THE ORGANIZATION OF THE GUILDS
1. It is sometimes imagined that the guilds united all the merchants
and all the craftsmen of one region. This is a mistake. At first those
who lived in the country, with rare exceptions,[5] did not belong to
them: certain towns, Lyons for instance, knew nothing of this method
of organization, and even in those towns where it was in existence,
there were trades which remained outside, and there were also isolated
workers who shunned it--home-workers, who voluntarily or involuntarily
kept themselves apart from it.[6] Guilds, then, were always privileged
bodies, an aristocracy of labour.
It is also imagined that they were voluntary organizations of a uniform
type. There is the classic division into three degrees or grades. Just
as under the feudal system, a man became successively page, esquire,
and knight, and it was necessary, in order to rise from one stage of
the hierarchy to the next, to complete a certain time of service and
of military education, so in the guild organization, he was first an
apprentice for one or more years, then a journeyman (_garçon_, _valet_,
_compagnon_, _serviteur_), working under the orders of others for
an indeterminate period, and finally, a master, established on his
own account and vested with full rights. Just as the knight, after he
had given proof of having finished his instruction, had still, before
putting on his golden spurs, to go through a religious and symbolic
service which included the purifying bath, the oath, and the communion,
so the master, after having proved his capabilities by examination or
by the production of a piece of fine craftsmanship, took the oath,
communicated, and fraternized with his fellows at a solemn banquet.
But this quasi-automatic promotion from rank to rank was in fact far
from being as regular as has been imagined. It was not unusual for
one of the three grades, that of _compagnon_, to be passed over, for
the apprentice to rise directly to the rank of master, and for the
formalities of admission to be reduced to a minimum for one who had
the good luck to be a master's son. From the earliest times mastership
tended to become hereditary, as did the life fiefs held by barons
and earls. Nor on the other hand was it rare for a _compagnon_ to
find himself for life at that grade without the possibility of rising
higher. Moreover, the famous divisions never existed, except in certain
trades.
The truth is that guild organization, even within the walls of a
single town, presented several different types. It might be _simple_,
or _complex_; it might be either half democratic or capitalistic in
structure.
2. It was simple when it included only one trade, and this was fairly
often the case. It was complex when it was composed of several
juxtaposed or superimposed groups. In this case it was a federation of
craft guilds, each keeping its individual life, its own statutes, and
its own officers, but all united in a larger body of which they became
members. This was the name which at Florence was borne by those lesser
bodies of which the whole was composed.[7] The whole was called an
_Arte_, and just as the _membri_ could themselves be subdivided, so the
_Arte_ might be defined as a union of unions.
The Middle Age was not an age of equality. Usually among the groups
united under a central government there was one which predominated,
which held fuller corporate rights; the others, regarded as inferiors,
only enjoyed a greater or smaller part of such rights. Some did not
enjoy the privilege of co-operating in the election of the federal
magistrates, to whom none the less they owed obedience; others were not
allowed to carry the banners, towards which they nevertheless had to
contribute their share.
Take, for example, the _Arte dei medici, speziali, e merciai_, at
Florence, which included, as may be seen, three _membri_--doctors,
apothecaries, and haberdashers. This seems a heterogeneous assemblage,
but the first two are easily accounted for; and if the connection is
less clear between the last and these two, it may be found in the fact
that the haberdashers, like the great shops of our own day, sold some
of everything, and consequently kept in their shops those foreign drugs
and spices of which the _speziali_ were the usual depositaries.[8] The
complication is here increased because the _speziali_, among whom Dante
was enrolled, included as subordinate _membri_ the painters combined
with the colour merchants, while the saddlers were coupled with the
haberdashers.[9]
It will easily be understood how troubled must have been the life of
associations formed of such diverse elements. There was in each an
endless succession of internal struggles in the attempt to maintain
between the varying elements an equilibrium which was necessarily
unstable. Each "member," according to the number of its adherents,
or according to the social standing which it claimed, or which was
accorded to it by public opinion, fought for the mastery; but as in
the course of years their relative importance was constantly modified,
the constitution of the whole body was for ever changing. No fixed
principle regulated its ceaseless mobility, or set on a solid basis the
organization of its compact but rival groups, of which one or another
was ever tempted to imagine itself sacrificed.
3. The guild, when simple, was usually half democratic. Being a
bourgeois growth developing in feudal surroundings, it rested, like the
feudal system itself, on two closely connected principles--hierarchy
and equality. It included several superposed grades, while at the same
time it assured identical rights to everybody included in any one of
those grades. Masters, journeymen, and apprentices were ranked one
above another, but those of the same grade were equals. Inequality
could be, theoretically at least, only temporary, since the master
had once been a journeyman, the journeyman was a prospective master,
and the apprentice in his turn would climb to the top of the ladder.
This state of things, however, was only to be met with in the building
trades, in "small" industry and "small" commerce--the most numerous it
is true, but not the most powerful. There alone was almost realized
the idyllic picture of the workman working in the workshop beside his
master, sharing his life, eating at his table, his partner in joys and
sorrows, joining him in processions and at public ceremonies, until the
day when he himself should rise to be a master.
4. It is convenient to begin with the lowest grade and work upwards.
The apprentice was, as may be imagined, the object of a somewhat keen
solicitude. Apprenticeship, in "small" industry, with which it was
intimately associated, was the means of maintaining that professional
skill on which the guild prided itself. The apprentice was a child whom
his parents or guardians wished to be taught a trade as soon as he was
ten or twelve years of age, although there was no fixed age limit. A
master was found who would take him. Every instructor must be a master:
he must also be of good life and character, endowed with patience, and
approved of by the officers of the guild. If he were recognized as
capable of carrying out his duties, the two parties bound themselves by
a contract, often verbal, often also made before a notary. This fixed
the length of the apprenticeship, which varied greatly in different
trades; for it might cover from one to six, eight, ten, or twelve
years; sometimes it stipulated for a time of probation--usually a
fortnight--during which time either side could cancel the agreement.
The apprenticeship was not free of expense, at any rate to begin with,
and the child's guardians paid an annual fee in corn, bread, or money.
In return, the child received his lodging, food, clothes, washing,
and light, and was supervised and taught in the master's house.
Certain contracts contain special clauses: one states that the family
will supply clothes and boots; another, that the apprentice shall
receive a fixed salary after a certain time; another provides for the
circumstances under which the engagement may be cancelled.[10]
The apprentice had certain obligations, which sometimes, in spite
of his youth, he solemnly swore to keep (the oath has never been
so much used as in the Middle Ages). He promised to be industrious
and obedient, and to work for no other master. The master, on his
side, promised to teach him the secrets of his craft, to treat him
"well and decently in sickness as in health," and certain contracts
add, "provided that the illness does not last longer than a month."
Naturally these duties carried with them certain rights. The master
might correct and beat the apprentice, provided that he did it himself;
a contract drawn up with a rope-maker in Florence says, "short of
drawing blood." It often happened that the apprentice, sick of work
or in a fit of ill-temper, ran away from his master; a limit was
then fixed for his return, and his place was kept for him during his
absence, which sometimes lasted quite a long time (it has been known to
continue as long as twenty-six weeks). If he returned within the time
limit he was punished but taken back; but if he indulged in three such
escapades he was dismissed, his parents had to indemnify the master,
and the truant was not allowed to go back to the craft which he had
abandoned.
However, an enquiry was held to decide whether the master had abused
his rights, and the officers of the guild or the civil authority, as
the case might be, set at liberty any apprentice who had been unkindly
or inhumanly treated. We find a master prosecuted for having beaten
and kicked an apprentice to death; a mistress indicted for having
forced into evil living a young girl who had been entrusted to her
care. In such a case the apprentice was removed from his unworthy
master and put into safer hands. Sometimes it happened that the master
was attacked by a long and serious illness, or that through trouble and
poverty he could no longer carry out his agreement.
A custom, however, sprang up which threatened to wreck the system.
This was the practice of buying for money so many years or months of
service, thus establishing a privilege to the detriment of professional
knowledge and to the advantage of the well-to-do. A sum of money took
the place of actual instruction received, and some apprentices at the
end of two years, others only at the end of four, obtained their final
certificate which allowed them to aspire to mastership.
Attention should be called to the fact that there are many statutes
which limit the number of apprentices. What was the motive of this
limitation? The reason which was usually put foremost--namely,
the difficulty one master would have in completing the technical
education of many pupils--does not seem to have been always the most
serious. Perhaps a reduction was insisted on by the journeymen, for
it was usually to the interest of the masters to have a great many
apprentices, and to keep them for a long time at that stage. They were
so many helpers to whom little or nothing was paid, although the work
exacted of them nearly equalled that of the journeymen. Therefore we
must not be astonished if the latter looked unfavourably on these young
competitors who lowered the price of labour. The poor apprentices
were thus between the devil and the deep sea. They suffered from the
jealousy of the journeymen as well as from the greed of the masters,
who cut down their allowance of food, and by keeping them unreasonably
long prevented them from earning a decent living.
The literature of the times,[11] when it deigns to notice them, leaves
us to infer that their existence was not a particularly happy one;
nevertheless it is only right to add that their lot cannot be compared
with that of the wretched children who, in the opening years of the era
of machinery, were introduced in large numbers into the great modern
industries.
5. The journeymen (also called _valets_, _compagnons_, _serviteurs_,
_massips_, _locatifs_, _garçons_, etc.) were either future masters or
else workmen for life, unable to set up for themselves because they
lacked the indispensable "wherewithal," as certain statutes crudely
express it. Their time of apprenticeship over, they remained with the
master with whom they had lived; or else, especially in the building
trades, having perfected themselves by travel, they went to the market
for disengaged hands[12] and offered their services. They were hired in
certain places where the unemployed of all trades assembled. They were
required to give proof that they were free of all other engagements,
and to present certificates, not only of capability, but of good
conduct, signed by their last master. Thieves, murderers, and outlaws,
and even "dreamers" and slackers, stood no chance of being engaged,
while those who, though unmarried, took a woman about with them, or who
had contracted debts at the inns, were avoided. They were required to
be decently clothed, not only out of consideration for their clients,
but also because they had to live and work all day in the master's
house. The master, when he was satisfied with the references given, and
when he had assured himself that he was not defrauding another master
who had more need of hands than himself, could engage the workman. The
contract which bound them was often verbal, but there was a certain
solemnity attaching to it; for the workman had to swear on the Gospels
and by the saints that he would work in compliance with the rules of
the craft.
The engagement was of very varying duration; it might be entered into
for a year, a month, a week, or a day. The workman who left before the
time agreed upon might be seized, forced to go back to the workshop,
and punished by a fine. If the master wished to dismiss the workman
before the date arranged, he had first to state his reasons for so
doing before a mixed assembly composed of masters and journeymen. A
mutual indemnity seems to have been the rule, whether the workman
abandoned the work he had begun, or whether the master prematurely
dismissed the man he had hired.[13]
The journeyman had to work in his master's workshop, and it was
exceptional for him to go alone to a client (in which case he was
duly authorized by the master), or to finish an urgent piece of work
at home. The length of the working day was regulated by the daylight.
Lighting was in those days so imperfect that night work was forbidden,
as nothing fine or highly finished could be done by the dim light of
candles. This rule could never be broken except in certain crafts--by
the founders, for example, whose work could not be interrupted without
serious loss--or by those who worked for the king, the bishop, or the
lord.[14] The rest worked from sunrise to sunset, an arrangement which
made summer and winter days curiously unequal. Some neighbouring clock
marked the beginning and end of the day, and a few rests amounting
to about an hour and a half broke its length. All this was very
indefinite, and disputes were frequent as to the time for entering or
leaving the workshop. The Paris workmen often complained of being kept
too late, and of the danger of being obliged to go home in the dark
at the mercy of thieves and footpads. It was necessary for the royal
provost to issue a decree before the difficulty was overcome.
The workers, however, reaped the benefit of the many holidays which
starred the calendar and brought a little brightness into the grey
monotony of the days. The Sunday holiday was scrupulously observed
without interfering with the Saturday afternoon, when work stopped
earlier, or the religious festivals which often fell on a week day. It
has been calculated[15] that the days thus officially kept as holidays
amounted to at least thirty, and it may be safely said that work was
less continuous then than nowadays.
To leave work voluntarily at normal times was strictly forbidden,
and the police took up and imprisoned any idlers or vagabonds found
wandering in the towns. But even in those days Monday was often taken
as an unauthorized holiday. Certain crafts had their regular dead
season:[16] thus at Paris among the bucklers (makers of brass buckles)
the _valets_ were dismissed during the month of August; but such
holidays, probably unpaid, were rare, as was also the arrangement to be
found among the weavers at Lunéville, which limited the amount of work
a journeyman might do in a day.
For various reasons it is difficult to state precisely what wages were
paid; there are very few documents; the price of labour varied very
much in different crafts and at different periods; the buying power
of money at any given time is a difficult matter to determine;[17]
and finally, it was the custom to pay a workman partly with money and
partly in kind. It must not be forgotten too that a man ate with his
master, a decided economy on the one hand, and on the other a guarantee
that he was decently fed. Sometimes he received an ell of cloth, a
suit of clothes, or a pair of shoes.[18] It has been stated that his
wages (which were paid weekly or fortnightly) were, in the thirteenth
century, enough for him to live on decently.[19] It has been possible
to reconstruct the earnings and expenditure of a fuller at Léon in
the year 1280; the inventory of a soap-maker of Bruges of about the
same date[20] has been published; it has been estimated that in those
days the daily wage of a _compagnon_ at Aix-la-Chapelle was worth
two geese, and his weekly wage a sheep; comparisons have been made,
and it has been concluded that a workman earned more in Flanders than
in Paris, more in Paris than in the provinces. All this seems likely
enough; but I should not dare to generalize from such problematic
calculations. I limit myself to stating that historians are almost
unanimous in holding that, taking into consideration that less was
spent on food, rent, and furniture, and above all on intellectual needs
(because both the demands were less and the prices lower), it was
easier for a workman's family to make both ends meet in those days than
it is now.
It is at any rate certain that a journeyman's salary was sometimes
guaranteed to him; this is shown by an article of the regulations in
force among the tailors of Montpellier, dated July 3, 1323:
"If a master does one of his workmen a wrong in connection with the
wages due to him, that master must be held to give satisfaction to the
said workman, according to the judgment of the other masters; and, if
he does not do this, no workman may henceforward work with him until he
is acquitted; and, in case of non-payment, he must give and hand over
to the relief fund of the guild ten 'deniers tournois' [of Tours]."
On the whole, then, in spite of the varying conditions in the Middle
Ages, it is not too much to say that, materially, the position of
the journeyman was at least equal, if not superior, to that of the
workman of to-day. It was also better morally. He sometimes assisted
in the drawing up and execution of the laws of the community; he was
his master's companion in ideas, beliefs, education, tastes. Above
all, there was the possibility of rising one day to the same social
level. Certainly one paid and the other was paid, and that alone was
enough to set up a barrier between the two. But where "small" industry
predominated, there was not as yet a violent and lasting struggle
between two diametrically opposed classes. Nevertheless, from this time
onwards, an ever-increasing strife and discord may be traced.
First the privileges accorded to the sons of masters tended to close
the guilds and to keep the workmen in the position of wage-earners;
this gave rise to serious dissatisfaction. Besides this, the masters
were not always just, as even their statutes prove. Those of the
tailors of Montpellier, which we have just quoted, decreed that the
workshops of every master who had defrauded a workman of his wages
should be boycotted. These injustices therefore must have occurred,
since trouble was taken to repress them. Still more acute was the
dissatisfaction in towns where the rudiments of "great" industry
existed. Strikes broke out, with a spice of violence. In 1280 the
cloth-workers of Provins rose and killed the mayor;[21] at Ypres, at
the same date, there was a similar revolt for a similar reason, viz.
the attempt to impose on the workmen too long a working day. At Chalon,
the king of France had to intervene to regulate the hours of labour.
Already the question of combination was discussed, and the masters did
their best to prevent it. At Rheims in 1292 a decision by arbitration
prohibited alliances whether of _compagnons_ against masters or of
masters against _compagnons_. This already displays the spirit of
the famous law which was to be voted by the Constituent Assembly in
1791.[22] In the year 1280, in the _Coutume de Beauvoisis_ by the
jurist Beaumanoir, the combination of workmen is clearly defined as an
offence[23]--"any alliance against the common profit, when any class
of persons pledge themselves, undertake, or covenant not to work at so
low a wage as before, and so raise their wages on their own authority,
agree not to work for less, and combine to put constraint or threats on
the _compagnons_ who will not enter their alliance."
The attempt to raise wages by combination was condemned under the
pretext that it would make everything dearer, and was punished by the
lord by fine and imprisonment.
One can see in these and other symptoms signs of the coming storm.
The workmen protested against the importation of foreign workers as
lowering the price of labour, and made them submit to an entrance
fee. They attempted to secure a monopoly of work, just as the masters
attempted to secure the monopoly of this or that manufacture. Thus
amongst the nail-makers of Paris[24] it was forbidden to hire a
_compagnon_ from elsewhere, as long as one belonging to the district
was left in the market. Even in the religious brotherhoods, which
usually united master and workman at the same altar, a division
occurred, and in certain crafts the journeymen formed separate
brotherhoods: the working bakers of Toulouse, the working shoemakers
of Paris, set up their brotherhoods in opposition to the corresponding
societies of masters, and this shows that the dim consciousness of the
possession of distinct interests and rights was waking within them.[25]
6. Finally we should take into account the condition of the masters
in the lesser guilds where the workshop remained small, intimate, and
homely, but these we shall constantly meet with again when we come to
study the life and purpose of the guilds, since it was they who made
the statutes and administered them. For the present it is enough to
mention that women were not excluded from guild life. It would be a
mistake to imagine that the woman of the Middle Ages was confined to
her home, and was ignorant of the difficulties of a worker's life.
In those days she had an economic independence, such as is hardly to
be met with in our own times. In many countries she possessed, for
instance, the power to dispose of her property without her husband's
permission. It is therefore natural that there should be women's guilds
organized and administered like those of the men. They existed in
exclusively feminine crafts: fifteen of them were to be found in Paris
alone towards the end of the thirteenth century, in the dressmaking
industry and among the silk-workers and gold-thread workers especially.
There were also the mixed crafts--that is, crafts followed both by men
and women--which in Paris numbered about eighty. In them a master's
widow had the right to carry on her husband's workshop after his death.
This right was often disputed. Thus in 1263 the bakers of Pontoise
attempted to take it from the women, under the pretext that they were
not strong enough to knead the bread with their own hands; their
claims, however, were dismissed by an ordinance of the _Parlement_.
Another decree preserved to the widows this right even when they were
remarried to a man not of the craft.
Nevertheless, in many towns, above all in those where entry into a
guild conferred political rights and imposed military duties, the
women could not become masters. Condemned to remain labourers, working
at home, and for this reason isolated, they appear to have been paid
lower wages than the workmen; and certain documents show them seeking
in prostitution a supplement to their meagre wages, or appropriating
some of the raw silk entrusted to them to wind and spin. But other
documents show them as benefiting by humane measures which the
workwomen of to-day might envy them. They were forbidden to work in the
craft of "Saracen" carpet-making, because of the danger of injuring
themselves during pregnancy. This protective legislation dates from the
year 1290: for them, as for children, exhausting and killing days of
work were yet to come.[26] All the same, one can see the tendency to
keep them in an inferior position for life, and, taken along with the
strikes and revolts, the first appearances of which amongst weavers,
fullers, and cloth-workers we have already mentioned, this clearly
shows that, side by side with the half-democratic guilds which were the
humblest, there existed others of a very different type.
7. Directly we go on to study the great commercial and industrial
guilds profound inequalities appear. Nor do these disappear with time;
whether we deal with the bankers' or with the drapers' guilds, we find
that their organization is already founded on the capitalist system.
The masters, often grouped together in companies, are great personages,
rich tradesmen, influential politicians, separated from those they
employ by a deep and permanent gulf.
The river merchants of Paris, the Flemish and German Hanse, the
English Guild Merchants, and the _Arte di Calimala_ in the commune
of Florence,[27] may be taken as types of the great commercial
guilds. They were the first to succeed in making their power felt,
and represent, first by right of priority, and later by right of
wealth, all that existed in the way of business, the _Universitas
mercatorum_, and they long retained an uncontested supremacy. Not only
the whole body, but the heads of the houses or societies dependent
on them, had numberless subordinates, destined for the most part
to remain subordinates--cashiers, book-keepers, porters, brokers,
carriers, agents, messengers. These paid agents--often sent abroad
to the depots, branch houses, bonded warehouses, _fondouks_, owned
collectively or individually by the wholesale merchants whose servants
they were--were always under the strictest regulations. Take, for
instance, the prohibition to marry which the Hanseatic League imposed
on the young employees whom it planted like soldiers in the countries
with which it traded. Nor was the Florentine _Arte di Calimala_, so
called after the ill-famed street in which its rich and sombre shops
were situated, any more lenient to those of its agents who, especially
in France, were set to watch over its interests. The merchants
of the Calimala--buyers, finishers, and retailers of fine cloth,
money-changers too, and great business magnates, constantly acting as
mediums of communication between the West and the East--were far from
treating their indispensable but untrustworthy subordinates in a spirit
of brotherhood. They looked on them with suspicion as inferiors.
They complain of their "unbridled malice";[28] they reproach them,
and probably not without reason, with making their fortunes at the
expense of the firms which paid them. It was decided that in the case
of a dispute as to wages, if nothing had been arranged in writing,
the master could settle the matter at will without being bound by
precedent or by anything he had paid in a similar case. If the employee
was unlucky enough to return to Florence much richer than he left it,
he was at once spied upon, information was lodged against him, and
an inquiry instituted by the consuls of the guild; after which he
was summoned to appear and made to disgorge and restore his unlawful
profits. If he could not explain the origin of his surplus gains, he
was treated as a bankrupt, his name and effigy were posted up, and
the town authority was appealed to that he might be tortured till a
confession of theft or fraud was forced from him; he was then banished
from the Commune. Thus we see exasperated masters dealing severely with
dishonest servants: capital ruling labour without tact or consideration.
The autocratic and capitalistic character of the great industrial
guilds is even more striking.[29]
The woollen industry offers the most remarkable instances. The
manufacture of cloth (which was the principal article of export to the
Levantine markets) was the most advanced and the most active industry
of the Middle Ages, with its appliances already half mechanical,
supplying distant customers scattered all over the world. It was the
prelude to that intensity of production in modern times which is the
result of international commerce.
The wholesale cloth merchants no longer worked with their own
hands; they confined themselves to giving orders and superintending
everything; they supplied the initiative; they were the prime movers
in the weaving trades which depended on their orders; they regulated
the quantity and quality of production; they raised the price of raw
material, and the workmen's wages; they often provided the appliances
for work; they undertook the sale and distribution of goods, taking the
risks, but also the profits. Already they were capitalists, fulfilling
all the functions of captains of industry.
What became, then, of the intimate and cordial relations between
masters, journeymen, and apprentices? The guilds began to assume a
character unlike anything which could exist among the clothiers or
blacksmiths for instance. This new state of affairs suddenly arose at
Florence in the _Arte della Lana_. At some periods of its existence
this guild had a membership of 20,000 to 30,000, but it was like a
pyramid, with a very large base, numerous tiers, and a very small apex.
At the summit were the masters, who were recruited entirely from among
the rich families and formed a solid alliance for the defence of their
own interests. Forced to guard against the perils which threatened
their business on every hand--the difficulty of transport, a foreign
country closed to them by war or by a tariff, the jealousy of rival
towns--they tried to recoup themselves by employing cheap labour, and,
remembering the maxim "divide and rule," they ranked the workmen they
employed in different degrees of dependence and poverty.
Some classes of workers, such as dyers and retailers, were affiliated
to the _arte_ under the name of inferior _membri_. True, they were
allowed certain advantages, a shadow of autonomy, and liberty of
association, but at the same time they were kept under strict rules and
under the vow to obey officers nominated by the masters alone. Thus the
dyers were not allowed to work on their own account, and were subject
to heavy fines if the goods entrusted to them suffered the slightest
damage; the rate of wages was fixed, but not the date of payment, which
was invariably delayed.
On a lower tier came the weavers and the male and female spinners;
both classes were isolated home-workers under the system of domestic
manufacture, which is highly unfavourable to combination and therefore
to the independence of the workers. The weavers, whether proprietors
or lessees of their trade, could not set up without the permission
of the masters who held the monopoly of wool, on whom they therefore
became entirely dependent. They were pieceworkers and had no guaranteed
schedule of prices.
The spinners lived for the most part in the country, and this country
labour served, as usual, to lower the rate of wages in the towns;
perhaps this was why the Florentine tradesmen favoured the abolition
of serfdom, for the reason that its abolition took the peasants from
the land and left them free but without property, thus forcing them
to hire themselves out, and so creating a reserve army for the needs
of industry. The masters invented a curious method of keeping the
women weavers in their power. Every year the consuls obtained pastoral
letters from the bishops of Fiesole and Florence, which, at Christmas,
Easter, Whitsuntide, and All Saints, were read in the villages from
the bishop's throne. In these letters the careless spinner who
wasted the wool which had been entrusted to her was threatened with
ecclesiastical censure and even with excommunication if she repeated
the offence. An excellent idea indeed, to use the thunderbolts of the
Church for the benefit of the great manufacturers!
On a lower tier again we find the washers, beaters, and carders of
wool, the fullers and the soapboilers, who formed the lowest grade of
the labouring classes--a true industrial proletariat,--wage-earners
already living under the régime of modern manufacture. They were
crowded together in large workshops, subjected to a rigorous
discipline, compelled to come and go at the sound of the bell, paid
at the will of the masters--and always in silver or copper, or in
small coin which was often debased,--supervised by foremen, and
placed under the authority of an external official who was a sort of
industrial magistrate or policeman chosen by the consuls of the _arte_
and empowered to inflict fines, discharges, and punishments, and even
imprisonment and torture. In addition, these tools or subjects of the
guilds were absolutely forbidden to combine, to act in concert, to
assemble together, or even to emigrate. They were the victims of an
almost perfect system of slavery.
This short sketch shows how necessary it is to discriminate between the
various types of guilds. But, however much they differed in their inner
characteristics, they shared many points of resemblance which we must
now proceed to examine.