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.
The administration of the guilds was everywhere almost uniform. The guild was a voluntary association of men carrying on the same trade or allied trades and pledging themselves by oath to defend their common interests. It demanded of those who, in virtue of their mastership, wished to belong to it, proofs of capability, morality, orthodoxy, political loyalty, and often the regular payment of a contribution. Once enrolled, a member could not leave without first publicly announcing his intention to do so, and discharging any debts owing to the guild. He could be expelled for any serious breach of its regulations or of the laws of the state.
The association thus constituted was autonomous; it was a moral and legal person; it could possess wealth in lands, houses, money, or bonds; it could contract, bargain, bind itself, appear in court through representatives whom it nominated (syndics, proctors, etc.). It had its guild halls, which were decorated with its coats-of-arms. It had its banner, funds, seal, and archives. It was, then, within the limits of its jurisdiction, self-governing. Its constitution was semi-democratic in the sense that the masters of whom it was composed were looked on as possessing equal rights. The legislative power was in the hands of the General Assembly, which made, or at least sanctioned, the statutes and the revisions of the rules, and it is remarkable that from one end of Europe to the other identical formulae on more than one point are found; the words relating to the subject of prohibition, for example: “Let none presume or be so bold as to....”[30]
No act of any importance pledging the whole guild could be carried through without the advice and ratification of the assembly. The interests involved were, however, so complex, the business of such daily occurrence, that it would have been impossible to convoke the assembly on every occasion; it therefore became necessary to create an organ of government, an executive, and at the same time a judicial, power—in other words, to nominate officers to act in the name of the guild. The method of nomination varied in every age and region. In most cases the election was made directly by the masters alone, or indirectly by electors whom they nominated; sometimes, but rarely, the inferior members of the complex guilds, journeymen of the simple guilds, took part, and a certain number of those elected belonged to their group. In other cases the nomination depended on the lord or on some one to whom he had delegated his authority; in others it was held by the municipal magistrates, as at Toulouse; and in others again the resigning officials nominated their successors or filled vacancies as they occurred. In Italy there were complicated systems in imitation of those in use for the communal magistracies. The candidates’ names were proposed, and accepted or rejected by acclamation or by secret ballots; those approved were written on tickets which were placed in sealed and padlocked bags. In this way a supply of candidates was provided for several years, and whenever necessary, a child or a priest drew at hazard one of the names for each post.[31] This curious combination of chance and of popular choice was often to be met with in the Italian Republics. At Arras, in the butchers’ guild, as many balls of wax as there were masters present were placed in an urn. The words “Jésus-Marie” were inscribed on one of the balls, and the man who drew it became head of the guild.
In course of time the right to office was restricted by an age limit, by a longer or shorter period of matriculation, and even by wealth or social standing. Thus, among the old-clothes dealers of Florence no one who cried his goods in the streets, and among the bakers, no one who carried bread from house to house on his back or on his head, could be elected rector.
The officials thus nominated (and none could escape the duty which fell to him) were sometimes quite numerous; the Arte di Calimala at Florence had four consuls, a treasurer or camérier, a cashier, a syndic, and a proctor, not to mention two notaries and other subordinate officers whom the consuls chose with the assistance of a general council, and of a special council of the guild. The heads or chiefs were called in the south of France, consuls, recteurs, bailes, surposés, etc.; those in the north were called gardes, eswards, jurés, prud’hommes, maïeurs de bannières, etc. In certain texts one comes across “bachelor” masons and carpenters, curious titles given to ex-officers, who, though they had resigned their headship, might still have some official duties.[32]
These officers were usually not long in power—sometimes only a few months, and practically never longer than a year; their duties ended with a statement of accounts which carried with it ineligibility to re-election for a certain time.
There was always a fear of creating magisterial dynasties which might perpetuate themselves at will, and of encouraging the development of cliques; for these reasons several members of a family or business house were not allowed to sit on the guild committee simultaneously.
The reason why so much trouble was taken to divide the responsibilities was because they conferred considerable power and entailed a great deal of absorbing work. The heads of the guilds, by whatever name they were called, took an oath that they would first and foremost see that the rules were carried out—no easy matter. In this respect they had legal powers, and they not only acted as arbiters in the quarrels which arose among the members, but also in the conflicts which in the great merchant guilds might arise in the course of trade even with foreigners: disputes over weights and measures, bankruptcies, frauds, reprisals, etc. They were, in fact, public officials, and their consular tribunals were to become in time the organs of the Commune. In the industrial guilds they had to watch over production, inspect the articles of manufacture in the workshops, to make sure that they were in conformity with the prescribed rules. In cases of delinquency they had the right to seize and burn the goods and to inflict a fine on the offenders. In some places it was their duty to protect the apprentices, to examine the candidates for mastership, and to provide the necessary funds for the pious works which were under the control of the community.
At Florence the Arte di Calimala had the care of the monastery of San Miniato, the baptistery of St. Jean, and the hospital of St. Eusèbe; the Arte della Lana took charge of the building and decoration of the dome. In short, everything which could contribute to the welfare and reputation of the guild was under the jurisdiction of the heads, who, controlled by their colleagues, had thus an extensive sphere of activity.
The consuls of the Calimala had among their duties the maintenance of roads and hostels, and even the safe conduct of Florentine travellers in a district extending as far as the fairs of Champagne and St. Gilles.
But it will be easier to judge of the multiplicity of duties which the guilds demanded of their officers if their aims are more closely studied, and this will best be done by carefully investigating their guiding principles as shown in their statutes.
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.