Guilds in the Middle Ages

by Georges François Renard

Municipal and guild life were so closely united that it was impossible to strike at one without injuring the other. In the city of Liége, the thirty-two crafts and the perron which was the emblem of its independence were taken away at a single stroke.

At Florence, no sooner had the Medicis become Dukes of Tuscany than the Constitution of the Arte was altered in such a way as to make it impossible for them to exercise any influence in the direction of public affairs. In England,[117] the king and Parliament agreed in forbidding the guilds to make ordinances without the consent of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Crown Treasurer, or to fix the price of goods, and aimed at supplanting them in supervising the quality of products. The Statute of Labourers in 1563, in the reign of Elizabeth, gave to justices of the peace, that is to say, to magistrates who were not craftsmen, the right of fixing workmen’s wages. In France, Philip the Beautiful ill-treated the confraternities and found no difficulty in modifying the rules of the Parisian industries.[118] The Crown, however, differentiated between the guilds: at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the doctor of theology, John Gerson, lays down in the clearest terms the alliance between the Crown and the rich burgesses: “All the harm,” he says, “arises from the fact that the king and the good burgesses have been put under servitude by the outrageous enterprise of men of small standing.... God has permitted it in order that we may know the difference between royal domination and that of any people whatever: for that which is royal is general and should be gentle: that of the low-born is a tyrannical domination which destroys itself.”[119] In accordance with this principle, royalty was tactful in its dealings with the great guilds, and willingly bestowed on them honorary privileges. Francis I. not only confirmed to the Six Guilds, which formed the merchant aristocracy of the capital, the precedence which they enjoyed at solemn functions, but of the thirty-six wardens of these Greater Guilds as they would have been called at Florence, he formed a High Council of Parisian industry.

Even with the others, the Crown proceeded gently at first. It desired to absorb, and not to suppress. It realized what an advantage it would be if these independent institutions, still under the influence of their feudal origin, could be transformed into State institutions, protected and obedient! It was with this end in view that Henry III. decided that their organization, hitherto local, should be extended throughout the whole kingdom, to the scattered villages as well as to the towns. The city (urban) guild was therefore converted into a national organism, and the guild was made compulsory at the same time that it was put under tutelage. This unification, which placed it under the direct supervision of royal agents, was, however, only to operate on paper. It encountered the displeasure of the craft guilds; worse still, it was in opposition to the first principle of the whole system. The ordinance allowed the inhabitants of the suburbs to follow their craft within the cities, and the inhabitants of one town to settle in any other, with the exception of Paris[120]—a last concession to an ancient tradition. It was something quite new for craftsmen to possess equal rights and for crafts to be organized like those of Paris throughout the whole of France; but it was only in accordance with the general trend of French civilization. This sudden enlargement of the guild system, however, was practically its death, and there were many who from this time did not hesitate to say so openly.[121] The edict, renewed by Henry IV. in 1597, was next extended to include merchants, and was completed by the abolition of the king of the mercers, who still exercised a certain amount of authority in the fairs; for even so trumpery a king made the king at the Louvre uneasy!

The Crown was the less willing to give up its ideas of realizing unity in the industrial domain in that it mistrusted the small crafts; it bore in mind the fact that, formerly, when the Holy League tried to create a sort of intermunicipal federal Republic, the masters’ and journeymen’s confraternities eagerly joined in the attempt. It did not forget that, in the time of the Fronde, the guilds were credited with having had the repeal of the privileges granted to the great merchants and the prohibition to import silks into the kingdom inserted in the peace treaty forced on the Regent by his rebel subjects. Little by little it reduced the authority remaining to them. It was tenacious in carrying into every sphere the form of organization at which it aimed. It made further attempts in 1673 and 1691; between the first date and the second the guilds officially constituted and classified rose from 60 to 127, and what clearly shows the meaning of this administrative classification is the fact that it nominated, or threatened the nomination of, the headmen by officers of the Crown.

A very inadequate idea, however, of the encroachments of royal authority will be gained if the solemn publication of edicts alone is remembered, and the daily, incessant attempt of its agents to restrict the jurisdiction both of local and of guild authorities is ignored. No doubt a good deal of the economic jurisdiction formerly exercised by the town magistrates still existed. Contraventions of regulations, and struggles between producers and consumers, between employers and employees, and between allied and rival crafts, were under municipal jurisdiction.[122] The right of pronouncing judgment on such points as falsifications, the observance of religious festivals, the price of merchandise and the rate of wages, was still left to the municipality by Colbert. Naturally its powers were greater or less according as the town was royal, seigneurial, or communal. But it was not unusual for it to retain the right of collecting taxes, and of nominating supervisors who controlled crafts; for it to create masterships and organize charity workshops which changed into regular factories; or to withhold the monopoly granted to the guilds.

It is none the less true that communal jurisdiction grew less year by year. Attention must be drawn to the fact that the craft guilds sometimes passed it by and of their own accord applied to the central authority for intervention. Thus, questions of provisions, public health, monopoly, speculation, regulations for the prevention of fraud, and the protection of apprentices, one by one came under the jurisdiction of parlements, ministers, governors, and of their delegates. Colbert, in his general rules for manufacture which date from 1666 to 1669, codifies, in the name of the State, the minute directions contained in the guild statutes on questions of apportionment, bad work, etc.

At the end of the seventeenth century, then, the guilds still existed, but had been subjugated and deprived of their principal rights. Behind the solid front which they still presented were ruin, desolation, and decay.

(b) It is probable that the Crown in France allowed them to live and decline in peace because they supplied an easy method of directing commerce and industry; but it was also because they were fruitful sources of production. The Crown often disguised with fine phrases the fiscal interest which inspired it; it is, however, easily discoverable in three different forms. Sometimes it confirmed, strengthened, and extended the monopoly of the guilds and made them pay for the favour; sometimes it sold to outsiders privileges which encroached on and compromised this monopoly; and finally, it sometimes threatened them, and only withdrew threats in return for ready money.

The great ordinance of 1581 and the special edict of taxes of 1673 may be taken as examples of the first method. In 1581 the strengthening of the organization of the guilds by purging them of certain abuses and irregularities was the pretext cited; the king spoke and appeared to act as the great national justice of the peace; but the real object of the measure, which extended to the kingdom a system hitherto localized, may well have been the filling of the royal treasury into which fell a part of the matriculation fees paid by each new master. In 1673 trouble was no longer taken to find a pretext; the work was done by a financial edict, that is, by the establishment of a method of taxation. The guilds themselves encouraged these calls on their funds; indeed, in 1636, when France was in danger of invasion, they offered their wealth and their services for the defence of the kingdom.

The second means, which consisted in creating privileges for which the guilds paid and by which the king’s coffers were filled, was invented by Louis XI., who in 1461 instituted letters of mastership, which exempted those who bought them from the examination of capability and the expenses which the ordinary reception entailed. Soon the kings introduced irregularities into the masters’ guilds on every possible occasion.[123] The blow could not miss its aim. If none were found to take these licences, the guilds hastened to buy them up to prevent the intrusion of new competitors. In vain they attempted to protest; the procedure became habitual and legal. The great ordinance of 1581 stated that the king would dispose of three letters of mastership in every town and every craft.