By Carol Symes, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
To an extent, the emergence of self-regulating guilds was an extension of a medieval town’s own corporate status. Many of these towns were fiercely independent, formed around a sworn association of free citizens whose mutual oath, the coniuratio, constituted a political, social, and economic bulwark against the predations of local lords and the meddling of emerging monarchies.
Towns Get Official Seals
A town became a self-governing body, often by forming a commune and demanding a charter from a local ruler. It had the right to make and administer laws within its walls and banlieue—the area within which its banns (or laws) could be enforced.
With this legal status came the right to possess and use an official seal. These official seals enabled towns to participate in political and economic transactions. In the later Middle Ages, towns increasingly used their seals to guarantee the authenticity of any commodities for which they were famous. For example, many distinctive varieties of cloth were so closely associated with a town that they took its name; arras became the generic name for tapestry; damask meant a luxurious silk from Damascus; the city of Valenciennes was synonymous with lace; malines was a type of fine Flemish woolen; and so on.
And, of course, even today we associate some medieval towns with their evergreen commodities—the cheeses of Gouda, Cheddar, and Münster; the mustard of Dijon; the wine of Bordeaux. Some of the towns that became transnational centers of commerce and banking even minted and guaranteed their own money, which could be more stable and prestigious than any royal coinage. Until the late 13th century, the artésien of Arras was the trusted currency of northern Europe; afterwards, the florin of Florence or the ducat of Venice became the international currencies of account.
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Strong Solidarities within Trades
Protecting the integrity and quality of a product was the trade guild’s most essential purpose, together with the protection of its members’ legal rights and welfare. From what we can determine, this was also the function of guilds in antiquity, which were called collegia (meaning collectives, from which we get colleges) or simply, bodies—in Latin, corpora, from which we get corporations.
All such early guilds benefitted from the fact that those practicing the same crafts usually lived on the same street or in the same neighborhood, often adjacent to the quarters of craftsmen who practiced allied trades or whose work involved the same materials. Marriages and family partnerships also created strong solidarities within trades.
Both archeological evidence and surviving urban toponymics (or place names) even make it possible to map the kinds of labor performed in many medieval towns and the relative hierarchy of those professions: with skinners, tanners, and fullers on the peripheries due to their messy, smelly work; leather workers, shoemakers, parchment makers, and bookbinders all working the same animal hides in different ways; high-end metalworkers, blacksmiths, and butchers closer to the center; and then the more luxurious work of weavers and drapers, with gold- and silversmiths alongside the merchants and bankers along the city’s major street or square.
Location, Location, Location
The maps and street names of major European cities still bear the names of the trades that once gave these neighborhoods their identity. In London, for example, one can still walk along Apothecary Street, Bakers Hall Court and Bread Street, Cheapside and Eastcheap (from the Old English chepe, ‘market’), Cloth Fair and Cloth Street, Fish Street and Fishmongers’ Wharf, Fruiterers Passage, Jewry Street, Honey Lane, Lombard Street (where wool merchants from northern Italy lived), Oystergate Walk, the Poultry, Skinners Lane, and Stationers Hall Court, among others.
The word guild in Old English and other Germanic languages comes from geld (meaning ‘payment’, ‘service’, ‘tribute’) and is related to yield (or yauld): hence a geguild was a collective of those whose labor yielded similar goods or services. On the Continent, the word most frequently in use for such associations was confraternitas or caritas—‘confraternity’, ‘brotherhood’; or carité, ‘charitable organization’.
Although some medieval confraternities were based in individual parishes or around certain churches and shrines, and were thus motivated by shared rituals and neighborly pursuits, the majority of them had some role in the professional development of their members and in safeguarding the mysteries or know-how of specific crafts and trades.
Group Identity
In all cases, guilds fostered a sense of group identity and mutual responsibility—and, as such, could be perceived as threatening to established authorities and hierarchies. There were efforts on the part of both ecclesiastical and secular rulers to outlaw guilds, especially if their meetings or holiday festivities became unruly, but these efforts were constantly thwarted.
Thus, one can say that later medieval guilds were occasionally powerful enough to spearhead urban uprisings. They also organized general strikes that were remarkably successful, even though, ultimately, temporary.
Common Questions about Medieval Guilds
Official seals enabled towns to participate in political and economic transactions. In the later Middle Ages, towns increasingly used their seals to guarantee the authenticity of any commodities for which they were famous.
Early guilds benefitted from the fact that those practicing the same crafts usually lived on the same street or in the same neighborhood, often adjacent to the quarters of craftsmen who practiced allied trades or whose work involved the same materials. Marriages and family partnerships also created strong solidarities within trades.
The word guild in Old English and other Germanic languages comes from geld (meaning ‘payment’, ‘service’, ‘tribute’) and is related to yield (or yauld): hence a geguild was a collective of those whose labor yielded similar goods or services. On the Continent, the word most frequently in use for such associations was confraternitas or caritas—‘confraternity’, ‘brotherhood’; or carité, ‘charitable organization’.
