Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/98

 GUILDS

68

GUILDS

oaths concerning the payment of contributions in case of fire or shipwTeck." This prohibition appears sev- eral times in the laws enacted under the Carlovin- gian emperors; nevertheless the guilds continued to exist, at least in the northern part of the empire. The records of the provincial councils held in those dis- tricts also show that the guilds were a matter of no small concern for the ecclesiastical authorities; for a long time the Church was bent on extirpating from their organization a number of objectionable features which made them a menace to morals.

In France and the Low Countries a guild w-as orig- inally a sort of fraternity for common support, protec- tion, and amusement. The members paid each a certain contribution to the common fund; they pledged their word to give one another assistance; they took care of the children of the deceased members and had Masses offered up for the repose of their souls; they celebrated the patron saint's day with great fes- tivities in which the poor had their share. These and other features of the guilds did not, of course, appear all at the same time. Like most human institutions they had a modest beginning, and they developed according to circumstances, .\gain, it should be noted that they do not everjTvhere present one and the same type. Some are mainly social, others em- phasize the religious side of the organization, while, later on, in the merchant and craft guilds, it is the economic aspect which becomes predominant. Be- fore speaking of the latter a word should be said of the origin of the guilds in the two countries with which we are concerned here. This has been a much debated question. Some scholars consider the guilds as the product in Christian soil, of the German instinct of association, and they would assign for their remotest origin the banquets (coni-ina) so common among the Teutons and Scandinavians. Others claim that they were nothing else than the Roman corporations {col- legia) established in Western Europe under Roman sway and reconstructed on Christian principles after the great invasions. That the Roman colleges of artisans flourished in southern and central Gaul has been established lieyond doubt by the discovery of numerous inscriptions at Nice, Nimes, Narbonne, Lyons, and other cities. It is not likely that the Barbarian invasion broke entirely the Roman tradi- tions in countries where the influence of Rome had been felt so deeply, and one is warranted in saying that in southern and centra! France the origin of the guilds was to a certain extent Roman. Such an as- sertion, however, could hardly be made for northern France and still less for the Low Countries. There is no evidence to show that the Roman collegia ever at- tained great importance in these regions. At any rate, the dominion of Rome was estalilished there much later than in the South and was never so deep- rooted. Romaninstitutions and customs had .scarcely had time to take root before the Cierman invasion, and they must have given way very easily under the press- ure of the conquerors, whose numbers, rapidly in- creasing, soon insured to them a preponilerating influence.

But whether a legacy of Roman civilization or a native institution of the young Teutonic race, the guild would never have attained its wonderful devel- opment had not the Church taken it under its tutelage and infused into it the vivifying spirit of Christian charity. Furthermore, it is certain that a large num- ber of guilds owed their existence solely to the aspira- tions which gave rise to chivalry and induced thou- sands of men to join the monastic communities. Towards the end of the tenth century, with the greater security following the Norman invasions, there was an increase of trade on the Continent. In each of the large towns, such as Rouen, Paris, Bruges, .-^rras, Saint-Omer, there soon arose a corporation which was known as the Merchant Guild and which was;, in some

instances at least, a development of an older associa- tion. None but the brethren of the corporation were allowed to trade in any article except food. Whether the communes (chartered towns) of France and the Low Countries had their origin in the Merchant Guild is a moot question, although it seems certain that the merchants were at least instrumental in the grant- ing of charters by princes, for the right of managing its own affairs, conferred on the town, practically meant that its government fell into the hands of the trading class. At the origin of the Merchant Guild, any towns- man might become a member of the corporation on payment of a stated fee, but with the increase of their wealth, the traders showed more and more a tendency to shut out the poorer classes from their association. The latter classes, however, were not without organi- zation; they had their own corporations (the craft guilds), most of w'hich .seem to have been constituted in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Each one of these craft guilds, like the merchant guilds, had its charter and statutes, its patron saint, its banner and altar, its hall, its feast day, and its place in the rehg- ious processions and public festivities. There were in the craft guilds three classes of persons: the appren- tices, or learners (apprendre, "to learn"), the journey- men {journce, "day"), or men hired to work by the day, and the masters or employers.

The apprentice had to remain from three to ten years in a condition of entire dependence under a master, in order to be qualified to exercise his trade as a journejTnan. Before a master could engage an ap- prentice, he had to satisfy the officers of the guild of the soundness of his moral character. He was to treat the boy as he would his ow'n child, and was held re- sponsible not only for his professional, but also for his moral, education. On completing his apprenticeship, the young artisan became a journeyman (compagnon) ; at least, such was the rule from the fourteenth century onward. To liecome a master, he must have some means and pass an examination before the elders. At the head of the corporation was a board of trustees composed of two or more deans {doyens, si/ndics) as- sisted by a secretary, a treasurer, and six or more jurymen {jxtris, assesseurs, trouveurs, prud'hommes). These officers were elected from among the masters and entrusted with the management of the guild's in- terests, the care of its orphans, the defence of its privileges, and the protection of its members. It was more especially the duty of the jurymen to enforce the statutes of the guild bearing on the relations betw-een employer and employee, engagement of apprentices and journeymen, salaries, hours of work, holidays, etc. They could punish or even expel from the corporation any member whose conduct incurred their disappro- bation.

From this strong organization, all pervaded with the spirit of Christianity, there resulted great benefits for the artisan. His work, which was well regulated and broken by many holidays, did not tax his strength too severely; the good life he was induced to live saved him from need, while his rights and interests were pro- tected against the vexations of the local or central government. Still more noteworthy was the broth- erly character of the relations between employee and employer, to which the great cities of the Middle Ages were indebted for the social peace which they enjoyed for many centuries. This alone would outweigh what disadvantages may have been attached to this organi- zation of labour. The guilds of the Low Countries, otherwise similar to the French guilds, differed from them in one respect: political importance. The latter never gained enough influence to free themselves from the condition of utter dependence in which they had been placed by the kings, but in the Low Countries several circumstances combined which gave the la- bouring classes a power they could not have in France Of these circumstances, the most important were the