Appendix X: The Origin of the Guilds

The origin of the guilds has been the subject of many controversies. There is not the slightest doubt that craft-guilds, or “colleges” of artisans, existed in ancient Rome. It appears, indeed, from a passage in Plutarch that Numa legislated about them. “He divided the people,” we are told, “into trades... ordering them to have brotherhoods, festivals, and meetings, and indicating the worship they had to accomplish before the gods, according to the dignity of each trade.” It is almost certain, however, that it was not the Roman king who invented, or instituted, the trade-colleges — they had already existed in ancient Greece; in all probability, he simply submitted them to royal legislation, just as Philippe le Bel, fifteen centuries later, submitted the trades of France, much to their detriment, to royal supervision and legislation. One of the successors of Numa, Servius Tullius, also is said to have issued some legislation concerning the colleges. A Servio Tullio populus romanus relatus in censum, digestus in classes, curiis atque collegiis distributus (E. Martin-Saint Léon, Histoire des corporations de métiers depuis leurs origines jusqu’à leur suppression en 1791, etc., Paris, 1897. ³¹⁹

Consequently, it was quite natural that historians should ask themselves whether the guilds which took such a development in the twelfth, and even the tenth and the eleventh centuries, were not revivals of the old Roman “colleges” — the more so as the latter, as seen from the above quotation, quite corresponded to the mediæval guild. The Roman sodalitia, so far as we may judge (same author, p. 9), corresponded to the Kabyle çofs. ³²⁰ It is known, indeed, that corporations of the Roman type existed in Southern Gaul down to the fifth century. Besides, an inscription found during some excavations in Paris shows that a corporation of Lutetia nautæ existed under Tiberius; and in the chart given to the Paris “water-merchants” in 1170, their rights are spoken of as existing ab antiquo [from ancient] (same author, p. 51). There would have been, therefore, nothing extraordinary, had corporations been maintained in early medieval France after the barbarian invasions.

However, even if as much must be granted, there is no reason to maintain that the Dutch corporations, the Norman guilds, the Russian artéls, the Georgian amkari, and so on, necessarily have had also a Roman, or even a Byzantine origin. Of course, the intercourse between the Normans and the capital of the East-Roman Empire was very active, and the Slavonians (as has been proved by Russian historians, and especially by Rambaud) took a lively part in that intercourse. So, the Normans and the Russians may have imported the Roman organization of trade-corporations into their respective lands. But when we see that the artél was the very essence of the everyday life of all the Russians, as early as the tenth century, and that this artél, although no sort of legislation has ever regulated its life till modern times, has the very same features as the Roman college and the Western guild, we are still more inclined to consider the eastern guild as having an even more ancient origin than the Roman college. Romans knew well, indeed, that their sodalitia and collegia were “what the Greeks called hetairiai” (Martin-Saint-Léon, p. 2), and from what we know of the history of the East, we may conclude, with little probability of being mistaken, that the great nations of the East, as well as Egypt, also have had the same guild organization. The essential features of this organization remain the same wherever we may find them. It is a union of men carrying on the same profession or trade. This union, like the primitive clan, has its own gods and its own worship, always containing some mysteries, specific to each separate union; it considers all its members as brothers and sisters — possibly (at its beginnings) with all the consequences which such a relationship implied in the gens, or, at least, with ceremonies that indicated or symbolized the clan relations between brother and sister; and finally, all the obligations of mutual support which existed in the clan, exist in this union; namely, the exclusion of the very possibility of a murder within the brotherhood, the clan responsibility before justice, and the obligation, in case of a minor dispute, of bringing the matter before the judges, or rather the arbiters, of the guild brotherhood. The guild — one may say — is thus modelled upon the clan.

Consequently, the same remarks which are made in the text concerning the origin of the village community, apply, I am inclined to think, equally to the guild, the artél, and the craft- or neighbour-brotherhood. When the bonds which formerly connected men in their clans were loosened in consequence of migrations, the appearance of the paternal family, and a growing diversity of occupations — a new territorial bond was worked out by mankind in the shape of the village community; and another bond — an occupation bond — was worked out in an imaginary brotherhood — the imaginary clan, which was represented: between two men, or a few men, by the “mixture-of-blood brotherhood” (the Slavonian pobratimstvo), and between a greater number of men of different origin, i.e. originated from different clans, inhabiting the same village or town (or even different villages or towns) — the phratry, the hetairiai, the amkari, the artél, the guild. It is striking to see how distinctly this very idea is expressed in the well-known passage of Plutarch concerning Numa’s legislation of the trade-colleges: — “And through this,” Plutarch wrote, “he was the first to banish from the city this spirit which led people to say: ‘I am a Sabine,’ or ‘I am a Roman,’ or ‘I am a subject of Tatius,’ and another: ‘I am a subject of Romulus’” — to exclude, in other words, the idea of different descent. ³²¹

As to the idea and the form of such an organization, its elements were already indicated from the savage period downwards. We know indeed that in the clans of all savages there are separate secret organizations of warriors, of witches, of young men, etc. — craft mysteries, in which knowledge concerning hunting or warfare is transmitted; in a word, “clubs,” as Miklukho-Maclay described them. These “mysteries” were, in all probability, the prototypes of the future guilds. The work of H. Schurtz, devoted to the “age-classes” and the secret men’s unions during the barbarian stases of civilization (Altersklassen und Männerverbände: eine Darstellung der Grundformen der Gesellschaft, Berlin, 1902), which reaches me while I am reading the proofs of these pages, contains numbers of facts in support of the above hypothesis concerning the origin of guilds. The art of building a large communal house, so as not to offend the spirits of the fallen trees; the art of forging metals, so as to conciliate the hostile spirits; the secrets of hunting and of the ceremonies and mask-dances which render it successful; the art of teaching savage arts to boys; the secret ways of warding off the witchcraft of enemies and, consequently, the art of warfare; the making of boats, of nets for fishing, of traps for animals, and of snares for birds, and finally the women’s arts of weaving and dyeing — all these were in olden times as many “artifices” and “crafts,” which required secrecy for being effective. Consequently, they were transmitted from the earliest times, in secret societies, or “mysteries,” to those only who had undergone a painful initiation. H. Schurtz shows now that savage life is honeycombed with secret societies and “clubs” (of warriors, of hunters), which have as ancient an origin as the marriage “classes” in the clans, and contain already all the elements of the future guild: secrecy, independence from the family and sometimes the clan, common worship of special gods, common meals, jurisdiction within the society and brotherhood. The forge and the boat-house are, in fact, usual dependencies of the men’s clubs; and the “long houses” or “palavers” are built by special craftsmen who know how to conjure the spirits of the fallen trees. ³²²

With regard to the above-mentioned work by E. Martin-Saint-Léon, let me add that it contains very valuable information concerning the organization of the trades in Paris — as it appears from the Livre des métiers of Boileau — and a good summary of information relative to the Communes of different parts of France, with all bibliographical indications. It must, however, be remembered that Paris was a “Royal city” (like Moscow, or Westminster), and that consequently the free medieval-city institutions have never attained there the development which they have attained in free cities. Far from representing “the picture of a typical corporation,” the corporations of Paris, “born and developed under the direct tutorship of royalty,” for this very same cause (which the author considers a cause of superiority, while it was a cause of inferiority — he himself fully shows in different parts of his work how the interference of the imperial power in Rome, and of the royal power in France, destroyed and paralyzed the life of the craft-guilds) could never attain the wonderful growth and influence upon all the life of the city which they did attain in North-Eastern France, at Lyons, Montpellier, Nimes, etc., or in the free cities of Italy, Flanders, Germany, and so on.