THE AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GUILDS
The guilds appear to have had three essential aims: an _economic_ aim,
a _social and moral_ aim, and a _political_ aim.
1. The economic aim comes first in time and importance. The guild
was first and foremost a fighting organization for the defence of
the trade interests of those who belonged to it. It was jealous both
of the welfare and of the honour of the craft--two things intimately
connected; for it realized that good reputation is one of the
conditions of good business. Naturally the first means to suggest
itself for the attainment of this double ideal was the regulation of
_production_ and _sale_.
With regard to production, the guilds prided themselves on giving an
official guarantee to the consumer. Hence the many articles contained
in the statutes in which they boast of their good faith,[33] or make a
point of emphasizing the honesty of their trade dealings; hence their
complicated regulations, often so misunderstood by historians, for the
prevention of bad work; hence the minute instructions prescribing the
number of vats into which the Florentine dyer was to dip his materials
and the quantity and quality of the colouring matters he was to
employ; the size of the meshes in the nets which the Roman fisherman
was to cast into the Tiber;[34] the length of the pieces of linen to
be woven by the Parisian spinner, regulated by that of the tablecloths
which covered the table of "good King Philip";[35] or the colour and
size of the garments which the silk workers of Constantinople were to
make.[36]
In pursuance of the same principle, and on the authority of the
Statutes--intervention on the part of the public authorities not being
required--it was strictly forbidden, under penalty of a fine or of
expulsion, to sell damaged meat, bad fish, rotten eggs,[37] or pigs
which had been fed by a barber-surgeon who might have fattened them
on the blood of sick people.[38] The dyers pledged themselves to use
nothing but fast colours, furriers to use only skins which had not
been previously used, mattress-makers never to employ wool coming from
hospitals. The tailor who spoilt a garment or kept a piece of cloth
entrusted to him was made to pay back his client and was punished by
his fellows. In Maine a butcher might not display a piece of beef on
his stall unless two witnesses could testify to having seen the animal
brought in alive.[39] If by any chance an article passed through the
hands of two craft guilds, delegates from each had to assure themselves
that the rules of both had been faithfully observed.[40]
The guild prided itself on letting nothing leave its shops but finished
products, perfect of their kind; it examined and stamped every article,
and further required that it should bear a special trade-mark stating
where it was made and its just price.[41] At Ypres, towards the end of
the thirteenth century, the pieces of cloth thus officially accepted
numbered 8000 a year. Nor was this all; like Caesar's wife, the guild
must be above suspicion; not only fraud, but the very appearance of
fraud was rigorously excluded, all that might deceive the buyer was
forbidden. In Florence jewellers might not use sham stones, even if
they declared them to be such;[42] in Paris it was forbidden to make
glass jewels in imitation of real stones, or to put a leaf of metal
under an emerald to give it an artificial brilliance;[43] plated and
lined goods were not allowed, as they might be mistaken for solid gold
or silver.[44] Once when a goldsmith, thinking no harm, had made a bowl
of this kind, it was decided, after deliberation, to sell it secretly,
and he was cautioned never to make another.
Sale was as carefully watched over as production. Not only had the
weights and measures to be verified and controlled in conformity with
carefully preserved standards, but at Florence, for instance, the
"iron ruler" of the _Calimala_ was the standard for measuring woollen
materials, and there were besides minute directions for measuring;
there were prescribed methods for measuring a piece of cloth, or for
filling a bushel with onions by placing the arms round the edge in
order to add to the contents and ensure good measure.[45]
In "great" commerce the guild regulated the conditions which made
a bargain valid, the duty of paying the _denier à Dieu_, and the
earnest-money, the regular term for completing payment, the rate of
discount, and the transparent methods of avoiding the ban placed on
interest by the Church,[46] the methods of book-keeping, etc. By means
of these Statutes commerce was eventually to emerge armed with full
rights; and as the failure of one member to fulfil his undertakings
might compromise all the others, we can understand, even if we cannot
approve, the severity of the penalties inflicted on a bankrupt, the
posting up of his name and effigy, his expulsion from the guild, his
imprisonment and occasionally his banishment from the city.
One serious result of this constant and perfectly legitimate effort to
assure the success of the guild was that it produced a strong desire
to reduce, or if possible do away with, competition. The Middle Ages
did not understand rights except under the form of privileges, and the
guild always tended to arrogate to itself the monopoly of the craft
which it carried on in a city. It even tried to exclude neighbouring
towns from the market, and this was the secret of the desperate
struggles which set at enmity Bruges and Ghent, Siena, Pisa, and
Florence, Genoa and Venice, etc.
There is ample proof of this exclusive spirit. At first the guilds
tried to keep their processes secret, just as to-day a nation makes a
mystery of its new submarine or explosive. Woe to him who betrayed
the secret which gave the guild its superiority over the others! He
was punished by his fellows and by the law. The merchants of the
Calimala swore not to reveal what was said in the Councils of the
guild. Florence owed part of her wealth to the fact that for long she
alone knew the secret of making gold and silver brocade. A tragic
example of what it might cost to be indiscreet may be found in a
Venetian law of 1454: "If a workman carry into another country any
art or craft to the detriment of the Republic, he will be ordered to
return; if he disobeys, his nearest relatives will be imprisoned, in
order that the solidarity of the family may persuade him to return;
if he persists in his disobedience, secret measures will be taken to
have him killed wherever he may be." The following is an example of the
jealous care with which the guild tried to prevent any encroachment on
its domain: in Paris the guild of the bird fanciers attempted, though
unsuccessfully, to prevent citizens from setting on eggs canaries which
they had caged, as it injured the trade of the guild.[47]
It may well be imagined that guilds so jealous of their prerogatives
did not make it easy for merchants and workmen coming in from outside.
In the free towns (i.e. towns in which industry was organised) a
master's licence obtained in a neighbouring, or even a sister, town,
was invalid, just as to-day the diploma of doctor of medicine gained in
one country does not carry with it the right to practise in another.
To open a shop, it was necessary to have served an apprenticeship in
that city; or at the very least it was necessary to have learnt the
trade for the same number of years demanded of the apprentices in that
district. The merchants who came from other parts, not like birds of
passage to disappear with the fairs, but to settle down and establish
themselves in a country, were subject to the same dues as the citizens,
but did not share with them the franchise and might not join their
guilds. They formed colonies and attempted to obtain, or even bought
permission to reside and trade; but they ran the risk of being arrested
or turned out at any moment, especially if they were money-lenders, as,
for instance, the Lombards, who both in France and England many a time
suffered from these intermittent persecutions. Outsiders, even though
in many cases they had originally come from the district, were hampered
by all sorts of restraints and obligations. In short, the town market
was usually reserved for the citizens of the town, and the policy
of the guilds (with occasional exceptions on the part of the great
commercial guilds) was to shut the door to all foreign goods which
they could produce themselves. Even within the city walls it was their
ambition to ruin, or to force into their ranks, free lances of the same
trade;[48] and although the word "boycott" was not then invented, the
thing itself already existed, and was practised when necessary.
This tendency to preserve craft monopoly led to other practices, and
we find each guild jealously guarding its particular province against
all intruders. Doubtless in those days an article was as a rule wholly
produced in a single workshop, but it sometimes happened that an
article had to pass through the hands of more than one craft guild;
this was the case with cloth, leather, and arms. Sometimes, again, a
craft which began by being simple became so complex that its very
development forced it to split up. Thus we find in some large towns
that the wine merchants were subdivided into five classes: wholesale
merchants; _hôteliers_ (hotel-keepers), who lodged and catered;
_cabaretiers_ (inn-keepers), who served food and drink; _taverniers_
(publicans), who served drink only; and _marchands à pot_ (bottlers),
who retailed wine to be taken away. It followed that the dividing line
between guild and guild was often very doubtful, and this situation was
continually giving rise to differences, quarrels, and lawsuits, some of
which lasted for centuries.
In one case[49] we find a currier, who had taken to tanning, forced
to choose between the two trades; in another we find goldsmiths
forbidden to encroach on the business of money-changing. Interminable
disputes dragged on between the tailors, who sold new clothes, and
the sellers of old clothes,[50] and the courts laboured for years and
years to fix the exact moment at which a new suit became an old one!
The harness makers quarrelled with the saddlers; the sword polishers
with the sword-pommel makers; the bakers with the confectioners; the
cooks with the mustard makers; the woollen merchants with the fullers;
the leather-dressers with the shamoy-dressers; the dealers in geese
with the poulterers, etc, etc.[51] When it was not a question of the
right of manufacture, they quarrelled over the best pitches. At Paris
the money-changers of the Pont-au-Change complained that the approach
to their shop was obstructed by the birdsellers, and tried to force
them to settle elsewhere. The wheelwrights established in the Rue
de la Charronnerie (it might have happened yesterday) compelled the
clothes-sellers to move about with their hand-barrows, instead of
taking up their station in their neighbourhood. These ever-recurring
legal disputes were inherent in the guild system and could only
disappear with the system itself.
Lastly, this competition for monopolies made itself felt in the very
heart of each guild. It led directly to rigorous limitation of the
number of masters. If, in fact, all those who were qualified to receive
mastership had been left free to set up, those who first held the
privilege would have risked being lost in the crowd of newcomers. This
explains why even here they sought to reduce competition to a minimum.
Only six barbers were allowed in Limoges, and when one of them died,
his successor was elected after a competitive examination. At Angers
the head of the guild only created new master butchers every seven
years, and even then it was necessary to obtain the consent of the
other masters.[52] In certain towns when a family in possession of a
craft died out, its house of business and appliances reverted to the
guild, which indemnified the heirs.[53] It was an expense, but it meant
one competitor the less. Is it to be wondered at that mastership in
many crafts gradually became hereditary? It was only necessary to push
the principle a little further. If we consult the _Book of Crafts_
drawn up by Étienne Boileau from 1261 to 1270 by order of Louis IX.,
we read in the Statutes of the napery weavers of Paris: "No one may be
master weaver except the son of a master." Thus, from the thirteenth
century, guild organization, in the pursuit of its economic ends,
closed its ranks and tended to become a narrow oligarchy.
2. The second ruling idea of the Guild Statutes was the pursuit of
moral and social aims; it desired to establish between the masters of
which it was composed honest competition--"fair play." It desired to
prevent the great from crushing the small, the rich from ruining the
poor, and, in order to succeed, it tried to make advantages and charges
equal for all. Its motto so far was: Solidarity.
Thus, every member was forbidden to buy up raw material for his own
profit. If the arrival of fresh fish, hay, wine, wheat, or leather was
announced, no one might forestall the others and buy cheaply to sell
dearly; all should profit equally by the natural course of events. When
a merchant treated with a seller who had come into the town, any of his
fellows who happened to come in at the moment when the earnest-money
was paid and the striking of hands in ratification of the bargain
took place, had the right to claim a share in the transaction and to
obtain the goods in question at the same price.[54] Sometimes, in order
to avoid abuses, anything which had come within the city walls was
divided into portions and the distribution made in the presence of an
official (_prud'homme_), who saw that the allocation was just, that
is to say, in proportion to the needs of each shop or workshop.[55]
Often the maximum amount which an individual might acquire was strictly
laid down. At Rome a mattress maker might not buy more than a thousand
pounds of horse hair at a time, nor a shoemaker more than twenty
skins. To make assurance doubly sure, the community, when it was rich,
undertook to do the buying for its members. At Florence the _Arte della
Lana_ became the middleman;[56] it bought wholesale the wool, kermes,
alum, and oil, which it distributed according to a uniform tariff
amongst its members, in proportion to their requirements; it possessed,
in its own name, warehouses, shops, wash-houses, and dyeing-houses,
which were used by all. Thus it came to carry out transactions to
the loss of the common funds but to the profit of all the master
woollen merchants. It even helped the masters with any available
funds by financing them. Again, at its own expense, it introduced new
manufactures or called in foreign workmen. Later on it even possessed
its own ships for the transport of the merchandise which it imported or
exported. It acted like a trust or cartel.
Still with a view to equalizing matters between masters, the cornering
of the supply of labour was forbidden, and not only was it forbidden
to tempt away a rival's workmen by the offer of a higher wage,[57] but
as a rule a man might not keep more apprentices than others, and the
spirit of equality was carried to such lengths on this point that at
Paris,[58] among the leather-dressers, no master who employed three or
more workmen might refuse to give up one of them to any fellow-master
who had in hand a pressing piece of work and only one, or no, _valet_
to execute it.
For the same reason a workman might not complete work begun by another
man and taken away from him. Even the doctors at Florence might not
undertake the cure of a patient who had already been attended by
a colleague; but this rule was repealed, no doubt because it was
dangerous to the patients.[59]
Again, it was forbidden to monopolize customers, to invite into your
own shop the people who had stopped before a neighbour's display of
goods, to call in the passers-by, or to send a piece of cloth on
approbation to a customer's house.[60] All individual advertisement
was looked on as tending to the detriment of others. The Florentine
innkeeper who gave wine or food to a stranger with the object of
attracting him to his hostelry was liable to a fine.[61] Equally open
to punishment was the merchant who obtained possession of another man's
shop by offering the landlord a higher rent. Any bonus offered to a
buyer was considered an unlawful and dishonest bait.
The formation within the guild of a separate league for the sale of
goods at a rebate was prohibited; prices, conditions of payment, the
rate of discount, and the hours of labour in the workshops were the
same for all members. Privileges and charges had to be the same for all
masters, even when the masters were women.
One feels that there was a desire to unite the masters into one large
family. So true was this that, in commercial matters, not only was
father responsible for son, brother for brother, and uncle for nephew,
not only were the ties of unity strengthened at regular intervals by
guild feasts and banquets, but the ordinary dryness of the statutes
was redeemed by rules of real brotherhood. The merchant or craftsman
found in his craft guild security in times of trouble, monetary
help in times of poverty, and medical assistance in case of illness.
At Florence the carpenters and masons had their own hospital. When
a member died, shops were shut, every one attended his funeral, and
masses were said for his soul. In short, within a single guild all
rivals were also _confrères_ in the full and beautiful sense which the
word has now lost.
These rules of brotherhood were often accompanied by moral and
religious rules; the guild watched over the good conduct and good name
of its members. To be proconsul in the _Arte_ of judges and lawyers at
Florence, a man had to be respected for his piety, his good reputation,
his pure life, and proven honesty; he must be faithful and devoted
to the Holy Roman Church, sound in body and mind, and born in lawful
wedlock. To be received as a master, it was necessary almost everywhere
to make a profession of the Catholic faith and to take the oath, in
order that heretics such as the Patarini and Albigenses might be kept
out. Punishments were inflicted on blasphemers, players of games of
chance, and even usurers. It was obligatory to stop work on Sundays
and holidays, and to take part with great pomp and banners unfurled in
the feasts of the patron saint of the town and of the guild, not to
mention a host of other saints of whom a list was given. The statutes
often begin by enumerating the alms it was thought necessary to bestow
on certain monasteries and works of mercy and instruction which they
promised to support out of their funds.[62]
But in these works the guild was often duplicated and supplemented by
another institution connected with it--the fraternity.
The fraternity appears to have been anterior to the trade association
in some places;[63] but whether older or younger it remained closely
united with it. Born in the shadow of the sanctuary, it had aims that
were fundamentally religious and charitable; it was always under the
tutelage of a saint, who, on account of some incident taken from his
mortal life, became the patron of the corresponding trade. Thus, St.
Éloi was patron of the goldsmiths, St. Vincent of the vinegrowers, St.
Fiacre of the gardeners, St. Blaise of the masons, St. Crespin of the
shoemakers, St. Julien of the village fiddlers, etc. Every fraternity
had its appointed church, and, in this church, a chapel dedicated to
its heavenly protector, in which candles or lamps were kept burning. It
celebrated an annual festival which generally ended with a merry feast
or "_frairie_," as it was still called in the days of La Fontaine.[64]
It joined in processions and shared in the election of church-wardens.
Apart from the obligatory assistance at certain offices and at the
funerals of its members, the fraternity owned a _chest_, that is to
say, a fund maintained out of the subscriptions and voluntary donations
of the members, as well as by the fines which they incurred. Of these
funds, collected from various sources, part was given to the poor,
to the hospitals, and to the expenses of worship. Thus at Rennes the
fraternity of bakers ordained that in every batch of bread one loaf
of fair size should be set apart, called the _tourteau-Dieu_, which
brings to mind the portion for God or the poor which it was the custom
to reserve when the king's cakes were distributed. In Alsace, again, in
the bakers' fraternities, strict by-laws regulated the treatment of
the sick in hospital;[65] they were to be given confession, communion,
a clean bed, and with every meal a jug of wine, sufficient bread, a
good basin of soup, meat, eggs, or fish; and all were to be treated
alike.
The chest served also for supplying dowries to the poor girls of the
fraternity, which, it will be seen, very much resembled a friendly
society, but which, in addition, sometimes took upon itself powers of
arbitration, as in the case of the furriers of Lyons.[66] Sometimes the
fraternity coincided with the guild--that is, all the members of the
latter, including the journeymen, took part in it; more often, however,
it was merely an affiliated institution, and membership was optional.
It is curious to find that it was not looked on with much favour by the
higher ecclesiastics or by royalty,[67] perhaps because, not having the
defence of trade interests as its object, it attempted to dictate in
Church matters and was concerned with politics; perhaps also because it
increased the number of guild banquets which easily degenerated into
orgies and brawls.
This leads us to the relation between the guilds and the public
authorities, and to the part which they played in the political life of
the Middle Ages.
3. The guilds necessarily came into relation with the authorities; they
were far from being absolutely sovereign communities, unrelated to the
society around them. They retained ties of dependence which reminded
them that their emancipation was both recent and incomplete.
In the first place it must not be forgotten that in most cases they
had extorted or bought from the lord their earliest privileges.
According to the feudal conception, the right to work was a concession
which he granted or refused at will, and it followed that he kept
the prerogatives of supervising and regulating the guilds, whose
existence he sanctioned and protected. Thus at Rouen, towards the
end of the twelfth century, Henry II., King of England and Duke of
Normandy, sanctioned an association founded by the tanners, with its
customs and monopolies, giving as his reason for so doing, the services
which this industry rendered him. At Étampes, at the beginning of the
thirteenth century, Philip Augustus of France made known "to all those,
present and future, who should read these letters" that he permitted
the weavers of linen and napery to organize as they chose, and that
he exempted them from all obligations towards himself, except the
payment of the market toll, military service, and a fine in case of
bloodshed.[68] He did this, he said, for the love of God, which does
not mean that he did it gratis; for in return for their freedom these
craftsmen had to pay the king twenty pounds a year.
The lords maintained their authority everywhere by exacting payment for
the favours they granted. They did not, however, always exercise this
authority directly, but often delegated it to their great officers. The
Parisian guilds were under the orders of the provost of Paris, who was
the king's agent and police magistrate; and traces are to be found of
the time when craftsmen, living on the lands of the lord, were grouped
under the direction of a headman nominated by him. In those days the
nobles, who divided between themselves the domestic services of his
house, naturally kept a firm hand over the craftsmen whose duties were
allied to their own. Thus at Troyes, capital of the Court of Champagne,
the bakers were under his _grand panetier_, the tapestry-makers
and _huchiers_ under his _grand chambrier_, the saddlers under the
constable, etc., and a similar organization was to be found in every
feudal court. At Rome, every guild had at its head a cardinal, who
was its protector and superintendent. But by degrees the power of
these dignitaries became nominal, till it was reduced to being merely
honorary and lucrative. They contented themselves with the revenues
brought in by their duties, and with certain privileges attached to
them. They gave or sold the rights which their titles conferred on
them, to some private individual, usually to the master of the guild,
who, under the name of "master of the craft," really held the power.
In the free communities and in the free towns which had become
collective lordships the control, superintendence, and direction of the
crafts passed, by a natural transference of power, to the municipal
magistrates. There were thus (and nothing was more common in the Middle
Ages than these ill-defined situations) rivalries and struggles for
jurisdiction between the various authorities, from which the guilds
were never free.[69]
The very fact that they had to reckon with neighbouring and superior
powers taught them to understand that the possession of political
rights was a means of defending their economic interests, an
indispensable condition in the guidance of public affairs to their own
advantage. Accordingly, directly the towns freed themselves, the guilds
joined forces with all the lower classes against lay or ecclesiastical
feudalism. They took an honourable part in the insurrection of the
Communes, and took their share also in the spoils of victory. They won
important liberties, and as each guild formed a sort of little city
in which the members discussed, deliberated, and voted, a miniature
republic in which they received their civic education, they quickly
acquired an important place in the struggle of parties and brought
their influence to bear on the government.
But the complexity of the situation demands a double distinction. The
political influence of the guilds varied according to two main factors,
the degree of independence of the towns in which they existed, and the
nature of the crafts of which they were composed.
With regard to freedom, the towns ranged between two extremes. There
were those in which a power external to the burgesses (king, lord,
pope, bishop, abbot) remained full of life, active, and capable of
making itself respected. Such was the case in France, in England, and
for a long time in Rome. There were others, on the contrary, in which
the burgesses almost eliminated every element foreign to their class;
in which they absorbed the wealth and jurisdiction of the bishop;
in which they subdued the nobles and forced them either to give up
interfering or to become plebeians by joining the guilds; in which they
created real republics with their own constitution, budget, army, and
mint, all the dangers and all the prerogatives of practically complete
sovereignty. Such was the case in Florence, Venice, Ghent, Strasburg,
and in the imperial towns, which had nothing to fear from the impotent
or distant phantoms who claimed to be the successors to Caesar and
Charlemagne.
If they lived under the domination of an energetic and neighbouring
power, the guilds only took a secondary place, and this is perhaps
the reason why it has been possible for the greater number of French
historians to leave them in the background; but they became powers of
the first order if they developed in surroundings where their expansion
was not interfered with.
Let us begin by considering them in those places where they were held
firmly in check. The authority which weighed on them was exerted in
several directions at which we will glance.
In the first place, this authority attempted to regulate the conditions
of labour, to fix its hours and its price. It forbade work on certain
days, though it is true that it consented to many exceptions. At Rome,
where religious festivals were naturally very numerous, the Pope
authorized the wine-sellers and innkeepers to serve travellers, though
not inhabitants of the town, on such days; the farriers to shoe horses
on condition that they did not make new shoes; the barbers to dress
wounds but not to shave; the grocers and fruiterers to open their shops
without displaying their goods; the butchers to hang their meat, so
long as it was covered up; the shopkeepers in general to leave the
doors of their shops half open for the sake of ventilation.[70] In
other words, trade was allowed _sub rosa_. The intervention of the lord
in these matters was so habitual that it caused no surprise. John II.
of France, in his famous ordinance of 1355, proclaimed in 227 articles
a maximum tariff for merchants' goods and the wages of the workmen. The
Statute of Labourers in England in 1349 had similar objects.
The authorities interfered also in judicial matters. When there was a
dispute between two guilds (and this, unfortunately, was of frequent
occurrence) the case came under the jurisdiction of the lordly,
communal, or royal tribunal; in Paris the matter went before the
king's provost, and in case of appeal, to the _Parlement_. But if the
trade was held in fee, _i.e._ if it was under the protection of a
master who held it in fee, it was he who settled the difference.
Thus long wars were waged between barbers and surgeons; at first united
in one body, they wished later on to be separated; but the surgeons
wanted to keep the monopoly of surgical operations, and against this
the barbers protested. Now the head of the trade was the king's barber
and first _valet de chambre_; and in 1372 he inspired an ordinance,
which reserved to the barbers the right to "administer plaisters,
unguents, and other medicines suitable and necessary for curing and
healing all manner of boils, swellings, abscesses, and open wounds."
This, however, did not prevent the quarrel from lasting several
centuries longer.[71]
There were many other causes which led to lawsuits.[72] The guild
might go to law with individuals over the possession of a house or a
field, or have difficulties with the tax-collector. Often, too, the
causes of dispute lay within itself and arose between officers and
masters, who claimed to have been unjustly accused of wrong-doing. In
all these cases it was invariably the rule to apply to the head of the
craft or to the representatives of the competent authority (provost or
seneschal).
In fiscal matters, the guild had obligations from which it could
not escape. In the first place, the right to work, collectively and
individually, had to be paid for. The first article of the statutes of
the napery-weavers of Paris was couched in those terms: "No man may be
napery-weaver at Paris unless he buys the right from the king." By the
application of the same principle the community had to pay a royalty
to get its statutes approved, although this did not always exempt a
member from having to pay down a sum in advance for permission to open
a shop or hang out a sign.[73] Usually the _tonlieu_ and the _hauban_
were paid to the lord, though it must be clearly understood that the
king and town might take his place; the _tonlieu_, which was paid in
money, was a sum levied on the sale of merchandise in proportion to the
amount sold; the _hauban_, which was a payment in kind,[74] exempted
those who paid it from the other charges falling on the craft; it seems
to have been a privilege which could be bought, or at least a sort of
mutual contract or exchange between payer and paid. But the lord, apart
from what he thus put straight into his coffers, levied other indirect
charges on commerce and industry. If he had granted to a guild (the
river merchants, for example) the river tolls, he reserved the right
of free passage for everything destined for his own use. He kept for
himself a certain number of lucrative monopolies.[75] He had, in the
fairs and markets which he alone could authorize, the right of first
choice and purchase. He demanded payment for his stamp on the weights
and measures; he taxed everything which entered or left his territory;
he claimed duties on the weight of goods, and on the inspection of
goods and of inns. Often these rights of lordship were transferred
by him to one of his officers, whose services he remunerated in this
way. One curious example will suffice.[76] The Paris executioner was
a great personage in those days; he walked the streets clothed in red
and yellow, and was exceedingly busy, for he had to keep the gibbet at
Mont Lançon supplied with humanity--and it had room for twenty-four
victims; not to mention the pillories, where the minor offenders
were exhibited, and the scaffolds on which the worst criminals were
executed. To recompense him for his grim services he had been accorded
important privileges, amongst others the right of _havage_; that is to
say, of every load of grain taken to the corn market he claimed as much
as could be held in the hollow of the hand or in a wooden spoon of the
same capacity. Besides this, he collected a toll on the Petit-Pont,
duties on the sale of fish and watercress, on the hire of the fish
stalls surrounding the pillory, and a fine of twopence-halfpenny per
head on pigs found straying in the streets.
These were by no means all the charges imposed on the guilds. They had
further to guarantee certain public services. To the building guilds
was assigned the provision of safeguards against fire; to the doctors'
and barber-surgeons' guilds, the care of the sick poor and of the
hospitals; to all, or nearly all, the assessment of certain taxes, the
policing of the streets, and sometimes the defence of the ramparts.
In Paris, where the nights were as unsafe as they were ill-lit, every
guild in turn furnished, according to its importance, a certain number
of men to patrol the streets and keep guard, from the ringing of curfew
to the break of day, when the sergeant of the Châtelet sounded the
end of the watch. The same custom was to be found in most of the free
towns. A few guilds only were exempt from keeping guard, either on
account of their finances or because it was considered that they had
to render other services. Such, for example, were the goldsmiths,
archers, haberdashers, judges, doctors, professors, etc.
On the other hand, some guilds were under special regulations, _e.g._
the provision guilds. The fear of scarcity, owing to the frequency
of bad harvests or war and also to the permanent difficulty of
communication and transport, was a perpetual menace to the towns.
Their policy in this matter was nearly always that of a besieged
city. The consequent legislation was, above all, communal, and was
inspired by two fundamental principles: first, that on the Commune
devolved the duty of seeing that the inhabitants were healthy and well
fed; secondly, that the Commune, when it was short of money, had a
convenient resource in the taxation of the necessaries of daily life.
Thus the Commune wanted, above all, an abundance of cheap provisions;
it was anxious to avoid food crises which are generally the precursors
of riots and even revolutions; and, without theorizing (nobody troubled
much about theories in those days) they practised what a historian has
called a sort of "municipal socialism."[77] The Commune did not confine
itself to checking the exportation of cattle or of wheat by strict
prohibitions, to encouraging imports by giving bonuses, and forbidding
speculations and monopolies under pain of severe punishments; it
instituted the public control of grain, owned its own mills and ovens,
filled public granaries at harvest time, and emptied them when prices
were high; and it did all this with no idea of gain, but in order that
the poor should not be condemned to die of hunger when times were bad.
Sometimes the Commune owned fisheries and fish-markets (Rome); it often
held the monopoly of salt (Florence); sometimes it forbade a family
to keep more wine in the cellar than was needed, in order that the
possibility of using it should not be confined to the rich. It was with
this object in view that in the town of Pistoria it was decreed that
every owner of sheep should supply at least twenty lambs from every
hundred sheep, and in the district of Florence, that every peasant
should plant so many fruit trees to the acre.
When the Commune did not go so far as to take on itself the supply
of actual necessaries, it achieved the same end through the medium
of the provision trades. This is why the millers were the objects of
endless regulations intended to protect from fraud those who gave
them their grain to grind. This is why the bakers were subjected to
a municipal tariff, were closely watched, and were sometimes obliged
to put up with the competition of outside bakers. This is why the
merchants sold vegetables, fruits, oil, and wine at prices fixed by
special magistrates. Besides this perfectly legitimate endeavour to
guarantee the necessaries of life to every one as far as possible,
there was the very similar and no less justifiable attempt to guarantee
the good quality of provisions exposed for sale. The _talmelier_,
or baker, might not offer for sale bread that was badly baked or
rat-eaten.[78] Provisions for market were submitted to a daily and
rigorous examination. The butchers at Poitiers had to undergo a
physical and moral examination to make sure that they were neither
scrofulous, nor scurfy, nor foul of breath, and that they were not
under excommunication. There was the curious office of the _langueyeurs
de porc_, who had to examine pigs' tongues to see if they showed any
signs of measles or leprosy.
Hygiene, little studied in those days, gave birth to several
precautionary measures. Indeed, it was necessary to study it when
epidemics were abroad, and epidemics were both frequent and deadly.
The private slaughter-houses, and still more those of the Butchers'
Guild, were periodically inspected and moved out of the towns into the
suburbs. The numerous rules and dues which were imposed on this rich
guild, which, with its slaughterers and knackers, formed a formidable
and powerful company, appear to have been balanced by considerable
privileges. At Paris, for instance, the Grande Boucherie, as it was
called, possessed a monopoly extending to the suburbs, by which the
masters, reduced to a small number who succeeded one another from
father to son, had the sole right of selling or buying live animals or
meat, as well as sea and fresh-water fish.
The constant relations between the craft guilds and the authorities
gave them a place of their own; but, besides this, they led to the
creation of guilds of an entirely official character. The guilds
of the measurers (_mesureurs_ and _jaugeurs_), who verified the
capacity of earthenware jars, barrels, bushels, etc., or of the criers
(_crieurs_), who cried in the streets the contents of their jugs--wine
for instance--and offered them to the passers-by to taste,[79] were in
fact combinations of government officials. These trades were peculiar
in this respect, that those who plied them were in receipt of a salary
out of their official takings, and that they might not exceed a certain
number; and also that they held a monopoly, since every one was obliged
to employ them.
Through them we can pass to the second aspect of the communal or
lordly legislation which regulated the provision trades, viz. the
fiscal aspect.
It was no longer in the interests of the consumer that the Commune
kept, for instance, the monopoly of salt, buying as cheaply and selling
as dearly as possible. It was for its own benefit that it instituted
customs, dues, and tolls, levied on food-stuffs, which therefore
fell more heavily on the poor than on the rich; their variation was
simple--when the poorer classes had their way the dues went down, when
the rich were in power they went up. Things are just the same nowadays,
in spite of the fine phrases with which the fluctuations of commercial
policy in great states are disguised. But since, in speaking of guilds,
we have been led to speak of social classes, we must now describe
their classification in those centres where the system was most fully
developed,--that is where guilds, instead of being subjects, were
ruling powers.
It naturally follows that their relations with the authorities
were greatly modified in the towns in which they created, or were
themselves, the authorities. Such was the case at Florence, where, from
the year 1293, twenty-one _Arti_ or unions of craft guilds nominated
the Priors and the other supreme magistrates of the city; at Strasburg,
where, during the fourteenth century, the City Council was formed from
the delegates of twenty-five _Zünfte_, having the same constitution
as the Arti of Florence; at Ghent, where at about the time of James
van Artevelde the three _members_[80] of the State were formed by the
weavers, the fullers, and the "small" crafts; at Boulogne, Siena,
Bruges, Zurich, Liége, Spire, Worms, Ulm, Mayence, Augsburg, Cologne,
etc.; where within sixty years similar revolutions occurred, putting
the power into the hands of the guilds.
In those days the guilds were the units for elections, for the militia,
and for taxation; they judged their dependents without appeal; they
expelled, or reduced to the rank of passive citizens, those who were
not inscribed on their registers; they decided questions of taxation,
peace, and war, and directed the policy of their town, whose internal
and even external history is essentially one with their own.
In these little corporate republics, the principal question became
that of deciding how the different groups of guilds should apportion
the government among themselves. But first, on what principle were the
guilds classified? Was it according to the vital importance of the
needs they existed to supply? This would seem reasonable enough, but
apparently it was nothing of the kind, or else the provision trades
would have been in the first rank. _Primum vivere_, said the old
adage, and to live it is necessary to eat and drink, more necessary
even than to be housed and clothed, and to trade, and certainly more
necessary than to draw up notaries' deeds or go to law. Now the crafts
which provided for the inner man, for Messer Gaster, as Rabelais
calls him (butchers, wine merchants, bakers), were almost everywhere
placed in the second or third rank; the only exceptions were the
grocer-druggists, and it will be seen why this was so.
We must look elsewhere, then, for the reasons which determined the
order of social importance assigned to the guilds by public opinion
in the Middle Ages. It appears that this classification was based on
three different principles which I will call the _aristocratic_, the
_plutocratic_, and the _historical_; that is to say, the status of
a profession seems to have depended on whether it was more or less
_honourable_, _lucrative_, or _ancient_.[81]
The place of honour was reserved for those crafts in which brainwork
took precedence over manual work. They were regarded as more honourable
evidently because, in the dualistic conception which governed Christian
societies, spirit was placed above matter, the intellectual above the
animal part of man. It was for this reason that the professions which
demanded brainwork alone were called from that time onwards "liberal,"
as opposed to manual labour which was called "servile," an expression
which the Catholic Church has piously preserved to our own days.
At Montpellier, Boulogne, Paris, wherever universities existed
(which were themselves in effect "guilds" or corporations, and were
practically federations of advanced schools, as we see from their
jurisdiction, their statutes, their dependents and agents whom they
possessed in the parchment makers and booksellers, and in the title
of rector which their head shared with many other officers elected
by the guilds), the professors of the different Faculties enjoyed
very extensive privileges, and had the proud right of walking, like
the nobles, on the wall side of the pavement. At Florence, where the
division of the guilds into _greater_, _intermediate_, and _lesser_
bore witness to their hierarchy before all the world, as there was no
university, the judges and notaries took precedence; the judges, who
were doctors of law, styled themselves _Messer_, like the knights;
the notaries called themselves simply _ser_, but this served to
distinguish them from the commoners. The proconsul, or head of the
corporation, went out robed in scarlet, and was always escorted by two
gold-laced apparitors. In the first rank, too, were the doctors, but
the barber-surgeons, simply because they performed operations, were
relegated to a lower status; artists, in spite of being often ranked
among craftsmen, gradually obtained social recognition.
Although architects were ranked with carpenters, and image makers and
sculptors were often ranked with stonecutters, in many places the
goldsmiths, who included chasers, moulders, enamellers, and statuaries,
took a high rank. At Paris they were classed among the _Six Guilds_,
which, when the king, the queen, or the papal legate made a solemn
entry into the city, enjoyed the coveted honour of carrying the blue
canopy under which the august personage advanced. At Florence they
belonged--as a sub-order it is true--to the _speziali_ (apothecaries),
which also included the painters and colour-merchants.
While the artists, when they were ranked among the great guilds, only
took a secondary and subsidiary position, the bankers, money-changers,
wholesale traders, the great manufacturers (woollen merchants,
haberdashers, or furriers) lorded it over the others with their
wealth and splendour. This was, moreover, to a certain extent, homage
rendered to brains and education. The exchange and the bank, where it
was necessary to make rapid and complicated calculations, to transact
business at a distance, and to do accounts in differing coinages (and
sometimes, even, without coin), demanded varied knowledge and a certain
mental agility.
Wholesale commerce, which henceforward became international, involved
the power of taking long views, quickness in grasping a situation,
general aptitude, and, in fact, qualities of mind and character which
are not given to all.[82] The apothecaries had an advantage in that
they sold spices which had come from distant lands. The trade in
luxuries (furs and silks) was also concerned with foreign articles
and took for granted a certain _savoir-faire_. "Great" industry, for
its part, demanded of those who carried it on, a talent for setting
in motion, directing, and co-ordinating the complicated machinery of
affairs or of men, and this gift of organization is far from common.
However, it is easy to see that in the priority accorded to the great
industrial and commercial guilds, the second of the principles we have
mentioned was at work, namely, that a craft was considered more or less
honourable according to the wealth it yielded. Did the goldsmiths owe
the respect which was shown them more to their artistic skill than to
the fact that they were in the habit of handling jewels and precious
metals? It would be difficult to say. But it is very certain that the
bankers, money-changers, manufacturers of cloth and silk, the dealers
in furs and in spices, and the haberdashers, who sold everything, would
not have been among the most favoured, if they had not also been among
the most wealthy. Thanks to the crowns, ducats, and florins at their
command, they could indulge in a sumptuous style of living and rival in
luxury the lords of the land.
Like the latter they were in command of troops of men; in their way
they were captains; they united the prestige of power with that of
wealth. It was undoubtedly for this reason that the butchers, who
had numerous assistants working under their orders and who made
considerable profits, sometimes managed in Paris to be included among
the _Six Guilds_, and at Florence headed the list of Intermediate
Guilds. It was for a similar reason that in the same town the
innkeepers and the stone and wood merchants, classed among the Lesser
Guilds, were called _grosse_;[83] while the small tavern-keepers
and those who retailed wood were not considered worthy of such a
distinction.
The third principle--the historical--was active in its turn. The later
crafts, recently specialized, suffered from the competition of work
done in the home from which they were imperfectly separated. If the
butchers did not succeed in taking their place definitely among the
Six Guilds of Paris, or in becoming affiliated to the Greater Guilds
of Florence, it is probably because, for many years, the people were
their own butchers, and the fatted pig or calf was killed at home;
in other words because their field of action was an integral part of
domestic industry. The same may be said of bakers and bread-makers;
many peasants had their own oven in which they baked their bread,[84]
and they held stubbornly to this right which they sometimes insisted on
having solemnly recognized. There is no need for further explanations
to make us understand why the bakers and bread-makers at Florence came
last on the list of the twenty-one official guilds. It is useless to
attribute their comparative disrepute[85] to the supposed ease with
which they could defraud their clients in the weight and quality of
the bread they sold. Unfortunately, the same suspicions might have
been applied to many others. Can it be forgotten that, at Rome, the
fishmongers were compelled to use scales with holes in them like
skimmers, so that the water could run off and not add weight unfairly!
Thus on account of one or another of these three principles, "small"
crafts and "small" commerce were far from attaining the level to
which the great guilds rose; and in those days the organized world
of labour was divided, sometimes into three groups, as at Florence,
Perpignan,[86] or Ghent, sometimes into two, as at Zurich, and
sometimes into a greater number. It is impossible to go into the
details of the prolonged struggles between these unequal groups, of
their efforts to maintain the balance among themselves, or to rule one
over another, or of the alternate victories and defeats which they
sustained. Nearly two centuries--from the middle of the thirteenth
to the middle of the fifteenth--are filled with the unrest caused by
these quarrels which broke out in two or three hundred towns at once,
and which, in view of the absence of dependable information concerning
them, appear at a distance utterly chaotic. All we can do is to
indicate the development which followed.[87]
Immediately upon the victory of the lower classes over lay and
ecclesiastical feudalism--the first act accomplished by the communal
revolution--the power passed to the rich burgesses. Aristocracy of
money naturally succeeded aristocracy of birth. This plutocracy
was represented by the great merchant guilds, whose rise was soon
followed by that of the great industrial guilds, destined in some
cases to supplant them, but more often to remain their faithful
allies. At Florence, the _Arte di Calimala_ which included bankers
and finishers and sellers of foreign cloth, was at first the most
important of all; it was later dethroned by the _Arte della Lana_,
composed of cloth manufacturers, but both were included in the
federation of the Greater Guilds, which kept in its own hands the
direction of affairs. At Brussels and at Louvain seven families long
furnished the aldermen; at Ghent thirty-nine _nouveaux riches_, and
at Amiens an oligarchy of several families, monopolized the direction
of communal affairs. Everywhere wool-merchants, money-changers, and
goldsmiths became important in proportion to their wealth, not to
their numbers. At Beauvais of thirteen "peers" who constituted the
municipal administration seven were nominated by one guild--that of the
money-changers; the other twenty-one guilds nominated six.
In short, what happened in the free towns was what usually happens in
such a case, namely what happened in France in the nineteenth century.
The victorious bourgeoisie wanted to keep to themselves the spoils
of victory; they attempted to keep the lower classes--their allies
of yesterday--in a precarious and subordinate position, and not only
excluded them from the magistracy, but stamped all politics with a
strongly plutocratic character. They sold to or reserved for themselves
all lucrative posts; they administered the finances according to their
own ideas without giving any account of their actions; they multiplied
wars to kill inconvenient competition, or to open up new outlets for
their commerce. As all this entailed enormous expense they resorted
to loans which brought in high and steady interest, and to taxes on
objects of daily consumption--reactionary taxes which demanded an equal
sum, and therefore an unequal sacrifice, from rich and poor. They
despised and oppressed the small craftsmen and the small retailers;
they tried to limit or to suppress their right to combine or hold
public meetings, and of course they were still harder on all that
labouring population which was not admitted to the guilds, or which
at least was only admitted in a subject capacity. We have already
seen (Chapter II. 7) how they organized the first form of capitalist
supremacy.
The second act of the revolution now began. The town population divided
itself into two separate groups, which soon became two opposing
parties: the rich and the poor; the _fat_ and the _lean_; the great
and the small; the good and the bad, as the chroniclers, who usually
belonged to the leisured class, said with a certain savage naïveté. The
crafts which claimed to be honourable were set in opposition to those
which were considered low and inferior, and were supported and urged on
by the masses, who, without rights or possessions, lived from day to
day by hiring out their labour.
The fight was complicated by the capricious intervention of the nobles
or clergy who, sometimes by a natural affinity, joined the aristocracy
of wealth; sometimes, in the desire to get the better of the great
burgesses who kept them out of the government, allied themselves to the
lower classes and made the balance turn in their favour.
At certain times (this also is a law of history) the lower classes,
in despair at never getting anything out of a selfish and implacable
bourgeoisie, put their confidence in some soldier of fortune, some
ephemeral dictator, some "tyrant" in the Greek sense, who defeated
their enemies and secured them a little well-being and consideration.
On other occasions it was the rich burgesses who, frightened by the
claims of the people, called on some foreign or military power to
reduce the populace to order. Thus, by separate roads, the republics
and towns were travelling towards monarchy.
Before they reached this point, however, the "small" crafts had their
days of supremacy, which were characterized by a peaceful policy,
fiscal reforms, and the effort to make taxation just through the
progressive taxation of incomes. They raised with themselves, out of
the darkness and degradation into which they had fallen, the ragged and
barefooted labourers (carders, porters, _blue-nails_, as the Flemish
labouring classes were called in derision), proletarians, wage-slaves,
who in their turn desired political rights, a legal status in the city,
a rank among the guilds, a share in the direction of the Commune.
In the year 1378 this movement seems to have been at its height.[88]
A wave of revolution passed over Europe at that time, and at Florence
as at Ghent, at Siena as at Rouen, in Paris as in London, for several
years, months, and sometimes weeks, Ciompi, Chaperons blancs,
Maillotins, etc., made the ruling classes tremble for fear of union on
the part of all this riff-raff. As a Flemish chronicler expresses it:
"An extraordinary thing was to be seen in those days; the common people
gained the supremacy."
Their victory was short-lived. All the conservative forces combined
against the intruders. The attempt, not to destroy but to reform and
enlarge guild administration, to make the whole world of labour enter
into it, was shown to be powerless; perhaps because the workmen and men
of the "small" crafts did not clearly perceive what could give them
freedom, or know how to unite into a cohesive body; perhaps, also,
because the idea of hierarchy was still too strongly rooted in society;
finally, perhaps because there was a fundamental contradiction between
the administration of the closed guilds which stood for privilege, and
the ideas of equality which tried to force an entrance into them.
Whatever may have been the cause, from this culmination they descended
again towards their starting-point, the supremacy of money and of
the great commercial and industrial guilds which no longer allowed
their power to be shared by the Lesser Guilds. However, they stopped
half-way. The preponderance was not restored either to the prelates
or to the lords, neither did it remain with the lower classes. It
was too late for the great, too early for the small. It remained and
was consolidated in the hands of two powers, each of which relied
on the other--the middle classes and the monarchy, the latter being
represented in the great states by royalty and elsewhere by princes
who might be _condottieri_ or upstart bankers. Florence went to sleep
under the enervating and corrupt rule of the Medicis. An ever-narrowing
merchant oligarchy governed Genoa, Venice, and the towns of the
Teutonic Hanse. Flanders was quiet under the authority of the Dukes of
Burgundy and of its opulent guilds, to which craftsmen were no longer
admitted. Towards the middle of the fifteenth century the great epoch
of the free towns was over, and the glory of the guilds went with them.
Nevertheless, while their restless and busy life lasted they had their
days of greatness, heroism, and glory. Sometimes, as at Courtrai, they
gained victories over armoured knighthood. They did better. In the
neighbourhood of their cities they built roads, canals, and seaports.
Within the city walls they gave a splendid impetus to architecture.
They built monumental halls like those of Bruges, fountains, hospitals,
and public promenades; they erected churches which were popular
palaces, town halls which were carved like fine lace and flanked by
towers and belfries from which the Tocsin called the citizens to arms
or to the assembly. They had pride and patriotism, and also desired to
honour the profession which was for each of them a state within the
state. They contended for the honour of giving a picture, a statue,
or a tabernacle to the buildings which thus became the incarnation of
the soul of a whole people. The traveller who visits Florence admires
the bas-reliefs half-way up the Campanile attributed to Giotto,
which represent the origin of arts and crafts in the earliest ages
of mankind; it is the stamp and blazonry of the working classes on
their common work. Guilds have passed away, as all human institutions
must pass, imperfect and frail in their very nature; but before their
passing they realized a great part of their high ideal, which, in its
many aspects, I have tried to make plain.