Guilds

GUILDS. - Term used in Sicily to designate the guilds of arts and crafts, which, numerous though under different names and with special characteristics, developed in every city of Italy during the Middle Ages.

The most ancient origins of the Sicilian m. can be traced back as far as the period of Arab domination, although the existence of the first Sicilian craft associations becomes certain only at the beginning of the 14th century. At their head were the consuls and the councillors, the former being appointed by the guild and recognized by patent of the Commune. The functions of the consul were principally to represent the college, to intervene to settle all divergences that might arise over questions relating to the craft, to decide, together with two councillors, on the admission or non-admission of new apprentices, to preside over the meetings and to administer the patrimony of the guild. As a higher authority sat the praetor or chief consul, who provided for the resolution of all possible disputes arising among the consuls themselves and between these and third parties. Each m. was regulated by its own statutes or chapters, which had to be approved by the Commune, with which a copy was deposited.

Each craft formed a group unto itself, each having its own district, which took its name from the m. that carried on its trade and craft there (contrata barberiorum, contrata planellariorum, etc.), its own church, its own patron saint, its own laws and its own customs. Entry into a craft, for those who had not been raised and brought up in it, was no easy undertaking, inasmuch as both the craft and the workshop with its tools and even its customers were strictly hereditary. The m., assembled together but each under the orders of its respective consul, furthermore made up the civic militia; in Palermo, in fact, the fourteen bastions with the arms and equipment supplied by the Commune were, in case of necessity, entrusted to them.

The first decline of the m. in Sicily began in the second half of the 18th century because of their own rigid structure of a closed caste, when, having pointed out the damages that derived to national industry from their nature as monopolistic organisms, in order to restore the necessary freedom to the arts, by royal dispatch of 16 Nov. 1784 the statutes of all the m. were abolished and these were divided into two classes, namely the m. of the mechanical arts, 44 in number, under the dependence of a delegated minister, and those concerning the annona, 15 in number, subject to the Senate in its capacity as annona magistrate. All the m. that could not be included in the two aforesaid categories were to be understood as forthwith abolished, because they were held to be "illegitimately existing." Nevertheless restored by royal dispatch of 13 Oct. 1812, after the revolution of 1820 the m. of every kind were definitively suppressed by royal rescript of 13 March 1822, following a report of the director general of police, in which they were represented as "a united force that opposes the force of the government." In the present-day meaning, by m. are commonly understood the workers of the arsenals and of the ships, sometimes ordered into companies with engineers at their head, or else the workers of any industrial complex. To set forth their economic-social problems, other, more comprehensive terms are customarily used today (v. INDUSTRIALISMO; PROLETARIATO). For the trade-union problems, v. SINDACALISMO E SINDACATO.

Niccolò Del Re