This unity, however, did not exclude variety. The guilds were more alive and more powerful as the towns were more free. Consequently it was in Flanders, in Italy, in the “Imperial Towns,” in the trading ports, wherever, in fact, the central authority was weak or distant, that they received the strongest impetus.
They prospered more brilliantly in the Italian Republics than at Rome under the shadow of the Holy See. In France, as in England, they had to reckon with a jealous and suspicious royalty which has ever proved a bad neighbour to liberty. The more commercial, the more industrial the town, the more numerous and full of life were the guilds; it was at Bruges or at Ghent, at Florence or at Milan, at Strasburg or at Barcelona, that they attained the height of their greatness; at all points, that is, where trade was already cosmopolitan, and where the woollen industry, which was in those days the most advanced, had the fullest measure of freedom and activity.
[CHAPTER II]
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE GUILDS
1. It is sometimes imagined that the guilds united all the merchants and all the craftsmen of one region. This is a mistake. At first those who lived in the country, with rare exceptions,[5] did not belong to them: certain towns, Lyons for instance, knew nothing of this method of organization, and even in those towns where it was in existence, there were trades which remained outside, and there were also isolated workers who shunned it—home-workers, who voluntarily or involuntarily kept themselves apart from it.[6] Guilds, then, were always privileged bodies, an aristocracy of labour.
It is also imagined that they were voluntary organizations of a uniform type. There is the classic division into three degrees or grades. Just as under the feudal system, a man became successively page, esquire, and knight, and it was necessary, in order to rise from one stage of the hierarchy to the next, to complete a certain time of service and of military education, so in the guild organization, he was first an apprentice for one or more years, then a journeyman (garçon, valet, compagnon, serviteur), working under the orders of others for an indeterminate period, and finally, a master, established on his own account and vested with full rights. Just as the knight, after he had given proof of having finished his instruction, had still, before putting on his golden spurs, to go through a religious and symbolic service which included the purifying bath, the oath, and the communion, so the master, after having proved his capabilities by examination or by the production of a piece of fine craftsmanship, took the oath, communicated, and fraternized with his fellows at a solemn banquet. But this quasi-automatic promotion from rank to rank was in fact far from being as regular as has been imagined. It was not unusual for one of the three grades, that of compagnon, to be passed over, for the apprentice to rise directly to the rank of master, and for the formalities of admission to be reduced to a minimum for one who had the good luck to be a master’s son. From the earliest times mastership tended to become hereditary, as did the life fiefs held by barons and earls. Nor on the other hand was it rare for a compagnon to find himself for life at that grade without the possibility of rising higher. Moreover, the famous divisions never existed, except in certain trades.
The truth is that guild organization, even within the walls of a single town, presented several different types. It might be simple, or complex; it might be either half democratic or capitalistic in structure.
2. It was simple when it included only one trade, and this was fairly often the case. It was complex when it was composed of several juxtaposed or superimposed groups. In this case it was a federation of craft guilds, each keeping its individual life, its own statutes, and its own officers, but all united in a larger body of which they became members. This was the name which at Florence was borne by those lesser bodies of which the whole was composed.[7] The whole was called an Arte, and just as the membri could themselves be subdivided, so the Arte might be defined as a union of unions.
The Middle Age was not an age of equality. Usually among the groups united under a central government there was one which predominated, which held fuller corporate rights; the others, regarded as inferiors, only enjoyed a greater or smaller part of such rights. Some did not enjoy the privilege of co-operating in the election of the federal magistrates, to whom none the less they owed obedience; others were not allowed to carry the banners, towards which they nevertheless had to contribute their share.