Medieval craft guilds shaped nearly every aspect of urban work and trade during the Middle Ages. From controlling who could practice a profession to regulating quality, apprenticeships, and working conditions, Lucie Laumonier explains how these organizations played a central role in medieval economic and social life.
By Lucie Laumonier
What, exactly, were guilds in the European Middle Ages? This article strives to tackle this question by examining their emergence in the twelfth-thirteenth century, the roles they served for workers and governments and their internal organization. First things first, an attempt at definition. Guilds were town-based worker associations typically organized along the lines of a profession: guild of tailors, guild of merchants, guild of cauldron-makers. All people of said profession had to join the guild and abide by its rules to be allowed to practice the profession thereby creating a monopoly on trade.
The earliest written traces of craft guilds date from the twelfth century. These documents are explicit about the guilds’ role in establishing a monopoly on trade. Circa 1106-07, the bishop of Worms, in Germany, granted a monopoly to retail fish to 23 men of the city. If other people were caught selling fish, the merchandise would be seized and the culprit would have to pay a fine. A few decades later, c. 1175, Henry II of England gave a charter to the tanners of the city of Rouen (modern day France, then an English fief) guaranteeing their monopoly on tanning within the city’s jurisdiction. At around the same period, Henry II granted some Oxford shoemakers the right to form a guild, “so that none carry on their trade in the town of Oxford, except he be of that guild.” In exchange for such monopoly, the guild would pay an ounce of gold every year to the King’s Exchequer. The butchers of Paris were granted similar rights in 1182 by the king of France. To be allowed to buy and sell meat (and fish!), the butchers of Paris had to pay 12 d. on Christmas, 13 d. on Easter and 13 d. on the feast of St. Denis to the king or his representatives.
Dyers soaking red cloth in a heated barrel. British Library MS Royal 15 E. III, fol. 269
The function of guilds in establishing a monopoly of trade in a given city or town remained one of their most defining features to the end of the Middle Ages. In 1330, for example, the sardine fishermen of the town San Vicente de la Barquera, in north-Atlantic Spain, saw their monopoly confirmed by statutes stating that “no sardine fisherman can ply that trade in this town unless he is a member of the guild”.
In other cases, craft guilds emerged from religious confraternities. What happened, in essence, was that a confraternity dedicated to a given saint started to attract members of a particular profession, to the point where the confraternity became associated with the trade. In Catalonia, the first mention of a guild dates from 1203, when the cobblers of Barcelona established an altar dedicated to St. Mark in the city’s cathedral. In the catalan city of Girona, the confraternity of the Four Martyr Saints became connected with the stonemasons and carpenters, though it was open to all people who wanted to join. The statutes of the shearers of Arras, Flanders, drafted in 1236 provided that “whoever would engage in the trade of a shearer shall be in the confraternity of St. Julien.” All guilds established in Aix-en-Provence, southern France, formed their own confraternities, such as the bakers, whose guild-confraternity celebrated St. André. These guilds still had a monopoly on trade.
Guilds’ Statutes and Ordinances
Coats of arms of guilds in a town in the Czech Republic displaying symbols of various European medieval trades and crafts. Image by VitVit / Wikimedia Commons
In the thirteenth century, guild regulation became increasingly common. Statutes or ordinances were drafted either by the local authorities, by the king, or by the workers themselves, who then submitted them for approval to their lord or the city’s mayor. In Paris, a Livre des métiers containing the statutes of about 130 guilds was drafted in 1268 by the Provost of Paris, Étienne Boileau, at the request of the king of France. But in Burgos, Spain, the cobblers drafted their own statutes in 1258, later confirmed by the king of Castile Alfonso X. The butchers of Tuln, Germany, also wrote their own statutes upon receiving approval to do so by the city’s mayor in 1237.
Guild statutes and ordinances cast a wide net when it came to what, exactly, was under their purview. They usually defined the weight and quality of merchandise, and the type of tools workers would use to do their work. Seamen’s guilds from north-Atlantic Spain strictly regulated the size and type of nets employed to catch fish. In Leicester, England, a merchant was found guilty in 1254 of not respecting the quality standards laid out in the ordinances of the merchant guild. The culprit “had made a blanket and it was in the first part of good wool and elsewhere in many places of bad wool, and again because he caused a poor and bad vermilion cloth to be sewed to another good vermilion cloth.” In York, the c. 1385 ordinance of the tailors specified that “if any complaint be made concerning any garment,” it should be inspected and, if possible, the tailor “shall take it back to mend it.”
The quality of merchandise was indeed of great importance, even more so when the guild produced foodstuff. The German butchers of Tuln were barred from selling meat “on the day on which the animal is killed.” In addition, if “bad meat” was found in a butcher’s shop, “the master craftsman will seize that meat until [the guilty butcher] makes amends in the presence of the mayors”. In Bristol, England, the c. 1340 ordinance of the bakers said that “if any baker adulterates any bread after it has been standing in his window for sale and is convicted,” he would pay a fine of 40 d.
Guilds usually required entrance fees from their workers. The statutes of the shearers of Arras, in Flanders, drafted in 1237, required entry fees of 14 s. for masters and 5 s. for journeymen. The statutes of the guild of the wool workers of Padua, Italy, drafted in 1384, read: “Everyone who wishes to work or to organise work in the city and district of Padua is obliged to enter and enrol in membership of the wool guild and to pay to the treasurer 10 l. to enter.” In York, England, no tailor “should set up his stall to practise the craft before he has paid 6 s. 8 d. as is customary.” On top of entrance fees, guilds could collect weekly fees from the workers and typically asked for fees when masters took in apprentices. The Parisian makers of coral rosaries, for example, would pay 40 s. to the guild when taking in an apprentice.
Statutes and ordinances additionally specified which days workers were to stay home and keep their business closed. The bathhouse keepers of Paris were forbidden to “heat up their baths on Sunday, or on a feast day which the commune of the city keeps.” The wool workers of Padua had to respect no less than 50 feast days every year, in addition to Sundays. In Arras, shearers who worked on Sunday afternoon and on a series of other feast days would be fined 12 d. if they were masters, or 6 d. if they were journeymen. Higher fines of 5 s. would be imposed on those shearers working “in the four days of Christmas, or in the eight days of Easter, or in the eight days of Pentecost,” effectively granting them some 20 days of unpaid vacation.
The Hierarchy of Guilds
Medieval clothier – Hausbuch der Mendelschen Zwölfbrüderstiftung, Band 1. Nürnberg 1426–1549. Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, Amb. 317.2°
Apprentices were at the bottom of the guild’s hierarchy. They were usually taken in when reaching their teens. They received training and their keep in their master’s house, and were rarely paid. Statutes and ordinances typically included clauses regarding apprentices, the content of which varied from city to city. The 1345 ordinance of the spurriers of London specified that apprenticeships should last seven years. In Arras, apprenticeship for shearers took three years. In Paris, mistresses in the art of silk fabrics would pay 4 l. to the guild if they took an apprentice for fewer than six years; 40 s. for apprentices staying fewer than 8 years, but they wouldn’t pay any fee for apprenticeships lasting ten years. In Ratisbon, Germany, apprentices could be exempt from their fifth year of training if they paid a fee; while the silversmiths of Barcelona, Spain, couldn’t take any apprentices aged less than 12 years old.
Once their apprenticeship was complete, young workers could become journeymen or journeywomen. This meant that they would work for wages in a master’s workshop. In some trades, workers were paid by the piece, meaning that their earnings were dependent on the quantity of merchandise they produced. The next step was to try and become a master or a mistress. In some cases, accessing the rank of master required undertaking an examination. In Gerona, Catalonia, the fifteenth-century construction workers had to prove their skills in front of a committee made of guilds’ and city’s officials, including four master stonemasons and carpenters. Still in Spain, the makers of trimmings (passementiers) of Valencia had to adorn a bag with stripes and buttons and to craft a trimming on a decorative cloth to show their skills and become masters of the trade, as per their 1515 statutes.
The tailors of Paris had to be examined by the guild’s authorities before opening a shop. If they found the candidate sufficiently skilled in “sewing and cutting fabric”, he could open a shop as master. Other ordinances were less detailed: still in Paris, “any woman who wishes to weave silk kerchiefs may do so, provided she knows how to practice the craft well and truly”. In other cities, such as in Montpelier, southern France, statutes made no mention of an examination. The difference between journeymen and masters rather depended on the financial capacity to open their own workshop.
As governing bodies, guilds were usually managed by guild headmen—whose title varied greatly from one city to the next—who were chosen among the masters of the trade. In addition, the guild or public authorities appointed guild wardens to inspect the merchandise. Work guilds also undertook a number of religious functions, policed their members’ behaviors (for example by banning games of chance) and played an important mutual aid role. Members, for instance, supported the widows of departed workers.
Medieval craft guilds shaped nearly every aspect of urban work and trade during the Middle Ages. From controlling who could practice a profession to regulating quality, apprenticeships, and working conditions, Lucie Laumonier explains how these organizations played a central role in medieval economic and social life.
By Lucie Laumonier
What, exactly, were guilds in the European Middle Ages? This article strives to tackle this question by examining their emergence in the twelfth-thirteenth century, the roles they served for workers and governments and their internal organization. First things first, an attempt at definition. Guilds were town-based worker associations typically organized along the lines of a profession: guild of tailors, guild of merchants, guild of cauldron-makers. All people of said profession had to join the guild and abide by its rules to be allowed to practice the profession thereby creating a monopoly on trade.
The earliest written traces of craft guilds date from the twelfth century. These documents are explicit about the guilds’ role in establishing a monopoly on trade. Circa 1106-07, the bishop of Worms, in Germany, granted a monopoly to retail fish to 23 men of the city. If other people were caught selling fish, the merchandise would be seized and the culprit would have to pay a fine. A few decades later, c. 1175, Henry II of England gave a charter to the tanners of the city of Rouen (modern day France, then an English fief) guaranteeing their monopoly on tanning within the city’s jurisdiction. At around the same period, Henry II granted some Oxford shoemakers the right to form a guild, “so that none carry on their trade in the town of Oxford, except he be of that guild.” In exchange for such monopoly, the guild would pay an ounce of gold every year to the King’s Exchequer. The butchers of Paris were granted similar rights in 1182 by the king of France. To be allowed to buy and sell meat (and fish!), the butchers of Paris had to pay 12 d. on Christmas, 13 d. on Easter and 13 d. on the feast of St. Denis to the king or his representatives.
The function of guilds in establishing a monopoly of trade in a given city or town remained one of their most defining features to the end of the Middle Ages. In 1330, for example, the sardine fishermen of the town San Vicente de la Barquera, in north-Atlantic Spain, saw their monopoly confirmed by statutes stating that “no sardine fisherman can ply that trade in this town unless he is a member of the guild”.
In other cases, craft guilds emerged from religious confraternities. What happened, in essence, was that a confraternity dedicated to a given saint started to attract members of a particular profession, to the point where the confraternity became associated with the trade. In Catalonia, the first mention of a guild dates from 1203, when the cobblers of Barcelona established an altar dedicated to St. Mark in the city’s cathedral. In the catalan city of Girona, the confraternity of the Four Martyr Saints became connected with the stonemasons and carpenters, though it was open to all people who wanted to join. The statutes of the shearers of Arras, Flanders, drafted in 1236 provided that “whoever would engage in the trade of a shearer shall be in the confraternity of St. Julien.” All guilds established in Aix-en-Provence, southern France, formed their own confraternities, such as the bakers, whose guild-confraternity celebrated St. André. These guilds still had a monopoly on trade.
Guilds’ Statutes and Ordinances
In the thirteenth century, guild regulation became increasingly common. Statutes or ordinances were drafted either by the local authorities, by the king, or by the workers themselves, who then submitted them for approval to their lord or the city’s mayor. In Paris, a Livre des métiers containing the statutes of about 130 guilds was drafted in 1268 by the Provost of Paris, Étienne Boileau, at the request of the king of France. But in Burgos, Spain, the cobblers drafted their own statutes in 1258, later confirmed by the king of Castile Alfonso X. The butchers of Tuln, Germany, also wrote their own statutes upon receiving approval to do so by the city’s mayor in 1237.
Guild statutes and ordinances cast a wide net when it came to what, exactly, was under their purview. They usually defined the weight and quality of merchandise, and the type of tools workers would use to do their work. Seamen’s guilds from north-Atlantic Spain strictly regulated the size and type of nets employed to catch fish. In Leicester, England, a merchant was found guilty in 1254 of not respecting the quality standards laid out in the ordinances of the merchant guild. The culprit “had made a blanket and it was in the first part of good wool and elsewhere in many places of bad wool, and again because he caused a poor and bad vermilion cloth to be sewed to another good vermilion cloth.” In York, the c. 1385 ordinance of the tailors specified that “if any complaint be made concerning any garment,” it should be inspected and, if possible, the tailor “shall take it back to mend it.”
The quality of merchandise was indeed of great importance, even more so when the guild produced foodstuff. The German butchers of Tuln were barred from selling meat “on the day on which the animal is killed.” In addition, if “bad meat” was found in a butcher’s shop, “the master craftsman will seize that meat until [the guilty butcher] makes amends in the presence of the mayors”. In Bristol, England, the c. 1340 ordinance of the bakers said that “if any baker adulterates any bread after it has been standing in his window for sale and is convicted,” he would pay a fine of 40 d.
Guilds usually required entrance fees from their workers. The statutes of the shearers of Arras, in Flanders, drafted in 1237, required entry fees of 14 s. for masters and 5 s. for journeymen. The statutes of the guild of the wool workers of Padua, Italy, drafted in 1384, read: “Everyone who wishes to work or to organise work in the city and district of Padua is obliged to enter and enrol in membership of the wool guild and to pay to the treasurer 10 l. to enter.” In York, England, no tailor “should set up his stall to practise the craft before he has paid 6 s. 8 d. as is customary.” On top of entrance fees, guilds could collect weekly fees from the workers and typically asked for fees when masters took in apprentices. The Parisian makers of coral rosaries, for example, would pay 40 s. to the guild when taking in an apprentice.
Statutes and ordinances additionally specified which days workers were to stay home and keep their business closed. The bathhouse keepers of Paris were forbidden to “heat up their baths on Sunday, or on a feast day which the commune of the city keeps.” The wool workers of Padua had to respect no less than 50 feast days every year, in addition to Sundays. In Arras, shearers who worked on Sunday afternoon and on a series of other feast days would be fined 12 d. if they were masters, or 6 d. if they were journeymen. Higher fines of 5 s. would be imposed on those shearers working “in the four days of Christmas, or in the eight days of Easter, or in the eight days of Pentecost,” effectively granting them some 20 days of unpaid vacation.
The Hierarchy of Guilds
Apprentices were at the bottom of the guild’s hierarchy. They were usually taken in when reaching their teens. They received training and their keep in their master’s house, and were rarely paid. Statutes and ordinances typically included clauses regarding apprentices, the content of which varied from city to city. The 1345 ordinance of the spurriers of London specified that apprenticeships should last seven years. In Arras, apprenticeship for shearers took three years. In Paris, mistresses in the art of silk fabrics would pay 4 l. to the guild if they took an apprentice for fewer than six years; 40 s. for apprentices staying fewer than 8 years, but they wouldn’t pay any fee for apprenticeships lasting ten years. In Ratisbon, Germany, apprentices could be exempt from their fifth year of training if they paid a fee; while the silversmiths of Barcelona, Spain, couldn’t take any apprentices aged less than 12 years old.
Once their apprenticeship was complete, young workers could become journeymen or journeywomen. This meant that they would work for wages in a master’s workshop. In some trades, workers were paid by the piece, meaning that their earnings were dependent on the quantity of merchandise they produced. The next step was to try and become a master or a mistress. In some cases, accessing the rank of master required undertaking an examination. In Gerona, Catalonia, the fifteenth-century construction workers had to prove their skills in front of a committee made of guilds’ and city’s officials, including four master stonemasons and carpenters. Still in Spain, the makers of trimmings (passementiers) of Valencia had to adorn a bag with stripes and buttons and to craft a trimming on a decorative cloth to show their skills and become masters of the trade, as per their 1515 statutes.
The tailors of Paris had to be examined by the guild’s authorities before opening a shop. If they found the candidate sufficiently skilled in “sewing and cutting fabric”, he could open a shop as master. Other ordinances were less detailed: still in Paris, “any woman who wishes to weave silk kerchiefs may do so, provided she knows how to practice the craft well and truly”. In other cities, such as in Montpelier, southern France, statutes made no mention of an examination. The difference between journeymen and masters rather depended on the financial capacity to open their own workshop.
As governing bodies, guilds were usually managed by guild headmen—whose title varied greatly from one city to the next—who were chosen among the masters of the trade. In addition, the guild or public authorities appointed guild wardens to inspect the merchandise. Work guilds also undertook a number of religious functions, policed their members’ behaviors (for example by banning games of chance) and played an important mutual aid role. Members, for instance, supported the widows of departed workers.
Lucie Laumonier is a medieval historian and professor at Concordia University, Montreal. Her newest book is Charity and Community in Montpellier, 13th–16th Centuries: The Multiplication of Loaves. You can follow Lucie on Instagram @lucie_in_academia
Click here to read more from Lucie Laumonier
Further Readings:
Roy C. Cave, A Source Book for Medieval Economic History, 1965
Noël Coulet, “Les confréries de métier à Aix au bas Moyen Âge,” in Les métiers au Moyen Âge. Aspects économiques et sociaux, 1994
Germán Navarro Espinach, “Textiles in the Crown of Aragon: Production, Commerce, Consumption,” in Textiles of Medieval Iberia: Cloth and Clothing in a Multi-Cultural Context, 2022
Jesús Ángel Solórzano-Telechea, “Seamen’s Guilds, Labor Organizations and Social Protest in Northern Iberia in the Late Middle Ages,” Histories, 2023
Sandrine Victor, La construction et les métiers de la construction à Gérone au XVe siècle, 2008
Top Image: BnF. Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal. Ms-5062 fol. 149v
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