Crafts, Gilds, and Women in the Middle Ages: Fifty Years After Marian K. Dale
By Maryanne Kowaleski and Judith M. Bennett
Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 14 (1989)
Introduction: Of the many forms of community life in the Middle Ages, urban gilds were among the most common and most influential. Gilds joined together persons engaged in the same trade or craft for their mutual economic, social, and religious benefit. As a rule, only persons involved in skilled work, merchants or artisans, formed gilds, and they controlled access to their work through these organizations. Only members of a gild could engage in the trade or craft supervised by that gild. Although the main purpose of merchant or craft gilds was economic (they provided training for apprentices, regulated wages and prices, and stipulated trade practices and quality), they also exercised important social, religious, and charitable functions. They held annual feasts, buried the dead, cared for the families of deceased members, and participated in religious processions. Gilds often accrued political clout as well; in many towns, membership in certain gilds was a prerequisite to civic enfranchisement.
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