Explores the motives and experiences of the medieval men and women who joined together in guilds, family-like societies that affected most aspects of their members' lives.

"Guilds ruled many crafts and trades from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, and have always attracted debate and controversy. They were sometimes viewed as efficient institutions that guaranteed quality and skills. But they also excluded competitors, manipulated markets, and blocked innovations. Did the benefits of guilds outweigh their costs? Analyzing thousands of guilds that dominated European economies from 1000 to 1880, The European Guilds uses vivid examples and clear economic reasoning to answer that question. Sheilagh Ogilvie's book features the voices of honorable guild masters, underpaid journeymen, exploited apprentices, shady officials, and outraged customers, and follows the stories of the "vile encroachers"--Women, migrants, Jews, gypsies, bastards, and many others--desperate to work but hunted down by the guilds as illicit competitors. She investigates the benefits of guilds but also shines a light on their dark side. Guilds sometimes provided important services, but they also manipulated markets to profit their members. They regulated quality but prevented poor consumers from buying goods cheaply. They fostered work skills but denied apprenticeships to outsiders. They transmitted useful techniques but blocked innovations that posed a threat. Guilds existed widely not because they corrected market failures or served the common good but because they benefited two powerful groups--guild members and political elites."--Rabat de la jaquette.

Includes instructions for making jewelry, stone carving designs, a peasant's hat, shoes, armor, pottery, etc. from available materials.

First full study devoted to the archery and crossbow guilds which grew up in Flanders in the middle ages.

Epstein takes a fresh look at the organization of labor in medieval towns and emphasizes the predominance of a wage system within them. He offers illuminating comment on a wide range of subjects_on guilds and guild organization, on women and Jews in the work force, on the value given labor, and on the sources of disaffection. His book presents a feast of themes in medieval social history. David Herlihy, Brown University

The origin of guilds has been the subject of a great deal of discussion, and two opposing theories have been advanced. According to the first theory they were the persistence of earlier institutions; but what were these institutions? Some say that, more particularly in the south of France, they were of Roman and Byzantine origin, and were derived from those collegia of the poorer classes (tenuiorum) which, in the last centuries of the Empire, chiefly concerned themselves with the provision of funerals; or, again, from the scholae, official and compulsory groups, which, keeping the name of the hall in which their councils assembled, prolonged their existence till about the year 1000.

This study argues that late medieval English 'mystery plays' were about masculinity as much as Christian theology, modes of devotion, or civic self-consciousness. Performed repeatedly by generations of merchants and craftsmen, these Biblical plays produced fantasies and anxieties of middle class, urban masculinity, many of which are familiar today.

In the half millennium of their existence, guilds in the Low Countries played a highly significant role in shaping the societies of which they were a part. One key aspect that has been identified in recent historical research to explain the survival of the guilds for such a long time is the guilds' continued adaptability to changing circumstances. This idea of flexibility is the point of departure for the essays in this volume, which sheds new light on the corporate system and identifies its various features and regional variances. The contributors explore the interrelations between economic organisations and political power in late medieval and early modern towns, and address issues of gender, religion and social welfare in the context of the guilds. This cohesive and focussed volume will provide a stimulus for renewed interest and further research in this area. It will appeal to scholars and students with an interest in early modern economic, social and cultural history in particular, but will also be valuable to those researching into political, religious and gender history.