Guilds

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By Zachary Heller

A Metalworking Guild's Master's House

Quotes:

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master”

--Ernest Hemingway

Love the little trade which thou hast learned, and be content therewith.

--Marcus Aurelius Antonious

Skill comes from practice

--Chinese proverb

The word guild probably derived from the Anglo-Saxon root "geld" which means "to pay". A guild is an organization of craftsmen in a particular trade or an association of people with similar pursuits. Medieval Guilds played an important role in Medieval towns. Guilds tried to guarantee standards among crafts in the Middle Ages. They are like Unions nowadays. A group of craftsmen in a particular trade might make a guild. A guild would make sure that anything made by a guild member was good quality and that it was sold at a good price. Membership of a guild was an honor as it was a sign that you were a skilled worker. If you were a member, your guild would look after you if you were sick. The guild would help the families of dead guild members too. Guilds were in The Islamic World, England, and throughout the rest of Europe. People in guilds mainly wrote books until the Printing Press was invented.

Medieval Town

Apprentices and Journeyman

An apprentice was usually a male teenager who went to live with a master in a guild. The master would teach his apprentice his trade. An apprentice would live with the master and his family. The apprentice's parents paid to have him taken on by a master in a guild. They would learn their trade in the master's shop. During an apprenticeship, the apprentice was not allowed to marry. The apprentice would learn from 2-7 years depending on the craft. The apprentice then progressed to journeyman. Usually a master had an apprentice and a journeyman in his house at the same time. The big difference between an apprentice and a journeyman was that the journeyman was paid. The next thing that you had to do once you became a journeyman was that you had to make a masterpiece that the master would like. If the master thought your masterpiece showed skill, you could assume the title of master craftsmen and would get membership in the guild.

Hardships of a Journeyman

The journeyman had to work on his own time to produce his masterpiece. This was a problem because Sunday was the only day that they could. This was because Sunday was the only day which they did not work sun-up to sun-down. A journeyman had to use his own tools and raw materials to make his masterpiece. They might not have been able to get their own tools and materials easily even though they were a wage earner. Then if a journeyman did make the needed masterpiece, the state of the economy could change his ability to get into the guild. There was a vote made to accept journeymen as masters in the guild. It was not good to have too many masters in a guild and when the economy was bad. Fewer products would be purchased by the public and all of the masters wouldn't get much business during a time when the economy was bad. It would burden the craftsmen to have more people selling the same wares because they would get less money.

Punishments

If a guild member was found to be cheating the public, by not using the guild's standards, they would be fined or made to do the work again. The worst punishment for not following standards was to be kicked out of your guild. This meant that you could no longer trade in your town.

Medieval Metalworking Guild

The Temporary End of Guilds

Guilds were believed to be against free trade and they were believed to slow advances in technology. According to several accounts of this time, guilds became increasingly involved in simple territorial struggles against each other and against free practitioners of their arts.

Guilds Today

Even though the use of guilds ended a long time ago, guilds have made a comeback nowadays. The Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen is one guild that is in business now. There are author, writing, movie, and theater guilds. There are also a lot of knitting guilds in the United States. There are also internet guilds where people connect online. (These are usually in computer games)