Medieval Sourcebook:
The Butchers of the City of Chartres: Prior Restraints on Trade, 1249
The butchers of Chartres, who owed the recognition of their craft to the cathedral,
apparently made an agreement not to sell their goods on credit to the clergy, and steps
were taken by the chapter to prevent a repetition of the practice.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen. We, Robert of Cortenaeken,
deacon of Chartres, decree by our authority that you, Stephen, master of the butchers, John Pellipari and Peter Martin, on your own behalf, and the other butchers of the city of
Chartres, on behalf of whom you have pledged yourselves to us on oath under pain of sixty
Chartres pounds, will purge yourselves to us in chapter by your oath that you have not
made a sworn agreement or coalition among yourselves, or a pact, or convention, or
society, or union, in whole or in part, for not selling your goods on credit to the
chapter of Chartres, or, if you have done any of the said things, that you will revoke and
amend this, nor will you go against this for the future; but we put a value on your
emendation in this way in writing, namely, that you butchers will give three pigs of a
price of thirty solidi, of which one, at our command, will be given to the almoner of
Chartres, another to the leper house, a third to the daughters of God of Chartres, on this
coming Sunday.
Done in the year of the Lord 1249, in the chapter of Chartres, on the Friday before the
Nativity of Our Lady.
Source.
From: Gustave Fagniez, ed., Documents Relatifs a l'Histoire de l’Ilndustrie et
du Commerce en France, (Paris: Alphonse Picard et Fils, 1898), Vol. I, p. 174,
reprinted in Roy C. Cave & Herbert H. Coulson, A Source Book for Medieval Economic
History, (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1936; reprint ed., New York: Biblo
& Tannen, 1965), pp. 241-242.
Scanned by Jerome S. Arkenberg, Cal. State Fullerton. The text has been modernized by
Prof. Arkenberg.
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© Paul Halsall, September 1998
halsall@murray.fordham.edu
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