Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution Part 10

28. See previous chapter.

29. Kofod Ancher, Om gamle Danske Gilder og deres Undergang, Copenhagen, 1785. Statutes of a Knu guild.

30. Upon the position of women in guilds, see Miss Toulmin Smith's introductory remarks to the English Guilds of her father. One of the Cambridge statutes (p. 281) of the year 1503 is quite positive in the following sentence: "Thys statute is made by the comyne a.s.sent of all the bretherne and sisterne of alhallowe yelde."

31. In medieval times, only secret aggression was treated as a murder.

Blood-revenge in broad daylight was justice; and slaying in a quarrel was not murder, once the aggressor showed his willingness to repent and to repair the wrong he had done. Deep traces of this distinction still exist in modern criminal law, especially in Russia.

32. Kofod Ancher, l.c. This old booklet contains much that has been lost sight of by later explorers.

33. They played an important part in the revolts of the serfs, and were therefore prohibited several times in succession in the second half of the ninth century. Of course, the king's prohibitions remained a dead letter.

34. The medieval Italian painters were also organized in guilds, which became at a later epoch Academies of art. If the Italian art of those times is impressed with so much individuality that we distinguish, even now, between the different schools of Padua, Ba.s.sano, Treviso, Verona, and so on, although all these cities were under the sway of Venice, this was due--J. Paul Richter remarks--to the fact that the painters of each city belonged to a separate guild, friendly with the guilds of other towns, but leading a separate existence. The oldest guild-statute known is that of Verona, dating from 1303, but evidently copied from some much older statute. "Fraternal a.s.sistance in necessity of whatever kind,"

"hospitality towards strangers, when pa.s.sing through the town, as thus information may be obtained about matters which one may like to learn,"

and "obligation of offering comfort in case of debility" are among the obligations of the members (Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1890, and Aug.

1892).

35. The chief works on the artels are named in the article "Russia" of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition, p. 84.

36. See, for instance, the texts of the Cambridge guilds given by Toulmin Smith (English Guilds, London, 1870, pp. 274-276), from which it appears that the "generall and princ.i.p.all day" was the "eleccioun day;"

or, Ch. M. Clode's The Early History of the Guild of the Merchant Taylors, London, 1888, i. 45; and so on. For the renewal of allegiance, see the Jomsviking saga, mentioned in Pappenheim's Altdanische Schutzgilden, Breslau, 1885, p. 67. It appears very probable that when the guilds began to be prosecuted, many of them inscribed in their statutes the meal day only, or their pious duties, and only alluded to the judicial function of the guild in vague words; but this function did not disappear till a very much later time. The question, "Who will be my judge?" has no meaning now, since the State has appropriated for its bureaucracy the organization of justice; but it was of primordial importance in medieval times, the more so as self-jurisdiction meant self-administration. It must also be remarked that the translation of the Saxon and Danish "guild-bretheren," or "brodre," by the Latin convivii must also have contributed to the above confusion.

37. See the excellent remarks upon the frith guild by J.R. Green and Mrs. Green in The Conquest of England, London, 1883, pp. 229-230.

38. None

39. Recueil des ordonnances des rois de France, t. xii. 562; quoted by Aug. Thierry in Considerations sur l'histoire de France, p. 196, ed.

12mo.

40. A. Luchaire, Les Communes francaises, pp, 45-46.

41. Guilbert de Nogent, De vita sua, quoted by Luchaire, l.c., p. 14.

42. Lebret, Histoire de Venise, i. 393; also Marin, quoted by Leo and Botta in Histoire de l'Italie, French edition, 1844, t. i 500.

43. Dr. W. Arnold, Verfa.s.sungsgeschichte der deutschen Freistadte, 1854, Bd. ii. 227 seq.; Ennen, Geschichte der Stadt Koeln, Bd. i. 228-229; also the doc.u.ments published by Ennen and Eckert.

44. Conquest of England, 1883, p. 453.

45. Byelaeff, Russian History, vols. ii. and iii.

46. W. Gramich, Verfa.s.sungs und Verwaltungsgeschichte der Stadt Wurzburg im 13. bis zum 15. Jahrhundert, Wurzburg, 1882, p. 34.

47. When a boat brought a cargo of coal to Wurzburg, coal could only be sold in retail during the first eight days, each family being ent.i.tled to no more than fifty basketfuls. The remaining cargo could be sold wholesale, but the retailer was allowed to raise a zittlicher profit only, the unzittlicher, or dishonest profit, being strictly forbidden (Gramich, l.c.). Same in London (Liber albus, quoted by Ochenkowski, p.

161), and, in fact, everywhere.

48. See f.a.gniez, Etudes sur l'industrie et la cla.s.se industrielle a Paris au XIIIme et XIVme siecle, Paris, 1877, pp. 155 seq. It hardly need be added that the tax on bread, and on beer as well, was settled after careful experiments as to the quant.i.ty of bread and beer which could be obtained from a given amount of corn. The Amiens archives contain the minutes of such experiences (A. de Calonne, l.c. pp. 77, 93). Also those of London (Ochenkowski, England's wirthschaftliche Entwickelung, etc., Jena, 1879, p. 165).

49. Ch. Gross, The Guild Merchant, Oxford, 1890, i. 135. His doc.u.ments prove that this practice existed in Liverpool (ii. 148-150), Waterford in Ireland, Neath in Wales, and Linlithgow and Thurso in Scotland. Mr.

Gross's texts also show that the purchases were made for distribution, not only among the merchant burgesses, but "upon all citsains and commynalte" (p. 136, note), or, as the Thurso ordinance of the seventeenth century runs, to "make offer to the merchants, craftsmen, and inhabitants of the said burgh, that they may have their proportion of the same, according to their necessitys and ability."

50. The Early History of the Guild of Merchant Taylors, by Charles M.

Clode, London, 1888, i. 361, appendix 10; also the following appendix which shows that the same purchases were made in 1546.

51. Cibrario, Les conditions economiques de l'Italie au temps de Dante, Paris, 1865, p. 44.

52. A. de Calonne, La vie munic.i.p.ale au XVme siecle dans le Nord de la France, Paris, 1880, pp. 12-16. In 1485 the city permitted the export to Antwerp of a certain quant.i.ty of corn, "the inhabitants of Antwerp being always ready to be agreeable to the merchants and burgesses of Amiens"

(ibid., pp. 75-77 and texts).

53. A. Babeau, La ville sous l'ancien regime, Paris, 1880.

54. Ennen, Geschichte der Stadt Koln, i. 491, 492, also texts.

CHAPTER VI

MUTUAL AID IN THE MEDIAEVAL CITY (continued)

Likeness and diversity among the medieval cities. The craftguilds: State-attributes in each of them. Att.i.tude of the city towards the peasants; attempts to free them. The lords. Results achieved by the medieval city: in arts, in learning. Causes of decay.

The medieval cities were not organized upon some preconceived plan in obedience to the will of an outside legislator. Each of them was a natural growth in the full sense of the word--an always varying result of struggle between various forces which adjusted and re-adjusted themselves in conformity with their relative energies, the chances of their conflicts, and the support they found in their surroundings.

Therefore, there are not two cities whose inner organization and destinies would have been identical. Each one, taken separately, varies from century to century. And yet, when we cast a broad glance upon all the cities of Europe, the local and national unlikenesses disappear, and we are struck to find among all of them a wonderful resemblance, although each has developed for itself, independently from the others, and in different conditions. A small town in the north of Scotland, with its population of coa.r.s.e labourers and fishermen; a rich city of Flanders, with its world-wide commerce, luxury, love of amus.e.m.e.nt and animated life; an Italian city enriched by its intercourse with the East, and breeding within its walls a refined artistic taste and civilization; and a poor, chiefly agricultural, city in the marsh and lake district of Russia, seem to have little in common. And nevertheless, the leading lines of their organization, and the spirit which animates them, are imbued with a strong family likeness.

Everywhere we see the same federations of small communities and guilds, the same "sub-towns" round the mother city, the same folkmote, and the same insigns of its independence. The defensor of the city, under different names and in different accoutrements, represents the same authority and interests; food supplies, labour and commerce, are organized on closely similar lines; inner and outer struggles are fought with like ambitions; nay, the very formulae used in the struggles, as also in the annals, the ordinances, and the rolls, are identical; and the architectural monuments, whether Gothic, Roman, or Byzantine in style, express the same aspirations and the same ideals; they are conceived and built in the same way. Many dissemblances are mere differences of age, and those disparities between sister cities which are real are repeated in different parts of Europe. The unity of the leading idea and the ident.i.ty of origin make up for differences of climate, geographical situation, wealth, language and religion. This is why we can speak of the medieval city as of a well-defined phase of civilization; and while every research insisting upon local and individual differences is most welcome, we may still indicate the chief lines of development which are common to all cities.(1)

There is no doubt that the protection which used to be accorded to the market-place from the earliest barbarian times has played an important, though not an exclusive, part in the emanc.i.p.ation of the medieval city.

The early barbarians knew no trade within their village communities; they traded with strangers only, at certain definite spots, on certain determined days. And, in order that the stranger might come to the barter-place without risk of being slain for some feud which might be running between two kins, the market was always placed under the special protection of all kins. It was inviolable, like the place of worship under the shadow of which it was held. With the Kabyles it is still annaya, like the footpath along which women carry water from the well; neither must be trodden upon in arms, even during inter-tribal wars. In medieval times the market universally enjoyed the same protection.(2) No feud could be prosecuted on the place whereto people came to trade, nor within a certain radius from it; and if a quarrel arose in the motley crowd of buyers and sellers, it had to be brought before those under whose protection the market stood--the community's tribunal, or the bishop's, the lord's, or the king's judge. A stranger who came to trade was a guest, and he went on under this very name. Even the lord who had no scruples about robbing a merchant on the high road, respected the Weichbild, that is, the pole which stood in the market-place and bore either the king's arms, or a glove, or the image of the local saint, or simply a cross, according to whether the market was under the protection of the king, the lord, the local church, or the folkmote--the vyeche.(3)

It is easy to understand how the self-jurisdiction of the city could develop out of the special jurisdiction in the market-place, when this last right was conceded, willingly or not, to the city itself. And such an origin of the city's liberties, which can be traced in very many cases, necessarily laid a special stamp upon their subsequent development. It gave a predominance to the trading part of the community. The burghers who possessed a house in the city at the time being, and were co-owners in the town-lands, const.i.tuted very often a merchant guild which held in its hands the city's trade; and although at the outset every burgher, rich and poor, could make part of the merchant guild, and the trade itself seems to have been carried on for the entire city by its trustees, the guild gradually became a sort of privileged body. It jealously prevented the outsiders who soon began to flock into the free cities from entering the guild, and kept the advantages resulting from trade for the few "families" which had been burghers at the time of the emanc.i.p.ation. There evidently was a danger of a merchant oligarchy being thus const.i.tuted. But already in the tenth, and still more during the two next centuries, the chief crafts, also organized in guilds, were powerful enough to check the oligarchic tendencies of the merchants.

The craft guild was then a common seller of its produce and a common buyer of the raw materials, and its members were merchants and manual workers at the same time. Therefore, the predominance taken by the old craft guilds from the very beginnings of the free city life guaranteed to manual labour the high position which it afterwards occupied in the city.(4) In fact, in a medieval city manual labour was no token of inferiority; it bore, on the contrary, traces of the high respect it had been kept in in the village community. Manual labour in a "mystery" was considered as a pious duty towards the citizens: a public function (Amt), as honourable as any other. An idea of "justice" to the community, of "right" towards both producer and consumer, which would seem so extravagant now, penetrated production and exchange. The tanner's, the cooper's, or the shoemaker's work must be "just," fair, they wrote in those times. Wood, leather or thread which are used by the artisan must be "right"; bread must be baked "in justice," and so on.

Transport this language into our present life, and it would seem affected and unnatural; but it was natural and unaffected then, because the medieval artisan did not produce for an unknown buyer, or to throw his goods into an unknown market. He produced for his guild first; for a brotherhood of men who knew each other, knew the technics of the craft, and, in naming the price of each product, could appreciate the skill displayed in its fabrication or the labour bestowed upon it. Then the guild, not the separate producer, offered the goods for sale in the community, and this last, in its turn, offered to the brotherhood of allied communities those goods which were exported, and a.s.sumed responsibility for their quality. With such an organization, it was the ambition of each craft not to offer goods of inferior quality, and technical defects or adulterations became a matter concerning the whole community, because, an ordinance says, "they would destroy public confidence."(5) Production being thus a social duty, placed under the control of the whole amitas, manual labour could not fall into the degraded condition which it occupies now, so long as the free city was living.

A difference between master and apprentice, or between master and worker (compayne, Geselle), existed but in the medieval cities from their very beginnings; this was at the outset a mere difference of age and skill, not of wealth and power. After a seven years' apprenticeship, and after having proved his knowledge and capacities by a work of art, the apprentice became a master himself. And only much later, in the sixteenth century, after the royal power had destroyed the city and the craft organization, was it possible to become master in virtue of simple inheritance or wealth. But this was also the time of a general decay in medieval industries and art.

There was not much room for hired work in the early flourishing periods of the medieval cities, still less for individual hirelings. The work of the weavers, the archers, the smiths, the bakers, and so on, was performed for the craft and the city; and when craftsmen were hired in the building trades, they worked as temporary corporations (as they still do in the Russian artels), whose work was paid en bloc. Work for a master began to multiply only later on; but even in this case the worker was paid better than he is paid now, even in this country, and very much better than he used to be paid all over Europe in the first half of this century. Thorold Rogers has familiarized English readers with this idea; but the same is true for the Continent as well, as is shown by the researches of Falke and Schonberg, and by many occasional indications.

Even in the fifteenth century a mason, a carpenter, or a smith worker would be paid at Amiens four sols a day, which corresponded to forty-eight pounds of bread, or to the eighth part of a small ox (bouvard). In Saxony, the salary of the Geselle in the building trade was such that, to put it in Falke's words, he could buy with his six days' wages three sheep and one pair of shoes.(6) The donations of workers (Geselle) to cathedrals also bear testimony of their relative well-being, to say nothing of the glorious donations of certain craft guilds nor of what they used to spend in festivities and pageants.(7) In fact, the more we learn about the medieval city, the more we are convinced that at no time has labour enjoyed such conditions of prosperity and such respect as when city life stood at its highest.

More than that; not only many aspirations of our modern radicals were already realized in the middle ages, but much of what is described now as Utopian was accepted then as a matter of fact. We are laughed at when we say that work must be pleasant, but--"every one must be pleased with his work," a medieval Kuttenberg ordinance says, "and no one shall, while doing nothing (mit nichts thun), appropriate for himself what others have produced by application and work, because laws must be a shield for application and work."(8) And amidst all present talk about an eight hours' day, it may be well to remember an ordinance of Ferdinand the First relative to the Imperial coal mines, which settled the miner's day at eight hours, "as it used to be of old" (wie vor Alters herkommen), and work on Sat.u.r.day afternoon was prohibited. Longer hours were very rare, we are told by Janssen, while shorter hours were of common occurrence. In this country, in the fifteenth century, Rogers says, "the workmen worked only forty-eight hours a week."(9) The Sat.u.r.day half-holiday, too, which we consider as a modern conquest, was in reality an old medieval inst.i.tution; it was bathing-time for a great part of the community, while Wednesday afternoon was bathing-time for the Geselle.(10) And although school meals did not exist--probably because no children went hungry to school--a distribution of bath-money to the children whose parents found difficulty in providing it was habitual in several places. As to Labour Congresses, they also were a regular Feature of the middles ages. In some parts of Germany craftsmen of the same trade, belonging to different communes, used to come together every year to discuss questions relative to their trade, the years of apprenticeship, the wandering years, the wages, and so on; and in 1572, the Hanseatic towns formally recognized the right of the crafts to come together at periodical congresses, and to take any resolutions, so long as they were not contrary to the cities' rolls, relative to the quality of goods. Such Labour Congresses, partly international like the Hansa itself, are known to have been held by bakers, founders, smiths, tanners, sword-makers and cask-makers.(11)

The craft organization required, of course, a close supervision of the craftsmen by the guild, and special jurates were always nominated for that purpose. But it is most remarkable that, so long as the cities lived their free life, no complaints were heard about the supervision; while, after the State had stepped in, confiscating the property of the guilds and destroying their independence in favour of its own bureaucracy, the complaints became simply countless.(12) On the other hand, the immensity of progress realized in all arts under the mediaeval guild system is the best proof that the system was no hindrance to individual initiative.(13) The fact is, that the medieval guild, like the medieval parish, "street," or "quarter," was not a body of citizens, placed under the control of State functionaries; it was a union of all men connected with a given trade: jurate buyers of raw produce, sellers of manufactured goods, and artisans--masters, "compaynes," and apprentices. For the inner organization of the trade its a.s.sembly was sovereign, so long as it did not hamper the other guilds, in which case the matter was brought before the guild of the guilds--the city. But there was in it something more than that. It had its own self-jurisdiction, its own military force, its own general a.s.semblies, its own traditions of struggles, glory, and independence, its own relations with other guilds of the same trade in other cities: it had, in a word, a full organic life which could only result from the integrality of the vital functions. When the town was called to arms, the guild appeared as a separate company (Schaar), armed with its own arms (or its own guns, lovingly decorated by the guild, at a subsequent epoch), under its own self-elected commanders. It was, in a word, as independent a unit of the federation as the republic of Uri or Geneva was fifty years ago in the Swiss Confederation. So that, to compare it with a modern trade union, divested of all attributes of State sovereignty, and reduced to a couple of functions of secondary importance, is as unreasonable as to compare Florence or Brugge with a French commune vegetating under the Code Napoleon, or with a Russian town placed under Catherine the Second's munic.i.p.al law. Both have elected mayors, and the latter has also its craft corporations; but the difference is--all the difference that exists between Florence and Fontenay-les-Oies or Tsarevokokshaisk, or between a Venetian doge and a modern mayor who lifts his hat before the sous-prefet's clerk.

The medieval guilds were capable of maintaining their independence; and, later on, especially in the fourteenth century, when, in consequence of several causes which shall presently be indicated, the old munic.i.p.al life underwent a deep modification, the younger crafts proved strong enough to conquer their due share in the management of the city affairs.

The ma.s.ses, organized in "minor" arts, rose to wrest the power out of the hands of a growing oligarchy, and mostly succeeded in this task, opening again a new era of prosperity. True, that in some cities the uprising was crushed in blood, and ma.s.s decapitations of workers followed, as was the case in Paris in 1306, and in Cologne in 1371. In such cases the city's liberties rapidly fell into decay, and the city was gradually subdued by the central authority. But the majority of the towns had preserved enough of vitality to come out of the turmoil with a new life and vigour.(14) A new period of rejuvenescence was their reward. New life was infused, and it found its expression in splendid architectural monuments, in a new period of prosperity, in a sudden progress of technics and invention, and in a new intellectual movement leading to the Renaissance and to the Reformation.

The life of a mediaeval city was a succession of hard battles to conquer liberty and to maintain it. True, that a strong and tenacious race of burghers had developed during those fierce contests; true, that love and worship of the mother city had been bred by these struggles, and that the grand things achieved by the mediaeval communes were a direct outcome of that love. But the sacrifices which the communes had to sustain in the battle for freedom were, nevertheless, cruel, and left deep traces of division on their inner life as well. Very few cities had succeeded, under a concurrence of favourable circ.u.mstances, in obtaining liberty at one stroke, and these few mostly lost it equally easily; while the great number had to fight fifty or a hundred years in succession, often more, before their rights to free life had been recognized, and another hundred years to found their liberty on a firm basis--the twelfth century charters thus being but one of the stepping-stones to freedom.(15) In reality, the mediaeval city was a fortified oasis amidst a country plunged into feudal submission, and it had to make room for itself by the force of its arms. In consequence of the causes briefly alluded to in the preceding chapter, each village community had gradually fallen under the yoke of some lay or clerical lord. His house had grown to be a castle, and his brothers-in-arms were now the sc.u.m of adventurers, always ready to plunder the peasants. In addition to three days a week which the peasants had to work for the lord, they had also to bear all sorts of exactions for the right to sow and to crop, to be gay or sad, to live, to marry, or to die. And, worst of all, they were continually plundered by the armed robbers of some neighbouring lord, who chose to consider them as their master's kin, and to take upon them, and upon their cattle and crops, the revenge for a feud he was fighting against their owner. Every meadow, every field, every river, and road around the city, and every man upon the land was under some lord.