury, collected tithes (one-tenth of produce), owned huge amounts of land, and ran monastic economies that farmed, milled and traded.

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The sakk was an Islamic written order to pay, an early form of cheque; our word 'cheque' comes from it, showing the sophisticated Islamic credit economy.