new ideas and products to Europe’s reawakening cities (Pirenne 1952). As commerce and trade expanded, so did the cities. In the year 1000 Europe boasted some thirty-five to forty-five cities with populations of more than twenty thousand. By 1340 that figure had probably risen to more than one hundred (Bairoch 1988:136). By the start of the fourteenth century there were five European cities with populations likely exceeding 100,000. Paris had jumped from 20,000 in the year 1000 to around 160,000 in