Baker

Someone supplying the staff of life.

"The connection between seigneurial power and urban vitality is self-evident. When an active court had its seat in the countryside, it would quickly give rise to an urban settlement. Before the year 1000 a burgus had formed at the abbey gate of Cluny; by the end of the twelfth century it could probably have mustered some two thousand inhabitants, closely associated for the most part with the economy of the large and extravagant monastic household. In Alsace, Haguenau became a little town shortly after Frederick Barbarossa had founded a palace there in 1164. The initial role of the burgi was to make provision for the lord's court by means of handicrafts and trade. Craft industries appear to have been entirely domestic in origin. They evolved in the form of outgrowths from manorial utilities: bread-oven, forge, tannery and weaving shed. Little by little these workshops offered part of what they produced to outside customers. The man who had charge of a bread-oven at the approaches to the bridge at Macon in the late eleventh century first supplied the bishop's household; he also sold bread to travellers, and his business grew as the road became busier, likewise his share of economic independence."

Georges Duby, The Early Growth of European Economy (1969).

[Translated by Howard B. Clarke.]