Reading — Test 19

Reading passage

During the High and Late Middle Ages, roughly from the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries, associations of artisans and merchants known as guilds emerged as one of the most influential institutions in European urban life. Guilds arose in response to the rapid growth of towns, which created both new commercial opportunities and new risks for those who practiced a trade. A weaver or goldsmith working alone in a medieval town had little protection against unscrupulous competitors, inconsistent quality standards, or the arbitrary demands of local lords. By banding together, craftsmen in the same occupation could regulate their trade collectively, and in doing so they gained a measure of economic security that no individual practitioner could secure alone. Guilds generally fell into two broad categories. Merchant guilds, which appeared earliest, united traders who bought and sold goods, often over long distances, and who needed collective bargaining power to negotiate tolls, secure trading privileges from town councils, and protect shipments from theft or piracy. Craft guilds, which proliferated somewhat later, organized producers within a single trade, such as bakers, tanners, or masons. Craft guilds set standards for the quality of materials and workmanship, fixed prices to prevent ruinous undercutting among members, and limited the number of practitioners permitted to operate within a town at any given time. This latter function was not merely self-interested; town authorities relied on guilds to guarantee that bread was properly baked, that cloth met agreed dimensions, and that consumers were not defrauded by shoddy goods sold under the guise of skilled craftsmanship. Central to the craft guild system was a graduated structure of training that moved an individual from novice to master over a period of years. A boy, and occasionally a girl in certain trades such as silk-weaving, would be bound as an apprentice to a master craftsman, typically for a term of five to seven years. During this period, the apprentice received instruction in the techniques of the trade in exchange for labor, though he received little or no wage and remained under the master's authority for matters of discipline and conduct. Upon completing this term, the individual became a journeyman, a term derived from the French journée, meaning a day's work, reflecting the fact that journeymen were paid by the day rather than bound to a single household. Journeymen could travel between towns seeking employment and further honing their skills, but they could not yet operate an independent workshop. Only after producing a "masterpiece," a demonstration piece judged by senior guild members to be of sufficient quality, could a journeyman be admitted as a master and thereby gain the right to train apprentices of his own and to vote in guild affairs. Guilds also functioned as institutions extending well beyond commercial regulation. Many maintained chapels or endowed altars dedicated to a patron saint associated with the trade, and guild funds commonly provided for members who fell ill, for the funerals of deceased members, and for the support of widows and orphans left behind. In cities such as Florence and Ghent, guilds became so economically powerful that they acquired formal political roles, with guild representatives sitting on town councils or even, in some cases, effectively governing the city. This blending of economic, social, and political functions meant that membership in a guild was not simply a matter of employment but conferred a recognized place within the civic order, complete with obligations of mutual assistance and participation in communal ceremonies and festivals. By the sixteenth century, however, the guild system began to face mounting pressures that would eventually diminish its dominance. The expansion of long-distance trade and the rise of merchant capitalists who financed production without themselves belonging to any craft guild gradually undercut the guilds' monopolistic control over local markets. Rural cottage industries, operating outside the jurisdiction of urban guild regulations, could often produce goods more cheaply, since they were unencumbered by guild-mandated wages, quality inspections, and restrictions on output. Although guilds persisted in various forms in many European cities well into the eighteenth century, and some historians have noted their influence on later trade organizations, the tightly regulated, locally bounded system that had structured medieval urban crafts for centuries was, by degrees, being supplanted by more flexible and geographically dispersed modes of production.