Origins: the Guild City and Its Merchants (to 1519) — a part of the book Zurich as an International Financial Centre by Dr Alexander Ressos.
A financial centre is a sediment of decisions taken over centuries. Before Zurich had a bank, a stock exchange or an insurer, it had a site on the outflow of a lake, a Roman customs post, a royal abbey with the right to strike coin and levy tolls, a council of merchants and knights, and from 1336 a constitution that gave the craft guilds a share of power. Part A follows this long prehistory from the statio Turicensis of the Roman period to the eve of the Reformation in 1519.
Four chapters structure the account. Chapter I traces the continuity of Zurich as a place of exchange from the Roman customs station on the Lindenhof through the Carolingian foundations of the Grossmünster and the Fraumünster to imperial freedom and the entry into the Confederation in 1351. Chapter II analyses the guild constitution of Rudolf Brun and the political economy it created: regulated markets, collegial government and a merchant elite bound into the institutions of the city. Chapter III describes the trade routes over the lake, the Limmat and the Alpine passes, the early silk trade and the relations with the Upper German and Italian trading cities. Chapter IV turns to money itself: the mint, the plurality of currencies, the prohibition of usury and the instruments that circumvented it, the Jewish and Lombard lenders, public debt and the pensions paid by foreign powers for Swiss mercenaries.
Each chapter closes by asking what the period left to the financial centre of today. The answers recur across the four chapters: a location that turned transit into income, a political culture of consensus and distrust of concentrated power, a public authority accustomed to administering credit, and a merchant class that learnt early to operate within dense regulation. These traits prepared the ground on which the Reformation, examined in Part B, would build a new moral economy of capital.
This part belongs to Zurich as an International Financial Centre by Dr Alexander Ressos, published here in full, section by section.
Turicum: from Roman customs post to medieval market town — overview and summary
Every financial centre rests on a place, and every place carries a history that shapes what can be built on it. Read more Zurich · OriginsThe Roman statio Turicensis and the Quadragesima Galliarum
The Roman customs post did not arise in empty country. The shores of Lake Zurich had been settled since the Neolithic. Read more Zurich · OriginsLate antiquity and the Alamannic period
The third century brought the northern provinces of the Empire into a prolonged crisis. Read more Zurich · OriginsCarolingian foundations: the royal fisc, the Grossmünster and the Fraumünster
The Frankish kings incorporated the region of the Alamanni into their kingdom during the sixth century, but it was under the Carolingians that Zurich regained a significance comparable to that of the… Read more Zurich · OriginsThe Pfalz on the Lindenhof and royal presence
Kings in the early and high Middle Ages governed by travelling. Having no fixed capital, they moved with their court from one place to another, lodging in episcopal cities, royal abbeys and palaces. Read more Zurich · OriginsThe abbess’s regalia: coinage, market and toll
Around 1045, in the reign of Henry III, the Fraumünster received the rights of coinage, toll and market. Read more Zurich · OriginsThe Zähringer, imperial freedom and the rise of the council
Ecclesiastical lordships required lay protectors. The advocates (Vögte) of the Zurich churches exercised on their behalf the high jurisdiction, which clerics could not wield, and represented them in… Read more Zurich · OriginsZurich enters the Confederation (1351) and builds a territory
The guild constitution of 1336 left Zurich internally divided. Members of the old council who had been expelled by Rudolf Brun found support among the nobility of the region, above all Count Johann… Read more Zurich · OriginsWhat the long history left to the financial centre
The first legacy of the period from Turicum to the late medieval city is location in the fullest sense. Read more Zurich · OriginsThe Brun constitution of 1336 and the political economy of the guilds — overview and summary
On 16 July 1336 the citizens of Zurich gathered in the Franciscan friary and swore an oath to a document that would govern their city, with successive amendments, for more than four and a half… Read more Zurich · OriginsZurich before 1336: a council of knights and merchants
By the early fourteenth century Zurich was a self-governing imperial town. The imperial advocacy that the Zähringer dukes had held since 1098 was not granted again as a hereditary fief after their… Read more Zurich · OriginsRudolf Brun and the revolution of 1336
Rudolf Brun is first mentioned in the Zurich sources in 1324. The son of Jakob Brun, himself a councillor, and of Mechthild, he was a knight and married Margaretha Fütschi, the daughter of a… Read more Zurich · OriginsThe Constaffel and the thirteen guilds
The word Constaffel, or Konstaffel, derives from legal terminology in which it designated the inhabitants of a castle, a town or a quarter of a town. Read more Zurich · OriginsRevising the compact: the Geschworene Briefe of 1373, 1393, 1489 and 1498
A distinctive feature of Zurich’s constitutional history is that the city never adopted a constitution once and for all. Read more Zurich · OriginsHow the guilds governed the market
The political guilds of Zurich were also economic authorities. They wrote and enforced the rules of the crafts, supervised quality, fixed or influenced prices and wages, controlled admission to… Read more Zurich · OriginsMerchants and the state: the Constaffel, the Saffran and the Meisen
The revolution of 1336 was directed against a merchant oligarchy, yet merchants kept their access to power through new channels. Read more Zurich · OriginsHans Waldmann and the limits of power
No figure illustrates the possibilities and the limits of the guild order better than Hans Waldmann. Read more Zurich · OriginsThe long survival of the guild order and its legacy
The guild constitution created by Brun and revised in 1373, 1393, 1489 and 1498 survived the Reformation, the Thirty Years’ War and the Enlightenment. It adapted through successive amendments. Read more Zurich · OriginsLake, Limmat and Alpine passes: trade routes before the Reformation — overview and summary
Anyone who walks today from the Paradeplatz down to the Limmat, past the Fraumünster and along the Schipfe, crosses in a few hundred metres the whole geography that this chapter describes. Read more Zurich · OriginsA city at the junction of waters
Zurich stands at the point where the Limmat leaves the northern end of Lake Zurich. Read more Zurich · OriginsThe Alpine passes and the shape of the transit business
Long before Zurich existed as a town the Alps were crossed, the passes of Graubünden being among the oldest routes. Read more Zurich · OriginsBoatmen, warehouses and tolls in the city
The men who worked Zurich’s waterways were among the first groups to be organised in the new constitutional order of 1336. Read more Zurich · OriginsSilk, linen and wool: Zurich’s first export trades
Transit was one foundation of a merchant city, and production for export was another. Read more Zurich · OriginsMarkets, fairs, weights and measures
For most of its inhabitants and for the surrounding countryside, Zurich was first of all a market. Read more Zurich · OriginsNeighbours and partners: Constance, Basel, Schaffhausen, Upper Germany and Italy
Who were the Zurich merchants who used these routes? The HLS article on merchants gives the outline. Read more Zurich · OriginsThe Old Zurich War and the struggle for the eastern route
The central political crisis of fifteenth-century Zurich was, at its root, a struggle over the eastern trade corridor. Read more Zurich · OriginsFrom the war to the Reformation: recovery within limits
The seven decades between the peace of 1450 and the beginning of Zwingli’s ministry at the Grossmünster in 1519 were a period of recovery within limits. Read more Zurich · OriginsWhat the routes left behind: transit, trade and the financial centre
It remains to ask what the transit and trade function of the medieval city contributed to Zurich’s later role as a financial centre. Read more Zurich · OriginsMoney, coinage and credit in late medieval Zurich — overview and summary
A modern visitor who walks from Paradeplatz down the Bahnhofstrasse passes, within a few hundred metres, the head offices of the country’s largest bank, the Swiss National Bank’s branch premises and… Read more Zurich · OriginsThe abbess’s penny: the Zurich mint from the eleventh century to 1425
The history of Zurich money begins with the Fraumünster. King Louis the German founded the abbey on 21 July 853 as a royal house for his daughter Hildegard, endowing it with the royal court at… Read more Zurich · OriginsMany coins, one market: currencies, conventions and money-changing
Late medieval Zurich lived with monetary plurality. The local penny circulated alongside the coins of neighbouring mints, of which there were many: the bishops of Constance and Basel, the abbeys of… Read more Zurich · OriginsThe prohibition of usury and the Rentenkauf
The medieval Church condemned the taking of interest on a loan. Drawing on the Old Testament prohibition of lending at interest to a brother, on the saying of Christ in Luke 6:35 (“lend, hoping for… Read more Zurich · OriginsHow credit worked in practice
In a society where most wealth consisted of land and the rights attached to it, credit was above all land credit. The Historical Dictionary distinguishes several medieval forms of pledge. Read more Zurich · OriginsJewish lenders in Zurich
Jews are documented in Swiss towns from the second half of the twelfth century, first in Geneva, then from 1213 in Basel and subsequently in Zurich, St Gall and other towns. Read more Zurich · OriginsLombards and Cahorsins in Zurich and the Swiss towns
The Christian professional lenders of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries came from two regions: northern Italy, above all Piedmont and Lombardy, with Asti as a leading centre, and southern… Read more Zurich · OriginsThe city as borrower and taxpayer: public finance
Public finance in the modern sense requires written accounts. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland dates the emergence of public budgets in the sources to the spread of written administration:… Read more Zurich · OriginsBuying a territory: pledges and the price of Kyburg
Between the middle of the fourteenth century and the end of the fifteenth, Zurich built one of the largest city states north of the Alps. Read more Zurich · OriginsPensions and the finance of mercenary service, 1474–1516
In the last quarter of the fifteenth century a new source of money flowed into the Confederation and transformed its public and private finances: the payments of foreign powers for Swiss soldiers. Read more Zurich · OriginsLegacy for the financial centre
Late medieval Zurich had no bank, no stock exchange and no merchant house of international standing. Read more