The image in which the pole of the banner concluded was not, however, invariably that of a saint, or of a saint alone. In the case of the cask-makers it was a golden tun surmounted by a cross, with figures of Saint Helen and the Emperor Constantine standing on either side of it. That of the armourers was a bat (the rat-penat or “winged rat” contained in the escudo of Valencia); that of the cloth-shearers, a pair of scissors with a golden crown and the image of Saint Christopher; of the fishermen, a boat containing Saint Peter and Saint Andrew; of the clothmakers, a sphere inscribed with the name of Jesus; of the stonemasons, a silver millwheel and a silver image of the Virgin. Similarly, each gremio displayed upon its coat-of-arms some kind of emblem such as the implement, or implements, associated with its trade:—the silversmiths, a square and compass; the carpenters, a hatchet and a saw; the lock-smiths, a pair of hammers and an anvil.
Quaintly instructive are the dispositions of the guilds relating to apprenticeship. The maestro of a trade, described by the Count of Torreánaz as “the principal worker in the workshop,” agreed to feed, clothe, and instruct his apprentice or discípulo, and treat him generally as a member of his own family. He was permitted to punish his apprentice for misconduct, but not to employ excessive physical violence; and a law of Jayme the First decreed that if the apprentice lost one or both of his eyes from a blow inflicted by his master, the latter was to “make good the injury” (sia tengut del mal que li haura feyt).
The number of apprentices allowed in any one workshop was often (and subsequently to the fifteenth century, nearly always) regulated by the law. The first disposition of this kind discovered by Tramoyeres dates from the year 1451, and refers to the shoemakers, whose apprentices might not outnumber three to each maestro.[70] Similarly, by provisions issued at a later date, the mattress-makers and the builders were allowed no more than two apprentices, and the silk-weavers three, although sometimes the master might admit an extra aprenent or so, on payment of a certain sum per head.[71] The term of the apprenticeship was also often fixed by law. In most of the trades it was four years; but in the case of the makers of ribbons and of boxes it was five years; while stocking-makers were apprenticed for six, and wax-makers and confectioners for eight years.
Before the father or the guardian of a lad could sign his papers of apprenticeship, it was required (during and after the sixteenth century) to prove before the guild, by means of his certificate of baptism, or on the declaration of witnesses, that he was the child of parents who were “old Christians,” and not the offspring of Moor, Jew, slave, convert, or (in the fierce expression of the stocking-makers) “any other infected race.” Still more absurd and savage was an ordinance, dated 1597, of the shoemakers, prohibiting any master of this trade from admitting to apprenticeship in any form, “a black boy, or one of the colour of cooked quince, slave or Moor … so as to avoid the harm which might befall our brother shoemakers from the ridicule that would be stirred among the populace, if they should see in our processions and other public acts, a slave, or the son of a black slave, or a lad of the colour of cooked quince, or a Moor; as well as the rioting and scandals that would be caused by the spectacle of creatures of this nature mixing with decent, well-dressed people.”
These statutes are selected from the mass of local legislation which concerned Valencia only. Turning to Spanish guilds at large, the study of these institutions throws considerable light upon the customs of the Spanish nation in the past, and more especially upon the social and financial standing of the older Spanish craftsman. As in other countries, the principal and primal object of the gremio was to organize a system of defence against the military and nobility, or even against the crown. Presently, however, and long before their evolution is completed, errors become apparent in the statutes or proceedings of these bodies which denote, very instructively and very plainly, the typical defects or weaknesses of the Spanish character. Foremost of all was thriftlessness. Although it is a fact that several of the Spanish guilds owned houses or even land, none of them (except the silversmiths of two or three large towns) were really affluent;[72] and indeed, in a country racked by incessant foreign wars or civil strife, there was every reason why they should not be affluent. Yet, notwithstanding this, in celebrating any kind of public festival, the poor agremiado made no scruple to vie in prodigal disbursements with the moneyed aristocracy, clothing himself in fanciful and costly stuffs,[73] constructing shows and spectacles on wheels, raising elaborate altars in the streets, contracting for expensive services, performances, and tableaux. More than once, the gremios were obliged to borrow funds to celebrate the festival of their patron saint.[74] So also with regard to dress. The costumes of the guildsmen of Valencia have been already noticed. An equal recklessness and foppery prevailed in other Spanish towns; for instance, at Barcelona, where, on a visit of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1481, the silversmiths formed part of the procession “dressed in the richest manner, with robes and mantles all covered with silver, and some of them with bonnets that were all of silver plate with jewels and silver foliage, while others wore silver chains about their necks.”
Two of the most conspicuous faults among the Spanish race are pride and envy. Yet these defects may be explained without much puzzling, and, in a measure, pardoned. Spaniards, through all the process of their national development, have clung by preference to the calling of the soldier or the priest; that is, the only occupations which directly dissipate the revenue of the commonwealth. Since, therefore, they were thus inclined from earliest antiquity, as well as tutored by a crafty priesthood to believe that might or violence alone is right, the haughtiness of the Spanish people is a logical, and indeed inevitable, outcome of their history. Moreover, side by side with this erroneous theory that the only prowess and decorum of a people must consist in armed aggressiveness, as well as in a truculent and militant intolerance in matters of religion (or rather, of superstition), there arose the equally as mischievous and erroneous theory that the arts of peace were venal, despicable, and effeminate, or, in the current phrase of our contemporaries, “unworthy of a gentleman.” “The Spaniards,” wrote Fernández de Navarrete, “are so proud-hearted that they do not accommodate themselves to servile labour.” Therefore this people chose their favourites and heroes in a semi-savage freebooter; never in a craftsman of gigantic merit, like the elder Berruguete, or Juan de Arfe, or Alonso Cano. Sometimes, as happened with the reja of the Chapel Royal of Granada, they did not even trouble to record the surname of her best artificers. These men, in fact, exceptions to her universal rule, were coldly looked upon, or even persecuted.[75] Abundant proof is yet extant of this humiliation of her merchants, craftsmen, shopkeepers, as distinguished from her soldiery and clergy, gentry and nobility. Undoubtedly, beneath such scorn the former of these groups were sensitive to their position, and all the more acutely sensitive because of their inherent Spanish pride. In fact, so sensitive were they, that now and then the crown esteemed it prudent to appease their wounded vanity by certain declarations or emoluments. Thus, the Repartimiento de Sevilla tells us that in the year 1255 Alfonso the Tenth rewarded several craftsmen of his capital of Seville with the title of Don, “a dignity,” says Amador, “rarely bestowed at that time.”[76] In 1556 Charles the Fifth resolved, in favour of the corporation of artistas-plateros or “artist-silversmiths,” that the masters of this craft, together with their wives, might dress in silk, “in that it was an art they exercised, and not an office” (Gestoso, Diccionario de Artífices Sevillanos, Vol. I., p. lx.), while Philip the Fourth decreed that they should not be forced to contribute to the equipment of his troops, but should only be invited to contribute, just as with the nobles. Nevertheless, Rico y Sinobas points out (Del vidrio y de sus artífices en España) that Philip the Fifth and Ferdinand the Sixth, on founding the royal glass factory of San Ildefonso, did not dare to ennoble the Castilian workmen.
“I bestow the name of craftsmen in silver (artífices plateros), not upon all who handle silver or gold, but only upon such as draw, and grave, and execute in relief, whether on a large or small scale, figures and histories from life, just as do the sculptors.” These words are quoted from a book, the whole of which was written with the aim of proving that certain classes of Spain's older craftsmen were less abject than the rest.[77] It is not so long ago that the expression viles artesanos (“vile artisans”) was banished from the legal phraseology of Spain. “That prejudice,” wrote Laborde, “which regards the mechanic arts as base, is not extinguished in Spain, but only abated: hence it happens that they are neglected or abandoned to such unskilful hands that they are wonderfully backward in these matters. The influence of this cause is striking: in Catalonia, laws, customs, and opinions are favourable to artisans, and it is in this province that these arts have made the greatest progress.”
Townsend commented as follows on what he called the national prejudice against trade. “Whilst the Jews were merchants, and the mechanic arts were left either to the Moors or to the vilest of the people, the grandees or knights were ambitious only of military fame. After the conquest of Granada, the Moors continued to be the principal manufacturers, and excelled in the cultivation of their lands. When these, with the Jews, were banished, a void was left which the high-spirited Spaniard was not inclined to fill. Trained for many centuries to the exercise of arms, and regarding such mean occupations with disdain, his aversion was increased by his hatred and contempt for those whom he had been accustomed to see engaged in these employments. He had been early taught to consider trade as dishonourable; and whether he frequented the theatre, or listened to the discourses of the pulpit orators, he could not fail to be confirmed in his ideas. Even in the present day, many, who boast their descent from noble ancestors, had rather starve than work, more especially at those trades by which, according to the laws, they would be degraded, and forfeit their nobility.”—(Journey through Spain in 1786 and 1787, pp. 240, 241.)
Laborde endorsed these assertions by uncharitably remarking that “the Spaniard had always fortitude enough to endure privations, but never courage enough to encounter work.” In our time judgments of a still severer kind have been passed upon the Spaniards by various of their own countrymen—among others, Unamuno, Ganivet, and Pompeyo Gener.
It is evident, too, that the cause of the relentless exclusion, by the Spanish guilds, of Moors, Moriscos, Jews, or converts—men who, owing to the unsubstantial taint of heresy, were hated and derided by the Spanish nation almost to a man—resided also in this morbid sensitiveness. Had not the Moorish prisoner been formerly considered as the merest chattel, legally equivalent to a beast of burden?[78] How, then, should he be ever equalled with the Christian Spaniard? These haughty and extravagant notions operated, in the seventeenth century, to bring about the general ruin of Spanish trades and manufactures. Bertaut de Rouen wrote at this time:—>“L'acoûtumance qu'avoient les Espagnols de faire travailler les Morisques, qui estoient libres parmi eux, et les Mores esclaves, dont il y a encor quelques-uns qu'ils prennent sur leurs costes et sur celles d'Afrique, les a entretenus dans la faineantise et dans l'orgueil, qui fait qu'ils dédaignent tous de travailler. Ce qui achève de les y plonger, c'est le peu de soucy qu'ils prennent de l'avenir, et l'égalité du menu peuple et de tous les moindres marchands et artisans qu'ils nomment officiales, avec les gentilshommes, qui demeurent tous dans les petites villes.”