Why Did Medieval Cities Hire Street Musicians as First Responders?

Musicians patrolled streets and city gates—carrying badges and even taking an oath of office. They were often as bulky as football players nowadays. But why?

You can tell a lot about a city just by counting up its essential workers, all those police officers and fire fighters and other specialized personnel it keeps on the payroll. But six hundred years ago, cities hired lots of street musicians—and it happened all over Europe. Any sizable municipal government recognized the need for musicians as part of what we today call first responders. Consider the peculiar law in London in the late medieval period, that required each entry gate into the city to keep a musician on duty. This could be a dangerous job—city gates were where attackers and other…

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