Guilds, was- Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: poor widow

[Laura C. Minnick]

At 07:20 AM 4/21/2005, you wrote:
>On a slightly different tangent, I was surprised to find that
>there was a system set up in the guilds to take care of widows.
><snip>
>  Has
>anyone else heard of this? I always thought that widows were left
>to fend for themselves until this tour.

Ok, I'm back for a longer answer...

Basically, there's three social groups that fall under the 'guilds' 
umbrella. There were merchant guilds, skill/trade guilds, and 
'fraternities' (no, not Animal House!).

The merchant guilds were based in large trade-hub towns, and controlled 
trade, often working hand in glove with the government (nothing's changed, 
eh?) as regarding tariffs and such. The Hanseatic League was an enormous 
merchant guild that controlled the shipping and trade for the Baltic, North 
Sea, and into the North Atlantic. Merchant guilds were held tightly by a 
few select families, but a few rose through the ranks.

The trade or skill guilds were also city-based, and were very much like our 
trade unions. The guilds provided something in quality control- they had 
specific oversight as regarding apprenticeships and training, they 
controlled things such as working hours (not just how many, but when- many 
guilds forbade working by candle-light, for instance), and how many 
apprentices and journeymen could work with a master. Members of the guild 
had to meet standards, or be shut down, and no, scabs weren't welcomed then 
either. There were many benefits though- the guild was a significant social 
group- they held banquets, participated in parades on feast days or for 
important occasions, and usually did so dressed in guild livery. They often 
sponsored charity works, such as hospitals and foundling homes. They also 
had specific funds (paid into by membership fees and such) for support for 
families if the guild member was taken ill, burial costs when he died, 
support for his widow and children- even help for a widow who wished to 
continue her husband's business (yes, it happened, and often quite 
successfully). There was even an investment fund for dowries for their 
daughters (there's a special name for that but I can't remember it at the 
moment). And there was pension money available when the tradesman was too 
old to work.

The fraternities were similar, with two differences: they were not only 
city-based- they could be found in the suburbs and sometimes in the 
countryside; and they were not occupation based, but were purely social. 
Instead of a trade union, think the Elks, Masons, or Odd Fellows. The 
fraternities were usually loosely religious-based, honoring a saint, or Our 
Lady. They filled many of the same roles as the trade guilds, minus the 
trade. They also held banquets, participated in processions, etc. They also 
usually had burial and dowry funds available, but less so disability and 
pension money, which are much more closely tied to actual earnings. But 
they were available in some places where the trade guilds were not, and 
filled a social niche that needed filling.

There is much more information available of course, so here's a short 
bibliography of books that have information on the subject (and a few other 
subjects :-)

Christopher Dyer, _Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social 
Change in England c. 1200-1520_. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989)

_City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe_, Barbara Hanawalt and Kathryn 
Reyerson, eds. (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1994)

_The Medieval Town: A Reader in English Urban History, 1200-1540_, Richard 
Holt and Gervase Rosser, eds. (Longman, London, 1990)

_Fifteenth-Century Attitudes: Perceptions of Society in Late Medieval 
England_, Rosemary Horrox, ed. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994)

Maurice Keen, _English Society in the Later Middle Ages: 1348-1500_. 
(Penguin, New York, 1990)

You'll also find some interesting difference between women's lives in the 
small towns and villages, and their lives in large towns where a woman 
could make an independent life for herself. She might even be able to be 
declared 'femme sole', which gave her rights to her own earnings, the right 
to move about as she would, and to sign and extend legally binding contracts.

That of course, is a whole 'nother subject... ;-)

'Lainie
___________________________________________________________________________
O it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it 
like a giant--Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act II