Guilds in the Middle Ages

by Georges François Renard

In June of the same year, a new law was destined to stifle any inclination they might have shown to come to life again. The pretext given for condemning them to their fate was the formation of societies of workers with the object of raising wages. Chapelier, affirming that it was the duty of the State to assist the infirm and find work for those who needed it in order to live, protested against every association which claimed to substitute a collective contract for the individual contract between master and workers.[144] Article 2 of the law in question reads:

Citizens of the same condition or profession, middlemen, those who keep open shops, workmen and compagnons of whatever art, may not, when they find themselves together, nominate president, secretary or syndic, keep registers, pass resolutions, make regulations for what they claim to be their common interests, or bind themselves by agreements leading to the concerted refusal or to the granting only at a certain price, of the help of their industry and labours.

According to a phrase taken from a petition addressed by the master-builders to the municipality of Paris, the above resolutions and agreements, if they ever happened to be made, had to be declared “unconstitutional, opposed to liberty and to the declaration of the rights of Man”; the authors, instigators, and signatories of these acts or writings were to pay a fine of £500 each, and to be deprived for a year of their rights of active citizenship. Severer penalties were provided in all cases of threat and unlawful assembly.

Thus pure reaction, excessive and impracticable, set in against trade combination; compulsory isolation was established under the false name of freedom of work, and in consequence the weak were abandoned to the mercy of the strong, and the poor to the mercy of the rich; the individual, naked and unarmed, was put face to face with the individual armed at every point; in the economic domain a mere agglomeration was substituted for any kind of organization. But besides being the culminating point of a long evolution, this reaction was the starting-point of a new development which created the modern Labour Movement. We must next take a rapid survey of Europe and see what was the fate of the guilds in other countries.

In Holland, where they had never been very strong, they counted for nothing after 1766. In Tuscany, from 1759 to 1766, a great inquiry was held into the state of the Arti, and following on the information obtained, the Archduke Peter-Leopold brought about, by means of decrees, a reform which was revolutionary in character. On February 3, 1770, he abolished enrolment fees throughout the duchy, with the exception of two or three small territories like that of Livurnia, and decided that, in order to ply a trade, it should be enough henceforth to be inscribed once and for all on a general register. In consideration of a fee of £2 at most, a man might, if he wanted to, follow more than one calling or open several shops. The only exceptions were the doctors, apothecaries, and goldsmiths, who were still subject to special obligations, and silk manufacturers, who kept a few ancient privileges. On February 17 of that year all the guild tribunals were abolished and all their powers vested in a Chamber of Commerce, Arts, and Manufactures, which had not only legal rights but also the duty of watching over the economic interests of the country, encouraging and assisting poor craftsmen, and administering the estates formerly held by the guilds which had thus been wiped out at a stroke of the pen. The clauses are curious and confirm what we have said concerning the action of princes. The Archduke expresses his wish that “such matters shall be regulated by a single authority, on fixed and uniform principles directed to the universal good of the State.” The bakers were no longer compelled to make loaves of a fixed weight; the merchants were exempted from paying for weights and measures which they hardly ever used but which they were forced to possess.[145] The glorious guilds of Florence had lived for centuries and were to leave their mark behind them for a long time to come; it was only in 1907 that the winding-up of the property which had belonged to the Arte della Lana was concluded.

In Lombardy, from 1771 onwards, under the rule of the Empress Maria Theresa, a similar reform took place; in 1786 it was Sicily’s turn; throughout the rest of Italy, all that remained of the ancient guild system disappeared under the French domination and the Napoleonic Code. The same thing happened in Belgium, where, after the decree of 17 Brumaire, Year IV., nothing was left but shadowy guilds, such as that of St. Arnoldus at Bruges, or the “Nations” at Antwerp.[146] In Germany the guild system was more tenacious and was only to disappear, in certain States, when German unity was almost realized. The Code of the Confederation of Northern Germany declared for its abolition in all the countries under its jurisdiction.

3. The guilds, then, were long in dying, and in addition to a few survivals,[147] there were even some attempts made here and there to revive them during the nineteenth century.

In France, from the days of the Consulate and of the Empire, professional guilds (notaries, lawyers, solicitors, law-court officers, stockbrokers, etc.) were formed and still exist. The practice of more than one profession—such as medicine, dispensing, printing—remained under the control of the public authority. Butchers and bakers, under new regulations, remained in this state till 1858 and 1863. In 1805, three hundred wine-sellers demanded, without success, the restoration of the old craft guilds and of their own in particular. Under the Restoration, which undertook the task of restoring institutions which the storms of the Revolution had destroyed, other petitions of the same nature found a few partisans in the “Chambre Introuvable” and in some of the General Councils;[148] but although “the small” crafts were in favour of this return to the past, “great” trade, which had been hostile to wardenships and masterships, was strongly opposed to it. The Chamber of Commerce of Paris and the bankers were among the first to fight and defeat these ideas.

It is among Catholics especially that such ideas have been awakened; inspired by sincere pity for the misery of the working classes who have been so long without protection, they have often been filled with the desire to create an organization for the propagation of social peace between masters and workers. During the reign of Louis-Philippe, Buchez, Villeneuve Bargemont, La Farelle, and Buret tried to bring the guild idea to life again. In 1848 it publicly reappeared for a short time, when the provisional government received hundreds of deputations classed according to their trades, and Louis Blanc nominated, according to craft guilds, delegates for the Commission of the Luxembourg, and when compagnonnage paraded its beribboned canes and splendid works of art in the processions of the republican festivals; but it was already modified; masters and workmen formed separate groups. More recently, in 1891, it has been advocated in eloquent but vague terms by Pope Leo XIII., and Catholic circles, founded by M. de Mun, have tried to put it into practice.