tendency to replace the longer procedure of ordinary courts with the swift and brief procedure of the specific guild tribunal. Initially limited to disputes among members of the guild concerning matters related to the exercise of the craft itself, it sought to expand its jurisdiction, thereby bringing the association’s jurisdiction closer to that of the State. On the other hand, where the major arts prevailed, these gradually extended their jurisdiction over the other arts as well, also because, unlike the latter, they possessed their own executive means.
Assistance functions were fulfilled through moral and material aid to members struck by adverse events and to the poor and unfortunate in general; this aid could take on organized and imposing forms with the founding of hospitals and hospices.
The religious function, more extensive in the cities of northern Europe, ranged from the fixing of feast days—hence days of abstention from work—to the celebration of the patronal feast, the erection of chapels and churches, and their maintenance.
III. ORGANIZATION
The internal organization of the guilds is best evidenced by the most important documentation still preserved today, which testifies to the structure of the various corporate bodies and, at the time when the guild was fully operative, legally consecrated its existence—namely, the statutes.Alongside the statutes, important elements of corporate organization are the seal and the seat. As regards the latter, its size and opulence depend on the economic standing of the guild, which sometimes gives rise to notable artistic manifestations.
The patrimony is also a constituent element of the guild’s structure. It gradually accumulated through contributions paid by members, fiscal revenues granted by the central authority, and bequests upon death.
But the essential element of internal organization is provided by the guild’s leaders. Variable in number, they always include the proper directors in the persons of the consuls, or abbots, or stewards, or mayors; councillors, advocates, or assessors for jurisdictional functions; notaries or clerks for drafting social acts; and, finally, the treasurers. Alongside them is a more or less numerous cohort of persons assigned to various tasks.
The criterion for the appointment of the various offices is closely supervised: normally this occurs either by election or by lot, except in those cities or at those times when the guilds are directly dependent on the central government, in which case the appointment is made by the latter.
Closely connected with the internal organization is the position of workers within the guild.
Initially, not all those who practiced a craft belonged to a corporate body; later, gradually, in order to defend themselves against competition, membership became obligatory, and this obligation was even sanctioned by the central authority. This did not, however, exclude the existence of artisans not enrolled in the guild.
Moreover, to be enrolled in a guild, the primary condition was the practice of that craft or of one of the crafts over which the guild had jurisdiction; consequently, especially for those professions requiring specific technical knowledge, proof of competence in practicing it was also required.
Apart from these conditions, there were others that fit within the ethical and social physiognomy of the guild. Among these, though not always, was being the son of a master of the guild (from which, especially in later periods, there arose a hereditary right of enrollment); from this also derived the prohibition on enrolling illegitimate sons.
Enrollment entailed two obligations: the payment of the prescribed fee and the swearing of an oath to observe the social statutes.
The position of members within the guild was not identical for all. At the apex stood the masters, who alone could hold guild offices; below them were the workers and journeymen or apprentices, who were therefore not wage laborers dependent on the masters but masters in potential, and who were legally destined to become such after various formalities—essentially only after demonstrating a thorough knowledge of the craft’s practice. In some cities of northern Europe, this occurred through the presentation, by the aspiring master, of a masterpiece.
Beginning in the 15th century (though the timing varies by region in relation to the maturing of the conditions that determined and accompanied the phenomenon), corporate organization declined. The reasons were both economic and political. The first signs emerged of the maturing of the productive organization. The rise of the merchant-entrepreneur and, consequently—though not immediately—the emergence of the figure of the wage laborer rendered anachronistic the continued existence of an organization that, by its nature, was meant—apart from the very particular case of the distinction between master and apprentice—to gather within itself elements in absolute parity, whereas now it placed side by side individuals whose economic potential and, above all, economic autonomy were markedly different.
On the other hand, growing competition spurred guild members, who were monopolists in the exercise of their craft, to further restrict entry into the guild, with the logical result that, especially outside the cities, an ever-larger cohort of free workers emerged whose very presence undermined the corporate structure at its base.
The political reasons lie in the increasing intervention of the central authority in relation to corporate bodies. Indeed, states—already inclined to extend their intervention in domestic economies (we are in the period when the Signorie were asserting themselves in Italy and the great monarchies outside Italy)—found it expedient for their own purposes to transform corporate bodies into instruments of their economic policy, often indeed into true state organs.
At the same time, in places like France and England, where the state wished to promote its emerging industries, it acted outside the guilds, which were thus stripped of much of their functions.
Even so, the guilds became even more entrenched in their circle of privileges, defending them both against other organizations and against the state itself, which recognized these privileges in exchange for the payment of heavy fiscal contributions that ultimately drained the guilds financially as well.
Under such conditions, the corporate body entered the 18th century, when naturalistic conceptions began to penetrate economic thought. And it is easy to imagine how the surviving corporate bodies were judged by the new oppositional ideas that rejected all economic constraint.
In the general aspiration for freedom, the guilds—which in their final days had increasingly denied it to those outside their orbit—became an ever more anachronistic and odious institution.
Da questa situazione di fatto al formarsi di una vera e propria campagna anticorporativa il passo è breve, cosicché, quando hanno inizio le riforme sia in Italia che altrove ad opera dei vari principi illuministi, il problema della soppressione del plurisecolare, glorioso, ma ormai superato organismo, è maturo per una radicale soluzione.
In Francia le corporazioni vengono soppresse da Turgot, ma non in modo definitivo, giacché ciò avviene solo con la Rivoluzione.
In Italia, invece, le soppressioni hanno inizio nel 1770 con Pietro Leopoldo in Toscana, mentre contemporaneamente nel Lombardo-Veneto le arti vengono private di ogni privilegio, salvo ad essere soppresse completamente fra il 1778 e il 1786.
A seguito della Rivoluzione Francese, anche Belgio, Spagna ed alcuni Stati della Germania operano la soppressione, nonché gli altri Stati italiani, primo fra essi lo Stato Pontificio nel 1801 con Pio VII, seguito da Ferdinando I delle Due Sicilie nel 1821 e da Carlo Alberto di Sardegna nel 1844.
Non sono ancora soppresse in tutti i paesi le antiche corporazioni, che già maturano definitivamente in alcuni le condizioni per il sorgere di nuove organizzazioni di lavoratori. È l'Inghilterra, paese che già aveva da tempo soppresso le *guilds*, l'ambiente dove, a causa dei progressi dell'industrialismo, tali condizioni sono più urgenti. Sintetizzabili in un acuirsi sempre più dei conflitti di lavoro e nella graduale convinzione che un regime di assoluta libertà economica non è il migliore sia per appianare i conflitti di lavoro, sia per